If you want to make manually an Oblivion install that contains its own saves, ini and plugins.txt, here are your 8 steps to heaven.

IMPORTANT

• Requires Wrye Bash or manual editing of the plugins.txt file.
  
• Not tested with Oblivion Mod Manager - I don't use it much these days, tell us if you try it and it works.
  
• Only tested with the NON-STEAM version of Oblivion. If it works with the Steam version, tell us.
  
• I'm sharing this in the hope it can be useful, but I'm making no guarantees it works on every weird setup out there. I'm not providing any support, mmkay?

Follow these exact STEPS:

• Backup current ini and generate a new one with the launcher, then run Oblivion once, load a save and exit normally (without crash) so you get a complete, fresh .ini file.
  
• Ensure bUseMyGamesDirectory=0 in your .ini, and that the variable is not duplicated in the ini file.
  
• Move Oblivion.ini into your Oblivion directory.
  
• Create a \saves subdirectory of Oblivion and move a single save in there, for testing purposes.
  
• [Install and] Launch Wrye Bash. It obeys your .ini setting and generates a fresh plugins.txt in your Oblivion directory. This is optional to the test itself (I think Oblivion.esm is loaded by default if you don't have a plugins.txt), but unless you create it manually you need Wrye Bash to manage your plugins list and load any mod or dlc.
  
• Launch Oblivion DIRECTLY with Oblivion.exe or OBSE. The Oblivion launcher DOES NOT obey the ini setting to keep things local.
  
• To check that Oblivion is indeed loading things locally, open the load game dialog and check that only the lone save you moved to the local saves folder is present.
  
• If you did launch Oblivion directly and not with the launcher, no new .ini file will be generated in My Games/Oblivion

Once you've done this you've basically got a skeleton install that's entirely self-contained. Back it up so you can copy the whole folder somewhere else and make Infinite Oblivions™.

Wrye Bash note: if you use BAIN, you'll probably want to fiddle with Bash's ini settings in each install so your Bash Installers directory is different for each.
(How? Copy bash_default.ini to bash.ini, and change stuff in bash.ini. Backup your computer and your house in case you mess up.)

BOSS note: I have boss.exe and the other BOSS files under Oblivion\BOSS, and I copy that along with the whole folder to my new Oblivions. It works just fine locally, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1300296-relz-8-steps-to-infinite-oblivions/page__view__findpost__p__19607900.

If you're an advanced Windows user, you can also do this: to save space, I hardlink all my vanilla .bsa files with http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html between the various Oblivions, since I know I'll never modify them. This means that apart from subsequent mod additions, each new Oblivion only takes a few hundred megabytes.

Time to sticky this?

Very interesting. I will get around to linking in my BAIN and mTES4Manager threads.

Makes me wonder about if this can be done with Skyrim?

Has anyone tried it and seen how it works?

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1116792-rel-inizer/page__view__findpost__p__19572487

The very appealing advantage of this method is that there is no need to switch installs via mTES4Manager or MOM.

But I wonder ... concerning the launcher - if one wanted to make a setting for one install but not another - wouldn't the launcher confuse things?

And since the launcher in Skyrim has to be active to launch the game this method would likely not work there ... yet.

Ok well I thought to myself "sounds good" and it just so happened I was looking to reinstall Oblivion and try and get a multiple set up going.

So I tried all of the steps. Then I copied my resultant "Self Contained Clean Instal" Oblivion folder and pasted it in the Bethesda folder.
I then went into the copied folder (without renaming the folder from "Oblivion Copy") and changed the name of the save file in the "Self Contained Clean Instal" slightly so I could recognize it a separate from the basic Oblivion folder and opened Bash to check if it was noticing the specific newly named save file. New name recognized! Excellent so far, so then I opened the game with Bash, went in far enough to check the name of the new save had changed appropriately.

Onto step two testing OBSE on/in both folders.For some reason I had to add an exception to my firewall for it but then - success! Complete localized installs with a basic Bash+OBSE setup!

So far only Boss doesn't like this system, it will only locate the mods installed in the original Oblivion folder. So if you're dedicated to BOSS I suppose you'd have to rename your folders to use the program on your second install.

