Sheesh! Some hot tempers eh?

Just gotta say Thanks Arthmoor. I for one really appreciate the work you have put into this.
The original Unofficial patch work fixed many an annoying little bug in the game, but a number remained. Thank you for putting in the time (for no reward remember people) to find and address them.

As for the fixes under contention from this (next to) latest patch. No, perhaps they weren't "bugs" in the strictest sense of the word (like funny textures and things not working) but still.
The added armours: No big deal either way, so why not add them in anyway? Although; if as Vacuity says, the Rusty Iron Gauntlets weren't implemented in game AT ALL, then that does seem like a 'bug' in the sense of developer oversight, doesn't it? Especially if they were created, all of the other armour of that type implemented, but not them!

The magical effects, since removed: The boar one I thought rather appropriate (I don't exactly know know why, but I did) and the others not only not a problem, but actually pretty good.

Over all I would agree with what I think was your initial thinking Arthmoor; while not strictly speaking bug fixes, they all seem to count as "how the vanilla game should have been set" fixes.

I've downloaded the 323a hotfix which removed the boar and imp resistances, but would have been just as happy with them in place. I bit of a fuss over nothing.

And once again it should be remembered that modders like Arthmoor are doing this stuff on their own time (and you Arthmoor; invoved with a fair few mods - and significant ones at that!), and giving the results of their labour away for free. By all means offer your personal opinions ("Personally I like this, but this is not for me, or doesn't seem quite right fo this..." etc.) But try not to attack or abuse these fine folk, ok?


EDIT: Just remembered something Arthmoor.
Came across this mod recently:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27718
And if it is as it advertises (because you know; sometimes... :rolleyes: ) then it sounds like something that might be worth considering for inclusion in the UOP (if not already implemented of course.)
Thought you might like to take a look.

I think the discussion is warranted as it is about an important principle - what is the scope of the UOP? I also fail to see how Vacuity has been anything less than courteous in his posts. Anyway, IIRC the Unofficial Morrowind Patch had much the same discussion a while ago and lifted out some fixes as optionals because of it. Personally, I agree with Vacuity and think that the Morrowind patch approach might be best. It seems finicky at best trying to figure out "what the developers probably intended". Take http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Brusef_Amelion%27s_Armor#Brusef_Amelion.27s_Armor just for one example. All pieces weigh 21, which seems highly odd. My guess is that the developers forgot to detail the stats on the pieces, but what should they be? Better to leave such stuff to optional fixes.

Also, many thanks for your work on this, Arthmoor. :foodndrink:

thanx for continuing the work on the UOP Arthmoor. I also agree that the boar/imp change didn't belong to UOP, but it's nothing compared to having the unofficial patch get updated as new issues arise.

The simple fact that you've taken out those changes the public didn't agree with says all about your character. Kudos

Many thanks to Arthmoor for taking time to do an unofficial update to the unofficial Oblivion Patch (let's recall this the two are unofficial thus not forcing anyone to use them). Personnaly I used hot fix 3.2.3 without questionning and merged it in the original v3.2.0 omod. All my new startings characters escape the prison and sewers without any gear except two or three torches. This is the way I role play Oblivion.
Arthmoor should just consider if there such animated debate about this patch this is because it's an important subject. Many peoples brought interesting ideas. Combined with the author work we can end to something that get community unanimity.

Discussion of the scope of the UOP is a bit moot since the UOP was considered done at 3.2.0

What Arthmoor has created is sort of an Unofficial Unofficial Oblivion Patch Patch. Perhaps that's the way it should be listed and referred to.

It's not as "necessary" as the UOP, only one thing in it is potentially game breaking, I think, but it certainly contains a lot of things that benefit the average player.

Aha. Perhaps it should have a separate thread then. Kind of confusing as it is. I thought it was a continuation of the UOP project, much as the Morrowind Patch Project. But my point still stands - if this "Unofficial Unofficial Oblivion Patch Patch" blends bug fixes as well as those other fixes the same discussion is warranted for it.

Thing is, Arthmoor made it pretty clear, in the threads at least, that he had no intention of taking over the UOP project.

He had discovered a major bug that was introduced by the UOP and offered to fix it, and then decided to throw in some other fixes as well, drawn from the community. Unfortunately, there's no consensus on those fixes (which may be why some of the more obvious ones, like the CG armors, were not included a long time ago).

Clearly, getting angry an Arthmoor is completely insane, and bg2408 seems to be transferring some hard feelings from previous discussions to this one.

