Renee, ghastley is totally right.

It's never perfect. You play it a while, with what you think is the perfect, stable, mod load order, then something happens, or a stray thought occurs to you, and you start asking yourself "What if . . ."

As I was writing OHDH, I got to hankering after making Gweden Farm Julian's homestead after she evicted the squatters. So that led me into the bowels of the CS. I was successful at making the little cottage with the big basement Julian's own unique retreat (we see a bit of it at the end of OHDH). It was a thrilling accomplishment for me.

Of course, I wanted to do the same with the Leyawiin house for sale for my current character Tallei. It took some doing to make it work, but I was successful again. Imagine how pleased I was to run TES4Edit on that little plugin and find that it was clean!

So modding starts in small increments. You try changing something here, something there. Just little things, but they add more to your role-playing experience.

One thing I'd like to learn to do is how to take apart another's mod, evaluate it and figure out what makes it work, and then build one that is more my taste. But right now I'm too busy enjoying some excellent mods out there that add so much more to the game experience.

That's awesome, haute ecole rider, your little story there. I find messing around with mods and the console fun, but it can get frustrating for me in a flash. I can't wait till the day that I know how everything works. It's a slow process.

Sometimes when stuff goes right I get these weird tingles in my fingers and down my spine. Hard to describe. I get so nervous, though. It's nervous energy. Everything goes right and I'm like "damn, did I just figure that out?"

That is how I figured out how to do most things. I download a mod that does the same basic thing, and then reverse-engineer it to find out what the creator changed. Or I reverse-engineer things from the vanilla games and their expansions. For example, I created my Forest Friend Amulet for Oblivion by looking at the Boots of the Crusader from KOTN. That showed me how to make a script that would put the player in an animal-friendly faction whenever the item was worn, and take them out of it again whenever it was taken off.

There really is not much to it. After you open up the Creation Kit and either click on File -> Data, or click on the Load Master Plugins/Files button (they do the same thing), it brings up the Data window where you pick what .esp you want to edit. Find the one you want, select it, and then click on the Details button. It will show you every record the mod changes. You can sort the list by Type, which I find makes things much easier. It will also give you the ids in names, which makes it easy to find what you are looking for once you load the mod.

Of course it does not tell you what in the record was changed. You have to use either the UESP Wiki, or load the Creation Kit without the mod and take screenshots of the vanilla records and compare them.

This question is actually not a modding question. All the text on my screen is now 'stretched' horizontally. I have no idea why. I went on an internet search and found a site which says I need to change the aspect ratio of my screen from X to 4:3.

I did more digging and found that my screen actually is 4:3 already. It's 1024 x 768 which equals 4:3. I just checked this on a calculator. Any ides what to do?

Never mind. Figured it out. Tech support rules.

So I have Better Cities installed and whenever I start the game it crashes almost immediately. BC's FAQ has a Q & A devoted to this issue, here is what it says:

Q: 9 - After installing Better Cities, the game no longer loads! Why does the game close as soon as I try to start it?

A: This happens if you install an ESP from Better Cities which you shouldn't be using. Any ESP which is dependant on another ESM or ESP will cause the game to quit on start-up if the ESM or ESP it is dependant on is not in your Data folder.

All our compatibility patches are dependant on the mods they patch.

All our FPS patches are dependant on whichever specific city the FPS patch is named for.

So if you try to use one of our compatibility patches without installing the mod it patches, the game will fail to start. Remove that patch to resolve.

It talks about ESPs and ESMs being dependent on ESMs and ESPs in the Data folder. I checked this. All the relevant ESP/Ms are in the Data folder. I've got Better Cities.esp, Better Cities Full.esp, Better Cities Resources.esm, and Better Imperial City.esp checked ON in the Oblivion startup screen, and all 4 of these are in the Data folder as well.

They may need to be set to load in a particular order. I know .esms always have to load first, and .esps after. Likewise some of those .esps might have load before the others. Like that Resource.esp might have to load before the others.

