how do i know beforehand if mods conflict?

Post » Sun Oct 02, 2011 4:46 pm

Well ive recently amassed quite a huge number of mods, most of which are small changes and a fair few with rather big changes. From my previous experience with just a few mods, some of em cause the game to crash when i do a certain thing (game kept crashing when i tried to store fire salts and frost salts in my chest)

and its worse with mods that change my HUD and map, after uninstalling the HUD/map mod, my map didnt go back to normal :( and i couldnt restore oblivion to before the mod was installed. (Does obmm have a restore feature?)

So i had to reinstall oblivion several times :brokencomputer: do any of you people have this problem? And how can i tell if mods are conflicting? Because if i didnt store frost salts in my chest, i would never have found out that my mods were conflicting..

bytheway is this the right section for the post?
User avatar
D IV
 
Posts: 3406
Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:32 am

Post » Sun Oct 02, 2011 2:49 pm

Mods take some time and effort on the part of the user, that's for sure. There's no way around it. The more mods you use at one time, the more time and effort you're likely to have to put into them. Over the years I have come to view modding my Elder Scrolls games as a kind of game unto itself.

You need to stay alert, to start with. Read the readme that comes with the mod. Know what the mod does...and what it doesn't do. The more information you have, the better able you are to sense where a problem lies. Read release threads, read user comments on download sites. Arm yourself with information. Any mod user who expects to simply throw files into their Data folder and start playing is headed for trouble, sooner or later.

Use your head and think through problems. If, for instance, you see a land tear in your game you should (through your reading) have a pretty good idea about which mods in your list change that area before you even start any detective work. You can then load those mods into TES4Edit and check records. Disable one of them, start a brand-new test character and travel to that spot and see if the rip persists. If that one didn't do it disable another and repeat the process.

Tracking down conflicts, in my experience, involves a combination of strategies. I use utilities like Wrye Bash and TES4Edit to pinpoint possible culprits. I will sometimes load those culprits into the Construction Set and take a look. I start brand-new test characters and travel to the location of the conflict to see first-hand if my changes are having any effect. This is important: when testing, start a new game with a new character, unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. I see even experienced mod users skip this step sometimes. They try to test with existing characters and waste hours or days because data in their save games is affecting the results of their testing.

I'm of the belief that all mod users should familiarize themselves with the Construction Set. It's an invaluable tool for mod users as well as mod makers. I alter nearly all of my mods in the Construction Set, and it's often to make them compatible with my other mods.

In my experience UI mods can be a bit tricky to uninstall occasionally. They can leave .xml files behind. They also may change the Oblivion.ini file. So my first advise would be to rename your Oblivion.ini (the one in your My Documents/Oblivion). Then start Oblivion up. It will generate a new Oblivion.ini.
User avatar
CHangohh BOyy
 
Posts: 3462
Joined: Mon Aug 20, 2007 12:12 pm


Return to IV - Oblivion