I've noticed odd pathing as well in my game. NPCs just walking into walls and such. I don't know how to fix it either.

I have noticed in Tes4Edit that sometimes in the Bashpatch things just don't get through. I've had to correct things like jewelry to apply to the correct item slot. Same thing with some NPCs having the screwed up eyes. I had to fix that by telling the patch where to get the eye textures.

Well, finally got it so the Countess was able to walk home. Sort of. Guess she's confused by the changes in the big city.

What I ended up doing was removing MMM from my install/load, and re-installing it through Wrye Bash (I had installed it through OBMM), then tinkering with the installers. I don't know if that fixed anything but my textures are back and so are the pathings - for the most part. One of the mounted patrols keeps jumping in mid-air for no apparent reason. I guess his Paint horse is a retired Grand Prix hunter/jumper.

I also set BSA Redirection in Wrye Bash (I hope that's what you meant, TK) but it didn't solve the missing textures problem, nor did setting the dummy BSA first. Apparently it was the way the game was unloading the files from the installers if I understand correctly. I didn't think it did once they were installed, but . . .

So far no googly eyes.

I thought I'd pop in and let TK and KC know how things are running.

GREAT!

I've played five game days (or was it six?). Other than the CTD's after so much time has passed (typical of heavily modded games - I guess mine qualifies for that now), it's been running just fine. I'm having a blast interacting with the farm animals at the Five Riders Stables (hey, little chick, what are you doing out in the middle of the road?) and the crabby mud crabs (some of which run from me, some ignore me, and some just want to eat me - go figure), and exploring both BetterCities's Leyawiin and the surrounding countryside. And I've finally discovered Blackwood Forest - or rather the large Ayelid ruin in the pool there. I haven't gone into it, just walked around it, since my character is not a fighter.

So, I have a few questions about the Better Cities Leyawiin setup. I found a couple new factions (added by OOO I think, or was it MMM) - the Topal Traders and the Rangers. I already found the bank and know I have to go to the IC to make a deposit there before I can use it. That's something for when Tallei actually has some money to deposit! But I can't figure out if there's any way to interact with those two groups in Leyawiin, or if they're just decoration.

Oh, and I tawt I taw a bunny wabbit! *inactivates Second Sight - detect life spell* I did tee a bunny wabbit!

It's like a whoooole new game!

Ahh, that ruin. If you enter, you might want to prepare to hit some weak points for massive damage.

Just sayin.

As for those two groups, they're mostly for decoration right now, but you should definitely take a look around for the Gold Horse Courier if you want to take on a few odd jobs. You'll find them eventually, as they are the ones you go to for banking business outside the IC.

Right now, I'm mostly waiting for the BBC for OCR patch to get to a decently polished state before I venture back into those things, as I really do like the new city layouts OCR provides.

I finally made it up to Bravil and was blown away by the Barrowfields. I will be exploring the region around Bravil soon.

But I'm getting ready to install OBGE, and have a question. Where in the Wrye Bash install order should I place it? I can't find it on your load order that you posted not long ago, so I can't figure it out. Should it go up near the top?

I still have the same load order that I posted before.

Thanks!

There is no .ESP for OBGE so load order isn't an issue with it.

Well, technically it does, but the support plugin isn't very well supported anymore, so it's preferred to use the Shaderlist method of loading shaders.

OBGE Liquid Water needs its plugin installed, though.

Load order doesn't really matter for them, as they are both purely scripted mods (making them LO independent), so place them wherever you feel is best.

Shaderlist? I installed OBGE and the Liquid Water plug in, but I can't figure out how to make it work. The first few times I started the game after installation, it popped up a screen to toggle the different shader effects, but when I clicked on them (didn't matter where), the window went away with no discernable effect on the game graphics. Now it's not popping up anymore (after I clicked on the first line - something to the effect of toggle all on/off I think) when I start up the game. When I click on shader options in the <options> menu within my inventory menu, it says the shader menu will come up after I close the inventory, but nothing comes up when I do. I did install the OBGE support plugin by mistake - should I inactivate that plugin?

Try assigning it to a hotkey. I have the same problems with pose mods.

The Shaderlist.txt is in the Shaders folder. This is the preferred method for loading new shaders with OBGEv3. You don't need it for shaders like Liquid Water, which replace one of the default shaders, but for new effect shaders, it is the best method to load them now. The support plugin, as you have witnessed, doesn't work very well anymore.