NMM - Nexus Mod Manager didn't like this at all. Claims it can't find Oblivion's ini. But Bain didn't seem to have any problem finding and installing mods from the Oblivion Mods folder. And while I was figuring that out I also discovered both instances of Bash can be open at the same time, utilizing mods in the same Oblivion Mods folder without interfering with each other. And I used that to install separate versions of OBGE so that's it I think, seems to work just fine with all the 'basics' on up to two installs - with the exclusion (currently, who knows maybe they'll fix this issue) of NMM :ahhh:

I doubt they will fix anything as it works if you don't do strange things like this.

As for BAIN reading the same BAIN archive differently for each install - I've been http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084204-bain-mod-installation-projects/page__view__findpost__p__15798007 for months. Except that the way i have it you have to switch active installs.

Good to know though.

I'd bet NMM would work better if you made a dummy my games/oblivion type folder with an ini ... it would never be read but may allow things to function.

Don't think BOSS can be rigged - not as it is now.

But I do like all this talk of self-contained installs.

Not true. All BOSS looks for is that there is a sibling folder of it's parent folder called "Data", that contains the plugins to be sorted, and this folder must include the game's master file (so not just other mod plugins).

So if BOSS.exe were installed to a folder 'A', which is in folder 'B', the following structure would work:

B
- A
-- BOSS.exe
-- rest of BOSS files
- Data
-- Oblivion.esm
-- rest of plugins

There are file placeholders for masterlist conditionals defined that look for things like OBSE and the game's executable being in the parent's parent folder as they would be if BOSS were installed to a game directory, but those have not been used yet.

So basically you're saying I just need to install BOSS into my Oblivion Copy\Data folder and it'll be able to properly sort my load order there as well? Sweet! I'll have to give that a shot when I wake up If that works then my install will be truly complete :twirl:

Oh and I installed OBMM, which seems to work fine from both installations so far

No I don't think he means in the data folder - but I'm not sure what he means from that.

OK, I'll try again.

If you have your mods installed in a Data folder somewhere, you just need to have BOSS.exe in another folder (which is your BOSS folder, but it doesn't actually have to be named "BOSS") next to your Data folder (not inside it). Just like how it is when you install BOSS normally.

So default install then?

========

But DarkDiva - does OBMM get confused at all because I thought that it sought out the plugins.txt in the AddData folder and so on.

So far so good with OBMM, I've only gone so far as to put a couple OMODS into a folder and point the different installs of OBMM to different OMODS within that folder- but they both seem to only load the files I told them too. For ex. in Oblivion I told OBMM to look for All Natural and in Oblivion Copy, I told it to look for Roberts Male. I haven't unpacked either of those into the game yet but so far it looks good and I'm hopeful that it'll work.

Well you can move the omod folder for each install and have that be unique to them.

For my own set up I have most installs share the same folder, but this is riskier than having them share the same BAIN folder due to the lack of info. But then the most I have in omods installed is like 5.

As a tip if you ever fear you have lost the omod location or OBMM wont start - open the settings2 file in notepad or something similar and you will see some gibberish and also the file path to where it looks for omods. You can alter it that way too.

Not tried yet, but it's unlikely to work with Oblivion on Steam as it uses the launcher (the DRM makes the launcher execute even if you run Oblivion.exe directly).

Tried installing BOSS to the "Oblivion Copy" folder and it's working! So that's basically everything then. Now I just need to kick the tires for a bit and see how long it can take the abuse :celebration:

I added a note about BOSS, I had it in a BOSS subfolder of each Oblivion copy, working locally without a hitch, but kind of took it for granted .

I'm glad to see it seems to be working out for you guys as well. :celebration:
I'm curious to know if one can pull of the same .ini trick with Fallout3/FONV/Skyrim, but no time to try it now.


Damn Steam. Great for auto update, and multiplayer games, but looks like it's a pain for modding... at least in the way Beth has integrated it to Oblivion.
The launcher will enforce the .ini location but it's possible that you could still get everything else to work locally... let us know if you try. Might be a better idea to use INIzer or the other tools in that case, though.