I would like to suggest a community project

[yosecretsquirrel]

In the last few days I have developed a real bitter taste in my mouth regarding one issue with the lovers Mods - LOAD ORDER.

Beyond the fact that the majority of these mods are made in countries were English is not the spoken language, I would have to say from observation of this forum the number one problem would be getting the load order right.

While I see there are several valiant attempts to create user lists and master lists for OBMM, or to post a load order on forum threads, They all have several key factors that ultimately lead to failure. They are usually created independently and usually only include plugins that individual uses.

The problem then becomes we see the same mods in different orders across the multitude of lists. I have spent way too much time just trying to wring some workable sense out of such lists. For example,In some cases I see the LPK mods lumped together in 2 lists but one loads high and the other lower down or even at the end.

Now I have noticed that there are actually quite a few LL members whom have a good working knowledge of how LPK fits together and what overwrites what, whether from personal experience or even working knowledge of the code and scripts. This is evident every time they suggest to include the load order when a member posts a technical problem.

So here is what I suggest;

How about these stellar individuals come together and create a standard set of criteria to establish load orders and then develope a definative load order list based upon the plugins available in the downloads thread. Now before you say "thats impossible, it would depend on what mods the individual runs.", consider that most of these are plugins dependent on at least 2 common .ESM files - Oblivion.ESM(SI) and LoverswithPK.ESM - this fact sets LPK apart.

 

I know for me, I often overlook the fact that in general it is really just one mod with a ton of optional plugins, with the exception of things like Tamango or Hiyoko (which still need the aforementioned .ESM files). What this means is that in general one should only have to focus on the LPK plugins and their compatability within the LPK group, While Mods like MBP++ have their own seperate criteria.

If you look at it from the point of view that you already have a working order for your select plugins, most of the hard work is already done, all thats left is to reach a concensus with others who have done the same and then share the results with the LPK community, in the same fashion that translations are done or scripts corrected and shared.

The end result would be much less time stareing at someone elses load order trying to stop the error when you can confidently point them to a ready made list that doesn't need to account for other unrelated mods like Joesflamingturdsword.esp, so you can get back to banging the hell out of some poor NPC or their dog sooner

 

Surely this would be a more elegant solution- think of the fame, the prestige, the beers you could drink while doing such a thing.

Remember, a mind is a terrible thing to waste while your waist is a terrible thing to mind.

Or Not.

[gregathit]

Kinda like the one that is in the spoiler at the bottom of this post here: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=6133

 

If there are any plugins missing I would be happy to update it but the bulk of them are in it.

[gregathit]

I can add those plugins into the mix and update the post. To be honest those plugins could go anywhere below Lovers with PK Extender.esp and above SetBody.esp

 

As to the two pay bandits: Yes you can use them together. The "for slaver" one allows you to pimp out your slaves to pay your debts.

[yosecretsquirrel]

I can add those plugins into the mix and update the post. To be honest those plugins could go anywhere below Lovers with PK Extender.esp and above SetBody.esp

 

As to the two pay bandits: Yes you can use them together. The "for slaver" one allows you to pimp out your slaves to pay your debts.

 

See now its this kind of advice that I'm refering to (and thanks for that). Most of us have no clue as to where things should go or why. And its the why part that prompted me to say we need knowledgable people to help standardize a load order that the whole community can use and even contribute to. Most of us have little or no real idea of how the plugins interact or even how or what Wrye Bash does, or for that matter why OBMM is a good tool. Its also the whole premise behind the development of tools like BOSS,OBMM and Wrye Bash.

Until I came here I was confident in my ability to just let BOSS do my sorting but with LPK for some reason there is no participation in the BOSS submission process. Now I can't even use BOSS effectivly, when I do things go horribly wrong even with userlists and masterlists found here. Boss provides the proof that standardization is needed simply by combining one userlist with one masterlist from here and then sit back and watch it freak out. I realize that you should only need one or the other, however if they both contained the same load order then all would be well. Unfortunately, they contain conflicting information and so things go badly. Add a bash patch to the mix and things get really nasty fast.

Having said all that perhaps it would be a better service to also look at using the information to get LPK plugins submitted to the BOSS system as well. Now that would be truly heroic.

