RG4's PC Modding Crisis Thread Options

[haute ecole rider]

Renee, ghastley is totally right.

It's never perfect. You play it a while, with what you think is the perfect, stable, mod load order, then something happens, or a stray thought occurs to you, and you start asking yourself "What if . . ."

As I was writing OHDH, I got to hankering after making Gweden Farm Julian's homestead after she evicted the squatters. So that led me into the bowels of the CS. I was successful at making the little cottage with the big basement Julian's own unique retreat (we see a bit of it at the end of OHDH). It was a thrilling accomplishment for me.

Of course, I wanted to do the same with the Leyawiin house for sale for my current character Tallei. It took some doing to make it work, but I was successful again. Imagine how pleased I was to run TES4Edit on that little plugin and find that it was clean!

So modding starts in small increments. You try changing something here, something there. Just little things, but they add more to your role-playing experience.

One thing I'd like to learn to do is how to take apart another's mod, evaluate it and figure out what makes it work, and then build one that is more my taste. But right now I'm too busy enjoying some excellent mods out there that add so much more to the game experience.

[Renee]

That's awesome, haute ecole rider, your little story there. I find messing around with mods and the console fun, but it can get frustrating for me in a flash. I can't wait till the day that I know how everything works. It's a slow process.

Sometimes when stuff goes right I get these weird tingles in my fingers and down my spine. Hard to describe. I get so nervous, though. It's nervous energy. Everything goes right and I'm like "damn, did I just figure that out?"


This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 23 2014, 11:02 PM

[SubRosa]

One thing I'd like to learn to do is how to take apart another's mod, evaluate it and figure out what makes it work, and then build one that is more my taste. But right now I'm too busy enjoying some excellent mods out there that add so much more to the game experience.

That is how I figured out how to do most things. I download a mod that does the same basic thing, and then reverse-engineer it to find out what the creator changed. Or I reverse-engineer things from the vanilla games and their expansions. For example, I created my Forest Friend Amulet for Oblivion by looking at the Boots of the Crusader from KOTN. That showed me how to make a script that would put the player in an animal-friendly faction whenever the item was worn, and take them out of it again whenever it was taken off.

There really is not much to it. After you open up the Creation Kit and either click on File -> Data, or click on the Load Master Plugins/Files button (they do the same thing), it brings up the Data window where you pick what .esp you want to edit. Find the one you want, select it, and then click on the Details button. It will show you every record the mod changes. You can sort the list by Type, which I find makes things much easier. It will also give you the ids in names, which makes it easy to find what you are looking for once you load the mod.

Of course it does not tell you what in the record was changed. You have to use either the UESP Wiki, or load the Creation Kit without the mod and take screenshots of the vanilla records and compare them.

[Renee]

This question is actually not a modding question. All the text on my screen is now 'stretched' horizontally. I have no idea why. I went on an internet search and found a site which says I need to change the aspect ratio of my screen from X to 4:3.

I did more digging and found that my screen actually is 4:3 already. It's 1024 x 768 which equals 4:3. I just checked this on a calculator. Any ides what to do?

Never mind. Figured it out. Tech support rules.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 28 2014, 01:07 AM

[Renee]

So I have Better Cities installed and whenever I start the game it crashes almost immediately. BC's FAQ has a Q & A devoted to this issue, here is what it says:

Q: 9 - After installing Better Cities, the game no longer loads! Why does the game close as soon as I try to start it?

A: This happens if you install an ESP from Better Cities which you shouldn't be using. Any ESP which is dependant on another ESM or ESP will cause the game to quit on start-up if the ESM or ESP it is dependant on is not in your Data folder.

All our compatibility patches are dependant on the mods they patch.

All our FPS patches are dependant on whichever specific city the FPS patch is named for.

So if you try to use one of our compatibility patches without installing the mod it patches, the game will fail to start. Remove that patch to resolve.

It talks about ESPs and ESMs being dependent on ESMs and ESPs in the Data folder. I checked this. All the relevant ESP/Ms are in the Data folder. I've got Better Cities.esp, Better Cities Full.esp, Better Cities Resources.esm, and Better Imperial City.esp checked ON in the Oblivion startup screen, and all 4 of these are in the Data folder as well.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 30 2014, 03:31 AM

[SubRosa]

They may need to be set to load in a particular order. I know .esms always have to load first, and .esps after. Likewise some of those .esps might have load before the others. Like that Resource.esp might have to load before the others.

Also, they might not all work together. It might be that you are only supposed to use one or two of the others. With a name like Better Cities Full, that one sounds like it does everything the other two do and more. Try it with just the Resources and Better Cities Full and see what happens. Or other combinations. See which specific .esp it is hanging on.

Finally, try going to the Nexus topic on it, and see if anyone else has had the same problem.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jan 30 2014, 03:41 AM

[haute ecole rider]

I once played with Better Cities, and here is the load order of all of the files (relative to each other):

Better Cities Resources.esm
Better Cities.esp
Better Cities Full.esp
Better Imperial City. esp
Better Cities Full FPS Patch.esp

There are also an entire list of patches to make Better Cities work with other mods, such as the Unique Landscapes mods.

