I did some tinkering with Oblivion and its array of helpful mods today, and thought I would share some of my discoveries.

All of these require OBSE

Oblivion Display Tweaks = this helps with microstutter and other things. It is compatible with OSR, but only if you Turn off bReplaceGetTickCount in Oblivion Stutter Remover's .ini file.

Oblivion Stutter Remover = of course.

OSR Optimized .Ini File = Is just the .ini for OSR, and has the bReplaceGetTickCount disables, among other tweaks.

Engine Bug Fixes = A bunch of bug fixes.

SkyBSA = Changes the way Oblivion puts BSA assets in your load order to act the same way Skyrim does, namely by no longer mucking with timestamps, and just going by your load order.

I asked in the other thread which version of Oblivion you were running - CDROM, GOG or Steam. The reason for asking is that they vary exactly in their performance - the things these mods aim to improve. I started out with a very vanilla Oblivion GOTY on CDROM, then I bought the GOG version. Boy, what a difference! The executable file had been rebuilt. The GOG version can actually take advantage of more modern hardware such as more RAM. It runs smoother and it doesn't stutter. It does not crash under a heavy mod load either.

Of course it will appear different on different hardware, but in my case those optimising mods either had no effect on GOG or in fact made it crash. So if you are running GOG, be careful with performance enhancing mods. The same is true for Steam - it too is optimised, and rather more than GOG.

The only enhancement mod that I run is the Engine Bug Fixes. I tried Stutter Removal but, firstly, I saw no difference (there's no stutter to begin with), and secondly, it was making the game crash. Must be my setup, but I'm just saying - these mods are not harmless, it's nothing like adding an extra sword, these can really mess things up.

I am familiar with these utilities. Currently I'm only using Oblivion Stutter Remover v4.1.37 and Engine Bug Fixes v1.6

I looked through my logs, and it appears that I tried this one. It worked well for a while, then it started to cause crash upon crash, so eventually I disabled it since it didn't really improve anything compared to vanilla GOG.

But I have to ask: what is OSR? I looked on Nexus, but the only thing I found was "OSR poses" which is a collection of animations...

Very much appreciated that you have put together this list, milady Rosa. I have a couple that I have also used in the past-- I think one of them is called 4GB Patch or something. I know there's a utility also which is supposed to enhance Oblivion's use of extra cores. Maybe that is 4GB patch, I don't remember. Whatever it is, I remember it really made a difference with performance for me.

Of your list, I occasionally use Oblivion Stutter Remover, set to 30 fps, and only when we go into Better Cities towns. The rest of the time, I haven't got this running. Getting 60 fps out in the countryside is glorious to me! It's a wonder, after years of 30 on the consoles. Because of this, I've never seen a need for Quarl's or any other visual add-ons.

That's it - 4GB patch and more cores business - that's what is already integrated in GOG Oblivion (and Steam too, I think). I tried to use those utilities and they crashed my game immediately because they clashed with the integrated version.

Oblivion Stutter Remover

I have installed SkyBSA hoping that it would allow the different BSA files to "overwrite" each other's assets according to the load order, as advertised in the mod description. Unfortunately I found it not to work, and I wonder if I've done something wrong setting it up (although it's just drop this file into the folder sort of thing). So I'm looking for comments and ideas from other people who have more experience with it, please.

In more detail. I have converted the vast majority of loose files in Meshes and Textures into BSAs, that is I re-downloaded those mods, packaged their assets in BSAs separating resources from LOD, and removed loose files. Everything is loading, there are no yellow exclamation signs or missing icons, so I know Oblivion has got it all. But... and here it comes.

I also have a few files loose, and those are things I'm working on. So according to the SkyBSA write-up, loose files will always overwrite their counterparts from the BSA. Problem is, they don't.

I have generated my own LOD - land and objects - for my load order. This is obviously stored in loose files, and I expected it to overwrite whatever other LOD is stored in the BSA archives (some mods already come with BSA archives and they are not always separated into resources and LOD, so some LOD was loaded that way too). But alas - where LOD was available in the BSAs, it got loaded instead of loose files. Where there was overlapping LOD, it got loaded too... multiple versions! You don't want to know what those mountains look like... And grass flickers like crazy, even though I don't have any grass replacer mods at all - no landscape texture replacers at all, actually. The problem was that conflicting landscape textures got somehow loaded from several BSA archives from different mods.

