» Fri Jul 09, 2010 6:04 pm Have you ever come across an unusual building, item, or NPC in the world of Oblivion and wondered whether it was part of the original game or added by a mod, and if so, which one? Or wondered where that NPC got his cool armor that you've never seen before? If you play with a lot of mods, it's easy to lose track of all the content that each one adds to the game. Sometimes (hopefully not too often) you might even get a big yellow warning sign telling you that something's missing because one of those mods isn't properly installed, and you want to know which one it is so that you can fix it.
RefScope is a powerful tool that lets you explore the internals of objects in the game. Using RefScope, you can browse through all of the following:
All this information can be valuable in resolving conflicts, debugging mods, or just keeping track of where your game content is coming from.
RefScope is a powerful tool that lets you explore the internals of objects in the game. Using RefScope, you can browse through all of the following:
- RefID and FormID of any object you can see or select in the console, as well as map markers on the world map
(Also tells you the name of the .esp or .esm file which defined it) - FormID of items in inventory, container, barter, spell, and spell-purchase menus
(As above, also tells you the name of the .esp or .esm file which defined it) - Contents of containers
(Also tells you whether the container is safe for storage) - Paths of missing mesh and icon files
- NPC, creature, and player equipment
- NPC, creature, and player inventory (including non-playable items)
- NPC, creature, and player spell list
- NPC, creature, and player factions (including hidden ones)
- NPC and creature AI packages
- NPC and player race, class, hair, and eyes
- NPC merchant container, if applicable
- Active magic effects (such as spells and diseases) on an NPC or creature
- Parent/child relationships between references
- Which key is needed to unlock a locked container or door
All this information can be valuable in resolving conflicts, debugging mods, or just keeping track of where your game content is coming from.
Download RefScope 2.0 from http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21862 or http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=5204. You'll also need the http://obse.silverlock.org/, version 0018.
Highlights
RefScope now includes a "hotkey" feature, which lets you examine things quickly and easily without needing to open your spell list. RefScope is active as long as you hold the hotkey, and the moment you release it, you're back to normal gameplay. The default hotkey is X, but it can be changed or disabled in RefScope's new configuration menu.
RefScope also offers visual feedback on containers: those that are safe for storage glow green, and those that are unsafe glow red. Combined with the hotkey feature, this makes checking a container as easy as looking at it and briefly pressing X. If you're faced with a roomful of containers, you can hold X and just glance at each one.
Scoping a "missing mesh" warning will now tell you the actual path and filename of the missing file. This can be helpful in troubleshooting broken mod installations.
In addition to scoping visible objects in the world, you can now scope objects in an inventory, container, or barter menu, as well as spells in your spell list or a spell-purchase menu, and map markers on the world map.
The optional logging feature that was added in version 1.3.0 has been enhanced to support http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26510 as an alternative to http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23979 for writing log messages to a file. In fact, ConScribe is now the default if both OBSE plugins are installed. You can choose which type of logging to use, or disable logging entirely, using RefScope's new configuraiton menu.
Full Change List
- Now requires OBSE v0018.
- Completely rewritten with a new design based on OBSE function scripts.
- New feature: Scope mode can now be activated with a hotkey, avoiding the need to open the spell menu to use RefScope.
- New feature: Scope mode now highlights containers red or green to indicate whether they're safe for storage.
- New feature: Paths of missing meshes and icons are now displayed.
- New feature: Paged lists (e.g. inventory), can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel. Each step of the wheel acts as a click on the (Previous Page) or (Next Page) button.
- New feature: Items in inventory, container, barter, spell, and spell-purchase menus, as well as map markers, can now be scoped.
- New feature: Scoping a locked object now displays information about the associated key, if any.
- New feature: The reference info window for an actor now has a link to the list of active magic effects, such as spells and abilities.
- New feature: The logging feature now supports ConScribe in addition to Pluggy. If both are available, ConScribe is used by default.
- New feature: A configuration menu has been added, and can be opened by right-clicking RefScope in the spell list. The menu currently has options for configuring the hotkey and logging features.
- Bugfix: Attempting to display a percent sign in an info window no longer crashes the game.
- Bugfix: Attempting to display a pipe character in an info window no longer produces a garbled message box. Pipe characters are replaced with underscores in the in-game info windows; they appear correctly in log files.
- Bugfix: RefScope no longer gets patched by a Bashed Patch. Prior versions contained a cell record whose fog distances were zero, and building a Bashed Patch with the "nVidia Fog Fix" tweak enabled would cause the patch .esp to override the cell's fog values, putting RefScope.esp in the patch's master list. Disabling RefScope would thus disable the Bashed Patch too, which was an annoyance. RefScope no longer contains any cell records, so the problem no longer exists.
- The "Travel Horse" button has been removed from the reference info window to make room for the new "Active Effects" button. (This tradeoff is necessary because it's possible for the window to reach the 10-button limit in certain cases.)
- "Casting" RefScope on oneself now directly hooks the Cast key instead of actually casting a spell, so it's quicker.
- Added a subtle pulse effect to the scope-mode highlight shader, just because it looks nice.
- Timestamps in log files are now written in YYYY-MM-DD format rather than MM/DD/YYYY format, to avoid confusion with DD/MM/YYYY.
- Documentation converted to HTML and largely rewritten.
Suggestions for further improvements to RefScope are welcome.