I realize that in most cases nobody here at LL is responsible for the development of these plugins and I applaud those who choose to take the time to do english translations or anything done within the CS to help make these Plugins useable for others as well. Perhaps establishing some standards here could become recognized by the people who are creating these plugins making their lives and ours a whole lot simpler.

Anyway I hope I have made my point and I thank you for your feedback. Now I'm off to spend several hours figuring out why my fresh install has invisible creatures, missing heads, bald heads and messed up eyes.

P.S.

After looking at the load order spoiler you put up, a couple of things occured to me as to why simply listing a load order is too rudimentary. Several of those plugins listed also need to be or can be merged into the bash patch while others should absolutly not. While load orders are very important, they are not the whole picture.

Part of my point is that while I recognize Greg as an experienced user, his focus and experience is centered primarily on the plugins he uses or has used, as is everyone else who trys to help sort it all out. A gathering of like minded individuals brings all that experience together to paint a more complete picture.

[yosecretsquirrel]

 

In my latest re-install, I used your load order to get started, then kludged the rest together from a bunch of older load orders.

 

My game is extremely stable now so I'm not messing with it anymore, but I believe a Lovers Lab "Anti-Boss" load order list would be a Godsend.

 

It WOULD have to be heavily moderated, though.

I would llove a peek at that load order, extremely stable is like the holy grail of Oblivion, let alone LPK.

[gregathit]

Again, I will work in the "left out plugins" from the lovers section but if you are asking for plugins advice from mods "outside" of the lovers area then that is a no go. There are simply far too many plugins and many of which conflict with one another.

 

Boss is a very effective tool as long as you understand what it "can" do verses what it "can not". Boss should be run on an initial setup (after installing all your mods "except lovers") and then should not be run again. If you "do" decide to run Boss at a later date for some strange reason then you have to be prepared to use a lovers friendly userlist and\or shuffle stuff by hand.

 

A general guideline for load orders is:

1. oblivion.esm

2. Official DLC and UOP patches

3. Overhaul mods

4. Clothing\armor\weapons mods <-- 3 and 4 are "switchable" depending on if you want to "over write the clothing\armor that an overhaul provides - if not then put these in the 3 slot.

5. Beauty mods

6. BU Dungeons (if you use them)

7. Tamago stuff

8. Lovers stuff

9. Bashed patch

10. Lovers idles files and the orgasm stuff

11. Xeosp++ and deadly reflex if you use it.

 

This again "assumes" you are using a bashed patch and remember NOT to include any lovers files in that bashed patch (except the sexual organs stuff) - it is best to just deselect all lovers esm and esp files prior to rebuilding your bashed patch to "make sure".

 

I am happy to help in any way I can but keep in mind that getting too carried away with piling mods into a master load order can chew up more time that you would ever believe. It is best to use the old KISS principle....

 

It will be sometime next week before I make any updates to things as I am off for a little golf vacation until next Tuesday.

 

Cheers,

Greg

[yosecretsquirrel]

Excellent post Gregathit, thank you! Your best yet on this subject, your general guideline is just what we need. Of course, I was not trying to solicit advice regarding non lovers mods, thats what Boss is for.

My reference to Bash was in regards to lovers mods like creaturesexualorgans being included in the patch. The odd thing about that is that according to Boss it is tagged no merge by the author, and yet Wryebash reports no tags. Personally my experience has not been good adding it to the patch. I prefer your advice not to include any Lovers mods into the patch. Where I'm a bit hazy is tamango/hiyoko so I choose caution and leave it out as well.

Enjoy your vacation Greg, try not to lose any balls! .

 

 

For those of you reading this and are new to mods or still trying to understand why any of this is important to adding mods to Bethesda games, I am going to suggest reading the help file for Boss by running the Boss GUI. Not only does it help understand what Boss does and how, it explains other important things about mods and it does it in simple to understand terms.One thing it helped me understand is why Boss is useless when it comes to the Lovers mods. In short the Lovers Plugins have been modified outside of their original production date, usually in the form of english translations, and so Boss cannot accurately guess at their load order. Also most LPK plugins affect or interact primarily with LoverswithPK.esm or .esp rather than Oblivion.esm (sometimes both), something Boss is not designed to deal with.

