So I've been working on trying to get Oblivion modded and working following a guide, and I must say that I am ready punch my screen.
Is there any chance that a compilation deal exists, similar to http://morrowindoverhaul.net/blog/
It seems getting a modded game up and running will take as much time as Morrowind did, and I'm not willing to spend the other half of my life repeating that learning process...

No. Compilation is a bit of a testy term around here.

so no one managed a friendly way to do a compilation yet hm? Well that's a bummer. Guess I'll have to wait to play OB until I have a life to waste to figure it all out. Thanks for the quick reply Deaths_soul

Yeah applying mods to oblivion is a daunting task. I started many times and never actually got to play the game. Literally hundreds of mods and their quirks is too much. There is something I found though by googling , called TCOM v2.

That thing you just mentioned isn't exactly welcomed here.

Figure out what it is that you like about Oblivion, and what... not so much. Have a look at threads around here, to get a few ideas of what is out there. Browse and search tesnexus.xom and other sites (tesalliance.org for example) for further inspiration, perhaps. You can always ask questions about specific mods, in their REL/RELz threads (or WiP/WiPz, if incomplete), or ask about certain kinds of mods you are looking for, in the Mod Detectives thread (should be found within the first half a dozen or so pages here).

Also, http://tescosi.com/wiki/Main_Page is a great site for advice, information, guides, links, and so on.

Lastly, feel free to ask more questions in this thread, and if I - or another forum member - should so happen to be able, you might just get useful answers.

I will also just say that mod compilations are not only frowned on by many Oblivion modders, for various reasons, but they are often fraught with risks and complications all their own. Far better to master the tools available (e.g., Wrye Bash) and make your own "compilation", in effect, and make the game truly your own.


edit: Here is a slightly outdated list of mods I favoured, for what it might be worth -> http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1211132-new-to-the-game-what-mods-do-you-find-necessary-for-oblivion/page__p__18130121#entry18130121 - perhaps others will point you to their own lists, or others'...

well, since most guides don't answer this question: what do I do about OBMM when I use a steam-installed Oblivion? It seems like it would be easier to just skip OBMM and omods altogether and just install manually because the manager can't handle putting things into my steam folder (every mod I tried ended up with esps that were 0kb...).

Also, everyone guide says to use FCOM (and the ooo,mmm,etc stuff). This was a pain to sort out, but it was made pretty easy when I realized most of the mods necessary were a couple of esps and bsas (except for OOO?). I can see some of the benefits of this mod (which, from what I remember on my first playthrough on a ps3 are REALLY useful), but can anyone give a brief overview of the big points each of those mods give me. Since the FCOM things pieces each one together, I'm not sure what benefit I'm getting from each mod.

I think beyond that, I'm just going to install graphic mods to avoid the headache of the compatibility issues I've been dealing with.

Last thing, Oblivion Graphics Extender: is this a big perfomance hit? I'd imagine that with the graphics mods the game will look great, and if the Extender drops performance a lot, I can live without it (unlike in Morrowind, where the graphics extender is pretty much needed to make the game look good )

Spiffyman :wave:

OBGE is not a big performance hit depending on shaders used.

Both Wrye Bash and http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084204-bain-mod-installation-projects/ (better than OBMM) are installed mostly locally to the game. Just find it buried in the steamApps folder. I can't imagine that OBMM would have this problem though.

Even just one overhaul can add a lot to Oblivion. FCOM is 4+ overhauls and it is heavy on system resources.

As for Overhauls this is outdated but not that badly: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/820948-scaling-overhaul-comparison/ It still outlines the type of overhauls out there, but there are a some newer ones too (WAC, OWC ND).

As for compatibility issues that is the bugaboo about Oblivion compared to Morrowind. Load orders here are filled with patches. It is not so bad though - I still can't wrap my head around why anyone would want to mod Morrowind only to get pretty much the same gameplay.

Morrowind had the same compatibility issues. It actually had more since it didn't have FormIDs and EditorID conflicts were common.

Also, I can think of several reasons to mod Morrowind. The fact that it's a much better game than Oblivion probably chief among them.


Anyway, compilations (a la Morrowind Overhaul) are problematic and headache-inducing for modders. In the slower pace of the Morrowind scene, kingpix was able to do a good job, but it's literally impossible to do at this point in the Oblivion timeline; mod authors are not willing to give up that much control over their mods because they are still working on them.

