[CYCO JO-NATE]

I am using COBL, but to drink from those wells you need a Cobl aware hunger mod, and FF_Real Thirst is one of the. Btw is just a minor issue, and i wonder if it is safe to just disable those wells that conflicts with BC (which are just a few anyway).

So you are using COBL but not the Real Thirst mod that is coming with it? Anyway with the patch Wrye made for us, the wells of Better Cities are compatible with COBL real thirst mods. Any other well that is conflicting can safely be disabled then to use our wells instead (and ours actually have water in if you checked )

[Melanie]

So you are using COBL but not the Real Thirst mod that is coming with it? Anyway with the patch Wrye made for us, the wells of Better Cities are compatible with COBL real thirst mods. Any other well that is conflicting can safely be disabled then to use our wells instead (and ours actually have water in if you checked )

Hmm, maybe i'm wrong (which is likely), but there's no Thirst mod in COBL Package. COBL just places a lot of wells and watersource around, but you still need to install a Thirst mod to use them. And yes, BC wells are totally compatible with COBL and FF_Real Thirst COBL.

[sexy zara]

In fact you've just proven that it wasn't (directly) Better Cities related The sound emission is as you say embedded in the flame, but the sound file played (whatever.wav) comes from the vanilla game's "Oblivion - Sounds.bsa". So we place the flame which emits the sound (which I cannot hear), but we don't control the flame volume. Thus the likely reason I cannot hear a raging inferno is because I still have the vanilla flame WAV playing, while you have a mod installed which provides a replacement WAV which is louder. Another possibility might be that I have a mod installed which replaces the WAV with one which is quieter, but I don't believe I have this. Does anyone else find loud flame noises when visiting the Market District at night (when using Better Cities, and please don't say "yes I do!!!" if you were holding a torch when you experienced this)?


Thanks for the Waterfront suggestions, I have copied those down in my small collection of suggestions people have so far made in response to my query about adding quests and dialogue to BC
I am presently slowly working out a short quest in Bravil. Since quest-creation is something I know very little about, I'm not entirely sure how to go about it, so I'm still at the stage of figuring out what happens rather than how to make it happen. Still, there's no hurry!

[rheanna bruining]

I am not hearing a flame sound...another issue perhaps, having great difficulty exiting IC west gate, CTD.

Enjoy your mod lots!

[Amiee Kent]

I can hear all of the flame sounds clearly when using headphones. I can hear them around corners and know the position of the lamp before I can see it. They seem to have about a 6 foot radius. The street lamps you can hear when you stand directly under them, but it is very faint. The lamps are also louder with two flames because the sounds are not in sync (the burning sound is about twice as frequent). This could be louder depending on your sound settings and sound replacers. None of my current sound mods replace the flame sound.

It might be a good idea to replace the base object with a new one. The loop sounds are played constantly even when you're out of range. The flame sounds are nice on about 6 of the lamps in IC, like the ones under the covered walkways (but not the ones in the open walkway) and in some of the alleyways. All of the others should not be able to be heard.

It was suggested that the loop sounds can lag the system since they never actually stop playing. I had considered this when I was making the tunnel patch, but I couldn't figure out where to edit the sound in the CS at the time. The lamps in there are louder because of the close proximity, I naturally felt the need to keep my distance from some them in the main intersection my first time through. Also at one point when collecting refid's in game, the two street lamps confused me because I could hear that the flame was not coming from inside them, I thought for a moment that I was hearing the ones on the gate and it made me question if those street lamps were putting out any light until I looked at it in the CS.

[Jennifer Munroe]

Hi again! I think i've found some minor incompatibilities with Kumiko Manor: the path leading to the manor is a little messed up. and looking at TES4 EDIT it seems like BC is changing some of the landscape east of Leyawiin (outside the new port zone) and overwriting those made by Kumiko Manor. Tried to fix that but got some scary error messages, i'm no expert so i'll leave it as it is. ^^

[Darren]

Hi again! I think i've found some minor incompatibilities with Kumiko Manor: the path leading to the manor is a little messed up. and looking at TES4 EDIT it seems like BC is changing some of the landscape east of Leyawiin (outside the new port zone) and overwriting those made by Kumiko Manor. Tried to fix that but got some scary error messages, i'm no expert so i'll leave it as it is. ^^

Are you using v4.3.6? This version had some edits east of Leyawiin removed, however any remaining edits east of Leyawiin are required.

