Help Modding Oblivion from a Noob

[shinderhizzle84]

Hi everybody!

So today I found this site via google and thought that I'd register an account. I've always loved the ability to heavily mod your games in Oblivion and Skyrim and thought this looked like a lovely community, so I signed up.

I've modded Skyrim a lot before but not really so much Oblivion. Today I downloaded a crapton of Oblivion mods found throughout this website and installed them as best as I could using the random readme's and installation descriptions from each mod, but the moment that I try to open up Oblivion my game crashes immediately without any form of error sign or anything. I open the game, the screen goes black for a second and then it crashes right to the desktop.

I hate to waste everyone's time, but I have to admit that I'm very new to modding Oblivion and definitely found a lot of the instructions in the various mod threads to be very confusing. Is there some sort of way I can tell which mod of mine is causing this crash, and how can I fix this issue?

Thanks so much!

[gregathit]

First off you need some tools. Things like OBSE (most mods require it) and OBMM (to manage you load order) and BOSS (to organize your load order). CTD's like you are having are either because you have a bad load order or you are missing a required mod that something you install needs.

A good place to start reading is Post 1 and 2 here: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=30

[shinderhizzle84]

First off you need some tools. Things like OBSE (most mods require it) and OBMM (to manage you load order) and BOSS (to organize your load order). CTD's like you are having are either because you have a bad load order or you are missing a required mod that something you install needs.

A good place to start reading is Post 1 and 2 here: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=30

Thanks for the speedy reply. I've got OBSE .20 or whatever the latest version is and I have already downloaded and installed BOSS. I edited the user load list based off of a post I had seen in the forums (I think it was this one http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=6350) but I don't have OBMM. I realize that load order matters based off of my reading of the mods, but the issue becomes way more complicated when I've got a ton of mods that all have very un-specific order requirements.

I think I must have downloaded a good 10-15 mods...so I'm kind of confused as to which mod goes in which position.

[gregathit]

Boss will pretty much take care of "most" mods for load order. It just does a terrible job with lovers with pk stuff - hence you need the userlists like the one you linked to.

As to installing mods. Your best bet is to wipe it and start over. You should install mods 1 or 2 at a time and then stop and test them to make sure the game still works. Then install a couple more and repeat. After installing a half dozen or so you should make a backup of your data folder somewhere so if something goes wrong you don't have to start completely over. Then continue this pattern until you have what you want.

[gregathit]

You can also post your load order here and folks will take a quick peek at it to give you some pointers. Read this if you don't know how to post your load order: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=6133

[shinderhizzle84]

Boss will pretty much take care of "most" mods for load order. It just does a terrible job with lovers with pk stuff - hence you need the userlists like the one you linked to.

As to installing mods. Your best bet is to wipe it and start over. You should install mods 1 or 2 at a time and then stop and test them to make sure the game still works. Then install a couple more and repeat. After installing a half dozen or so you should make a backup of your data folder somewhere so if something goes wrong you don't have to start completely over. Then continue this pattern until you have what you want.

Thanks for the tip. That'll probably be a huge pain in the arse, but I guess if I can get the game to work the way that I want it to, it'll be worth it.

I'll do that now and if I'm still having issues I'll come back

[Grumpf]

You may also want to try that in your OBSE plugins. If it doesn't help, remove it but remember to activate it from time to time, everytime you have a nice CTD...

Although Greg is right, best is to go slowly... When you have installed several mods, backup your data folder so you can reset things if they go wrong. Prefer mods that uses OBMM format (Omod) if you can, or at least mods with a compress archive (BSA) as opposed to free files. They quickly create a giant mess...

Oh, personal advertisement here: if you have a light Oblivion, it's the good moment to play CLS, before it's too modded!!!

[shinderhizzle84]

Ok so I am still very, very confused by that post about the user list for the program BOSS. My userlist doesn't look anything like that guy's userlist because that guy put in a bunch of random notes that I'd imagine screws up the program.

So I installed all of the mods fine. I double checked to make sure that every single mod has every single requirement mod downloaded and activated into Oblivion Mod Manager. When I start the game, it flashes the Bethesda loading intro ever so briefly before CTDing once again.

Attached is a copy of my userlist after I just copied and pasted everything that seemed applicable from that post I linked before.

If there's something else that I should be doing besides posting that userlist in BOSS, please let me know, because I am currently under the impression that fixing your loading list in BOSS is all that you should need to do to get the game working.

Any help that anyone could give me would be very welcome

[gregathit]

Ferdain's userlist works just fine as many have used it with no problems. Personally, I don't bother with userlists. I run BOSS and then hand sort the lovers files and any unrecognized.

Clearly something in your load order is off or missing. You can run the conflict detector in OBMM or use Wrye. You are also welcome to post your load order here and we can take a look at it to see if anything stands out.

