Oblivion Modding is NOT for New People

[opal407]

As the title suggests, I'm going to be going over why modding Oblivion should only be done if you know EXPLICITLY what you're doing, as it is tiresome, frustrating, and just downright not a fun experience.

 

I like to think of myself as a fairly average modder. I know my way around finding solutions to conflicts, I use Mod Organizer for Skyrim so I can pick and choose the best of the best for textures, etc. etc. But even then I STILL was no where near prepared to try and mod Oblivion.

Oblivion is one of my all time favorite games. It's fun, challenging, adventurous, and broken as hell. So after a few years of modding Skyrim and learning many of the semi-advanced topics for modding said game, I thought I'd try my hand at revisiting a past favorite, Oblivion. First off, this game is MERCILESS. You so much as mess up one single file and your game won't even start. When I first tried to play Oblivion, just the vanilla game, I ran into a problem of the game CTD before the starting intro could get even halfway. After about 30 minutes of digging I finally found someone who gave me the right answer. Delete the Oblivion folder in \MyGames. I thought this would be the worst of it. If I could get the main game running fine, I thought, the rest should fall into place....I regret ever thinking that.

 

Now...you need to understand that Oblivion was made in a different time with a completely different approach to modding. There was very few "mod managers" at the time and most of those that could handle mods were set up to also create mods as well, so needless to say they are VERY complicated programs. These days we have guides, tutorials, walkthrough's, FAQ's, descriptions, friends, neighbors, hell even websites DEDICATED to helping people mod their game to the max of what their systems can handle. Not Oblivion. There's a few descriptions here and there. Maybe a few people responding to comments in forums. But as for mods themselves being easy to work with? Or work TOGETHER? Let me give you an example. Keep in mind, I have never tried modding Oblivion before. I was coming into this completely new. No idea what to do.

 

First thing I had to figure out what what mod manager to use. I kept hearing two different ones. WryeBash and OBMM. I can use WryeBash if I have to but I much prefer something a little more simplistic. I decided to keep it simple and just try NMM. The mods are on their website, after all. Why shouldn't it work? It doesn't. At all. Weapon mods, nope. Race mods, nada. Unofficial patches? Nothing.

 

Back to the drawing board. Still don't want to use WryeBash, so let's try OBMM. Oh, but it's not OBMM anymore. It's TESMM, now. So not only am I not using the program people told me to use, but now, because it's a new program with new features and everything is all sparkly, I have to use common sense to pray that the mods are all installed the same way as before. Not a big change, sure, but small issues can lead to CTD, missing textures, or the mod just not working. Anyway, downloaded TESMM and started figuring out how that program worked. No guides, no in-depth FAQ's or ReadMe's. Just clicking buttons and seeing what everything does.

 

Let's try a mod. Unofficial Oblivion Patch. Hey! It worked! Maybe the file structure just needed a program that knew how to work with it! Unofficial Shivering Isles, good to go. Unofficial DLC, works like a charm. So cool, right? I can finally get back to reading what's needed for mods. But oh....ohhhhh not even close. See...this game has been out for 10 years, right? So many smaller mods have been added into big mods and optimized to work very well together. But these big mods...they don't like to play together. Two examples. Oblivion Reloaded, and Oblivion Character Overhaul Version 2. Seems fairly straightforward, you'd think. download one before the other, maybe a compatibility patch and boom. Done. Nope. It's all done in .ini files. Okay, no big deal. Just follow the instructions and change what's needed. Problem is the files they tell you to change, want you to change the same files. And not just the .ini files either. They REQUIRE files to be controlled by one mod, or the other. So they're incompatible? That's the fucked up thing. No, they're not. They work just fine together if you know what to do. But that's the issue. HOW TO's are scattered. A few from posts on both of the files, maybe a good one from a forum, another from a ReadMe included in one of the files. No one has a start-to-end explanation of how to get these mods to work together. Something someone new to modding Oblivion would be able to follow, step-by-step.

