looking for help with a few small problems

[space butler]

Howdy. Ive never really posted on any forums before, and I'm having a few little problems with Oblivion. This seems to be the best place place for some assistance. Ok, basically the problems I am having are this:

 

1. NPC speech cuts out before it finishes. Not during interactive dialogue, just general chatter

 

2.Some textures appear purple. I have run Content Validator to update ArchiveInvalidation.txt, and this has fixed several of these textures, but not all of them

 

3.Some NPCs have invisible clothes (Earana in Chorrol has an invisible top,etc.)

 

4.Oblivion crashes to desktop inside the first Oblivion Gate (Kvatch) when I get to the first loading point (next to the broken bridge). This breaks my game, as I can't actually progress any further in the main quest. Not sure if this is a mod related problem or what, as I haven't acually played that far without mods to test it.

 

5.Oblivion crashes to desktop randomly. Happens often-ish when landing a killing blow on an enemy, otherwise every now and then when it feels like it.

 

That's pretty much it. I have a bunch of mods installed, and most seem to work pretty fine. The main ones are: Francesco's mods, UOP, Deadly Reflex 5, Natural Landscapes, Unique Landscapes, Open Better Cities. That's all I can think of right now, although there is a bunch of other stuff on there too.Oh yeah, i use OBMM and OBSE as well. Don't know if this will help but my system specs are as follows:

 

CPU-Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual Core 2.7GHZ

RAM-4GB

VIDEO-NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT running at 1280x768 forced AA 4x

HDD-160GB w 35GB free

OS-Vista Home Premium SP1

 

Any help with this would be hugely appreciated, as I intend on sinking a massive amount of time on this game again. I can't believe the amazing amount of awesome mods people have made for this game. It was damn good before, now it's just friggin incredible. I spent a good few hundred hours on this for Xbox 360, then again for GOTY on PS3, now it's time to do it again on PC. Modders, you absolutely rock! You guys make good games great, and great games incredible. This is the reason I'm calling myself a PC gamer now. Mods maketh great games. Sorry for getting off-topic, but I just had to say thank you. Anyways, hope someone can help. Cheers

[exanimis]

I don't know anything about the voices cutting out but purple textures, invisible clothing and probably the crashing all have to do with the mods you've installed. You should post your load order and maybe someone can help you figure out the problem mods. You may have installed them wrong, read HERE, it'll tell you all about installing mods.

 

I hope you find the problem, you sound like a true fan of Oblivion.

[blazingakatosh]

Not completely sure but the voices cutting out may be Windows Vista I have the same problem and its a compatibility issue since Oblivion was intended for Windows XP.

[space butler]

Yeah I was thinking the load order is probably a big part of it, I'll post it asap. Bear with me, I'm at my public library (no internet at home....) so it might take a little while to get it on here. Does anyone know if setting vistas program compatibilty to XP will help? It doesn't really seem to do a hell of a lot when I've tried it on other (not made for vista) programs. Also yeah, mod installation is all over the place, I pretty much extract everything to Oblivion\Data and it sorts itself out. I always read the readme and install instructions for every mod I get and follow it to the letter. I'll check out that install guide (thanks exanimis) and see if there's something I've been missing. If these issues ARE a problem with the mods themselves, is there any way I can do a clean re-install of everything without losing my progress? I have Wrye Bash but haven't needed to use it, and I don't really want to. It seems a little convoluted and risky. I just really cant be bothered starting yet another new game. If I have to though, I'll probably just get the alternate starting (arrival by ship) mod. I hate those damn sewers.

[dezdimona]

General Load-Order Guidelines

 

 

Here are the guidelines that I adhere to, personally.

 

~ Unofficial Oblivon Patch should always be first on the list. The fixes are great, but most aren't essential, so if a mod overwrites them its not a big deal, and the fixes have the potential for screwing up other mods if loaded later.

 

~ Offical Content (DLC's) should be loaded last, until you complete all quests associated with them (that includes buying all furniture for the houses and whatnot). Once they're complete, they can be safely moved up in the list. This is especially important for Knights of the Nine, which will have some fairly major problems unless loaded last (unless you get the UOP for KotN)

 

~ Major overhaul mods (OOO, Frans, MMM) should be loaded near the end. That gives you the most complete experience with any of those particular mods. It also lets you carefully choose which other mods to load afterwards... only move mods that you know will conflict and that you want the changes from. For example, I have Improved Soul Gems below OOO because I know that OOO changes the icons of some of the SG's, and ISG needs to be below to show through.

 

Some people will recommend putting larger mods first, but personally I disagree. There are a number of mods out there that make minor tweaks, and loading after a large mod will end up completely overwriting a chunk from one of the bigger mods because of the way conflicts work in Oblivion (even one minor change will take precedence over the entire record... for example, simply tweaking the speed of a weapon can cause every stat of that weapon to be retained to vanilla levels if loaded later).

 

So basically, it stacks up like this...

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Minor Mods / DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mod/Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

 

 

 

Expanded Load-Order Guidelines

by dev_akm

 

I would extend this to include:

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Weather/Environment/Sound Mods>

<Minor Mods/New Items/Houses/DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

<Quests>

<Compatibility Patches/UOMP/Merged Leveled Lists>

 

And a special-case warning for Knights.esp (Knights of the Nine) -- you may not be able to move it earlier than some other mods (some people have had problems after moving it before OOO, for example).

 

That's basically the structure I use and I have 140+ mods working well together.

 

Another way of describing this (posted by DMan77):

....

Oblivion

unoffical patch

Deeper realism mods that add sights and sounds

added content like weapons/items

gameplay changes, like 'must eat and sleep'

The OOO type

the 'new begining' type mod..

...