[shinderhizzle84]

Ferdain's userlist works just fine as many have used it with no problems. Personally' date=' I don't bother with userlists. I run BOSS and then hand sort the lovers files and any unrecognized.

Clearly something in your load order is off or missing. You can run the conflict detector in OBMM or use Wrye. You are also welcome to post your load order here and we can take a look at it to see if anything stands out.

[/quote']

I thought that the userlist was the load order?

Where can I change the load order and how exactly do I go about doing it? I guess for some reason I thought that plugging that userlist into BOSS and running the program would automatically sort my load order...rookie mistake, I guess.

[GSBmodders]

Ferdain's userlist works just fine as many have used it with no problems. Personally' date=' I don't bother with userlists. I run BOSS and then hand sort the lovers files and any unrecognized.

Clearly something in your load order is off or missing. You can run the conflict detector in OBMM or use Wrye. You are also welcome to post your load order here and we can take a look at it to see if anything stands out.

[/quote']

I thought that the userlist was the load order?

Where can I change the load order and how exactly do I go about doing it? I guess for some reason I thought that plugging that userlist into BOSS and running the program would automatically sort my load order...rookie mistake, I guess.

Boss sorts your load order, but boss is only one step in setting your load order and very often boss fucks up which is why I and many others dont even bother with it.

your load order can be set by hand using OBMM or Wrye Bash, I highly recommend learning how to use Bash. Once you set your load order in bash and build your bash patch your game will run far smoother then it ever has before. Either one will do the job but bash is far more advanced then obmm feature wise and a large % of mods will require that you have bash for patching mods ect. it also important to note that should you use bash do not ever bash patch lovers mods

[gregathit]

A userlist is just a custom sorting mechanism (a this before that list of rules). The masterlist is the standard sorting mechanism (which is "not" lovers friendly).

Your actual load order can be obtained through OBMM by selecting "import/export" and then view load order. You can then copy and paste it here. Please use spoilers when posting load orders.

GSB is quite correct in that BOSS is just a first step. Most use BOSS only once (after initial install of base mods) and then hand sort from then on.

Cheers,

Greg

[shinderhizzle84]

So I've just spent I'd say about half an hour sorting through my load order in OBMM doing it as accurately as I can to that 2nd post in the Lovers PK Quick Installation thread. I honestly have no idea how to copy and paste my load order from OBMM onto here, but I ran the conflict detector before starting and I'm very confused by what it's been telling me.

So I have MBP Beautiful people or whatever it's called--I downloaded the OMOD version for it. There seems to be a conflict with a record group called "Record Group (RACE)" with almost all of the game's original races because it says that it conflicts with "Beautiful People 2ch-Ed Vanilla Race.esp, Beautiful People 2ch-ed ENG Race.esp and Lop-ears elf.esp"

There is also a conflict with "Chanpon.esp", which I'm pretty sure is also part of the MBP Beautiful People mod, for the value Prttycure17Rin that says "Conflicts with Beautiful people 2ch-ed Merged Hair Modules"...but both of those things are part of the whole MBP Beautiful People OMOD and I'm not sure which one i can tick off to stop the conflict and which one I have to keep to make the mod work...

I'm honestly not sure which one of those to untick to make it work, because they're all part of hte MBP Beautiful People mod, and when I went to the OMOD's thread for MBP Beautiful people i literally just ordered the load order the way it said to.

So now I'm very confused. I think I'm going to try starting the game just in case I don't have to worry about these types of conflicts, but I have a feeling that this isn't going to work since I seem to be at a total loss to do a lot of this.

[gregathit]

Shinderhizzle, MBP is supposed to be merged into a bashed patch. You can see which ones are to be merged as well as how to post your load order here: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=6133

[shinderhizzle84]

Shinderhizzle' date=' MBP is supposed to be merged into a bashed patch. You can see which ones are to be merged as well as how to post your load order here: http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=6133

[/quote']

So I just wanted to thank you and others for helping me out...I can imagine it was a bit frustrating for you at times.

After a lot of trial and error and fiddling around with the game and my mods and got the game to work...so thank you.

I do have a question though: I noticed in one of the mod-settings-changing spells that I can change my player's voice: but I cannot sample an audio clip so I can hear what it sounds like before I change it.

Is there an easier way to do this than having to wait until I'm actually using the mod to hear what my character sounds like? If I wanted to hear the audio files, where would they be located so I can listen to them outside of the game? I tried looking in the unrar'd folder of the Lovers Resources download but all of the audio files have very random names and I was unsure if I should open them or not

[gregathit]

The sound files for lovers are Oblivion\Data\sound\fx\lovers - there will be a number of files and folders and I can't tell you which ones are the men's voices off the top of my head.