 

I get it. Modding Oblivion really isn't that hard if you know what you're doing. But what about someone who doesn't know what they're doing? Who starts on modding Skryim, goes to Oblivion and knows off-hand what ArchiveInvalidation is? Or how about what the point of having ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated is? And yet many of these big mega-mods now just EXPECT people to know that "when you install this that must mean you have that installed" and all other mods inbetween that seasoned modders of Oblivion would know you OBVIOUSLY need but a new person would just go to the popular files, start downloading files and following what directions there are and their entire game breaks because they have no clue what's actually needed for modding Oblivion.

 

I'm not telling people to not mod Oblivion. If you want to, fuck it, by all means do it. Just know that you are going to have to start from the absolute bottom and hunt for every bit of information you're going to need, and you WILL need every last bit of it. Have fun, mod it to oblivion, pun intended. But me? After a week of trying my hand at it I'm throwing in the towel. I've managed to get EyeCandy installed once, and that was with Mod Organizer. I'm not going to try anymore, which is disappointing because I really wanted to add to the game. This is just my two cents and if I pissed you off due to my stupidity of not doing "obviously this" when modding Oblivion then please, make a video outlining how to add many of the mods that you personally use and I will be more than happy to follow it. But don't leave anything out in it because if you do, it will be just as useless as any of the other modding videos that don't allow for step-by-step following.

[Vader666]

Or how about what the point of having ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated is?

 

ArchieveInvalidation is needed to tell the engine it should use loose files over the files packed in the bsa´s.

And Skyrim is the first game where its not needed anymore.

 

I started with Oblivion some time ago and only got everything to work when the mods are installed with OBMM as Omod files.

Some things are working with MO though.

It´s just like things are completly different than in any Game after it.

The most confusing thing to me was how i should start the game with OBSE...

[gregathit]

Well, some of what you are saying is true, however some is not.  OBMM is still around:  http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/2097/?

I use it still for some things and Wyre for others.  The bashed patch feature of Wyre is something you really do need to learn to use as it solves many of the compatibility issues.  And yes......it does have a tutorial (with pictures even):  http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/35230/?

 

As to the frustration you have, while it is understandable, it is also a bit self inflicted.  Oblivion was made 10 years before Skyrim.  So it is going to figure that you are going to need different tools and have to do things differently than Skyrim.  Not sure why this was a shock.  Another thing is Oblivion's "secrets" are not hard to find.  Simple google searches yield up damn near every one.  Modding Oblivion is actually as simple as any other Beth game.  Each one has its quirks.

 

The biggest issue you may have is MO is not the simplest tool to try to use.

 

Archive invalidated is not the latest standard and should not be used.  Archive invalidation via bsa redirection (almost all mod managers can toggle this on) is what you need to be doing.  To read up on it:  http://devnull.sweetdanger.com/archiveinvalidation.html

 

Oblivion is extremely load order sensitive, so if you install two things that may have some conflict (common sense, readme files and TES4Edit can figure out if this is the case) then remember that the one lowest in the load order "wins".

 

If you get stuck, then ask.  There are still plenty of folks around to help out.

 

Cheers,

Greg

[fejeena]

There are so many instructions / tutorial pages how to install the game and all the tools you need.

 

If you want to use "Modular beautiful People"  ( I don't like it )

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/8893-installation-guide-with-lovers-mbp-and-wyre-with-bashed-patch/

 

How to use Mod organizer with Oblivion ( you really don't need MO )

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/65195-guide-to-using-mod-organizer-with-oblivion/

 

And how you install Oblivion with Body Mods, Archive invalidation, Mod sorting, ..... ( all you need before you install Lovers Mods )

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/36443-oblivion-install-gametoolsbodiesbbbmod-sorting-and-cleaningcs-cse-body-stretching/

[Vaelorian]

Oblivion modding is far more friendly than literally any other game I know.

Oblivion modding IS for new people. It is the BEST game to start with for new people.