The Morrowind Overhaul site has a few sections in foreign language that seem to be working on the Oblivion compilation. I honestly don't get the whole deal with this compilation business. If you make a mod on the internet it should be free use so long as credit is given. But whatever. I can still use their mods and do what I want with them as long as they're on my computer.

Otherwise FCOM seems to be the closest you can get at the moment. I usually have the rule that I don't run any small-time, lesser known mods. Usually they're the ones that mess you up. I run Francesco's and MMM with Better Open Cities, with the full Unique Landscapes Compilation. You can also throw body mods in there, the official patch, and I've also got Adonnay's Classical Weaponry because he's by far my favorite modder in both NWN and TES. It's not that hard to make a compilation for your own use, though I agree it'd be much better if someone did it for us. I just want to play the game, and fiddling with mods can get tedious. Morrowind Overhaul isn't any better though. That readme file was so intense it took me two hours to get that working for Morrowind, and in the end, it was filled with performance issues. The Overhaul that came before it, the Morrowind 2011 Compendium was 10x better but the guy who made it was ran out with modders with pitchforks and torches. I'll hold back my opinions on that matter. But I wish I could find that mod and its instructions again.

Also in case you're curious about Fallout 3 some time, FOOK 2 is my favorite compilation there. FOOK 2 + MMM works really good, and the only crashes I get are the crashes you typically get in Fallout 3. But alas, besides FCOM, there's nothing like FOOK 2 here for Oblivion. Except maybe OOO (Oscuro's).

I feel I've repeated this a few hundred times, but many have a total misconception of what FCOM is or even does.
It is NOT in anyway a compilation, nor does it attempt to be one.
Quite simply it's a series of patches that allow several mods to work together without conflicts.

NOTHING MORE.

It can't work independently as it requires other mods to even serve that function.

False.

Really, really, really important deal here. Putting up a mod for free download is not the same as making it public domain.

Hey Psymon! :foodndrink:

So I think what took me by surprise is that Oblivion mods seem to revolve around large mods (like OOO/fcom) so once I get those mods all set the rest should be easy by comparison. On that note, is is possible/feasible to combine all the Fcom esps into one esp? There are sooo many esps for these overhauls, it's hard to keep track of them :teehee:

And thanks for the tip about Bash Psymon. It's much more familiar for me since I'm used to Mash.

Rohok, I'm definitely getting the landscape mod. That's the type of mod that's on the top of my list I'd like to get open cities, but I'll wait to see how the game performs with the other mods installed first..

No as Shikishima pointed out FCOM itself is essentially just a series of patches that allow previously incompatible overhaul mods to work together. It is not a compilation; however, it is also fair to say that since the FCOM team have taken over development of or fixed things the main four overhauls that one could say that they are not all part of a whole.

Again you could start with one overhaul then move up to FCOM. The scaling overhaul gives and idea of what to expect from them. I find Frans to have the least compatibility issues.

The more overhaul oriented stuff you add the more patches you will need.

===

Not really wanting to get into either of two arguments: that Oblivion is better or that FCOM is needlessly complicated on install.

I prefer Oblivion because I prefer the player having a factor in the combat. Morrowind's all character centric combat is hyper annoying to me and false. My theory is that they wanted to have more player centric combat, but was unable to at the time - this limitation was taken as some noble attempt to make a more pure rpg game.

===

My last Oblivion install did not consist of hardly any fraction of patches. Of course with morrowind the answer is often to edit the offending mods not patch them. that kind of thing rarely happens with Oblivion.

Oh, I'm sure FCOM isn't as hard to install as I've made it sound. I'm pretty sure the biggest issue is that I have Oblivion through Steam. I've shut of UAC completely while I install the mods so that should make things go smoothly.

If you install steam, and the game to its default install location (within UACs grasp) you will have to keep UAC off thereafter so that you dont have problems with modding tools being strangled (which have to install in the same game installation folder) - There are ways around such problems but ...

Its far better to install steam and games outside of Program files\

End of problem.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129 (easy actually)

This is also good to do for all the mod related tools like Wrye Bash and edit.

You could try http://www.popehat.com/2008/06/09/building-a-better-oblivion/

Also check out http://www.tesnexus.com/ for any compilation mods.

:tes:

So its the issue of control. But the downside is that most people simply dont bother with modding because its way too complicated. If you want get "base" package (good overhaul,graphics enchantments, combat enchantment+ a few tweaks) you will be looking at literally around 100 different packages, which you need to arrange in proper order and download individually . That is a huge time investment.