[gregathit]

Well, all I can tell you on the no merge deal with the sexual organs...is that it is wrong. I will have to dig it up but there were some notes on making sure that it "was" merged into the bashed patch and never just enabled. My experience has been just the opposite in that all sorts of weird stuff happen if it is enabled.

 

Now which is actually correct "could" be a function of the version of sexual organs used, or it could be load order related, or it could be a conflict with another mod (or the lack of conflict). This quickly becomes a difficult thing to get to the bottom of and I have based my "bash in" recommendations on both my experiences and the advice that I received from folks like Donkey, who had one heck of a lot more experience than I will likely ever have.

 

I would love to get to the bottom of it, but unless we get multiple people who will all use the exact same plugins and test it in different load order arrangements and some bashing in, some not, then I don't honestly know that we will ever really know for sure. I had no takers to test some lovers updated mods when I advertised about a month ago, so I don't see this as a possible deal. We do have lots of lurkers who download stuff, but those willing to pitch in and get their hands dirty are but a few.....

 

All in all I am game to help in the limited time I have to help, but I can't carry the torch on getting into the nuts and bolts of things. I will however support anyone who wants to delve in.

 

Cheers,

Greg

[icecold29]

user list are not to difficult to manage have you thought about that... thats why not too many people have issues with load order...

You can create your own user list... I created mine on basis of greg's thread a long time back... I never ever had issues with load order since then...

Boss User List 101

 

 

There are only 4 commands you need to know...

 

OVERRIDE:

ADD:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BOTTOM:

 

First Things first... The Plugins are sorted on basis of Masterlist Even for the custom User list => Implies your userlist tend to be based on BOSS Masterlist..

Now Boss masterlist has a number of rules-> you can create your own rule but why bother... use BOSS master list rules...

 

We are concerned with only these Masterlist rules:-

ESM's

Sexual Stuff

Pre Bashed Patch

Post Bashed Patch

 

Now you have to keep in mind the Stacking order..

meaning LIFO {If you insert something to bottom and then immediately insert something else to bottom then last one is top-- and first one will become top..

example

 

OVERRIDE: Lovers with PK.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

OVERRIDE: LoversBitch.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

OVERRIDE: LoversCreature.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

will order as

{Lovers with PK.esp

LoversBitch.esp

LoversCreature.esp}

 

Now

OVERRIDE: what is present in Masterlist {Do a CTRL+F on master list to see which lovers plugins are there in master list}

and ADD: whatever is not..

BOTTOM: {Sexual Stuff for Older plugins}

Pre-bashed for newer and Other Stuff

Post Bashed for 4 plugins that always appear at bottom..

 

And there you go... your own custom made userlist..

Edit your unknown plugins to sort via other Masterlist rules like

LOD's , NPC Faces, Vanilla Fixes etc...

 

BTW. Wyre Bash/Smash is the monkey god of mod management/ modding experience and can allow you to attach these tags to unknown esp's so that they sort properly...

 

Listen to the monkey god, sooner or later everyone turns to him...

 

 

[yosecretsquirrel]

user list are not to difficult to manage have you thought about that... thats why not too many people have issues with load order...

You can create your own user list... I created mine on basis of greg's thread a long time back... I never ever had issues with load order since then...

Boss User List 101

 

 

There are only 4 commands you need to know...

 

OVERRIDE:

ADD:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BOTTOM:

 

First Things first... The Plugins are sorted on basis of Masterlist Even for the custom User list => Implies your userlist tend to be based on BOSS Masterlist..

Now Boss masterlist has a number of rules-> you can create your own rule but why bother... use BOSS master list rules...

 

We are concerned with only these Masterlist rules:-

ESM's

Sexual Stuff

Pre Bashed Patch

Post Bashed Patch

 

Now you have to keep in mind the Stacking order..

meaning LIFO {If you insert something to bottom and then immediately insert something else to bottom then last one is top-- and first one will become top..

example

 

OVERRIDE: Lovers with PK.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

OVERRIDE: LoversBitch.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

OVERRIDE: LoversCreature.esp

BOTTOM: Sexual Stuff

will order as

{Lovers with PK.esp

LoversBitch.esp

LoversCreature.esp}

 

Now

OVERRIDE: what is present in Masterlist {Do a CTRL+F on master list to see which lovers plugins are there in master list}

and ADD: whatever is not..