 

One of your biggest problems is that you've modded Skyrim; that's not good for you, that's bad. It means you have to un-learn a lot of what you know, because things are simpler here.

Yes, simpler. No using FNIS for animations, just pop 'em and play. No script compilers that require every other script be present, the compiler looks at your script and assumes you know what you're doing.

 

Now for your list of problems:

First off, you decided on NMM; you decided, deliberately and of your own accord, to install MALWARE on your computer. Need I say more?

 

Second, you're saying TESMM is not OBMM. That is completely wrong. TESMM has the exact same interface as OBMM, exact same functions, but it's simply optimized.

All of the guides for OBMM apply to TESMM, and there are plenty.

 

I don't use OR or OCOv2, so I'll concede that these two mods might not work together out of the box, or that they might not have perfect guides available. Maybe.

However, given the lack of validity of your other points I'm suspecting this one might be just something you missed.

 

To conclude: you have no idea what you're saying, and due to your own stubborn nature you've tried way too hard to figure things out yourself, rather than ask for help.

That has caused you frustration, and now you've opened a thread that's sole purpose is to scare potential new modders away.

 

So next time, ask for help, because things are far less complicated than you think,

-V

[dult]

To get most mods to install correctly, just take your mods, find their data folder(if it's got a plugin in it, it's the data folder), then drag everything in that folder into your oblivion install. Seriously, 75% or more of mods will install just fine by doing that, 20% are designed to be used with Oblivion Mod Manager(and it's upgrade) and I'd guess half of what's remaining were supposed to be installed in the primary oblivion folder or OBSE folders instead. So just back up your oblivion install and do that, rather than hoping for a mod manager to make things "easier" (Or redownload/reinstall if you have the net/cd's for it).

[farlibarcai]

I sometimes don't understand how hard can be for someone doing simple tasks like modding Oblivion, the first thing I did was reading a modding guide, and there's plety of them.

Oblivion Reloaded and Oblivion Character Overhaul work toguether like a charm without much effort, I don't understand your point, because both mods have readme and reading it is the first thing you should do before even downloading anything.

Another problem I saw was installing NMM. Get help, seriously, because Nexus launched NMM long time after Oblivion got their own mod managers and NMM isreally clunky and unstable. Most mod authors actually advise NOT to use it, but of course you didn't know that because you didn't take a single minute reading a readme.

But don't worry, asking here and in the Nexus forums, you may find helpful people.

[Cosmocreme]

 

I get some of what you'really saying, really. The information you need to mod Oblivion without (too much) frustration is out there, but it's more scattered, some of it is quite outdated, and there are some "traps" out there that a new modder is apt to fall into. Like NMM. However, it is entirely possible to learn, and have a fun time with, the ins and outs of modding Oblivion.

 

Learn to always read the mod description and readme file. Many mod authors will warn of potential pitfalls, for example many modder will explicitly warn to not use NMM for Oblivion. In fact, it's also a good idea to read through at least the first page of comments to look for other posted issues and solutions.

 

Learn to use Wrye Bash. It has a bad reputation, but with the pictorial guide and all, it really isn't so bad. And the bashed patch is essential when you've got a significant number of mods going.

 

If you're looking for a more modern modding guide for Oblivion, there are a few that go step-by-step. Here's one: http://wiki.step-project.com/User:Hishutup/OblivionGuide. It's even from STEP, so maybe you'll feel more comfortable as a Skyrim player.

 

Other people have already replied with some good advice, too, so I'll just say that while some of the responses may be a bit hostile, I think most people who've modder Oblivion a lot can understand being frustrated with the whole process. I think some just don't like the idea of scaring potential players off.

[opal407]

As I said before, if I pissed you off for not doing "obviously this", my bad. Which, judging by the replies from most of you, I did. As I said I started from the very bottom of learning how to mod Oblivion. I approached it the same way I approached modding Skyrim. I looked for information based on what mods I wanted to install and read everything I could.

