Oblivion Performance and Utility Mods Options

[SubRosa]

I did some tinkering with Oblivion and its array of helpful mods today, and thought I would share some of my discoveries.

All of these require OBSE

Oblivion Display Tweaks = this helps with microstutter and other things. It is compatible with OSR, but only if you Turn off bReplaceGetTickCount in Oblivion Stutter Remover's .ini file.

Oblivion Stutter Remover = of course.

OSR Optimized .Ini File = Is just the .ini for OSR, and has the bReplaceGetTickCount disables, among other tweaks.

Engine Bug Fixes = A bunch of bug fixes.

SkyBSA = Changes the way Oblivion puts BSA assets in your load order to act the same way Skyrim does, namely by no longer mucking with timestamps, and just going by your load order.

[Lena Wolf]

Very interesting to read about your tools, Macole - thank you! Wow, that's a lot of tools... I only use Wrye Bash, I do all my installs manually. Well, I also use the BSA Commander to view, pack and unpack BSA archives, and sometimes I use a command line tool "bsarch" to pack archives if that's more convenient of if the Commander fails.

So the point with the SkyBSA mod was that it was supposed to make Oblivion completely ignore time stamps on BSA archives and always follow the load order. This implies that Archive Invalidation flags would be ignored too. The rule of SkyBSA was supposed to be this: load BSA archives according to the load order overwriting assets as you go, then load loose files from disk on top always overwriting BSA archives. And this rule does not seem to hold in my setup.

I have a few questions about your notes on Wrye Bash, please.

- Lock the load order. What do you mean by that? My version of Wrye Bash does not have any special option to lock anything... It is distressing to think that the load order could be somehow slipping.

- Sometimes alter time stamps. What do you mean by "sometimes"? My Bash always alters time stamps of all the ESPs on the list to bring them in line with the load order. It does this automatically as soon as I start it up, without asking me and I cannot turn it off! Just as well, as it seems important. When I move mods on the list to change the order, it immediately updates all relevant time stamps to match.

[macole]

I have a few questions about your notes on Wrye Bash, please.

- Lock the load order. What do you mean by that? My version of Wrye Bash does not have any special option to lock anything... It is distressing to think that the load order could be somehow slipping.

- Sometimes alter time stamps. What do you mean by "sometimes"? My Bash always alters time stamps of all the ESPs on the list to bring them in line with the load order. It does this automatically as soon as I start it up, without asking me and I cannot turn it off! Just as well, as it seems important. When I move mods on the list to change the order, it immediately updates all relevant time stamps to match.

I also have used BSA Commander at times.

Ok here I go trying to explain how something work that I barely understand the workings of.
What do I mean by "sometimes". Very rarely, hardly ever, once in a blue moon. Well I guess I’m being confusing because it’s been a long time since I didn’t use a mod installer of some kind. I need to rethink the process a bit.

Ok let’s try this, I was talking about changing BSA install order. Say for example I install three BSA files in this order A, B, C and I want to add a fourth D. Oblivion will assign an order of A, B, C, D. Now for various reasons I want to change the order to A,B, D, C. To do that you would change the timestamp using either OBMM or WBash. I’ve done this maybe once or twice for Oblivion. In a way it was easier with Morrowind, you just went to the .ini file and manually typed it in where you wanted it to go..

Lock the load order.
FYI, I’m using WBash v307.20 standalone version.
In the MODs tab (see picture) right click on the File column header.
In the drop down box find and active Lock Load Order. Your .esp load order will then be saved. So unless you unlock, resort, and then lock order again WryeBash will revert to this saved locked order whenever WBash refreshes data/starts up.
If you wish to alter the position of an .esp or resort the entire file you would have to unlock, reposition the mod or mods, and then lock the load order again to save it. Otherwise WBash will try to sort the .esp load order and as we know it that doesn’t always work right.

Hope that helps but now you're probably more confused than before. It's like my old manager would say, "Mike, you know what you're doing but no one else can understand how what you do works."