Mods won't work (Oblivion and Morrowind)

[Sidus720]

In Oblivion, the mods I put won't work. Same for Morrowind, despite the fact that Vortex says they are enabled. And yes, all the plugins are enabled. Another thing, on some of the charactrers in Oblivion, their face says install Blockhead, despite it being installed. Yeah, I have the character overhaul enabled. Can anyone help? Is there something I installed wrong?

[rmm200]

Mods aren't active until you hit Deploy.

Also check your Plugins page and make sure it looks right.

[HadToRegister]

In Oblivion, the mods I put won't work. Same for Morrowind, despite the fact that Vortex says they are enabled. And yes, all the plugins are enabled. Another thing, on some of the charactrers in Oblivion, their face says install Blockhead, despite it being installed. Yeah, I have the character overhaul enabled. Can anyone help? Is there something I installed wrong?

 

 

Having just spent about a week setting up Oblivion to work with Vortex, I can tell exactly WHY the mods aren't working with Oblivion.

 

The mods were packaged for WryeBash and/or Oblivion Mod Manager, or just zipped up randomly because there was no standard at the time, and WryeBash and OBMM (OMODs) were just recent things.

 

So, what you're downloading is a mish-mosh of just bare ESPs files, or Mod Archives just zipped up with NAMED Folders inside that, such as "This mod here.zip" and when you open it, the first folder in the mod is "THis Mod Here", rather than "DATA"

 

Some Mods (especially the OBSE mods), are usually zipped up, with no folder structure whatsoever, so instead of OBSE\Plugins\thismod.ini, and OBSE\Plugins\Thismod.dll, instead you're getting BOTH of those files in the root of the zip file, which just puts them straight into the DATA folder instead.

 

 

I've just spent a week making a Vortex Oblivion install, by first clicking on "Preview File Contents" on every single mod page before I download an Oblivion mod to see if it's zipped properly, (If it is, I hit "Download with Mod Manager" and install.

If it isn't, I download manually, extract it to it's own folder, and zip it up properly, then add it to my download folder for Vortex to discover it

 

(I've got a long post waiting in the wings, about my "Adventure" with Oblivion and Vortex)

 

Anyway, you can't just download Oblivion and Morrowind mods and expect Vortex to be able to install them properly, due to the fact that Mod Managers basically showed up around the same time, but by that time, thousands of mods were zipped up whichever way, because most of it at the time was done manually, by hand.

 

[Striker879]

I've been curious about your experience on this since I first noticed that you were modding Oblivion HadTo.

 

Your findings and recommendations are completely in line with what anyone who was successful using NMM for Oblivion needed to do. The downside is that users then need to be knowledgeable in the ways of installing mods manually to be able to recognise downloads structured in a non-Vortex friendly manner so that they can properly restructure the files and folders.

 

Unfortunately the majority (or at least a large portion) of the Vortex user base aren't experienced manual installers.

[AugustaCalidia]

@HTR

I eagerly await the publication of your Oblivion "adventure."

Even today if you use OBMM for Oblivion, as I do (old habits die hard), you still have to do a lot of Oblivion mod repackaging.

 

Although I don't miss "the good old days," I still enjoy repackaging mods. It's sort of like working a puzzle (although a very simple one).

 

@Striker879

 

 

Unfortunately the majority (or at least a large portion) of the Vortex user base aren't experienced manual installers.

 

I would suspect this is also true for the entire Nexusmods user base.

[Striker879]

While very few of us arrived here knowing much about installing mods, in my opinion in the days before OBMM and Wrye Bash gained traction new comers had a choice ... sink or swim. Places like these sites were a clearing house for knowledge and somewhere for those who knew how to hang out and help those who didn't know how.

 

I personally didn't arrive until the later part of those days so there was ample opportunity for a guy like me who prefers to research himself rather than ask ... almost every question for Oblivion had already been asked and answered a number of times. That said, it didn't stop those same questions from being asked over and over (which played a big role in me finding my niche).

 

As the ranks of users shifts more and more towards those who only know how to click a Download with Manager button and the tools become more and more about just learning the interface rather than learning how mods work so you can use the tool the demographics have shifted, and those who know how are getting few and far between and those who don't know how are becoming legion.

[HadToRegister]

While very few of us arrived here knowing much about installing mods, in my opinion in the days before OBMM and Wrye Bash gained traction new comers had a choice ... sink or swim. Places like these sites were a clearing house for knowledge and somewhere for those who knew how to hang out and help those who didn't know how.