To activate a shader with the Shaderlist, all you need to do is add the name of the shader along with the file extension to the shaderlist. so if you wanted to install the Godrays shader, for example, you would add Godrays.fx to the shaderlist.

Just out of curiosity which ones do you have active?

Thanks! I had already found the Shader.txt in the data folder, but it was blank so I thought I was doing something wrong! Turns out I was!

So that's what that whole deal with the popup screens are about.

I'm going to try a couple of them - Depth of Field and Godrays. I'll see if they work.

I'm curious too, which ones do you like to use the most, TK?

Right now, my Oblivion install is using Liquid Water along with the following FX shaders:

Godrays.fx
MDLAA.fx

MDLAA is an anti-aliasing shader, which is necessary due to the need for OBGEv3 to use the depth buffer, rendering GPU anti-aliasing impossible. Nehrim is largely the same but with the addition of CrysisDoF.fx. I don't use SSAO shaders because there is a bug with them in that they display over fog, which is very unrealistic.

I tried some of the DoF effects but none of them worked correctly. All it did was make my entire screen uniformly blurry. I wonder if some of my other mods interfere with them.

I tried modifying the Shader.list like you recommended and didn't see any differences either. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong?

Some of them are very subtle and others I can tell no difference with. Godrays.fx is the only one that I am sure is working 100% correctly.
There was one that had no effect that I could see except my frames per second dropped to 10.

Here's something else that's bugging me.

I created a new character, and I can't get the beard effect to go away. Not only that, but all the women NPC's have faint beards. It's annoying, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.

Here's what I'm talking about.

She's Italian. A beard is a sign of sex appeal in Italy, some men even wear them!

FaceGen sucks in this game.

You could try a facial texture replacer like Natural Faces and see if that helps. But that's all that you can really do aside from painstakingly tweaking the beard away in the Race menu.

I know that problem. It used to drive me nuts too. You can use the construction set to change the facial textures for each NPC, but they will not take effect in the game. The problem is the game uses pre-generated textures in a .bsa, which is still uses despite whatever you try to mod it use. You have to use NPC Face Color Unlocker to make it work. What is does is replace the bsa with essentially blank textures. This allows the construction set to change them. The downside is that everyone's face appears black in the construction set (but not in the game). So it takes some trial and error to get the textures how you want them.

You should be able to get rid of the 5 o'clock shadow for your character though. Just play with the beard shadow options (as you can see, they still work for female characters as well as male ones).

*

I can't get this Trap to work, and wondered if anyone had any suggestions. The Trap is as exact a copy as I could make of the TG11 Ultimate Heist "Falling Exit" from Ocato's chambers via the fireplace "Loose Hearthgrate." (my absolute favorite Trap in the entire game).

The only changes: Of course cutting out quest references in the script. Other than that the only change is the landing - the fall lands you in water instead of concrete. (or would if it worked).

The issues: The ChorrolLoadDoorMiddle02 not functioning whatsoever, even when "Auto" is clicked.

The biggest issue is that the PlayerControls become disabled as soon as the Player enters the IDSkyliteTube01. I tried to script "OnActivate EnablePlayerControls - that worked only once, but the Chorrol Load Door didn't - so at this time those are the only two issues I know of.

I made this Trap with the actual materials (copied and pasted) of the original "TG11 Falling Exit" and spent tons of time crawling all over the original to learn how it worked - my PlayerControls never became disabled even when I tried to activate the original with a script, so I can't understand what is causing that (unless it is my script ...urk!).

Anyway, here is my trap and script, if anyone can help me fix this - I'd really appreciate it tons!


http://s434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...%20Exit%20Trap/


In case you need to reference the original Trap and Script, I have it in a seperate album here:


http://s434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...w%20It%20Works/


Thank you so much in advance for any help you can give me


*

Doors are special cases for onActivate scripts. I would call it an engine bug, because onActivate scripts on doors prevent the doors from functioning like... well, doors. Animated doors don't open and load doors don't teleport. That's what the "activate" function is supposed to do, but I'm not sure if it does this all the time.

What I would suggest is to remove the script from the door entirely and set up a teleport link that puts the player into a trigger zone that activates your script.