 

***Cosmocreme, thank you for understanding. You gave me a few things to go read, and weren't trying to be a smartass about it, or downright hostile. You realized, "Hey...I've been this frustrated before and I know where this person is coming from because things are MUCH different in modding now than they used to be. I'm going to ACTUALLY try to be helpful and maybe they'll be able to enjoy Oblivion modding as much as Skyrim modding!" Someone who enjoys modding a game as much as you obviously do will do much more to help someone new than others would. I know because I've been in your place before with modding Skyrim. I love when people get frustrated in a forum about something not working because it's a chance to help them learn about something I love doing. Again, I thank you. You were one of the few people who were trying to be genuinely helpful.

 

**dult, while Cosmocreme has you beat, you were still rather helpful. I honestly didn't know that most mods for Oblivion could just be thrown into their respected folders and just work. I'll be on the lookout for such a simple solution in the future!

 

To the rest of you; if you want to help someone new into learning how to mod Oblivion you MIGHT not want to imply they are idiots because of what they tried to do. Especially if they themselves say "I have never tried modding Oblivion before. I was coming into this completely new. No idea what to do." One more thing. Just curious but...where did I ever say I didn't know how to use Wrye Bash or make a bash patch? Just curious.

[Vaelorian]

See, your mistake here is assuming that I was trying to help you.

I wasn't.

 

Put simply, my only intention in my earlier post in this thread was to debunk your arguments.

 

If you want help, ask. Don't create click-bait titled threads that can scare new folks away, because that gets people upset.

 

This isn't rocket science here.

 

Here are a few examples of people who have asked in a civil manner and received help from me:

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/71130-oblivion-where-to-startoh-gods-im-fugly/

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/68215-questions-re-ooo-installation-bain/

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/68258-re-modular-beautiful-people/

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/67932-question-re-wrye-bashobmm/

 

These are just four, there are dozens more. Look at my other posts if you wish. Gregathit and Fejeena both answered dozens of people before you, and will answer people long after you're gone.

 

You were downright hostile to the game itself, and by extension anyone who might hope to see new folk join the modding community, and you should expect the response to be of a similar tone.

[gregathit]

I'm going to have to agree with Vaelorian here.  You wrote false and somewhat nonsensical OP, to which several folks have responded to set the record straight, rather than to be "hostile to you".  Next time spare us the dramatic speech and just ask for the help you need, which, you will indeed get.  

 

Cheers.

[fejeena]

I also never used Wrye Bash ( If you had read my tutorial you know it)

I only use Oblivion Modmanger.

 

And my tutorial is for beginners. Only the basic Mods you need if you want Nude Bodies ( all you need before you start with Lovers).  No beautification and cosmetic Mods ( such Mods you can install when know how to mod your game. )

 

If you know nothing about Modding start small ( not: "I want it all , I want it now"  When I see some loader orders of beginners I am getting sick . All Lovers Mods they could find are in the Load order and they say they just started with Oblivion.... and it does not work and they do not know what the mods do.)

 

[QuiteTheTail]

I agree with fejeena.

Start with little projects and then aim a little higher as you learn to do things. Keep looking for tutorials and resources (there's plenty around). I am a newbie myself and the first impact was tremendously discouraging for me. Now I understand that patience and dedication are the only things that can get you somewhere. Take your time, ask around for suggestions, especially when you feel lost and don't know what to do.

Don't be afraid to ask the obvious (I do it all the time, without shame)

[xartom]

Going to xth the idea to start off with small modifications before you install a more complex mod set up. I went this route with the other elder scroll games I've played and it's always worked out (not to mention the community is willing to answer questions).

 

Imo Morrowind was way tougher to mod than Oblivion and Skyrim, maybe because of the lack of tools.

 

I see lots of videos on how to install x regading Oblivion (even how to install vanilla off the cds). I've always assumed most people are the see-learn type, what more could be done to make Oblivion approachable then? Maybe a little program that checks if certain pita mods are in the correct folders...