I wonder how hard it would be to use TES4Edit to make a patch file from the differential, and add that as an optional download from the main UOP?

Anyone who wants to do the work can obviously edit their copy of the UOP to suit themselves, but the sheer size of it makes that daunting now.

Let me specifically say *thankyou* for reverting that change, and thanks again for your work on this.
Half of me wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole, half of me is almost tempted to give it a go myself as I really don't much care about criticism and my typical reaction to suggestions I don't think fit mods is "that sounds great, http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page!". On the other hand all I can do is lists, items, creatures and particle systems. So any fixes needed beyond that would be *very* slow in coming (and when I'm slow at something, we may be talking months).

Vac

I'm in the process of trying to rebuild by FCOM Bain archive after a hard drive crash, and it occurred to me that a patch containing just the new changes would be beneficial to people using the MOBS versions of the UOP as well.

I have always felt that Amelion's stats should be adjusted correctly since it is light armor. It weighs too much to be light armor once again.

The shield for instance weigh almost has much has a daedric shield or ebony shield but only provides half the protection at the same weight.

The curiass rating is almost has good has amber curiass would be but it weighs more.

Only thing about Amelion's is that it static placed after all. So you aquire it without doing the quest. Great armor if you can carry all 126 pounds of it.

Corepc

Well, this is going to sound pathetic from me, but I'm starting to think everything I attempt doing ends up turning into crap because of my own wrongdoing.
These controversial changes were suggested by me, I even made the file with the changes and sent it to Arthmoor. If I hadn't done that none of this would have happened and everyone would probably be a little less angry.
Here you can see the post which started it all:



The part in bold is an example of where I betray my own idea of what a patch is: if I'm going to include things left out, why not including everything? Because even I noticed something which would not patch, but more than likely break completely the balance of the game in a certain area, but failed to see that other similar changes were doing exactly the same, although not in such a big way.
I don't think I'll try the activity of "suggesting" again, it always ends up causing more trouble for other people and for me.

Well the fact is that the game STILL has problems, we can't just let that be can we?
It seems we all have different opinions on what a bug is, perhaps maintaining the UOP should not be left up to one person but to a group.

@migck--Again, I firmly believe that your heart (and Arthmoor's) is in the right place.




That would probably be best for all concerned, I think. I agree that at this point some of the changes were trivial (yeah, you escaped from prison and you looked good doing it ... but with all the armor mods available, how long is anyone really going to wear that rusty armor anyway?); as I see it, the issue was always more where it goes from here. I fully support fixing obvious errors such as bad meshes and textures, but would prefer to err on the side of caution with regard to more arbitrary changes, at least until their possible effects on the more commonly used mods/overhauls are reasonably explored. As the UOP occupies a privileged position in the Wryebash bashing process, importing its changes gives it precedence over any other mod, and may affect those mods in ways that their creators did not envision.

Perhaps rather than suggesting changes made to other mods you could make your own? That way you get exactly what *you* want and the game runs exactly how *you* feel it should run. It's not a bad thing to do at all. Even better, you can then offer your mods for other people to download and install if they like your work.

Vac

Well, I suggest(ed) when I thought the changes I propose for the mod in question would benefit many more people. I can't make amazingly big and complex scripts like those in a mod such as Supreme Magicka, or a leveled list structure as incredibly twisted as the ones in FCOM, so I can only suggest the things I'd like to see in them and hope they are well liked enough (like most people here do I guess). But for minor mods, yeah, I can mod the small stuff of them. In any case, as I said I don't think I'll "suggest" anything again. To each one with his game.
I don't even play Oblivion that much now, it has probably been the game I've liked the most in my life (to many true gamers dismay I guess, I'm quite young and haven't tried too many games), with its lore and background. I even discovered the meaning of the word "mod" with it. But I think its time for me to move on to more serious stuff.
Well, I hope we can keep on topic now.

I'm the first to admin that I've got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the UOP (let's summarize many earlier discussions about techniques rightfully frowned upon with "I don't use other mods, so I don't see an issue", and leave it at that). However saying that I've got a campaign going on against it isn't really the case - after all I strongly recommend all new players to use the UOP series (base mod list). However I don't like the direction the UOP is heading, and heading for quite some time. It's not a campaign - I'm trying to prevent something that I feel would be detrimental for both mod users and modders.

