Hoping maybe this will get some attention here, because I'm stumped.

Really, really confused.

Using TES4Gecko I had merged TNR, NPC New Clothes, Cyrodiil NPC Remodeling Project, and Hemingwey's Capes (sans Citizens). I'd originally done this because I thought I had some issues using Bash to get them all to work together.

I was informed they should indeed all work together using Bash. So I attempted to do so again, importing inventory for all of those mods, except for Hemingwey's Capes, which was nowhere to be seen when I went to rebuild my patch, despite being tagged and marked mergeable.

It worked! I wondered why I had resorted to using TES4Gecko earlier. So at one point after that I went to rebuild my patch again, and this time Hemingwey's Capes was available for merging. Weird, but I tried it.

I ended up with a bunch of naked NPCs, and it appeared the Capes were overriding most of the other clothing changes. Okay... I'll just rebuild my patch, this time without Hemingwey's Capes.

Still naked NPCs here and there, and now none of the clothing mods I have importing inventory in my bashed patch appear to be working. NPCs all wearing vanilla clothes. I've tried various configurations, but no matter what I do, I can't get any of the clothing mods to work via Bash. The only other thing I was doing at the time was trying to get Better Redguards to work, and I've tried rebuilding my patch numerous times with slight modifications so I'm sure I rebuilt it in the same way I did when I first got the clothing mods to work. The only other changes I made were to the load order at a couple points, but I of course made sure the bashed patch was loading last.

Does anyone have any idea what happened here? I'm at a total loss. No matter what I do it seems I can't get the clothing mods to work using Bash, even though I had done it successfully an hour before. How can the same configuration produce different results? One thing I realized is that I couldn't import the Cape mods because for some reason I had them later than my Bashed Patch in the load order, and moving them to load before the Bashed Patch made them available for merging. But I can only assume something was changed that I'm unaware of that wrecked everything, because before I tried merging in Hemingwey's Capes I had the clothing mods working via Bash just fine. Then for whatever reason when I went to rebuild my patch again with the Cape mods it seems something permanently broke.

Bonus points: If anyone can tell me how to get Better Redguards working so I don't have [at best] Redguard NPCs with darker bodies and lighter heads, I'd like to know. I've tried every possible combination of settings I can think of, including the specific compatibility tweak in Bash. Either they're the same skin tone as before or I get darker shaded bodies but lighter heads.

palidoo:

If I were you, I would completely uninstall all those clothing mods, rebuild your bashed patch, then make a clean save...go to the testing hall and wait until your respawn timer has run...vanilla is 3 game days. Then download each of those mods again (or use pristine backups you might have saved in a safe location). Then install each of the clothing mods again, run BOSS, activate each mod and carefully rebuild your bashed patch and play.

I have no idea what you did, but, generally speaking, attempting to merge mods in Gecko is a bad idea (at least in my opinion), unless you know exactly what each mod does/changes and are certain they safely can be merged together...I know I wouldn't try it. :hehe:

As a general proposition, the NPC portions of Hemingwey's Capes don't play nice with the NPC remodeling project mods (at least from what I am told), in part because the NPC capes in Hemingwey's Caoes are amulet slot items, and the NPC remodling project mods include items that use the amulet slot...thus there are conflicts even Bash can't solve entirely...again, so I have heard.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Hem

Palidoo -- told ya.

[edit] wait - I guess I didn't read close enough - I thought you stuck with Gecko for merging.

Yeah like Hemingwey says - cell respawns so that lists can repopulate. You remove clothes NPCs are wearing then until respawn they may be naked.

sorry

Better redguards AND body mod texture replacers?

Search out better redgaurds on this forum - arkngt did a lot of testing on that mod. Worth a read.

The thing is, merging all the mods with TES4Gecko is what I had working originally. And I have Capes disabled for Citizens, so I probably avoid most of the conflicts you mention, as well as the fact that the capes don't match the new clothes NPCs are wearing.

I'll try what you suggested and let time pass, I had traveled to a city I thought I hadn't been to in a while to confirm things weren't working right, but maybe I had been there more recently than I thought. All I saw were vanilla clothes.

What puzzles me so much is that I had it working the first time I tried merging them all with Bash today. It was only after I changed the load order so that the Capes showed up, imported them in Bash, discovered conflicts in-game, then disabled them that I ran into what feels like a permanent disability.

It just doesn't make sense to me that I can load a save after merging in Bash the first time and have it work, but then every time after that when I load THE SAME SAVE in a dozen different configurations I get vanilla/naked NPCs. That's not a situation where I have to wait for anything to repopulate, is it? I mean, it worked the first time! Or was that some kind of residual effect from when I had it working with my merged file? Maybe it's something ridiculously simple, I don't know.