Also, they might not all work together. It might be that you are only supposed to use one or two of the others. With a name like Better Cities Full, that one sounds like it does everything the other two do and more. Try it with just the Resources and Better Cities Full and see what happens. Or other combinations. See which specific .esp it is hanging on.

Finally, try going to the Nexus topic on it, and see if anyone else has had the same problem.

I once played with Better Cities, and here is the load order of all of the files (relative to each other):

Better Cities Resources.esm
Better Cities.esp
Better Cities Full.esp
Better Imperial City. esp
Better Cities Full FPS Patch.esp

There are also an entire list of patches to make Better Cities work with other mods, such as the Unique Landscapes mods.

Hope this helps!

Whoa, there's a BC patch? That's weird. I don't remember seeing that over at Nexus. Hmm.

I'll check that load order too. Thanx Miss Rosa and haute ecole rider.

And look how far we've come! A month ago if you asked me the diff between an esp and an esm I woulda been like

Trying to use BOSS to sort load order. Because what's happening is all the BC files are in the order you've got, haute rider. The ESM is first, then BC.ESP, then BC Full.ESP, ... etc.

The problem is Better Cites.esp is way above a lot of other esps, including all the MMM stuff. All the other BC esps are at the bottom of the load order (where they're recommended to be by the BC team). So I'm trying to move Better Cities.esp above Better Cities Full.esp, can't figure it out, though.

In the GUI User Rules Manager, I somehow did manage to move Fundament.esm before Better Cities.esm last night. I did this by telling the Editor "For Fundment.esm Sort Item before Better Cities.esm, and this worked. Somehow. Can't move BC.esp down the list with the other BC esps, though.

Edit: Hmm, I notice there's a Notepad file called 'modlist', and it's got all the files listed in order. I wonder if it's safe to just cut & paste the BC file where (I think) it should be? I'm not going to do this until someone says it's okay, though. BOSS's ReadMe is (as usual) rather vague.

Edit 2: Maybe I should try re-installing Better Cities from scratch, but this time use Wrye Bash instead of OBMM. I'm try that tomorrow perhaps.

Actually, the way BOSS does it is correct. In my load order, I had like twenty other mods between the Better Cities.esp and the other esp files. So don't worry about that, it is supposed to do it that way. It has to do with what resources get overwritten. For Better Cities to work, some of the supplemental files have to come after certain other mods, such as the OOO, MMM, and the UL mods.

Make sure you have all the patches you need to make BC work with your other mods. I'm not sure, but I think those patches may be part of the main file. You should see them as checkable options in Wrye Bash when you install it. I can not remember (it's been so long ago) if it comes with a built-in Wizard that helps you cover all the bases.

Hope that helps!

Bash. You are right, I gotta use Bash. OBMM screwed up MMM for my game, so who's to say it didn't also screw up BC?

I'll try Bash next.

Better Cities is still not working, and it's driving me insane because it's such a popular mod, it's gotta be able to work, right? I did start all over from scratch installing BC, this time using Bash's wizard, installed the game in the specified order, yet the game crashes on startup.

So what I did is uninstalled everything except the BC files. All other mods (Fundament, Darker Dungeons, etc.) were uninstalled, and the game still crashes. I narrowed this down to the very core file: BetterCitiesResources.ESM and de-activated everything else. The game crashed. Then I tried de-activating this ESM while activating BetterCities.esp. NOW the game does not crash. So it's gotta have something to do with the master.

The master file needs to be activated, correct? .. Dumb question I guess. I'm not seeing any options for patches, but maybe I need to look again. Still, if everything else is de-activated except the BC resources master, why would it clash with some other file?

Renee, forgive me for not logging in sooner to see your latest plea.

Better Cities is one of the more complex mods, which is why I use Wrye Bash to install it. IMHO, Wrye Bash does a much better job installing these complex packages than does OBMM. There are actually very few mods I use OBMM for. The rest are all installed through Wrye Bash. The reason? WB shows me the install options that I can then install.

For your situation, I recommend you start here. This is where I went for questions, and there are detailed instructions for installing, including WB (which is the recommended method, BTW). I found it to be very helpful, and was able to get BC up and running (finally) when I followed the instructions there. I think if you take the time to read through the FAQs and the installation instructions, you will find it very helpful.