[CSar L]

Are you using v4.3.6? This version had some edits east of Leyawiin removed, however any remaining edits east of Leyawiin are required.

Yes i'm using the last version. The problem is that the first part of the road leading to Kumiko Manor is overwritten by BC, and this cause some ugly "scars" in the landscape. Nothing major anyway, i just wish i could fix that with TESEDIT.

[kasia]

Yes i'm using the last version. The problem is that the first part of the road leading to Kumiko Manor is overwritten by BC, and this cause some ugly "scars" in the landscape. Nothing major anyway, i just wish i could fix that with TESEDIT.

No, you'd need to use the CS to fix that.

[Rudy Paint fingers]

Something meaningful here.
Unless it is totally Meaningless...
Who knows? The real post is on the next page!

[Rob Smith]

I just added to the main post the Technical Features which are included in Better Cities and may or may not be visible to the users because I think they are meaningful of the work done on Bananasplit's Better Cities since we started this "translation" and reached the state of a nearly completely different mod. So here they are so you don't have to go back to the first post:

Unique range of formID for each City/district:
Allow the merging of the esp while using TES4Gecko to never change any formID and thus banishing forever the need of clean saves between different version (started on version 4.3.0) [Tool used: TES4Edit]

Unique worldspace in the Imperial City:
Allow to have a separate Map for the Imperial City and also to banish any conflict with any mod dealing with the Imperial Isle (Unique Landscape Imperial Isle and others) as the districts do not share their landscape edition with the Imperial Isle anymore. The drawback is that the Better Imperial City needs to be loaded last (or so) in your load order to ensure that no mod is resetting the IC to its initial worldspace. You also can't fast travel outside the city (Speed is Limited!) but you need to get out of the IC to be able to fast travel to other places outside the IC. [Tool used: TES4Edit]

Way of dealing with Doors:
We replace the doors by BC version of the same doors when we have to move them from their vanilla position. The vanilla doors are disabled and made non persistent so that their state wont be kept in your saved game and if you remove Better Cities, the vanilla doors will automatically be back at their right place without any issue. [Tool used: Brains!!!]

Customization:
Nearly each city/district has its own customization based on the users preferences on gore, FPS issue and compatibility with other mods. The customization comes in 2 different way: In Game Menu for those who use OBSE (which is recommended also to use Streamline and lower the FPS hit of Better Cities) and Manual where the user needs to enter some console commands to achieve the customization desired. [Tool used: OBSE and Brains]

BAIN & Scripted Installation:
The installation which comes in 3 archives (Mains files with the esp/esm, Main resources with the bsa archives and Update to the Resources if and when needed) is all scripted to facilitate an omod installation with Oblivion Mod Manager. In the same way, the archives are packaged to allow an easy BAIN Installation when Using Wrye Bash. [Tool Used: OBMM and Wrye Bash]

Cleaned ESP:
All our plugins are cleaned with TES4Edit to limit the conflicts with Oblivion Vanilla and Other mods. Of course this doesn't mean that others mods wont conflict with Better Cities but just that we took extreme precautions to limit those conflict as much as we could. Before reporting any conflict, make sure that Better Cities is loaded after the mod you think is conflicting. [Tool used: TES4Edit]

PiFFYed Meshes:
All our meshes are PyFFIed and further stripped of useless data to ensure an optimum performance in game. [Tool used: PyFFI]

BSA Archives:
All the main resources are then packaged into BSA archives (when this is possible) to allow an easy install/uninstall. The BSA are separate into different categories for customization purposes (B&M or vanilla Bravil textures for instance) and translation purposes (English Names on Textures and English Dialogs which can be replaced by their translated version for any other language). [OBMM BSA Creator]

For most of these accomplishments, our thanks go to Elminster who created TES4Edit and developed for us new features, thus enabling our dreams for Better Cities to come true. (No he is not dead and neither are we nor Better Cities but it was time to point out the technical achievements included in Better Cities).