BOTTOM: {Sexual Stuff for Older plugins}

Pre-bashed for newer and Other Stuff

Post Bashed for 4 plugins that always appear at bottom..

 

And there you go... your own custom made userlist..

Edit your unknown plugins to sort via other Masterlist rules like

LOD's ' date=' NPC Faces, Vanilla Fixes etc...

 

BTW. Wyre Bash/Smash is the monkey god of mod management/ modding experience and can allow you to attach these tags to unknown esp's so that they sort properly...

 

Listen to the monkey god, sooner or later everyone turns to him...

 

 

[/quote']

 

Sure Ice, userlist is a great way to manage things, but only after a working load order is established. What this post is about is establishing ONE singular, definative, word of god type load order for existing LPK plugins found here rather than the piecemeal collectiveness of the load order suggestions, masterlists and userlists posted in various places around LL. I created this post realizing 2 things, first that it would be impossible to do so with all TES4 plugins. Second, that it is possible and probably desireable to group all the LPK plugins together in the LO. Based on that second assumption, all that remains is establishing the order for all LPK plugins and determining whether they should load before or after the 20k plus TES4 mods. In turn this produces two big results - a definative userlist AND the ability to finally submit the results to BOSS in a meaningful fashion (That last one could effectively eliminate the need for a userlist for boss users).

There are currently 7 pages of posted LPK plugins on this site's download section, and even if the original authors posted them to BOSS, these ones would not sort because they have been modified by translation and do not have a matching CRC. So while it is great they they have been fixed in one fashion or another, it complicates their useage by the average TES4 user in terms of figuring out load order or even which ones are mutually exclusive, outdated or just plain broken.

I suppose I may just be beating a dead horse here, Maybe Greg is right in saying we are all just lurkers with no interest in helping out. It just seems a shame that there is such a wealth of reposted info regarding load orders and noone with the knowledge and will to sort it all out and getting working right. I would do it all myself, but I just don't know enough yet and I suffer from APD so unless I could do it in 10 mins or less it would never get done.

Ahh well, maybe I should STFU and leave well enough alone.

 

P.S.

After reading Ice's spoiler I was left thinking "What?". While I'm sure it is concise, I have no idea what it says. And I've read a fair amount of BOSS docs and BASH docs (most of which might just as well have been in Japanese for me). My point being this stuff might make sense to some but to others it's complete gibberish.

[icecold29]

^^ You misunderstand me good sir.. What i was trying to say is that one modded instance of game differ from another, so It is frivolous to keep making userlist that will suit everybody, Instead one Should generate his own user list...

 

Procedure is to export you Plugin to a textfile.. OBMM can do this, so can Wyre Bash and other managers --> worst case go to data folder-->Shift+rightclick to open command windows there and give command -->C:\Oblivion\Data>dir /b *.esp *.esm >MyPlugin.txt

will give you the list of your plugins... Now whatever is in master list has to proceed by OVERRIDE: and what place you want to sort to BOTTOM:, TOP:, BEFORE:, AFTER:

If Plugin is not in master list then instead of OVERRIDE: Use add

so every entry should look like

OVERRIDE:{Plugin.esp}

BOTTOM: {Group or ESP or ESM Name}

So on until every plugin has an entry.

That will be your custom userlist now rename it to userlist and out it in BOSS folder with master list ...Next time you will run BOSS your plugins should sort via custom order...

Some plugins might need some nudging up here and there... but overall most plugins should sort correctly..

Now look at BOSS errors and change your userlist accordingly...

Like if it Says: Plugin not found in masterlist skipping rule... change that entry to ADD:

PPS: Old chinese proverb

I listen, I forget, I see, I remember, I do,I understand...

So get your hands dirty... reading will not help...

I have started to recognize Japanese... after looking at so many texts... Now i can understand symbols like

Login: Download: Yes: No: Thats enough of japanese for me... i do understand some of the dirty words too but they are not so helpful..

 

Here look at This user list

 

it is Almost same like greg's post and you figure out the rest..