So I'm basically back to using my merged file from TES4Gecko, but I had that sweet taste of Bash togetherness and I want it back :<<<<<

Thanks for your suggestions and any help you can give, though. I posted this in the Bash thread but it was the last post on a page and the thread quickly fell off the first page of the forum, so I'm going to assume no one's going to read it. It's just a ridiculously weird problem I've never encountered or read about before, having something work one minute then be broken the next while using the same configuration. I just don't get it, unless it's some arcane load order issue and I need to mess around with the order of the clothing mods prior to importing them into my Bashed Patch.

Anything that effects leveled lists require squeaky clean upgrade and clean saves.

By squeaky clean that means waiting out cell respawns. So squeaky clean save is remove the mod then wait out a cell respawn. Or if upgrading then wait out and update.

This of course really only matters concerning places you have visited, but safe bet is to wait for respawn in all areas.

Anything with lists is also related to concept of spawning and that is a time issue. If an NPC is alrady spawned with an outfit then you remove it without cell respawn - you can get chaos.

You will get even more chaos if you have mods that you merged with Gecko then without clean saving from that directly loaded the originals and bashed. Yeah that will cause havok.

Okay, I'll do a super clean save and then try things again. I guess I assumed things worked differently than they actually do, and you know what happens when you assume...

Seriously, thanks though, it's probably obvious but it didn't occur to me that clean saves and cell respawns applied, I was just thinking of it like a "swap."

And if you have all these mods working together fine via Bash, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to get them working. I won't stop trying until I have sweet sweet success!!! I WILL HAVE THE MOST DIVERSE NPCS ON THE PLANET!!

...But unfortunately I get googly eyes when I try Cobl's TNR instead of regular TNR. I'd kind of like the hair, I thought Comprehensive Style Collection was supposed to change NPC hair (I mean why did it have me install 500mb of hair and eyes?) but apparently not, at least not for me.

Another thing that I don't quite understand--after rebuilding my Bashed Patch and setting it to import inventory from all of those clothing mods, the results at the end don't indicate it's importing from them, they're not listed as sources and the number of entries changed isn't any different from when I rebuilt the patch without them. This doesn't seem right, unless for some reason it's not supposed to display in the results you get after rebuilding your patch. Also after rebuilding with those clothing mods enabled, the number of gloves tweaked to show rings, something I enabled under clothing tweaks, goes from whatever small number it was before to 0. So confusing.

Are all those mods needing the tags you are adding?

Is that what BOSS is telling you to do? If adding anything else is there a reason why?

go to the mods tab of Wrye Bash and double click on the bashed patch - this should open the readme for that bashed patch and tell you what was imported.

The import tag is necessary to help deal with overrides more intelligently - but that does not mean that all the records from mods need to be imported into it.

That's what I was saying, it doesn't list any of the clothing mods as sources under Import Inventory when I look at the readme for my bashed patch.

I just tried doing a clean save, waiting four days in an interior cell, then importing the clothes. Nothing. I tried a clean save, then importing clothes, then waiting four days, aaaand nothing. I tried clean save, waiting, importing, waiting some more, and nada.

It's like even though the mods go through the importing process they don't work coming out the other end. Shouldn't there be lots of changes listed under Import Inventory after I rebuild the patch with any of them? Are they imported in some other way?

The way you have it, do you just import inventory from them all and they work fine?

On the bright side, even if this doesn't work, I always have my merged file to go back to. I know you think using TES4Gecko in this case is a bad idea, but really, I had unique clothes on just about every NPC while using it that way, and if there were any conflicts like one mod overwriting another in the merge, it wasn't a big deal. The NPC ends up with unique clothing either way, heh.

But still, this is pretty baffling.

BOSS recommends and I use:

CNRP - Graphics, Inventory.
TNR variants usually have - Invent, NoMerge, NPC Face
NNC does not seem to have tags.
Several options on Hemingweys capes the main on has Invent, Scripts, Stats.

Are you sure you are checking the box next to the mods in the rebuild bashed patch menus? Nothing gets imported unless you do that. The tags just make them importable but unless checked off they are not imported.

Here is the import inventory section of my bashed patch:

Guess who just realized you have to check the damn box? Thanks for suggesting it though, you almost would have made me slap myself if I hadn't already done it five minutes ago. Oh man. Go ahead and laugh! That is if you don't feel like I wasted your time looooooooool

Time to see if it works.

Edit: Hooray! Something I could have solved hours ago by doing the most obvious thing! This one goes out to all the people who have read this thread but refrained from suggesting something so obvious because you figured I wouldn't be so dumb! I fooled you all!!!!!

Anyway, it's nice to see the CNRP outfits that it turns out NNC was overwriting. I guess TES4Gecko did do things pretty haphazardly, although I still ended up with all unique NPCs. I guess now my NPCs are even uniquer! Though I may need to disable some part of the Capes mods, I noticed a couple clipping through clothes I presume were added by CNRP.

