CatTech

Very good FAQ. In my many years of PC gaming, I've only modded one game to date and that was a few months ago when I added Stalker Complete 2009 to my Stalker: SoC! That wasn't really even a mod compared to this because it consisted of downloading one file, transferring it to the game file and changing a few text lines.

Modding Oblivion is proving to be a very different world (I wish there was a mod package, similar to the stalker mod that bundled numerous mods into one file to work with, I seem to do better with those!). I worked through your list to try to come up with some I would like to implement, but at this point I'm just trying to figure out how to use OBMM, OBSE and Wyre.

I've looked up many tutorials on OBMM, but I still have one, very basic question. When I download a mod, I then have a .zip, 7zip or .rar file in my folder. Do I just hit 'create' in OBMM, hit 'Add Archive' and then browse for the downloaded .zip, .7zip, etc file, then once that's done hit 'create omod'? Or do I have to extract the downloaded file first? For whatever reason, the simple things get me with modding games.

Another thing that I think I almost have pinned down is the load order. Other than those links you posted about load order, how would you know if loading one mod before or after another is good/bad? Errors within the game? Would you be warned within OBMM that the load order is wrong?

It would appear that I've jumped into the deep end of the pool rather than getting in the shallow end first and swimming to the deep end with this modding stuff.

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jamenta

Hiya CatTech,

Thanks for the compliment on the FAQ.

One reason why I put up the FAQ here on Overclock.net was becuz modding Oblivion is very much like overclocking your rig ... you gotta do it slow and you gotta be careful about it! So this website seemed like the perfect place for the FAQ.

With zip files you can make a OMOD directly from the zip, but I usually avoid that becuz 1) sometimes it doesn't work the way it should 2) I like to make sure I only have what I want from the mod and not any more.

So my suggestion with zip files is unzip them into a temp directory and then create your OMOD from that directory.

Load order is a tricky thing. Arwen's website and load order I think is the best available right now. You really have to decide for yourself what order you want, and probably the best way to do that is slowly mod your game ... 1 mod at a time. Add a mod, play for awhile, add another mod.

Adding all the mods at once and hoping your rocket will launch without something going wrong is really risky.

What I did was first installed all the huge mod - like the mods I have in my Blockbuster section first. One at a time. Then work your way to other mods.

It can easily be a lifelong project and you really have to be kinda patient with it much like Overclocking your rig.

PS: If you haven't tried out BioWare's latest RPG Dragon Age: Origins I very much recommend it - I think it is the best RPG game to be released in years and is just an astonishing game ... probably best RPG released ever. Although I haven't finished it yet ...

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FAQ: Modding Oblivion Elder Scrolls IV

Eve Online BLOG: My God, it's full of stars!

Crazy9000

I've been hearing some good things about dragon age, I guess I will have to pick it up.

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jamenta

No guessing -- DO! Kinda nice being able to be around for yet another huge PC game release. This one is a big one ...

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FAQ: Modding Oblivion Elder Scrolls IV

Eve Online BLOG: My God, it's full of stars!

CatTech

Thanks for the reply Jamenta.

It looks like I should have taken the same approach to this modding as I did with overclocking, as you suggested above. I installed about half the mods I wanted to use, fired up Oblivion and the the screen would turn black, the logo would start to come up, but then the game would crash, no error reports were generated. I tried launching the game from the disk launcher, OBSE launcher and OBMM launcher.

Rather than slowly take mods out, I decided to uninstall Oblivion and start over fresh. I installed the game, loaded in the latest game patch, fired up Oblivion and the game would crash at the same spot, but now it generates an error message. I'm not sure what the problem is at this point, but once I get it figured out, I'll try modding at a slower pace this time around.

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His Royal Highness - A Thermaltake Armor case mod
My computer room set up

jamenta

Good luck Cat. Yeah it can be a bear modding Oblivion (like Overclocking). But once your engine starts to purr --- it's worth the effort.

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FAQ: Modding Oblivion Elder Scrolls IV

Eve Online BLOG: My God, it's full of stars!

RonindeBeatrice

When you uninstalled did you go in and clean up the install directory? The uninstall only removes the stock files and such, so all your mod .esp's will still be there along with a billion other files that can cause chaos on a "clean" install.

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CatTech

If you mean the Bethseda folder under program files, yeah I deleted that whole folder after doing the uninstall. I tried to delete it through Add/Remove programs, figuring it would do a cleaner job, but that folder wasn't listed. I'll run scandisk and defrag tomorrow and see if that helps.

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His Royal Highness - A Thermaltake Armor case mod
My computer room set up

jamenta

You also have to clean up any files in the local directory windows keeps for you the user if you're using XP (I think in My Documents).

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FAQ: Modding Oblivion Elder Scrolls IV

Eve Online BLOG: My God, it's full of stars!

RonindeBeatrice

Hey Jamenta, have you seen any mods which add age maps to the chars bodies in oblivion?

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