Another example concerns the menus. I made myself a different map menu, it's an XML file stored in Data/menus folder, loose on the disk. But of course there is also its counterpart in one of the Oblivion master BSA archives ("misc" archive). All of a sudden my changes disappeared - for some reason Oblivion archive took precedence. I quit the game, opened Wrye Bash, DID NOTHING, closed it again, restarted - my map is back on. Quit the game, restart - default map is back. This wasn't exactly alternating, it was just random - you never knew which map was going to be loaded. The same with grass - sometimes it would flicker, sometimes it wouldn't, and mountains would look different every time you load, sometimes duplicated as LOD got overlayed - very weird.

So I disabled SkyBSA and everything is loading normally again. May be assets don't get overwritten correctly, but hey, at least I can't see it in the game! Files on disk now always take precedence over BSA archives... And this is VANILLA!

But obviously SkyBSA was created for a reason. People have been having troubles, and it was supposed to help. It works for a lot of people, so why not for me?

I have two suspects: GOG Oblivion and Wrye Bash. I wonder whether GOG Oblivion that I'm using has already been patched somehow and that interferes with SkyBSA? But I doubt it.

Wrye Bash. It touches the ESPs when you open it and changes their "last modified" time stamps to fit with the load order. I wonder if it does the same to the corresponding BSAs thus playing up to Oblivion vanilla behaviour of looking at the time stamps? Does anybody know? But even if it did that, according to SkyBSA write-up, the whole point of that mod is to make Oblivion ignore the time stamps... So I don't see why updated time stamps should matter for SkyBSA.

Note that I do NOT use bashed patch - I had problems with it before, it threw away things and changed load order so things got overwritten wrongly.

When I load SkyBSA, behaviour changes, so it clearly is loaded and does something. It just doesn't seem to be what it was supposed to do but almost the opposite... Anyone seen this before?

Let me say first of all I’m just a user not the expert and if STEAM and GOG are involved call me John Snow for I know nothing. I have no experience with using SkyBSA. I read up on it last year and decided replacing my current method of validating BSAs was not worth the learning curve. I also have a bias against the way Skyrim does things.

End of disclaimer.

Sounds like SkyBSA is not applying the timestamp properly to the BSA. Is there any way to alter the timestamp manually so that yours loads last? Normally I would try using WBash for this.

My method of installing mods uses a combination of OBMM, WBash, and BOSS.

OBMM (once used to install everything):
1. BSA Archive Invalidation,
2. BSA browsing,
3. installing a few mods that are better done (IMO) with OBMM; MMO, DarkUld_DarN_16, RealisticLevelingv1.14,
4. To install a couple other OMOD scripted mods that I’m too lazy to break down and reformat.

BOSS: To sort the load order (don’t know if it is still being maintained, I’ve made manual edits for some newer mods).

WBash to:
1. install all packages other than those done with OBMM,
2. to make adjustments to package install order and to .esp load orders
3. to lock the load order,
4. to merge mergeable .esps (bash patch),
5. And to (very rarely) alter timestamps to fine tune install/load orders.

Very interesting to read about your tools, Macole - thank you! Wow, that's a lot of tools... I only use Wrye Bash, I do all my installs manually. Well, I also use the BSA Commander to view, pack and unpack BSA archives, and sometimes I use a command line tool "bsarch" to pack archives if that's more convenient of if the Commander fails.

So the point with the SkyBSA mod was that it was supposed to make Oblivion completely ignore time stamps on BSA archives and always follow the load order. This implies that Archive Invalidation flags would be ignored too. The rule of SkyBSA was supposed to be this: load BSA archives according to the load order overwriting assets as you go, then load loose files from disk on top always overwriting BSA archives. And this rule does not seem to hold in my setup.

I have a few questions about your notes on Wrye Bash, please.

- Lock the load order. What do you mean by that? My version of Wrye Bash does not have any special option to lock anything... It is distressing to think that the load order could be somehow slipping.

- Sometimes alter time stamps. What do you mean by "sometimes"? My Bash always alters time stamps of all the ESPs on the list to bring them in line with the load order. It does this automatically as soon as I start it up, without asking me and I cannot turn it off! Just as well, as it seems important. When I move mods on the list to change the order, it immediately updates all relevant time stamps to match.