Good luck!

Okay ..... you.... are ...

not...

going....

to believe this. We figured it out. The problem, that is. I'm facepalming so hard right now. The problem was (drumroll....) I NEVER INSTALLED SHIVERING ISLES!!!

Last night my friend was going through the mod with me and he asked if I had installed SI yet? Um... no I hadn't. Anyways, we fixed the problem. Phew!

... I think I did that once too! Glad you figured it out.


I don't have a lot of advice regarding Oblivion, I haven't played it since before 11/11/11, but I've been following this thread and silently cheering you on!

Truth is I would be nowhere without this community and a couple friends over at Beth.

Just saw my first sign of Better Cities. Bravil. Oh yeah, it's definitely different

I rather suspected either your Oblivion.esm was unpatched or you did not have SI installed. That's why I pointed you to the wiki for BC. Keep that linky handy!

And yes, BC makes everything different. So does UL. Having both BC and UL together is like . . . wow. I prefer Open Better Cities as the horses can enter the towns (though not the IC, for technical reasons apparently).

Glad you worked it out! Enjoy!

Trying to get CSR (Companion Share & Recruit) working tonight. The mod's been installed and activated, but I can't seem to get it working in the game. The Read Me is written on a program that I don't have on my computer, some office program, and they're asking for $99 a year to get this program started. No Way.

I managed to transform the text of this Read Me into a Word Pad file, but this turns the text into a huge wall. I broke this wall up a bit, but I'm not seeing any instructions on how to actually get this thing started. That's my question: where do I start?

Lady Saga found an NPC adventurer in some goblin fort. The guy is added by MMM, so this could be the reason why there are no options to try and recruit him. Does this mod only work with vanilla NPCs? .. And if so, how do I get it working.

Generally speaking, CSR works for NPCs who have 'Rumors' enabled as a topic. These NPC should also now have a 'Friend' topic. If their disposition toward you is reasonable, they will let you go into their inventory or consent to join you.

Oh okay thanks. Gotta be the fact that this is an MMM NPC because his disp was 84 towards my elf. She even bribed him to boost it to this level and there's no Friend option.

Takes care of that, thanks.

Talkie Toaster built CSR to be tied to if NPC's have the 'Rumors' option, they should be recruitable. Some NPCs with complex scripts don't have the rumors option enabled. A good vanilla example of this is Umbra. What I did in that case was opened her up in the CS and checked 'Enable Rumors'. Then Buffy was able to recruit Umbra. Talk about an overpoweed companion! Now, sometimes the scripting is too complex to allow the Rumors option to be enabled. Mazoga is a good example where simply ticking the box in the CS doesn't work; I had to use another mod to recruit Mazoga. I have been able to recruit mod-added NPCs as long as they have that Rumors option enabled.

Kind of long winded here, but what you might try is going into the CS and making sure the 'Rumors Enabled' box is checked for the desired NPC.

Renee, I feel your pain about the Read Me file being in a program you don't have on your computer. If you want to have that Read Me for future reference, I can convert it into rich text format and PM it to you. It should open in Word Pad for you then (I think). Want me to try?

Ha ha Grits beat you to it. She just PM'd me with the Read Me's text. Thanks H.E.R.


Holy **** you recruited Umbra? Lordy! .. That MMM adventurer did have a Rumors option, so maybe I'm missing something. I'll have to look at what Gritsy sent me.

I haven't even messed with the CK yet, but I will when I've got a lot of time to kill. I need to start reading about that from scratch. Imagine that?

Overall I want to thank ALL of you in this thread once again. I'm sure I would have figured out the 'bright lighting' scenario, but I'd be stuck on something dumb for sure without you all.

Garr. Sorry to drag this thread up again. I'm trying to get Coolsims hair to work. I've noticed that Nexus has two different pages for Coolsims Hair: one for all the meshes & textures, and another for the esp itself. I have no idea why they did it this way.

Anyways, there are literally no instructions in the ReadMe. I'm trying to move the meshes & textures around into different areas of my Oblivion > Data > Meshes and Oblivion > Data > Textures folders with no luck.

