How I wish I could delete this idiotic mod.

[Hickory]

If Hickory didn't offer any advice about using Wrye Bash to try fixing that save either I'm wrong about WB having that ability or it's something that has very low probability of success.

 

Wrye Bash does not have the ability to fix save games that fail to load because of permanent data stored from other mods. It can only *attempt* to fix ABomb, bloat, factions and hair, though it is warned that these functions are not 100% safe.

[Striker879]

Knew you'd have the answer to that one Hickory ... thanks for having my back.

[Vulcanao]

<p>Okay there's a lot of precious informations for me there. So if you<br />

don't mind welcoming another member for this community, I'm in, but I'm<br />

going to need your help. I mean it takes more than just a registration<br />

right?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>So :</p>

<p> </p>

<p>1) Thanks Hickory for the insight about <em>Streamline</em> and <em>Natural environments</em>. As I thought too, I didn't need it since my rig runs Oblivion with <em>Qarl's Textures</em> very well. As for <em>Natural Environments</em> I wasn't really planning on installing it because of reported issues.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2) Thanks Striker879 for advices, I'm thinking about hiring you with actual money. So :</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.1) This is a strange thing you mentioned about CLS.<span style="color:#b22222;"> You have any idea why it is so?</span> Anyway I'll be careful</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.2) This <em>MOM</em> thing you spoke about sounds very handy and yes given what you explained, I too thought I could avoid this castle bug, had I knew about it then. But then again maybe it didn't exist at all : BOSS doesn't even recognize this stupid mod.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.3) So *this* is the meaning of BBB? Bouncing Breasts? I've seen it many times around Nexus. However I think I already have a skeletons that enables this feature : <em>Sensual Walk for female NPCs</em>. It gives you the possibility to enable or disable BBB. The thing is I have this <em>Sensual Walk for Female NPCs</em> omod <u>and</u> <em>HGEC Body with BBB</em> omod and both of them are enabled (due to requirments from other mods) so <span style="color:#b22222;">how do I know which one is used and which one is not? Wouldn't it cause conflicts?</span></p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.4) I've checked out out the three houses you suggested for Vilja. I can't say I'm a big fan of those... I'm more into overcompensating big-ass castles... That end up crashing my save.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.5) <em>Pack Donkeys</em>? Shut up and take my money!</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.6)<span style="color:#a52a2a;"> Why wouldn't you use Cobl?</span> Like you said it's also meant to enrich other mods so it's a win-win mod.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.7) About what you said on Vilja being too sophisticated compared to other companions,<span style="color:#a52a2a;"> what about Viconia from the Underdark Saga?</span> Did you know you could introduce Vilja to Viconia and several other companions? As you surely do, <span style="color:#a52a2a;">what does that lead to?</span> More interactions (protection)? Extra dialogs? <span style="color:#a52a2a;">And those CM Partners, are they so cumbersome?</span></p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.8/ Yeah <em>Deadly Reflex</em> looks fun, but I'm suspicious about tinkering this kind of stuff, all the more when the actual fighting system satisfies me, so it'll wait. Here's another French saying : why make changes in a winning team?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2.9) So Hickory is a famous modder. Must be for this reason he got all sensitive about me saying I had a crappy mod. Well believe it is far less elaborate than what <em>Highwood</em> looks like, and it looks great by the way, already on my queue list of mods. <span style="color:#a52a2a;">How hungry is it for performance did you mean?</span> Because if it can overpower a SLI rig even a weak one, it might be concerning.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Well I'm growing quite fond of modding and with your help I'll get more and more involved as I learn. If not too hard I'll even try modding myself someday. Meanwhile<strong> I'll harass you people with question</strong>, if you don't mind answering a few.</p>

Edited February 23, 2013 by Vulcanao

[Hickory]

2.9) So Hickory is a famous modder. Must be for this reason he got all sensitive about me saying I had a crappy mod. Well believe it is far less elaborate than what Highwood looks like, and it looks great by the way, already on my queue list of mods. How hungry is it for performance did you mean? Because if it can overpower a SLI rig even a weak one, it might be concerning.

 

No, I'm not a famous modder my any means. And if you knew me (or at least my forum persona) you would not have thought that I got 'sensitive' -- I dont get sensitive, but I say things as I see them. I saw a person whinging and complaining about a mod, when it was not the mod at fault, no matter if you don't like the mod. That is the truth as I saw it.

 

Anyway, back to the point... Highwood only has a performance hit in certain areas, because of the liberal use of high poly meshes -- the upstairs landing with the 3D art is one such area. If your rig can handle Quarls it can handle Highwood.

