Hi folks,

I've finally got time to play Oblivion again after being away for months. Lots has changed - Wrye's finally retired! With so many new mods and new versions of my old standbys out I've decided it would be best to reinstall using full BAIN (thanks for the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=957424&st=0, Psymon!). However, I've got a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with.

First off, among the many bain packages I'm making is one for Mart's Monster Mod 3.7b3, including the BSA. I don't want to have to include the BSA three times though (once for vanilla MMM once for Fran's and once for OOO, named differently each time as per the readme). I seem to remember that you could include an empty .esp with the same name as the BSA to get Oblivion to load the BSA - is this correct? Does the .esp need to be ticked active in Bash, or just present in the data dir? How does the naming scheme work, exactly - first word needs to be the same, or ?

The next is more about esthetics. I used to use Robert's Male v4 and Team Fantasy Figures Female bodies. I have a ton of TFF/UFF clothes downloaded. Now I see that Robert has Female v1.2 out. Didn't Robert used to work with TFF? Is it the same body, newer version? Is it close enough to wear TFF/UFF clothes? Is there somewhere I can see a comparison? There used to be a body mod comparison page but it's gone now... I know nudity-bearing links are forbidden, so maybe someone could PM me or something?

And speaking of body mods, there has to be an easy way to get my chosen body mods, Better Redguards, Slof's Better Beasts, and Argonian Beautification to play well with Race Balancing Project. With my last install I manually edited my RBP esp to get everything to work, but that'll be a real pain if I start BAINing different body mods and such back and forth. Is there something simple I can be doing with Bash? Some tag I'm missing or misunderstanding?

Thanks!

I can't help you too much, as I don't use BAIN to install mods. I do use Wrye Bash to sort my load order (with BOSS) and merge patches etc. but try to make all my installs into an OMOD for simplicity.

I can tell you however, not sure if you know or not, but IMHO the best female body mod is HG Eye Candy or HGEC. I *think* it is relatively new and you might not know about it, reason I say this is not so you can get the best tig ol bitties to look at, but if you use clothing mods there are TONS for HGEC that I have seen and they have a whole project called EVE for HGEC which replaces all stock and FCOM related armors/items to fit the HGEC body.

My 2c

-J

I've never understood the upside of using BAIN for a single BSA such as this as it is rather easy to keep track on and just takes a lot of time to manage via BAIN. Isn't it easier to just have it in the Data folder and rename it depending on which mod set up you're using? If you want it automated anyway I guess http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=995334&hl= are the way to go as they rename it automatically on install.

Anyway, the beginning of the BSA name has to be exactly as one of the esp's you're using - and the esp has to be checked. So renaming it FCOM_Convergence_MartsMonsterMod.bsa means the resources get loaded in an FCOM install as you're using FCOM_Convergence.esp in that, etc.

I would agree that EVE HGEC has very widespread support/clothes; however, I think Roberts female is much better technically.

Roberts is seamless with respect to the hands and feet, so you don't have to worry about color mismatches there (though unfortunately, all body mods suffer the same vanilla issues around the head seam). If you look at the texture, you'll also find it's much more thoughtfully laid out to get maximal use for a given resolution (none of the wasted pixels that make up half of the EVE HGEC textures).

Really, though, it comes down to what aesthetic you're after. As best I can tell, the old comparison page is no longer anywhere online. EVE HGEC is already in a BAIN package and Roberts can be put in one very easily, so the best thing to do is try both out to see which fits your character.

Not disagreeing with Arkngt, but if you want to go with the dummy plugin route you can just create a dummy plugin named "MMM.esp" which will make MMM.bsa load. My omod installer comes with such a dummy esp, but you can also just copy and rename the Shivering Isles dummy esp.

Question: I read somewhere that the new MMM 3.73b's BSA file had to be renamed to something like you posted above. Thought it was FCOM_Convergence_MartigensMonstermod.bsa, anyways, my MMM BSA automatically got renamed FCOM_Convergence - MMM.bsa . I assume that is fine as it would automatically get loaded with FCOM as well? Or does it really need to be named FCOM_Convergence_MartsMonsterMod.bsa (or likewise)

As Arkngt writes, the only requirement is that the start of the bsa's name exactly matches the full name of an active esp. Since both the bsa names you mention start with "FCOM_Convergence" which exactly matches the name of " FCOM_Convergence.esp", they both work equally well. You can name it " FCOM_Convergence_this_is_MMM_3_73.bsa" or whatever.

Yeah my own MMM Bain package is called MMM for FCOM - meaning I pre-named the bsa FCOM_Convergence_MMM.bsa.

How often do you change overhauls after all?

As for upside of an MMM BAIN package:

1. Well I can add extra content more elegantly with extra sub-packages.
2. I can update more easily by repackaging with the update then annealing in the change as opposed to using OBMM to uninstall the entire thing then reinstall just for one esp update.
3. By arranging the esp into logical folders I can more quickly find, add, and remove extra content rather than run the OMOD install again.

like so:
4. Not to mention the other advantages to BAIN such as being able to control install order, which admittedly is not as important with MMM as there is now a bsa, but some of the extra content added still has loose files.

I didn't say that I don't understand the upsides of using BAIN, rather that I don't see the upside of using it for single +1GB BSA's.

Ahh so you did.

well then consider this a sales pitch on the idea that MMM could very easily be packaged for both OBMM and BAIN simultaneously.

Does this also work for ESM files? Can I name a BSA file "Oblivion - Meshes - PyFFIed.bsa", and will it load? And what about the load order when several BSA files are tied to a single ESP file?

Nope, only esp files, which is why we have the renaming of the MMM.bsa in the first case. "Mart's Monster Mod.esm" is always in use regardless of OOO/FCOM, but no single MMM esp file is always in use, so if esm files was good enough, the bsa would natively be named "Mart's Monster Mod.bsa" and there would be no renaming issue.

I beleive they are loaded per their individual time stamp, but don't know what happens if several bsa with same time stamps have conflicting resources.

Great, thanks guys. I knew there was a naming trick, I just couldn't remember it.

My MMM BAIN looks a lot like yours, Psymon. Glad to see I seem to know what I'm doing. I know there's no real point to including the BSA in the BAIN package, but I just wanted to be thorough. I'll likely just have the file in it's own BSA so the MMM one isn't huuuge.

So, no good advice on the bash tags to get all my body/race mods to play together nicely? I guess I'll just have to start experimenting... :wacko:

Seriously? Where have you been? Eye Candy and HGEC have been out for ages, far longer than Roberts. And not everyone likes having all those large briasted women in the game, it's not exactly natural now is it. Roberts looks much more like the average woman. Overall the body is more proportional as well.