I mean, once I get to character creation, I see the options to pick a variety of Coolsims hairstyles, but I don't see the hairstyles themselves.

EDIT: I found a post over at Nexus that says I need to go into the Construction Set to get this to work. I need to make my own esp. Great.

I have never used Coolsims, so I am not sure exactly what the issue is. It might be that one of the mods is simply the meshes and textures and nothing else. That at least sounds like what you dealing with.

The problem with hair mods is that to get them to work, you have to not only create a separate hair record for each hairstyle, you also have to manually add those hairstyles to every race that will use them. When you have two hair mods, that means they will conflict with one another, and only the one loading last will work.

The only way to get around that is to combine the two (or more) hair mods together into one mod. I had to do that with Corean, Ren's, and Soya's hairs to get them all to work. That might be why the modder released it as just meshes and textures, so people could add them into their existing hair mod. The good news is this is easy to do. This thread gives the basics. The bad news is that it is very tedious.

Thanks SubRosa, but YES I figured it out! *dances around room* I got it!

Turns out all I had to do was rename the esp file. I noticed the esp was called Coolsims627.esp. Just as I was getting ready to follow a rather long set of CK instructions I thought "hmm, I wonder what'll happen if I rename the esp? .. Removed the '627' part, and voila


Why on Earth would they not just have it so it's named Coolsims.esp from the get-go??? ... urrgh! ... Well at least I learned a few new things.

Gahh!

Since Renee Gade III got Xena's clothes, sword, and Chakram? her game's got a lot of frame-skipping and slowdown going on. Time to upgrade that memory card.

SubRosa I know you told me in the past I can do this myself, but I'm just too chicken. Plus, it'd be a warranty thing if I opened up my PC and screwed something up. So my question to all: Is it safe to take one's PC and bring it to some shop? Will a PC shop of some sort even change my video card for me? Where's a good place to go?

Actually that last question's dangerous. I don't want to take my rig to a giant chain store like Best Buy or Comp USA. Are there usually smaller, more specialized places that are reputable? .. I know this is going to cost some coin wherever I go, and I'm not too worried about how much. It's more a matter of getting it done.

There are lots of places that will both sell you a video card (or any part), and do the installation for you. That is from Mom and Pop stores to the big chains like Best Buy or Micro Center. I cannot give you any advice about the M&P stores in Maryland, but you are safe taking it to a place like Best Buy. They do this kind of thing all the time.

Good to know, thanks.

If your PC was bought pre-assembled, yes, making your own modifications to it will void the warranty. But, when you're me, pre-assembled doesn't cut it anymore, so this is for the homebuilders:

Changing a graphics card is one of the easiest and least risky things you can do. All GPUs built nowadays use the same slot type, so all you need to do is check that that specific slot (PCI Express x16, it's the largest side-mounted slot on your motherboard) and the one below it (if you plan on buying a high-end GPU, as the cooling units are big enough now to require taking two slots) are available. Then all you need to do is this:

1. Uninstall your current drivers (they may not be compatible with your new card). Windows has a basic display driver it will default to when you remove your aftermarket display driver.

2. Plug in your new graphics card.

3. Install the new drivers for it.

4. Enjoy

Just make sure you work on a tiled surface. Static discharges are not good for your PC.

I went in to Best Buy today. I figure they've got it all, or they can get it all. I think I've hit a wall, though, system-wise.

The least powerful graphics card they had on the shelf was a GeForce GTX 450, which costs $239. Cost is not really the issue though, I figure I can shop online and find one cheaper than that, no prob. Best Buy only charges $50 to do a hardware install, so that's peanuts.

The guy I spoke to was really informative, although he spoke really fast. I'm like "slow down, I gotta write this down!" Anyways, one of the things he was pointing out was wattage. He picked up one of the cards nearby and showed me it's got a 600w minimum or something. The cheapest card (the 450) has a 400w minimum.