If you intend for the player to land in the water, you don't need to do anything fancy with damage calculations. Landing in water cancels all fall damage in this game (not entirely realistic, but that's how it works).

Sample:

This is a great help, TK !! You ROCK !! I have been considering setting a trigger zone in the area above the ChorrolLoad door to enable PlayerControls and activate the ChorrolLoad door itself so your suggestion confirms it was something I should have done. Thank you so much for this !!

On that (DoOnce) in the script - will that mean I can only use this trap one time (period)? Or will it reset itself so the Player can "ride it" after that?

I'd like for it to be re-usable if possible, but I guess I can load a previous save to re-use it if that can't be done.

You can make the trap re-usable if you want. Check the scripts Bethesda used for their re-usable trigger zones for those, because I'm a bit flaky on those right now.

Thanks so much for your help! Now if I can just get the time to go try out your suggestions, lol. TK, if your answers work I am going straight over to the TESA and giving you a cookie, lol.

Well, I’ve had a Wrye Bash disaster. My laptop died unexpectedly (power issue) with everything running, and now WB won’t load. I’ve updated to the newest version from 303 hoping that would fix it, but still no load.

My guess is that there’s some kind of temporary file that did not get deleted because WB never shut down and that’s making it think it’s already running. I get the logo and a quick flash of some kind of text window and then nothing.

I’m searching online for an answer, but I thought I’d post here too in case anyone has an idea.

I'd have expected the upgrade to have deleted any temp files the older version might have left around, but the problem could be an .ini file or registry setting with bad window sizing. You may have to uninstall/re-install to clear that sort of thing, as an upgrade tends to preserve your settings, even if they're bad. Back up your Bash Installers files, profiles etc. just in case, but I don't think uninstalling will try and delete those.

Thank you so much, ghastley! I’ve backed up everything as you suggested and am now working on my “Summon Stones” spell to uninstall and reinstall. Yiiiiikes…

So I finally started messing around with the Construction Kit; it all seems easier than I thought. I hit a wall though.

I want to change an NPC face in one of the mods I've got. So I go into File > Data > Xena Updated (that's the mod). I activate this mod and open it. Now I can see all the zillions of things in the game. Blows my mind

I go to the narrow left-hand screen and click on NPCs. This opens up a huge list of NPCs in the game. I find the one I'm looking for, which is called Gabby Tester. Double-click on that, and *Boom* this opens up a whole bunch of options. It looks like I can change her class, her ability to loot, what spells she has, her Faction....all kinds of things. But I only want to change her face.

There's a tab that says "Face", so obviously I click on that. Then the program crashes. I tried opening up a vanilla NPC; Eugal Belette (just to see if maybe there's some weird mod thing going on) but the CK will crash whenever I try to look up an NPC's face.

Any ideas? I tried looking on the CK wiki, but there's no 'troublehshooting' section. And I don't want to wade through Beth's forums.

EDIT: one more thing: when I open up the Xena mod (activating it) with the CK, a message comes up which says 'Could not find referenced object....' over and over. I guess the program is looking for stuff but cannot find it?

EDIT 2: ha ha never mind. I figured it out. There's an option called 'Face" that has to be checked on before the editor can be used.

Hello everyone. I have a question hopefully somebody can answer. What I want to do seems very simple, but I have hit a virtual wall.

All I want to do is apply a magical effect (Sun Damage) to the NPC Vampire Faction in Oblivion. I found the Effect ID over at UESP.net, which is SUDG. I also found the Vampire Faction somewhere in the Construction Kit.

From there, I am lost. I don't see a way to add magical effects to an entire faction. Nor do I see a way to apply this effect to any of the individual NPC types in the Objects window of the CK. Maybe it's not even possible with the CK at all?

I learned about TES4Gecko, which is supposed to "do many things the Construction Kit cannot do" (paraphrase), and I read briefly about Gecko, but I don't see if Gecko can do this either. So the question is, is this even possible (applying a magical effect to an entire faction)? .. If so, which program should I use?

You don't want to apply an "effect", because that's just the visual appearance that plays when you are affected as a player. E,g, when you cast a spell, an effect plays, such as a curl of white smoke, at the same time as the spell does its thing, whether it's a buff to the player, or damage to an enemy.