Looking at your list, you might want to try out NPC New Clothes [Modified, unless you like your NPCs in bikinis, see-thru tops, and S&M outfits] and ClassyClothingCompendium if you want more diverse NPCs.

How does RandomClothing4NPCs work out while using something like CNRP? I downloaded it but haven't tried it since I've been trying to get all these NPC clothing mods to work. Like, does the random clothing mod draw from the vanilla clothes, or will it use all of the clothes that have been added?

Bonus fun fact: I just noticed the books NPCs read have "lorem ipsum..." text.

Anyway, I'm going to play some Oblivion or mess with some textures or something while trying not to feel like an idiot. Here I was thinking that the mod being activated was irrelevant so long as you had its additions and changes imported into the bashed patch. But I suppose I was misunderstanding and mixing it up with mods you can actually merge in and deactivate, or "virtually active" mods like Item Interchange and the All Natural indoor weather filter for mods. I knew it was something ridiculously simple that was messing me up. Except when I first tried it, thinking I was successful when it was just the residual clothes from having my merged mod active before that, that really threw me off. Maybe if I hadn't been trying to recreate a configuration that didn't actually work for a couple hours I would have realized sooner about actually activating the mods.

But seriously, I apologize if I wasted your time, and I definitely appreciate the help. I don't blame you if you never reply to my posts again, haha, sometimes I just overlook the most obvious things. I'd say this thread might as well be closed or deleted or something, but one day in the future some ambitious NPC diversifier might overlook checking off some boxes, and when he or she searches the forum for answers, this thread and its massive folly will be waiting. I only hope they read the entire thing before wasting their time waiting for cells to respawn!

Don't be so hard on yourself - we all go through/gone through these learning curves. No problems - at least you, unlike a few others I've helped recently, have a desire to learn this stuff. other feedback I've gotten recently was to curse the name of Wrye and call me sycophantic worshiper of Wrye just because I advocate the bashed patch and bain. Weird.

I, of course, know about all those mods having even discussed them with you in other threads. I actually have three Oblivion installs up and running. I use the other NNC mod in the other main install I have going (the third is Nehrim). Actually that install is one I twiddle with more now than play. I plan to scrap the second install and build a new one and inbetween all that finally finish Nehrim. I digress.

CNRP like NNC sets clothing for NPCs so the random mod won't effect them (or shouldn't too much) it is mean actually to compliment classy clothes and I forgot I removed classy clothes from that install with all my twiddling. Have room now to add it back. Neither CNRP nor NNC will coer all NPCs and in that then Classy will come in and address some of the lower class (actually classy is supposed to be part one of redoing all the class designations of clothes - though called classy I think it only handles lower class).

Yeah I get some clipping with capes - eh not that big a deal for me.

I googled Lorem Ipsum - guess I'm not getting the joke.

Lorem Ipsum is just an endless series of fake latin-y words generated to take up space and look like a real document (word length, paragraph breaks, etc.) except it's all gibberish. It's typically used when someone wants to get an idea of how something will look filled with real meaningful text, like the layout of a newspaper or newsletter or website, before there's any actual content to fill that space with. In this case it's used to make it look like the books actually say something meaningful from farther away when it's actually just gibberish, and it looked enough like a "real document" to me to actually zoom in on the book for a closer look. But the point is that if you ignore the content/gibberishness of the lorem ipsum text whatever you're designing should appear how it will end up looking when you put the real text in later, rather than typing "adsfjhdjfhjdskljsklklgdnf" or something which will not be representative of typical word length, sentence structure, etc. I'm sure there's a lorem ipsum generator if you look for it, so the next time you're designing a newspaper, there you go!

But yeah once again I'll never understand the people who won't use Bash. Well, I understand that they're probably not savvy enough that when confronted with something unfamiliar and seemingly complex they end up too intimidated to try it out and their stubbornness prevents them from taking any advice. But really, Bash isn't that hard to figure out. Of course I say this after spending hours trying to get stuff to work, but I think we can make an exception for a silly mistake, haha. But you'd think if they wanted something badly enough they'd at least try a little bit to get it. And with something like All Natural, which to me is at the top of my list of essential mods, it's so easy to set up with Bash that I almost feel bad for people who end up too terrified of the unfamiliar to try it.

Anyway, I'll try out the random clothing mod, though with all of these new clothes I'll probably have a hard time noticing changes, heh. Right now I'm trying to figure out why, when I have TNR checked and import faces, upon rebuilding my bashed patch it says only 200 entries were changed, but if I leave the TNR mods unchecked and import, I get the regular 1600 changed or whatever the exact number is. Either way I end up with TNR faces in-game, but that's something I still don't quite understand.