[Striker879]

I don't mind questions at all. Only two ways of learning anything that I know of are asking questions or making mistakes (though sometimes you don't know to ask a question until you've made the mistake).

 

Claudia's was designed (or has evolved perhaps) more as a total overhaul like Nehrim than an ordinary mod. Subsequently you can't really do much of the vanilla game while it's active. Have a read through the last dozen or so pages of the mod comments and you'll find that mentioned a few times (and perhaps it's even documented in the readme or manual for CLS, though I know I've seen mention of how far out of date the documentation had become with the latest iterations of CLS).

 

BOSS will never recognize all mods. If mod author and/or mod users don't report a mod to the BOSS team there's no chance of it being added to the database. Same with your own mods if you start creating them. For example none of my homegrown efforts have ever been released publicly. If I used BOSS I'd need to either hand place them in my load order (which would only last until the next time I worked on them as load order is time/date stamp dependent) or add them to the list of unrecognized mods. Again Hickory will know more about the ins and outs of BOSS than I (considering that I don't use WB I also don't use BOSS ... I'm a pretty primitive guy). Another good source for BOSS info is Surazal (works either on or closely with the BOSS team, and has a couple of handy tools for managing your BOSS lists ... do an advanced search on Oblivion Nexus with Surazal in the 'Uploader name contains' field).

 

Modding and acronyms seem to go hand in hand. Drove me nuts when I first got started. The thing to keep in mind about replacers is that install order is important ... last installed is what the game will use. That's because of limitations in how the game is designed. Many if not most of the common assets can only have a single model (or sometimes one for males and one for females). There can be only one skeleton.nif and one skeletonbeast.nif for use with the player and NPCs. No matter which way you install them, if Mod A and Mod B both include skeleton.nif and you install Mod A first and then Mod B the game will only use the skeleton.nif from Mod B. Exceptions to this are BAIN (the install tool in WB) and manual install providing you extract to a temporary folder and detect conflicts. I belong with the second group and Hickory and Nephenee13 are the advocates for the first (BAIN will detect overwrites and alert you, so you can choose which file to use). OBMM has no such ability (it's not really any different than simply extracting the download directly into your game's Data folder without regard to overwrites). If a mod only comes as an OMOD I use OBMM to extract the OMOD to a folder for that reason (so that I can examine the files and folders and compare to my game's current content). Did I mention that modding is also a minefield?

 

If it's big castles you yearn for then have a look at Battlehorn Castle Upgraded (providing you have that DLC). From all I've read it's the best of the Battlehorn mods.

 

Other companions will have varying degrees of sophistication compared to Vilja ... some will be close and others closer to CM Partner level. The ones that Vilja has special interactions with are listed in her documentation. Some of those are fully voiced both ways (Fergus is an example of that I think) and others are limited to extra voiced content from Vilja. If you're using Packdonkeys Vilja has some 'extra' content there too. Tell the donkeys to wait rather than stay here and make sure Vilja has some carrots in her inventory. If you're lucky you won't have to wait too long before Vilja complains about 'your donkeys' and their thieving ways. The Aleswell and Red Rose houses also have extra content for Vilja (extra dialogue and menu options). One of the coolest features is the Companion Keys. Give one to any non-hostile NPC and go through the 'introduction to Vilja' and they get extra options (look for ingredients, follow Vilja etc.). It's fun having an extra pair of hands along that's not bumping into your butt every time you stop.

 

Not wanting to speak for Hickory, but it's also possible he was a bit terse because of past experience. We often see mods accused of problems that turn out to be rooted in improper installation or missing requirements. Not saying that was the case here, but if you hang around here long enough you'll see that 95 times out of 100 it's pilot error and not the plane manufacturer at fault. Usually it's the brand new mods and obscure never been heard of mods that cause problems. I keep track of the mod comments watching for the new ones. When we run into one of the obscure ones we're at as much of a loss as the user unless we can either get a link to have a look or someone comes along that has past experience with it. Remember your tools ... mod comments are your friend before installing or even downloading a mod. MOM and a testing profile will save your character's game if you are religious in utilizing that method of trying out mods, especially the obscure ones. Would you fly in a plane that your 'jack of all trades' neighbor built in his basement, designed while he sat in the bathroom and learned to fly by watching a couple of YouTube videos?

 

- Edit - Hickory's post reminded me ... meant to say that when I tried Highwood I think one half of my SLI had already died (I lost one card and then much later the second). It didn't start out as a real powerful SLI ... a pair of 8800 GTS cards with 768 VRAM each so Highwood would have only had a single card to work with. Plus my rig only has 2 GB RAM.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Striker879