I've been using BOSS since week 1, which is supposed to have a feature which locks certain load orders (All Better Cities stuff at the bottom, for instance) but I've never been able to get it to work.

So instead, I'll use BOSS to sort stuff, but then use OBMM to move mods around. Currently I move the Bashed Patch all the way to the bottom, and then manually move all the Better Cities stuff below Bashed Patch. I have no idea what Archive Invalidations or Time Stamps or most of the other stuff y'all are talking about. Wish I did, sometimes. But you all are miles ahead. All I know is that my game works, most of the time. CTDs are rather rare.

Archive Invalidation is only relevant to BSA archives - files with .bsa extension. Some mods come with them, and of course Oblivion itself and the DLCs have all their resources stored in BSA archives.

Mod managers only change the load order of mod modules - the ESP files, they don't do anything for BSA. Or at least that's the theory. Oblivion engine itself is supposedly deciding on the load order of the BSA archives that correspond to the mods you're using. SkyBSA is supposed to alter that order. Note that SkyBSA is a mod for Oblivion, it is NOT a mod manager, not an external tool like BOSS or Wrye Bash or whatever. It's a DLL mod that changes the behaviour of the Oblivion engine with respect to loading resources.

So this all only has to do with resources, not with the mods themselves, so it has no bearing on crashes. Missing resources don't normally make the game crash, they just show as great big yellow question marks or diamonds or something. In my case when using SkyBSA, some resources seemed to be loaded in the wrong order or double up, which was extremely weird. But it didn't make the game crash.

Very good explanation Lena, thanks.

I also have used BSA Commander at times.

Ok here I go trying to explain how something work that I barely understand the workings of.
What do I mean by "sometimes". Very rarely, hardly ever, once in a blue moon. Well I guess I’m being confusing because it’s been a long time since I didn’t use a mod installer of some kind. I need to rethink the process a bit.

Ok let’s try this, I was talking about changing BSA install order. Say for example I install three BSA files in this order A, B, C and I want to add a fourth D. Oblivion will assign an order of A, B, C, D. Now for various reasons I want to change the order to A,B, D, C. To do that you would change the timestamp using either OBMM or WBash. I’ve done this maybe once or twice for Oblivion. In a way it was easier with Morrowind, you just went to the .ini file and manually typed it in where you wanted it to go..

Lock the load order.
FYI, I’m using WBash v307.20 standalone version.
In the MODs tab (see picture) right click on the File column header.
In the drop down box find and active Lock Load Order. Your .esp load order will then be saved. So unless you unlock, resort, and then lock order again WryeBash will revert to this saved locked order whenever WBash refreshes data/starts up.
If you wish to alter the position of an .esp or resort the entire file you would have to unlock, reposition the mod or mods, and then lock the load order again to save it. Otherwise WBash will try to sort the .esp load order and as we know it that doesn’t always work right.

Hope that helps but now you're probably more confused than before. It's like my old manager would say, "Mike, you know what you're doing but no one else can understand how what you do works."

Macole - thank you! I've never thought about clicking on "File"! I see now the option to lock load order which is ticked. I also see that mods can be sorted in various ways and not just according to their load order... Never knew that either.

So, if you enable the "Modified" column from that menu (under File -> Columns), and if you sort your mods by load order and then pick one and drag to change the load order, you will notice the dates changing so that the modified dates now match the load order, from old to new. And Bash does it every time, I cannot disable it. Unless this is the function of "Lock load order"? Not sure. So when I asked what you meant with "sometimes", I was really asking "how do you prevent Bash from changing time stamps every time and always?". Not the same question, I know... sorry!

Ok, this is getting clearer regarding ESPs - this is all just for ESPs, right? I see only ESPs on the list, so I assume it's for ESPs only. How do you change the order of BSAs then? I thought that would correspond to ESPs or else that Oblivion would determine the order internally. But you say you can change it in Bash? How?

As for listing BSA files in the INI file, you still can do it. Open Oblivion.ini and search for section [Archive], keyword SArchiveList. By default it lists Oblivion own BSAs, but you can just add yours. Some mods actually do it if the names of their BSAs are not the same as the name of the ESP.

More precisely, the name of the BSA must start with the same string. For example, if you have abc.esp, both abc.bsa and "abc - resources.bsa" will be loaded. I am not sure what the rule says exactly, but I use this pattern and it works.