installing Mbp++allin1 & Oblivion Character Overhaul version 2

[M.BISON]

hello

 

can i install both together? if yes how? whats the correct way to do it?

or is it better  to not install OCO 2 and install other mods in its place?

 

thanks in advanced!

[gregathit]

They "might" be compatible and might not.  

 

The reason they "might" is that MBP doesn't mess with vanilla NPC's.  Instead it is a resource mod that other mods draw from.

 

OCO2 is a vanilla replacer.  Where the "might not" part comes in is if the two mods have the same file structure and file names in that one might overwrite the other and you'd get all kinds of crazy happenings.

[ljacquard]

I have to ask : what is your goal in attempting to make them compatible ?

One is the product of a bunch of amateurs, released 10 years ago (?), which has the substance, consistance and structure of a pile of dung, upon which other amateurs came to release their own pile of dung over time, crossing fingers for it not to be noticed and to actually work.

 

The MBP package has no internal consistency. Some parts of it have assets with 4096 resolution while other parts remain as low as 1024. A lot of the hair meshes are not conformulated, or do not fit to all the races of the same package that they belong to. Som eyes are missing proper reflection maps. Some parts of the mod conflict with some ENB presets (bugged normal maps). File structure is a total mess. It survives because it's animu, and because people think that the pretty screenshots they see on LL or elsewhere are the result of an unmodified MBP package, and not some experienced modder which had to mod the mod to make it good looking.

The other one is the state of art work of modders that are as competent as you ever would want them to be, which natively takes advantage of modern TES4 plugins like <Blockhead>, and has the support of a big number of quality extensions (seam-mending, neck textures, tattoos, freckles, scars, glowing eyes, etc.) with compatibility for the most popular standalone racial enhancement mods (<Better Redguards>, <Argonian beautification>, <Orsimer overhaul>, etc.). It strives because its quality is widely acknowledged, it's lore-friendly and it remains aesthetically very appealing.

Mixing feces with Chanel n°5 might make the former smell less, but at the end of the day it remains shit. Plus, MBP on its own takes some experience as modder to get working as it should, so you will be in for a treat creating a compatibility patch, getting under the hood of <Blockhead> and debugging everything, because they are obviously not compatible with each other out of the box (Greg is being very "diplomatic" about it ^.^).

 

 

 

My advice would be as follows :

 

If you want to have your NPCs in animu style, it's XEO that you want instead of OCO.

If you want your PC to be one of the MBP races, like Diablo elves or whatever has your preference, you're better off just installing the original single race package.

If you want particular assets of MBP, like hairs or eyes, you are once again better off extracting them, and adding these to a patch, or even better yet, to use PerfectionCat's mod :

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/41705

 

If you want to keep both mods and most of their respective features, be prepared for some serious compromises, and probably headaches.

[Vaelorian]

So I'm looking at your comment, and while to pointed out many real flaws with MBP (and God only knows how much I personally dislike MBP) I can't shake the feeling you have a certain element of fanaticism in the comment.

 

Something about the "Why would you ever taint OCOv2 by installing it with MBP" vibe it has; is it the fact you called MBP a "pile of dung" while you called OCOv2 a "state of art work"? Or perhaps the way you called the creators of MBP "amateurs" while the OCOv2 creators are "as competent as you ever would want them to be"?

 

Again, I have no love for MBP, and many of your points were fair, but your comment seems to be borne more out of the need for self-validation than the desire to provide a fair assessment of the two mods.

 

If you like something, point out it's strengths in a fair manner and let the other guy be the judge.

Ultimately, they are human - like you.

And they can think for themselves - like you.

[ljacquard]

Fanaticism is a bit far stretched, but you're probably justified on calling me out on my motivations.

I utterly respect the fact that tastes and people are many and varied. However, nothing should be praised for what it is not. It should be known that MBP is not the high-quality mod that many players seem to see in it when they first browse LL. It gets a reputation that is unwarranted, given the arguably better alternatives that exist, be it only to install a select number of parts of it that players actually want to use. It's heaps better than rush into the OMOD (when they are aware of it), install it all, and come back with issues or broad/unlikely requests like in the OP. It also has the advantage to start teaching people what is what in a racial overhaul mod, to tweak it to their preference and to hopefully avoid most annoyances of it.

I don't want to cricitize MBP's aesthetical value, and never have. People may adhere to manga/animu style or not, but it isn't "bad" in itself for me. Stuff like movomo's x117/x110 hair wigs for example I can find visually very pleasing, and I have no doubts it's also well executed structure-wise as a mod.

In the larger scheme of things, what I would like to see is MBP set back to a position of optional component for good. LAPF (and submods) should not explicitely depend upon it in any fashion or form. I remember this not being the case not so long ago for major parts of LAPF (the whole pregnancy chapter of it), before Fejeena released his/her noMBP mods. It shouldn't be recommended to install MBP along side with LAPF (as in load order considerations, for example).

 

I also would like to continue making people aware that MBP "out of the box" is not as nice as it may look on some screenshots and has inherent flaws, quite like I would appreciate to be made aware if such was the case for other mods I am looking into downloading and using, from LL or elsewhere.

I believe I still showed helpful in my post above, and provided assistance. I will always try to do so, whether we're talking about MBP or not. You're right that no matter what people should think for themselves, and make the best out of what they could read on fora given their personal situation. I would like to encourage them to do that, but that implies to have a look at both sides of the coin.

So OCO fanboy'ism maybe, but not really different from any MBP fanboy/girl'ism.

[varenne]

MBP++ has come a long, long way from what it was years ago, and much much easier to setup. I do feel you have to take into consideration it was developed by Chinese/Japanese MOD authors and teams along the way, hence the fragmentation and some of its issues, then eventually ported to English users. Whenever you have disparate sets of developers working on a very large project, there is a much larger chance things will go awry and often do. Still I wholly appreciate the effort that went into developing such a complex MOD, for what it's worth.

 

My reasons for pursuing it at the time were mainly because other MODs I wanted to try depended on it, and too I tend to give many MODs a test run, as a resource to learn from them. I don't consider myself a fan of MBP++, but I will continue to use it and fix it as needed, to work for me. I like variety, and the more the merrier. MBP++ and Xeo adds just that, lots of NPC variety. The vanilla races are fine, and with Plom's work now even better, IMO, but I don't see myself ever uninstalling what I've built up and fixed over the years.

 

Me personally. I would not consider anything blockhead dependent at the moment, as it would require I disable many MODs I already use and completely rebuild my current Oblivion. It's not to say I don't appreciate how things have evolved and in many ways improved, I most certainly do. Just not into the level of effort involved any more.

 

 

So back to the OP's question. You would, IMO need to do a lot of clean up and restructuring of MBP++ related resources, before pursuing any type of side-by-side installation of these two MOD sets. I would also recommend a near similar Movomo/PerfectionCat approach to consolidating resources such as hair, eyes, etc. into their own pseudo-database add-on MOD, as it would make testing and troubleshooting that much easier. This has been my approach for about the last year, year and a half, as I use both MBP++ resources and MODs (ESMs & ESPs), and also Xeo resources and masters; (ESMs only). TES4Edit will be your best friend here. 

 

I'm not at all familiar with OCO 2, so no help there.

[M.BISON]

last time i installed oblivion i only used mbp++ for the LPK tamango pregnancy mods, i thought it was pretty good for that

 

OCO2 will make npc's look really good

 

what if i just install mbp++ and only install the meshes and textures from OCO2?

 

 

 

 

[M.BISON]

actually i might just take ljacquard advice

 

thanks everyone