Hello All,

I have an Oblivion character I've been using for several years and a heavily modded game to go along with him. A few months ago, my old PC died and I had to rebuild.

I would love to be able to continue my game. I'm wondering how likely it is that I could resurrect my game.

I saved everything in the game save directory and everything in my Oblivion program files directory.

On my old PC to make the game run and to configure the various mods I had Wrye Bash, OBMM, and OBSE installed. I'm not sure how much that helps or hurts the process.

My question is: Do you think I can get this game going again on a new machine?

-cwineman

If you've got all the old mod ESPs and all the saved games, meshes, texture files, etc, you should be able to resume playing. You'll need to reinstall first, then drop everything into the directories they were previously in. You'll want to use Wrye Bash to make sure everything's in the order you previously used.

Thanks for the reply.

I tried dropping everything into the Oblivion program files directory and the save files into my documents directory. I also copied some ini files there. I'm not sure what they are all for. They must have been on my machine and that's why I saved them. In addition to the "Saves" directory, here's a list of what is in my "My Games\Oblivion" directory:

BashSettings.datBashSettings.dat.bakBlendSettings.iniCopy of Oblivion.iniMessages.datMessages.dat.bakOblivion.inioblivion.ini.PHINIXRendererInfo.txtWryeLogTemp.html

When I start the game, I can see my old save games, but when I select one to run I get the old "This save requires content that is no longer present" message. Not surprising, I haven't used Wrye to activate the mods yet. More concerning is that after I hit "Yes" to continue, the game gets hung trying to load and never seems to recover. I've killed the process every time after a few minutes using Task Manager, but it's possible that the game would load if I waited longer.

Before I try to do anything using Wrye, I was wondering about what other things I should install first. The mods for my game were set up primarily using the FCOM recommendations. Some of the things that I remember installing as part of FCOM were Wrye Bash, OBMM, OBSE, and Python( I think this was required for Wrye). Do I need to download and re-install any of those programs/utilities? I'm not sure if those tools stored all of their information in my Oblivion folder or they stored data elsewhere - for example in the registry or in their own program folders.

If I do need to install those tools, I'm not sure what version I should go after. Its been about a year since I changed anything significant in my mod list. Things have changed with some of those tools since I last installed them. Also, it looks like the the original FCOM developer has moved on to greener pastures and the project has been taken over by someone else since. So I'm not sure how up to date the information on the FCOM pages is.

I would appreciate any advice.

-cwineman

** Also, to be clear, I did a clean install in this machine to start. Then I installed the official Bethesda 1.2 patch.

I think you can use wrye bash, look into the saves tab and look at a save file, then you can see which mods were loaded into that save and in which order.

So I'd install oblivion, update, dump all files into the right directory, check out the order and which mods I actually need to have and then run the game (with obse if needed) and hope I'm not missing any meshes or textures or ini files.

Don_Zardeone, thanks for the reply.

You mentioned What's the best way to do that? I'm not sure if I should install Wrye or not. If so, what version?

I saved everything in my old Oblivion folder. Is there a working copy of Wrye there that will work?

In my new install, I can get the game to load using the OBSE launcher. When it loads, I get a message about some content missing. As I said earlier in this post, I have all of the old saves, mods, etc from my Oblivion game on my old PC. I installed a new version of Oblivion and copied all of the data from my old game into the new game folder. My list of loaded mods doesn't seem to have transferred for some reason. Where is that data stored? When I use OBMM or Wrye, it says I only have the Oblivion.esm file checked. That's the reason I get the content not loaded message.

Is there some way to figure out what my load order was on my old machine using old save data or some other information I might have saved?

When you launch Wrye Bash, do you see a list of your mods in the Mods tab? Is it just that they aren't checked? It's easy enough to check them all, run BOSS, rebuild your bashed patch. What version of Bash did you install?

You can easily find your old list of mods and load order by going to the Saves tab and right clicking on your last save > List Masters. When you highlight a save, the list on the right of your mods should all be blue. That means you're in sync and in business.

One thing I noticed you mention a couple of times is "Oblivion program files". Does this mean you installed Oblivion in the default Program Files directory? If so, stop right there before you fiddle with your mods again, un-install Oblivion and re-install it to a directory outside of Program Files, like a C:\Games directory. Move all your data files there. You'll avoid UAC and numerous headaches.

Thanks, Hanaisse.