I assume you want the vampires to get damaged by the sun under the same circumstances as the player character. That's typically done by giving them an ability, which is a spell that provides the result. The spell would need to be one that uses a Script effect, so it can be controlled by the location and time of day, i.e. damage if not in an interior cell, and during daylight. You probably can't just copy the same one that applies it to the player, as there are a whole bunch of functions that only apply to the player, and I'd imagine they're used for this.

I also think it's likely that your game won't have many vampires before long, as the AI doesn't have self-preservation built in, and they won't know they need to get inside. They'd probably feel the damage, and try to attack what caused it.

Wow, that's helps a lot thanks! Yes, I want the physical effect more than the visual one, although the visual effect would be pretty neat to have. But that would require messing with graphics, right? And I'm not really ready for that yet. I remember reading something about 'time of day', and how different things can be applied in this manner. Anyways, I'll let you know if I figure this out



This is okay. The only problem might be for named vampires, but the generic ones (the typical matriarch, bandit bowman, etc) I don't care about. That's kinda the point; if they follow my characters outside into daylight, I want to see them suffer the same consequences a PC would.

So. . . vampires aren't smart enough to come in out of the rain sun?

I wrote my first script today. I simply followed the instructions in the CS's My First Script tootorial, but put my own little twist on it. My character likes alcohol, so I added messages to her game. Like if she finds a bottle of beer, the on-screen message says "Mmmm beer". If she finds some ale, it says something like "Can't wait to gulp this down." Kinda silly, but this sort of thing actually fits her game.

....

Congrats on your first script! That’s pretty neat that you can weave little thought messages into your character’s game.

Ha ha thanks Grits. Yeah, it's just silly little bits of code. I'll never put it up at Nexus or anything like that, but it fits my game.

The dots up above are yet another virtual wall I hit, but then toppled over. All the sudden certain cells were full of WTF? signs. There were about a half-dozen of them in the Count's Arms, a few in the Anvil Fighter's Guild, and even more in a brand new mod I picked up (IMPEReal's Sutch) and they were driving me crazy. I wound up getting FormID Finder, and long story short, figured out that I somehow managed to dissolve all the Cheap Wine in my games. It's because of the scripting mod I just made. Somehow I erased the Cheap Wine image, so instead of Cheap Wine there was WTF? signs Kahreem, if his game was on PC, would have gone crazy

But I figured it out. My motto for 2014 is "I figured it out".

That is an EXCELLENT motto! So you can imagine my face palm when I discovered that Darnand could not get out the now broken door with his brand new staff. Make something, break something, fix it, new idea... It’s a learning experience!

Perhaps this is not such a bad thing for the world?

"Make something, break something.." Yeah no doubt. I found a really cool-looking Whip mod made by Snusmiriken (I think that's how you spell his name). It looks awesome. Got it into Renee's game and voila, somehow there's no sound if she draws or sheathes her weapon (not the whip, the spear she's been carrying lately, all the sudden it doesn't make any sounds). Arrgh. So I had to manually remove all the Whip files, dangit, most of which are animation files. I'm not sure which one was responsible, and I don't feel like messing with it now.

...but I will figure it out. Maybe it's not meant for Renee's game, but maybe Snaaty's game, which is less heavily-modded. I can totally see my skooma salesman with a whip, you know?



Ha ha yeah, you know?

This is actually a construction set question.

If I want to make a particular chest not respawn anymore, is this possible?

I went into the construction set, found containers, and found chests. There are all sorts of chests listed. Some respawn, some don't. The chest I want to make non-respawnable has the Editor ID 0004e097, if I look at it under the console. But the CS doesn't use Editor IDs. Or does it? .... I don't see them listed, all I see are alphabetic descriptions of chests (Chest-MiddleClass for instance)

Once I can link an Editor ID with one of these chests in the CS, the rest seems easy. Just make that type of chest not respawn. Any ideas?

Yes, in theory, but then you'll affect all the chests of that type, which may mean no loot in the next dungeon, because the chests didn't re-fill.

It's better to add a non-respawning chest where you want it in your mod, and then drop the original below the ground to get it out of the way. I wouldn't even do a search and replace to change the chest into yours, as it may be referenced by ID, not name.