Problem is my system: it's only 300 watts. Damn. Now, I did manage to figure out on the GeForce website that the GeForce GT440 has a 300 watt minimum, problem is the guy was saying my actual wattage should be higher than the quoted minimum, and I think that sounds reasonable.

So how does that work? How does wattage get increased? Or is that even possible? Obviously with money, anything's possible. How much money, though? Damn. I wonder if I should start all over. Maybe trade in my system (if possible) and get something even better..

Ah, yes. Wattage.

High-end GPUs (and current mid-range as well) are extremely power-hungry.

The component that provides the power to the whole computer is the power supply (PSU).

If you are a gamer, the bare minimum wattage you want is 750. The recommended amount is 1000. My former PSU was 1000 Watts, until it catastrophically failed and blew my motherboard forcing a total rebuild. I'm now using my reserve PSU, which is 750.

You do not want for your GPU to exceed, or even meet the wattage. That power is needed elsewhere too and the closer you get to maxing out the power output of your PSU the more likely it is to fail and the smaller its lifespan becomes. You want to have a buffer zone to make sure your PSU is not being fully utilized at any point, it seriously helps the lifespan.

To increase wattage you need to replace the power supply. This can be a bit finicky because every component uses a slightly different plug from the supply, the CPU gets its own, the main board gets its own, the GPU gets its own, etc.

Oh yes, power supply. Don't skimp on your PSU. Spend the extra money, and as TK says, get at least a 1,000 watt PSU. That is going to cost you though, probably about $150 I would imagine. That is a good one to have the store do the install for you, as some of the cabling can be tricky.

But you think Best Buy can do this? .. That's a relief. I paid off one of my credit cards last summer, and that one's got a $4,000 limit, so technically I could buy an entirely new system if I absolutely needed to. I figure I'd trade the one I have now, and get at least a couple hundred bucks down.

Guess the people I should be asking are the ones at Best Buy, of course. I'll have to take my processor in sometime (maybe tomorrow) and have them at least look at it. Then they can tell me what to do next.

I was looking at this page earlier. This is HP's 'gaming rig' page, and yeah, these suckers are expensive! .. Liquid cooling? Christ, there's liquid in these rigs??

Anyways, that's a last resort. I'll go for something top-notch like this only if upgrading my current system is a no-go.

Stores like Best Buy and Micro Center (I think there is one of those in Maryland) replace computer parts all the time. Micro Center will even build your computer for you from scratch, so will a lot of mom and pop shops. I don't think Best Buy would do that though, since I don't believe they sell all the individual parts (like motherboards and cases).

Okay, there's a Micro Center about a half hour away from me, maybe an hour assuming I went there during rush hour. I doubt the house I live in will be able to support a thousand watts from one outlet; that sounds like circuit breakers getting tripped (it's a 40 year-old house with no new wiring). .. I'll go for maybe 600 to 750, and a vid card rolling 400 to 450. That sound feasible? .. I just want Renee's game to not have any slowdown & frame-skipping, without pushing the Video quality lower than "High".

Right now I've got 300 watts, an integrated video card, and from what I understand it's the 'integrated video card' that's mostly the culprit.

Sounds like you need to upgrade the wiring in your house too!

I am in an old apartment with crappy wiring too. I cannot use a blow dryer or microwave that is rated for 1200 or 1500 watts without blowing a circuit breaker. But my PC has a 1000 watt PSU, and I have never had a problem. The top end of your wiring can handle is something only you can guess. Look for a PSU just under that.

I can run both my Xbox and my PC at the same time with no problems, it's how I write some of my stories. PC = 300 watts, and the Xbox only uses 125 according to a Wiki page I found. I've got a 'fattie' PS3, which draws about 130. There's a been a few times I've had all three systems on at the same time (by accident) and so we're talking

300
125
130

555 watts if I got my math correct. All 3 are plugged into the same power strip, so 600 watts (or a little more) seems reasonable.

Hey thanks for all your advice!

Do you have a microwave you use regularly? What's the wattage on that?

That should give you a good baseline of what your house can handle.

I do have a microwave in my room, it's a small one, though. Not sure what its wattage is, but I suppose I could look at the label on its back to find out.