The "List Masters" step in particular was what I needed to know. I selected my most recent save, found out what needed to be active, turned them on in OBMM, and *POOF* I was back in my game again. I was expecting a lot more trouble. I still did get a message about missing content, but I didn't notice anything missing or behaving strangely. I'm may or may not try to figure out what it was.

Also, I did re-install outside of the program files directory. The UAC issues were a pain in the ass.

You can find out what mod is missing from your old saves by going to the "saves" tab, and then looking at the right-hand side box indicating all mods that were loaded with that save. Mods in blue are still available, mods in red are missing from your current install.

Could also be an OBSE plugin, not sure their listed... (Yet) :shrug:

I'm don't understand Wrye enough to tell what is missing from my old saved games. In an earlier post Hanaisse says



Well, I'm not sure what exactly should be in blue. Here's a screenshot from Wrye of the saved game that I began my resurrection from:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6489008311_9f35f099b1.jpg

As you can see, the first item has a checked blue square and blue text. The second item has a non-checked green square with blue text. The next several items are green checked squares (except one, Tamrielic Ingredients.esm) with blue text. Then there is a change at Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp where the text turns black instead of blue. I'm assuming the this indicates the distinction between .esm and .esp files. You can't see it in the screenshot, but the remaining items are all green checked squares with black text.

What is the differenence between the blue and green squares? What do the checks mean?


So far, even missing whatever content is missing, the game seems to run fine. It's running on much better hardware so I've got my settings jacked up. There's one thing that is bothering me, though. The images in my saved games are getting screwed up. Here's another screenshot from Wrye of one of my latest games saves:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6489008361_0157e6d383.jpg

It's kind of hard to tell in that image, but the saved game picture is of my character standing near the door to my Bravil home. Instead of being able to see my whole character in the center of the screen like in the earlier screenshot from my old saved game, the image is only capturing the top of my characters head and everything seems stretched. This doesn't happen every save. Some games save the correct way so that I can see what was on my screen during the save. But most my new saves do the weird cropping streching thing.

Anyone know what's up with that?

Ok, let's see if I can explain it better.

In the saves tab, the colour of the save (on the left list) is actually more important. The list on the right relates to that.

If the save is a purple check box, then the list on the right should all be blue check boxes. Blue text are esm's, black text are esp's. And everything is perfect.

Of course, we're not in a perfect (gaming) world.

If the save is a blue check box, then you're still good. It just indicates there are some mods in the list that are not used in that particular save game. Usually seen when using profiles and different mod lists.

If the save is a green check box, it's still good, but not perfectly in sync with the current mod list. You may see in the list on the right some green boxes (like in your picture). All this means is that those mods were installed after that save game. No check means it's not active. If you want, you can right click on that save and select Load Masters to load all those mods into the save game. Really not necessary though. If you were to load that save and re-save it would come in sync anyway.

If the save is an orange check box, it's still good and just means that your mod order has changed since that save game, such as having removed a mod and re-ordered with BOSS.

If the save is a red check box, this is trouble. The save relies on a master file that is missing. Right click and select Diff Masters for a list of what's missing.

So, if you're still trying to figure out what is missing from a certain save and why you get the "some content missing" warning, right click on that save and select Diff Masters. It will tell you what was added or removed between that save and your current load order.

As for the picture, I don't know, but it probably has to do with resizing it into that tiny thumbnail. I wouldn't worry about it.

Thanks for the detailed response. I'd be lying if I said I understood all of what you described, but that's because of my being too lazy to understand it all, not your post.

From what you wrote, I take it that my saved game is generally okay, so I'm not going to bother going back to figure out what was missing.


It's not that I think the screwy picture is anything to worry about, it just makes it hard for me to tell what is in the saved game. And that's a problem for me. You see ... I am a compulsive saver. I save early and often. I save first and ask questions later. Sometimes I save when I haven't done anything since my last save. And then I save again.

I became this way because at one point, my game was crashing so often that saving ridiculously often became a habit. I never dropped the habit.

All of this saving means that I need to go back fairly often and clean out obsolete games. The picture associated with saved games is very handy when figuring out what needs to stay and what needs to go.

But even if I never figure the save image issue out, I'm pretty happy. This game resurrection has gone smoother than I expected.

Thanks for your help.

-cwineman

Open the console and type:

save "name of game"

Then a save will be created, called "name of game". It's that simple.