[Far'ed K.G.h.m]

And let's not forget a couple other things:

Totally modular
Each city and each IC District is offered in two ways: as a separate ESP on its own, or as part of two merged Full ESPs. This allows users to pick and choose which cities/Districts to use, so if they don't like one they can choose not to use it, or if a city or District conflicts with another mod they use, they can choose not to use it. Yet if you do want to use all cities, there's a single ESP for all, and if you want all IC Districts, there's a single ESP for all, which helps reduce the number of active ESPs in your load order if you do want every city and every District. We expand this concept into the City Defences ESPs - separate ESPs for each city, or a single Full ESP for all of them. And then again with the FPS patch ESPs as well! [Tool used: Brains!!!]

An ESM
Early on we found that some new resources were being used by more than one city. Without an ESM, this means duplication of base objects in each ESP - not very tidy! So we adopted a single ESM to contain base records for all cities and Districts to reference as needed. Dialogue also goes into the ESM, as some of our dialogue is voiced, but voice files are stored in the Data folder based upon the ESM or ESP they are used by - since BC is modular, this gets messy as the same dialogue used by Better Cities - Chorrol.esp is needed by Better Cities Full.esp. So to avoid duplication of MP3s, the dialogue was moved into the ESM, allowing the MP3s to be stored once for use by the ESM only. Also (!) we store ALL interiors in the ESM instead of in each city or District ESP which makes creation of AI packages simpler as they can safely reference interiors from multiple cities or Districts. At the same time, this allows for the possibility of other ESPs to use the BC interiors without needing to be dependent on the BC ESPs. This means more to modders than mod users of course! [Tools used: TES4Edit and Brains!!!]

Built-in compatibility with other popular mods
(Where possible)
Better Cities is specially tweaked in some locations to enable compatibility with other conflicting mods, without the need for patches. Examples include Bravil for Lost Spires, Bruma for Heart of the Dead, and the Arboretum for Let the People Drink. Lost Spires moved the city walls and raised some land up beside the Chapel to place a new building. Better Cities also moves the city walls to match Lost Spires, and raises the land height, so that Lost Spires' new building fits in perfectly. Yet this area is NOT left empty if you don't use Lost Spires. Without Lost Spires, you'll find a burnt out house ruin on the same spot, so you won't realise the area is reserved for Lost Spires. We do this for other mods as well! [Tool used: Brains!!!]

So, with that jolly pat-on-our-own-backs-aren't-we-clever (engage Smug Mode!) and the chilling Zombie cry for Brains!!! repeated a few times, back we go to whatever we were doing.

[Josh Trembly]

So, with that jolly pat-on-our-own-backs-aren't-we-clever (engage Smug Mode!) and the chilling Zombie cry for Brains!!! repeated a few times, back we go to whatever we were doing.

Having used BC for quite some time now, and not ever intending for it to leave my load order, I can say that your collective cleverness was never in much doubt as far as I was concerned

[Zosia Cetnar]

Hi again! I think i've found some minor incompatibilities with Kumiko Manor: the path leading to the manor is a little messed up. and looking at TES4 EDIT it seems like BC is changing some of the landscape east of Leyawiin (outside the new port zone) and overwriting those made by Kumiko Manor. Tried to fix that but got some scary error messages, i'm no expert so i'll leave it as it is. ^^

I whipped up a small patch. You can get it http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5ce8d9a40acd6ec86b21be4093fab7ac4024a5032c9a4882f88875faa4c6c51e (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5ce8d9a40acd6ec86b21be4093fab7ac4024a5032c9a4882f88875faa4c6c51e). It only addresses (25,-36) and (25,-37). I don't know if there are any other problems in the landscape.

This patch only works if Kumiko is installed before BC. Install the patch after BC.

Let me know if there are any problems with it.

[P PoLlo]

I have to say this mod is beyond amazing, I especially love the way the Market and Underground Market districts are done. Amazing job!