The thing with the UOP is the special place it holds. It's supposed to be one of the most basic additions to Oblivion. One that's there to fix bugs present in the original game. Often when new players ask for which mods to get, many regulars say "only mod everyone should use is the UOP, rest is a matter of taste". The implicit reason here is that the UOP fixes genuine bugs, but lets the rest of the Oblivion experience untouched and in the hands of the player.

Several mods were, for this very purpose, not included in the UOP. Example given you could argue that Harvest Flora is a purely visual fix, one that should be in the game from the very beginning. Nevertheless it wasn't included, because it's an actual change in Oblivion's vision. That plants stay unchanged even when harvested wasn't a bug, therefore there was no "bug fix" included. Of course you could call out the Vanilla system as "broken by design", and I won't argue about it - I love Harvest Flora - but it doesn't belong into a patch.

Otherwise you end up with a situation like "Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines". There once was an unofficial patch, too. Then it began to restore content (kind of like the Kotor 2 Restoration project, except that it got actually released). Then it began to change quest outcomes. Then it began to change the balancing...
,,, and then not only one but two alternative unofficial patches emerged, that have the sole purpose of only fixing bugs. In one case because in it's author's opinions the original unofficial patch strayed too far from it's origins. Add insult to injury, the second unofficial patch fork (so the third unofficial patch available) was done by the author of the now-bloated original unofficial patch, to offer an alternative to the slimmer second unofficial patch. And then the first unofficial patch got renamed to reflect it's expanded content. If your head hurts now, you may understand what I try to talk about.

The only justification for the position in the community that the UOP holds, and for it's very name, is that it's the unofficial oblivion patch. It's not "Oblivion ReInvisioned". Once you go that route, by changing aspects of the games on the basis of possible improvements and alterations, something goes wrong. Because then you can justify adding anything to the patch, and sooner or later you begin to alienate people by doing so. We've already talked about Harvest Flora. Now what about leveling quest awards? Creature statistics? Maybe even the level scaling itself?

Do I overexaggerate the situation? Maybe, maybe not. The most prominent German patch mod went that route, later integrating everything from parts of Fran's, parts of Supreme Magicka, House Improvements, and a lot of other mods. Compatibility hilarity ensued. In it's defense at least you could say it wasn't named "unofficial patch", but it once had the same status. Note the past tense - "had". I am not making this up - I had to explain a lot to users that it was their patch mod that increased Magicka regeneration drastically, that it was their patch mod including this and this spell. People didn't realized this, because they didn't expect it. So they attributed unexpected Oblivion behavior to other mods.

And that's the catch: We know the expections coming with the UOP, which is that it's a patch. If aspects are added to it that are not fixes of actual issues, but design decisions, it violates the patch nature. No one is stopping anyone from expanding the UOP to be something like an "Oblivion ReInvisioned", but it shouldn't be called UOP then, and the UOP shouldn't include such aspects.

Again, I confess that I'm not on good terms with the UOP. After I read "Spells acquired from runestones have been made lesser powers and immune to silencing." I've taken this literally - which it hopefully isn't. Background: The only spells you aquire from runestones are the doomstone spells, the others aren't aquired at all. I haven't thought about the cast-when-activated spells, which are hopefully ment, so I likely have overreacted here. For that I am sorry and wish to apologize.

Nevertheless please understand that this speaks for the importance of the UOP - we, as modders, must expect that most mod users are using it. Therefore I at least have a strong interest to not see any kind of new strange mod interactions caused by it. In this regard the UOP is not like many other mods, but it's very widespread and nearly universally used. So if the UOP messes something up or causes mod interaction, it's going to hit you hard. (And did so in the past.)

And that's the next big problem if anything in addition to clear bug fixes get added: You don't know what will happen to the game, especially in a heavily modded environment. Sooner or later, as has both VtM: Bloodlines and the "unofficial German equivalent patch" shown there's a high likelyhood for a development fork, which will only add to the confusion of new players and not be beneficial for the community at large. And in addition modder can even less expect what will happen or can be expected on players' installations.

This does not contain an actual judgement of the added content - maybe boars with resist magic work better, maybe they don't. It's just not UOP area to trespass on. Neither are other gameplay changes not based on clearly bug fixes so. Again, if you want "Oblivion ReInvisioned", you've got every right to do so. Just don't name or advertise it as unofficial patch then (or unofficial unofficial patch).

This holds the risk to make the situation worse for the players and modders. Which may lead to a development fork, that in itself is a confusing thing not making matters easier. Hope this much too lengthy explanation clears the air a bit .