If there was a simple single file to download and simple install (e.g. extract) there would be many more people using the mods. As of now most biggest mods are unseen by most everybody who played game.

If modding community wants their efforts to be seen by broader audience they need simplify the using of mods by orders of magnitude. Right now all the tools (obmm, boss, wrye ) are inadequate and only really useful for small mods or modders themselves. The nexus download manager seems to be a step in right direction, but its way too early in development and hard to say whether it will mature enough to be useful.

Compilations is sorely needed and its a shame thing like TCOM are apparently "not welcome".

If the FCOM team released a single download with executable to install the base mods it might open the flood gates. I've attempted FCOM installs in the past but I never quite nailed it. Over the last couple of days however I decided to sit down and really figure out the uses of Wrye/BAIN and OBMM. They're definitely powerful tools but not without their faults, primarily lack of user friendliness.

I'm now confident in most major aspects of Wrye Bash other than tagging and following BOSS result recommendations (does Wrye do what BOSS suggests automatically or is the user expected to do it?)

Amazing work from everyone involved though, no doubts about that. The extra time needed to make it all approachable just can't be justified if they're not getting paid tbh.

Compilations aren't needed. This discussion has come up in the past and always goes the same way. If people can't be bothered to learn what they're doing, there will be a lot more problems down the road. If someone is too lazy to read the documentation, then they really shouldn't be trying to do it in the first place. They won't even know how to fix things if they go wrong. Mod installation is easy as can be thanks to Bash and BOSS. OBMM is sorely out of date and has too many problems that it shouldn't really be used unless absolutely necessary. By understanding how the mods work, one can also determine if a different mod is compatible. With a compilation, there's a good chance folks will install incompatible mods and they won't have a clue what to do. By forcing them to understand, things go smoother. Also, it's the author's right to decide on how their mod is used. If they don't want it to be bundled, then that's that. No one should be forced to waive their rights to others due to sentiments of other users.

Anyways, this thread is beginning to be derailed.

Well average gamer will not invest all that time into learning how just use the mods. Basically what you are saying is that modders do not care about the audience and just happy that their mod exist, not that people are using them



Point of compilation is that all the issues and intricacies are ironed out by author(s) of compilation. End user has a single file with simple "Extract" install instruction, He doesnt have to know anything about how mods work, their debugging , etc. Thats the point of compilation - mods put together , crash and performance issues free, easy install.

Personally at one point I made "ultimate modded oblvion" version for myself which had many of major mods and tons of tweaks. It took around of 2 months of getting everything in place , testing ,debugging , etc. At the end of it I was so burned out on modding that I never actually played the modded game. And heck oblivion at all pas that point. There is too much involved in making an aggregation of mods work. It shouldnt be so for end user.

No, what I'm saying is that the average gamer doesn't care enough to try to make things work. Don't twist my words into something they're not. I say what I mean and nothing more.



And therein lies the problem. User installs a mod and it crashes due to no fault of the mod but because it is incompatible with a mod in the installation. How are they supposed to know what's going on and fix things if they don't know what's really going on? They can't exactly report a problem since they don't know what the problem really is. If the end user wants to, they can read documentation. That's all you need to do: read the documentation. There's an old saying for a reason: read the manual. It comes in various forms, but the point is all the information is included in documentation. Too few people read documentation nowadays and that, in itself, is the cause of lots of problems and headaches.

I'd welcome a FCOM self install deal to make sure that everything is installed as it should. If only because there are a lot of steps to get that set up. On a side note, I stumbled upon a mod that made argonians look like their morrowind brethren. That reminded me of the character models in Skyrim. I find that argonians look better in Skyrim and was wondering if anyone made a skyrim-style Argonian mod? Googled it and got nothing, but you never know

It's in the main FCOM thread near the top. It just renames everything and helps set up, it contains nothing else. Also, I just followed the FCOM documentation to the letter and got it all working just fine in just a few hours. That of course included reading all of the documentation, even the outdated bits to make sure I had all holes filled, but I got it all running fine and no complaints on my system. Either way you go, just make sure to use Bash and BOSS and OBMM as little as possible. Heck, I converted all my files to be usable in Bash since OBMM is not exactly memory friendly for me among other reasons.

I still recommend using Bash though to install everything. It's just much better than OBMM and makes things easier to sort out and such. It's not hard to install, it's all in the install order really.