I have found a strange error though that I can not seem to fix. Any door that connects the IC, Prison, or AU to the Wilderness crashes the game upon use. I have not checked the Waterfront or the other cities yet but at the moment I am assuming they will do the same thing. It only seems to crash when going from said district or building to the Wilderness. I don't seem to crash if I go from the Wilderness to said town district or building. Only major mods I have that effect the game extremely are mods like MMM,OOO,Fran, FranOOOMMM, Deadly Reflex, Unnecessary Violence, and your Better Cities mod. I have Better Cities almost at the end of my load list, only thing loading after it is DR and UV. Anyone have any possible solutions to this?

I will check through the rest of this thread just incase I can find someone who had a problem like this before. I only posted this ahead of time because my area is going to be getting a storm soon. Thought I would post my problem ahead of time just incase my power ends up going out ^_^;

Thank you for your time and this amazing mod!


EDIT: I just checked the other towns and the Waterfront District. They seem to be fine as does the main entrances to the IC. Only problems seems to be the Market District door that leads to the Prison, the door leading from the Arboretum to the AU and the door from the AU to the Aroboretum.

[Juan Suarez]

I have to say this mod is beyond amazing, I especially love the way the Market and Underground Market districts are done. Amazing job!

I have found a strange error though that I can not seem to fix. Any door that connects the IC, Prison, or AU to the Wilderness crashes the game upon use. I have not checked the Waterfront or the other cities yet but at the moment I am assuming they will do the same thing. It only seems to crash when going from said district or building to the Wilderness. I don't seem to crash if I go from the Wilderness to said town district or building. Only major mods I have that effect the game extremely are mods like MMM,OOO,Fran, FranOOOMMM, Deadly Reflex, Unnecessary Violence, and your Better Cities mod. I have Better Cities almost at the end of my load list, only thing loading after it is DR and UV. Anyone have any possible solutions to this?

I will check through the rest of this thread just incase I can find someone who had a problem like this before. I only posted this ahead of time because my area is going to be getting a storm soon. Thought I would post my problem ahead of time just incase my power ends up going out ^_^;

Thank you for your time and this amazing mod!


EDIT: I just checked the other towns and the Waterfront District. They seem to be fine as does the main entrances to the IC. Only problems seems to be the Market District door that leads to the Prison, the door leading from the Arboretum to the AU and the door from the AU to the Arboretum.

I think this is only a memory problem. Highly modded spaces will most probably make you crash when you leave them to other highly reclaiming spaces in video memory. I don't think we can do anything about that sadly. Yet I may be wrong but as we didn't change anything there since some version ago, I fairly assume that this behavior is only caused by the game engine.

I whipped up a small patch. You can get it http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5ce8d9a40acd6ec86b21be4093fab7ac4024a5032c9a4882f88875faa4c6c51e (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5ce8d9a40acd6ec86b21be4093fab7ac4024a5032c9a4882f88875faa4c6c51e). It only addresses (25,-36) and (25,-37). I don't know if there are any other problems in the landscape.

This patch only works if Kumiko is installed before BC. Install the patch after BC.

Let me know if there are any problems with it.

Thanks for the patch. I just checked Kamiko Manor in TES4Edit and as any old mod it requires cleaning. The automatic cleaning removed 116 records and the Undelete "restored" 1275 records. There are also vanilla cells affected for not reason and I guess it was when the modder tried to understand how things were working in vanilla to duplicate some things. At this time it was quite impossible to undo some things the CS was modifying without the modder knowledge.

Except that I see that the mod is quite large and affect many things and many cells have their landscape changed. Most are outside the cities though so BC wont care so much or override them as it is loaded after and heavily transform Leyawiin. There are lot of poster placed by Kumiko Manor though and maybe they need to be looked into to see if they are still visible or removable to lessen the clutter in the city.

I guess we need to look into that and maybe you could authorize us to use your patch for starter and then include it in BC pack for next release?

[Damned_Queen]

I think this is only a memory problem. Highly modded spaces will most probably make you crash when you leave them to other highly reclaiming spaces in video memory. I don't think we can do anything about that sadly. Yet I may be wrong but as we didn't change anything there since some version ago, I fairly assume that this behavior is only caused by the game engine.

Dang, hmm. Sorry if this may sound as a noobish question but when you are refering to video memory are you talking about the game's or the computer's? I'm guessing my computers as I haven't seen anyone else have this problem. Would updating video memory hardware possibly fix this?