By default the CS hides the IDs of everything. It would be too useful if you can see them after all. But you can make them visible in the Object Window. In the right hand pane, look at the top menu bar. At the left it starts with a column named Editor ID, which is really the name of the items. Next you will see two little bars, then a column named Count. There is actually a column in between them. If you double click on the second bar, or just click and hold down on the second one, then drag it over, it will open up the hidden column. This will show you the Form IDs.

I don't think you can search by the Form ID. And trying to go through them manually will probably be a royal pain. It would be easier to go to the Cell View Window, find the cell where the chest is, open that up, and look for the chest that way. What I will typically do is find it that way, then double click on it to open it up. Typically the Reference Editor ID field at the top of the window will be empty. I will give it a unique name, like 0PersephonesTreasureChestRef. Then click on Edit Base. That will bring up the base type of chest the one in the cell was copied from. Now change the ID line at the top of that to something unique as well, like 0PersephonesTreasureChestBase. Then uncheck the Respawns box in that window, and change the contents however you like. Click Ok, and say yes to create a new form. That takes you back to the Cell View, with the first window for the chest is still up (0PersephonesTreasureChestRef). Now click ok there as well. Now that chest will be unique, and non-respawnable.

And a little hint. When naming new objects, always begin the ID name with the number 0 or 1. That way it is always at the top of every list. That makes it easy to find it in the future. I always end the name of objects in the world with 'Ref', as in short for Reference. That helps keep the object that appears in the world separate from the base object it is cloned from.

Hey thanks you all. I got it figured. Actually what I realized is I've never used the CS's Cell and Render windows. I had a brainstorm today and remembered that every cell is viewable (with all the objects inside it) in these windows. Found the chest I wanted to change, which is inside one of Lord Drad's Slave Houses, and found a Respawn option we can click on and off.


Is it bad (by the way) if I save this non-respawning chest to a pre-existing mod?



This is what I realized. It would not be good to affect all the chests of this type. ... This could also cause some save bloats, right?



ninja'd I didn't know the part about naming our own Reference ID though, so yah! I just learned some new things!

I'll repeat the above question: is it bad to save that new non-respawning chest to a pre-existing mod? .... Because if I don't do this, when I save it wants me to create a brand-new esp, and I don't really want to keep adding esp after esp, you know? ... I specifically am thinking of saving the chest to Settlements of Cyrodiil's esm. Is this okay or not?

There is nothing really wrong with modding an existing mod. I end up modding at least half the mods I download. Sometimes when you have mods that affect the same thing you have to do that. Like with multiple hair mods. You have to combine them all into a single mod, otherwise the only one that will work is the last one in the mod order.

Thanks SR. Wow, we can combine hair?

In Oblivion you have to. It is a long, tedious process. But not really that difficult.

What do you do if a mod just flat-out doesn't work? ... And you visit that mod's POSTS page at Nexus (where everybody posts their experiences) and you don't see anybody else having problems? .. Asking questions in that POSTS section would be a waste of time; the mod author seems to have vanished, and I notice people don't really answer posts at Nexus, unless the mod in question is new and / or hot.

The module I'm looking at is called Natural Environments?. This mod includes five esps, but I'm only interested in using one of them: Natural Habitats. Natural Habitats.esp adds birds and insects to the gameworld.

I noticed that the first few times I used Natural Habitats it worked fine. Birds were flying everywhere, insects were buzzing. I was in heaven. But it eventually just *stopped*. I deactivated and deleted the mod, reinstalled it, and then it worked again. Eventually stopped again. Deactivated + deleted again. eTc.

Eventually it simply stopped working, period. Doesn't matter if I try using OBMM (there is an Omod version of this mod), installing with Bash, or installing manually. Doesn't matter if I put Habitat at the very bottom of my load order. Oddly the other esp I use from this same mod, Natural Water, works just fine. It's only the Habitat which doesn't work. And I'm not using any of the other mods: not using Natural Weather, Natural Weather HDR, or Natural Flora.

I've tried opening up NH in TES4Edit, but I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be looking for. It's weird how this mod initially worked, but then just stopped, and then stopped for good. Any ideas?

Could it be the A-bomb? The critters are animated, so maybe their animations just got stopped.

Hmm I wonder. I have destroyed the bomb at least once during the time I started Natural Habitats. In other words, I installed the mod 2 or 3 weeks ago, and during that time the A-bomb showed up once, so I used Bash to get rid of it. No A-bomb in my game now, at the moment.