Oh, and also, aside from the fact that I generally like to make the most of any utility and learn what's going on under the hood of a game I'm playing (don't get me started on my quest to conquer Civ4), part of the reason I want to learn as much as I can about Oblivion and its modding universe has to do with my aspirations for my own mods eventually. I've got a txt file going with mod ideas, and once I finish my massive mod compendium website (Oblivion Aesthetic Overload is my current top contender for a name, the most difficult part of the whole project), I'm going to dive in and see if I can't make some of those ideas reality. They range from small immersion-boosters, like boats viewable off the coasts and in the bay, to ridiculous stuff like overhauling and expanding clutter so you find more diverse stuff in barrels, etc. as well as to give interiors more varied "clutter personalities" plus a system where you give specific types and quantities of clutter to specialized NPCs (blacksmith, tailor, etc.) whose demands change every week in return for a special item, gold, love, or whatever. The clutter mod is in the category of "will probably never be made" but it's probably my most ambitious, albeit silly idea. Well, next to my plan for a real light source expansion for AWLS (formerly Illumination Within for SI lolol). Or my vague concept to hand place thousands of subtle particle effects all over the world, should I ever figure out exactly what those effects would be. And I could go on and on, but suffice to say I may be late to the Oblivion modding scene but it's never too late to start modding! My sole accomplishment so far is a new road texture to replace QTP3's, unless you count http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36953 too. Gotta start somewhere!

Leave TNR deactivated and only import data - should leave a green dot in the checkbox.

The point of importing data has to do with having just those records carried forward and represented int he bashed patch - otherwise the load order rule of one will be in effect and if other mods alter then they will overwrite.

I too dislike Qarl's roads but I'm kinda over QTP anyway. You might want to check http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26075 out. I just don't get the cobblestone look.

But I don't really use QTP and haven't for a long while - I prefer saving my fps for mods that focus on new content and AI.

That custom road texture is actually what motivated me to do my own. It's actually just the vanilla texture with the color change slightly. Ha, if you read the comments you'll see I started out making a Detailed Terrain version of that texture, but eventually I said to myself "this is 512x512 still, I should make a 1024x1024 texture dammit!" And I've just finished version 2, since the first one I uploaded to tesnexus was just the vanilla texture multiplied by four to make it 1024x1024, resulting in obvious tiling in too many places, though I guess a few people liked it.

Anyway, I'm mostly a fan of QTP3 aside from its "graininess" and some of the textures being kind of gawdy. What matters to me is it got the colors right. And to me a big advantage of using QTP3, or at least its terrain textures, is the fact that Detailed Terrain comes with them. It's the kind of mod I'll always feel doesn't get enough praise because it's such a subtle and clever and well-implemented feature that in a way kind of overhauls the whole ground terrain system without you really noticing. But when you do notice you're reminded you can't live without it!! Someone should really convert the vanilla textures into alpha channel'd versions so people who prefer them can get some DT action.

As for framerate, when I checked it before and after installing QTP3 it dropped like 2 fps for me I think, whatever it was I was pleasantly surprised. I switched to Redimized but didn't check the impact on framerate with that, but I'd guess there wasn't much of a change. I'm thinking the major impact on my framerate comes from something else, but it's possible I just wasn't thorough enough checking the impact of QTP3. It gets down really low, like below 20, in cities as much as it does out in the wilderness. Probably even more. Whenever I hear people talking about big framerate hits it always seems to be in the wilderness. Not that I don't get a big hit sometimes facing towards the IC from deep in the woods, heh.

Hi-res textures won't affect FPS much as it's not like the engine has to read more polygons or anything. What you want to look out for when using texture replacers is rather when you get stuttering because the GPU memory isn't enough anymore. For instance, if I add Bomret's SI pack I don't get much less FPS but I get almost constant stuttering as my 512 MB GPU simply isn't enough.

Deactivated TNR used to be the norm but now it stays active. Why the change in BOSS and Wrye Bash I do not know but it has been this way for a while now.

Yeah, I most definitely couldn't do QTP3 with only 512mb. I got plenty of stuttering and crashes as it would peak as high as 1100-1200mb in the wilderness sometimes which my 1gb card couldn't handle. Redimized helped that, but yeah you're exactly right the big issue with hi-res textures is using up your memory. In addition to QTP3 I have basically every possible hi-res texture outdoors, so thorough that I ended up removing the hi-res tree billboards and supposedly improved hi-res sky to get a few dozen mb back, heh. Compromise, what is it?

It should definitely be inactive if using OOO, as it will override OOO's NPC stats otherwise, so you'll end up with vanilla stats if having it checked.

Thanks for that information. I will deactivate in my current game. Was not an issue for some time as I used RBP but in current game it may be (OOO ROM MMM). Will check it out.

Why ever would one leave TNR active if using a bashed patch?

Same with the RBP variant?