Well I hate to break it to you Arthmoor, but I found a problem and this one is not about taste or 'direction of modding that needs to be managed.'

The missing wall at the south west corner or Cheydinhal was fixed, but the section just north of the east gate remains torn as I reported last time.

Not game breaking obviously, but it sure don't help them MMM archers stay up there (not that they really need any help in falling).

Sorry, I'm looking at the east gate area in the CS now and see no such thing with only the UOP loaded up. It would be much faster in the future to report this sort of thing with a formID and/or a screenshot showing it.

Well I did post a screen shot before - 2nd one here: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=968536&view=findpost&p=15279972

but you are right no form ID - which is 00185c23
new pic: http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo54/psymon11b/ScreenShot46.jpg really only can see from a few angles.

Well ... I see no problem there.
Look at development of COBL: the esm is unintrusive and all intrusive changes are placed in "cobl tweaks.esp"
Why not to do the same with UOP? like the main esp is fixes only as people stated, and the new paired esp, let call "UOP intrusive.esp" which have added the controversive things get out of main esp, and give a warning that "UOP intrusive.esp" has some changes that some people may don't want to, and only the main esp is fully recommended to use, and "UOP intrusive.esp" is to be used at will

so the "UOP intrusive.esp" could contain the additional loot in starting dungeon, boar changes and so on - and any things that some people think that should be in UOP esp but rest think to leave it out of UOP

This.

Seeing bg2408 and Arthmoor squabbling makes me sad.

I sincerely appreciate Arthmoor for uop hotfix. :goodjob:

I wonder why some people have unusual sensitivity to mods/fixes/patches/updates...etc which they don't like. If you don't like a mod or think it inappropriate from your point of view, Just Do Not Use It. You are not forced to use it at all. Furthermore, you can always download and install previous version 3.2.0 in this case. If 3.2.0 is no longer unattainable, I DO agree with those people who claiming that Arthmoor's fix is inconsistent with the idea of UOP. But this is not the case.

Thanks again for spending your precious time to make hotfixes, Arthmoor.

When the UOP messes something up (and I speak of experience here, mind you), then you as a mod maker can end up quickly drowned in "bug reports".

As I tried to explain the overly long post above, when the UOP messes something, if you're a modder in the affected modding area it will hit you hard, regardless if you use it or not!

And yes, due to using a particulary dirty modding technique (to which clean alternatives exist and are used by 99,99% of all other modders) the UOP had played whack-a-mole with a number of mods already. Nothing beats coming online and seeing 150+ bug reports all caused because the UOP now has decided to hit your mod with some nice mod interaction megaglitch, that just used to have hit another mod before.

I have no qualms of writing in my readmes "does not work with the unofficial patch". In fact I've done so for the German equivalent patch mentioned in the overlong post of me above. Needless to say I haven't bothered since then to release anything for that whole community at all anymore.

Somehow I more and more felt throughout the year that this may be the best stance for the English community, too . Sorry for the rant, as I've said I'm not on good terms with the UOP, and I don't deny it. This however doesn't invalidate my point that when working on the UOP one should be careful and be aware of the responsibility associated with it.

...and the same do I. But I still agree with others that by principle, things like added resistances should not be part of the UOP.

That is a generally sound view, but in the case of what is supposed to be the one mod every mod user has common, it is a short-sighted and bad advice. bg2408 has explained why (quite lengthy), so you could at least take your time to tell what's wrong with his argumentation instead of just acting like you've not read it (maybe you haven't?).

Now that is something I agree too.

I can understand and agree with what you're saying (just to make sure, of course I've read bg2408's post before replying to this topic). I can admit that describing Quarn and Kivan as authors of UOP hotfixes in the mod description (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27710) may cause confusion and this should be corrected. Naming 'Unofficial' UOP hotfixes might also be a good idea and convenient for some people. But even if you think so, I think you'd better limit yourself to a suggestion. Why do you stick to what you think right and keep trying to convince Arthmoor or other people? What makes you so sure you're right? Every person is different! Please respect different wills and choices.

Everyone can still download UOP 3.2.0. Is it pulled down and no longer available? If you think UOP Hotfixes are not proper release, just choose not to use it. In case you're a modder and don't want your people to use Arthmoor's UOP Hotfixes, just mention that your mod is compatible with v3.2.0 but not with hotfixes. If you want to advice newbies to use UOP, you can just inform them that Arthmoor's UOP hotfixes includes some system tweaks which they may don't want to use. Is there any problem? I don't think so.