 

I personally didn't arrive until the later part of those days so there was ample opportunity for a guy like me who prefers to research himself rather than ask ... almost every question for Oblivion had already been asked and answered a number of times. That said, it didn't stop those same questions from being asked over and over (which played a big role in me finding my niche).

 

As the ranks of users shifts more and more towards those who only know how to click a Download with Manager button and the tools become more and more about just learning the interface rather than learning how mods work so you can use the tool the demographics have shifted, and those who know how are getting few and far between and those who don't know how are becoming legion.

 

It's amazing how things have changed, I came into this in 2003, right when Morrowind came out, and everything was manual install.

Add manual install + Absolute beginner (me), and my textures and load order was an absolute nightmare.

 

My Morrowind was chock-full of pretty red Diamonds with EXCLAMATION POINTS walking around instead of Mud Crabs.

 

I even tried to make a mod based on FTL's "Dungeon Master", I had the first floor all laid out until I realized I had no idea how to script, (Which was definitely needed for the puzzle/traps), so I ended up scrapping it, and learned how to do Textures instead.

 

I currently have a very stable Morrowind running on my system, using WryeMash (that was actually updated in 2018), and MLOX (pre-BOSS, pre-LOOT sort order for Morrowind)

 

I'm just going to back up the entire game folder, because I got it running a year or two ago, and I've forgotten some of the meshes I replaced by hand that were missing from the original mods that caused crashes.

 

Comparing that to using Vortex, I know why I find it so easy now.

[Sidus720]

Mods aren't active until you hit Deploy.

Also check your Plugins page and make sure it looks right.

 

 

While very few of us arrived here knowing much about installing mods, in my opinion in the days before OBMM and Wrye Bash gained traction new comers had a choice ... sink or swim. Places like these sites were a clearing house for knowledge and somewhere for those who knew how to hang out and help those who didn't know how.

 

I personally didn't arrive until the later part of those days so there was ample opportunity for a guy like me who prefers to research himself rather than ask ... almost every question for Oblivion had already been asked and answered a number of times. That said, it didn't stop those same questions from being asked over and over (which played a big role in me finding my niche).

 

As the ranks of users shifts more and more towards those who only know how to click a Download with Manager button and the tools become more and more about just learning the interface rather than learning how mods work so you can use the tool the demographics have shifted, and those who know how are getting few and far between and those who don't know how are becoming legion.

 

It's amazing how things have changed, I came into this in 2003, right when Morrowind came out, and everything was manual install.

Add manual install + Absolute beginner (me), and my textures and load order was an absolute nightmare.

 

My Morrowind was chock-full of pretty red Diamonds with EXCLAMATION POINTS walking around instead of Mud Crabs.

 

I even tried to make a mod based on FTL's "Dungeon Master", I had the first floor all laid out until I realized I had no idea how to script, (Which was definitely needed for the puzzle/traps), so I ended up scrapping it, and learned how to do Textures instead.

 

I currently have a very stable Morrowind running on my system, using WryeMash (that was actually updated in 2018), and MLOX (pre-BOSS, pre-LOOT sort order for Morrowind)

 

I'm just going to back up the entire game folder, because I got it running a year or two ago, and I've forgotten some of the meshes I replaced by hand that were missing from the original mods that caused crashes.

 

Comparing that to using Vortex, I know why I find it so easy now.

 

So should I switch to WyreBash? And I tried to fix the conflictions between the Oblivion Character Overhaul, Shivering Isles Unofficial Patch and Obilivion Unofficial Patch, and nothing works.

[HadToRegister]

 

So should I switch to WyreBash? And I tried to fix the conflictions between the Oblivion Character Overhaul, Shivering Isles Unofficial Patch and Obilivion Unofficial Patch, and nothing works.

 

 

It takes a lot of work to get Oblivion and Morrowind mods to comply with today's mod managers because people mostly manually installed them at the time, so mods ended up being zipped up in random ways, it wasn't until around Fallout New Vegas that a Standard started to develop about zipping up mods properly in order that every mod would install the same way.

Earliest was OBMM with OMODs, but not everybody used them

 

I typed up a guide on how I managed to convert Oblivion MOds to today's standards so they could be installed with NMM, Vortex, MO2, etc but it took some work

 

Vortex and Oblivion, an Experiment