[Jake Easom]

Dang, hmm. Sorry if this may sound as a noobish question but when you are refering to video memory are you talking about the game's or the computer's? I'm guessing my computers as I haven't seen anyone else have this problem. Would updating video memory hardware possibly fix this?

I think it is more the game than the computer. Of course higher end video cards help to minimize the issue but it is mostly an Oblivion Engine issue when dealing with mods asking for lot of resources like Better Cities.

There are solutions though before getting a new video card, OBSE with Streamline, WEOCPS and Oblivion Stutter Remover. With those mods, you can reduce drastically the number of crash of your game and enhance your FPS.

[Mr. Ray]

Thanks for the patch.

My pleasure.

I guess we need to look into that and maybe you could authorize us to use your patch for starter and then include it in BC pack for next release?

Consider yourself authorized. I don't need to be credited.

Funny thing is I don't even use Kamiko. I DL'd and installed it just to make the patch for the poster with the problem. From what I saw, I agree; it could use a major update and cleaning.

[Jennifer Rose]

Dang, hmm. Sorry if this may sound as a noobish question but when you are refering to video memory are you talking about the game's or the computer's? I'm guessing my computers as I haven't seen anyone else have this problem. Would updating video memory hardware possibly fix this?

It would also be a good idea to start a new character (purely for testing purposes) so that you can see whether the crashing occurs from the very beginning of gameplay or only in your existing saves. And if it is caused by another mod conflicting, then you can narrow this down by disabling all other mods, checking in-game to confirm no issue, then gradually enabling a few ESPs at a time and rechecking in-game for the problem to return.

[Rhi Edwards]

Consider yourself authorized. I don't need to be credited.

Funny thing is I don't even use Kamiko. I DL'd and installed it just to make the patch for the poster with the problem. From what I saw, I agree; it could use a major update and cleaning.

We are not authorized to update and clean the mod for redistribution by its EULA but anyone can do the automatic cleaning for themselves. We can patch though so that will have to do.

[Donald Richards]

I have found a strange error though that I can not seem to fix. Any door that connects the IC, Prison, or AU to the Wilderness crashes the game upon use. I have not checked the Waterfront or the other cities yet but at the moment I am assuming they will do the same thing. It only seems to crash when going from said district or building to the Wilderness. I don't seem to crash if I go from the Wilderness to said town district or building. Only major mods I have that effect the game extremely are mods like MMM,OOO,Fran, FranOOOMMM, Deadly Reflex, Unnecessary Violence, and your Better Cities mod. I have Better Cities almost at the end of my load list, only thing loading after it is DR and UV. Anyone have any possible solutions to this?

Have you tried deleting the Oblivion.ini file and letting the game generate a new one? If that doesn't work, see if you have the latest drivers for your video card. Also, turn down your video settings and see if that helps.

[casey macmillan]

We are not authorized to update and clean the mod for redistribution by its EULA but anyone can do the automatic cleaning for themselves. We can patch though so that will have to do.

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you folks doing the update. I meant the author of the mod.

[Laura Shipley]

It would also be a good idea to start a new character (purely for testing purposes) so that you can see whether the crashing occurs from the very beginning of gameplay or only in your existing saves. And if it is caused by another mod conflicting, then you can narrow this down by disabling all other mods, checking in-game to confirm no issue, then gradually enabling a few ESPs at a time and rechecking in-game for the problem to return.

Thanks for the help. I seem to have fixed it by accident. I was fixing up one of my other mods and realized I had two different versions of MMM running. Upon turning one of them off Better Cities stopped crashing. I don't think that had anything to do with BC but maybe it was just using up to much memory. Thank you two for the quick replies.

[KiiSsez jdgaf Benzler]

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you folks doing the update. I meant the author of the mod.

Well for one minute I did consider a fixed esp (easier then making patches and less esp for the user to load so everyone is winning) but the complexity of the mod stopped me in that line of thinking. When we fix esp people expect us (sort of) to also support the mod and we do not support other mods. We have enough on our hands with what we have already

As for the authors of this mod, I don't think they will update this mod anymore but I might be wrong.