Oblivion General Technical Issues Thread, What’s buggin’ yas? Options

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

I didn’t see a thread for general issues with Oblivion that has been posted in in the last decade, so I decided to make a new one, because yesterday I ran into an issue that I think is pretty major.

I decided that I wanted to add the Wizard’s Tower DLC to Saryn’s game before she went up north to Bruma for her last recommendation. So I went to the Microsoft Store on the Xbox Series X and tried to purchase and download it. First of all, it’s weird that I needed to purchase it because I’m positive I had already done so many years ago before my Xbox360 died. Ok whatever, I thought it was probably just because it was so long ago and it was less than $2. It gave an error message saying something went wrong and to try again later. I stopped after that and forgot about it for a few days and tried again. Same error message. I looked it up to see if there were known issues with this, and sure enough, there were. I tried things people said worked for them but no dice. I tried about 20 times or so. This morning I looked at my bank account. It charged me each time I tried. I had to contact Microsoft support and now I have refunds pending, but still no Wizard Tower DLC. Frankly, I’m not sure if you can even get this DLC on Xbox anymore since they shut down the Xbox360 storefront like just last month. I don’t expect this to be resolved, but I thought I would make a post about my experience to serve as a warning for anyone else trying to get this DLC on Xbox Series X/S or XboxOne.

[Renee]

It is amazing my 360 still runs. Got it in 2012. Granted, becoming more of a PC gamer over the years has extended my 360's life, methinks. I only play Mass Effect on Xbox once in a while, and occasional Skyrim (with Kinect voice commands) once it gets cold outside.

Well, Time to get my Oblivion back & running, Khajiit. Main difference: this time I'm going to document the process, in this thread! I already got the base game installed a week or two ago (Oblivion, Shivering Isles, Knights.esm) so that's a half-hour or so out of the way.

There's gonna be a lot of text in this post, just to warn ya! I feel it's necessary, though.

The error I made when rebuilding Morrowind and Fallout 3 in July and August is I would simply install the game. Then the utilities, then the patches, and finally the mods. Load up the game, and nothing! CTD on launch or whatever. And now I'm needing to work backwards; troubleshooting when I should be playing.

So today, my plan is to have a gamesave ready; actually two saves. Snaat Rayag the skooma dealer, Saves 1 and 948. Save 1 is, of course, his Imperial Prison beginning, circa 2014. Save 948 is from this past spring, some time in May. Save 1, obviously, includes zero mods, whereas 948 includes everything. His game is lighter than some of my others though, no Better Cities in his world for instance. This is why it'll be better to start with him. Less content, less potential headaches.

As I add this and add that, I'll occasionally start up his game. And if there are any problems, it'll be easier to track them. -- One thing I did right over the years is I've gotten into the habit of saving the folder structure for all my games on an external disc. This way, I can see how my Oblivion {or any other game with mods} was structured when it worked in the past.


1). Going into Documents > My Games > Oblivion and change Oblivion.ini's [Display] > SScreenShotBaseName to reflect the character and the time (Snaaty_Summer_2024). I always do this, which makes keeping screenshots from cluttering under the same name.

2). Next come the utilities, starting with OBSE. At this point, I've got three windows open: from left to right.

First window is my Downloads folder. As mentioned, I've saved all OB archives here.
Second window is empty.
Third window is my Modded Oblivion folder, where the game lives.

So the process literally becomes like a factory conveyor belt. Start with the Downloads > Utilities folder. Right-click & extract OBSE's archive into the empty window (so I can see if the archive includes any sort of folder structure). And then cut/paste everything in this folder into Modded Oblivion, right next to Oblivion.exe. Or the Data folder or wherever the folder structure calls. This 3-step process continues with every archive I'm installing, except archives which'll become OMODs or installed through Wrye Bash.

3). I made the OBSE_Loader into a desktop icon. Then right-clicked on this icon and went into Properties so I could change the nondescript loader icon to the proper Oblivion icon.

Alright, let's start the game! I loaded Save 1. No point trying to start Save 948; chances are that save relies on all kinds of junk, and will CTD right away.

4). Game loaded fine, but I can't move my character, or do anything with the menus. Ah, forgot to load up X-padder! Exited thegame, got my 'Oblivion - Variable Movement' template loaded. There we go. (I use two templates for OB: one of them makes the movement joysticks behave similar to consoles, with variable movement; the other template focues on 2-speed movement. 2-speed is for when I want to use Autowalk, usually during longer journeys.)

5). Next comes OBSE - Elys Universal Silent Voice, which keeps text onscreen whenever mod-added dialog occurs, but there's no voice. I actually have no idea where these files are supposed to go, and there's no Readme in the archive.

....And see, THIS is why it's good I still have the old folder structure on that external drive. Turns out, the four files in Elys go into Data > OBSE. I could've gone online to NEXUS (or wherever) and figured out where they're supposed to go. But I just saved X amount of time looking up my old folder structure instead.

6). I began going alphabetically through Downloads > Utilities folder, so next comes BOSS. My Downloads folder includes three versions of BOSS (what the...?) so it's a good thing I left myself a Notepad file (dated 11/9/2016) explaining why there are three archives. Right, 2.31_Installer is what I'm supposed to use. I included the other two versions "for reference" whatever that means. Perhaps in the past I tried versions 2.30 and 2.31 to see which one worked best.

BOSS went right into the main Oblivion folder, made a shortcut to desktop, making it easy to "BOSS" around the load order in the future. 💻

7). TES Construction Set is next. Odd. Why doesn't this get installed off the disc like Morrowind's version? Anyway, the CS installs through a Wizard. Again, put it straight into the main Oblivion folder. There is also a patch I'm supposed to install, but I got an error message when trying to do so. Weird. Moving on...

8). Now the first manager: OBMM. This folder's a mess! And I didn't leave any notes. Started with OBMM Extended Setup, I guess. *shrug* Tried to install it, got an error message, yet I was able to put OBMM into the main OB folder, make a desktop icon, and everything works.

Started the game after making sure to turn on Oblivion.esm, Shivering Isles, and Knight.esm, Save 1. "Prisoner, get over by the window, NOW!" the guard says. All good.

9). TES4Edit was a simple download from the archive. Cut/paste into the main OB folder. I've got version 3.2, which is probably old.

10). Next comes a folder with five CPUUnpark files. I know what this is for (getting the best performance from the quad-core) but I've got no idea where this goes, and these files are not in the old folder path I've using for reference. However, These files are from Microsoft according to their File Description. So, double left-clicked on the main executable and after a minute or so, got a panel which had an "Unpark All" button. Clicked on that. Says it worked, I guess.

11). Ah, Wrye Bash. Only one file in this folder, version 304, which is an installer. Cool. Installed into the main OB folder. The program actually found this folder automatically.

Dang, Error message. WB will not even run, what the hell?

Well, that's enough for now. Gonna have to do some research and my temperance is waning. Roughly two hours have passed, so far.

Hope this isn't too intrusive of a post, CheshireKhajiit! I'll move it into my own thread if it is. But see, I just wanted to outline the processes we all go thru as we're trying to rebuild these games from scratch!

This post has been edited by Renee: Aug 31 2024, 01:30 AM