Hope this helps!

[Renee]

Whoa, there's a BC patch? That's weird. I don't remember seeing that over at Nexus. Hmm.

I'll check that load order too. Thanx Miss Rosa and haute ecole rider.

And look how far we've come! A month ago if you asked me the diff between an esp and an esm I woulda been like

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 30 2014, 02:49 PM

[Renee]

Trying to use BOSS to sort load order. Because what's happening is all the BC files are in the order you've got, haute rider. The ESM is first, then BC.ESP, then BC Full.ESP, ... etc.

The problem is Better Cites.esp is way above a lot of other esps, including all the MMM stuff. All the other BC esps are at the bottom of the load order (where they're recommended to be by the BC team). So I'm trying to move Better Cities.esp above Better Cities Full.esp, can't figure it out, though.

In the GUI User Rules Manager, I somehow did manage to move Fundament.esm before Better Cities.esm last night. I did this by telling the Editor "For Fundment.esm Sort Item before Better Cities.esm, and this worked. Somehow. Can't move BC.esp down the list with the other BC esps, though.

Edit: Hmm, I notice there's a Notepad file called 'modlist', and it's got all the files listed in order. I wonder if it's safe to just cut & paste the BC file where (I think) it should be? I'm not going to do this until someone says it's okay, though. BOSS's ReadMe is (as usual) rather vague.

Edit 2: Maybe I should try re-installing Better Cities from scratch, but this time use Wrye Bash instead of OBMM. I'm try that tomorrow perhaps.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 31 2014, 02:38 AM

[haute ecole rider]

Actually, the way BOSS does it is correct. In my load order, I had like twenty other mods between the Better Cities.esp and the other esp files. So don't worry about that, it is supposed to do it that way. It has to do with what resources get overwritten. For Better Cities to work, some of the supplemental files have to come after certain other mods, such as the OOO, MMM, and the UL mods.

Make sure you have all the patches you need to make BC work with your other mods. I'm not sure, but I think those patches may be part of the main file. You should see them as checkable options in Wrye Bash when you install it. I can not remember (it's been so long ago) if it comes with a built-in Wizard that helps you cover all the bases.

Hope that helps!

[Renee]

Bash. You are right, I gotta use Bash. OBMM screwed up MMM for my game, so who's to say it didn't also screw up BC?

I'll try Bash next.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 31 2014, 04:47 PM

[Renee]

Better Cities is still not working, and it's driving me insane because it's such a popular mod, it's gotta be able to work, right? I did start all over from scratch installing BC, this time using Bash's wizard, installed the game in the specified order, yet the game crashes on startup.

So what I did is uninstalled everything except the BC files. All other mods (Fundament, Darker Dungeons, etc.) were uninstalled, and the game still crashes. I narrowed this down to the very core file: BetterCitiesResources.ESM and de-activated everything else. The game crashed. Then I tried de-activating this ESM while activating BetterCities.esp. NOW the game does not crash. So it's gotta have something to do with the master.

The master file needs to be activated, correct? .. Dumb question I guess. I'm not seeing any options for patches, but maybe I need to look again. Still, if everything else is de-activated except the BC resources master, why would it clash with some other file?

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Feb 1 2014, 05:16 PM

[haute ecole rider]

Renee, forgive me for not logging in sooner to see your latest plea.

Better Cities is one of the more complex mods, which is why I use Wrye Bash to install it. IMHO, Wrye Bash does a much better job installing these complex packages than does OBMM. There are actually very few mods I use OBMM for. The rest are all installed through Wrye Bash. The reason? WB shows me the install options that I can then install.

For your situation, I recommend you start here. This is where I went for questions, and there are detailed instructions for installing, including WB (which is the recommended method, BTW). I found it to be very helpful, and was able to get BC up and running (finally) when I followed the instructions there. I think if you take the time to read through the FAQs and the installation instructions, you will find it very helpful.

Good luck!

[Renee]

Okay ..... you.... are ...

not...

going....

to believe this. We figured it out. The problem, that is. I'm facepalming so hard right now. The problem was (drumroll....) I NEVER INSTALLED SHIVERING ISLES!!!

Last night my friend was going through the mod with me and he asked if I had installed SI yet? Um... no I hadn't. Anyways, we fixed the problem. Phew!

[King Coin]

... I think I did that once too! Glad you figured it out.


I don't have a lot of advice regarding Oblivion, I haven't played it since before 11/11/11, but I've been following this thread and silently cheering you on!

[Renee]

Truth is I would be nowhere without this community and a couple friends over at Beth.

Just saw my first sign of Better Cities. Bravil. Oh yeah, it's definitely different

[haute ecole rider]

I rather suspected either your Oblivion.esm was unpatched or you did not have SI installed. That's why I pointed you to the wiki for BC. Keep that linky handy!

And yes, BC makes everything different. So does UL. Having both BC and UL together is like . . . wow. I prefer Open Better Cities as the horses can enter the towns (though not the IC, for technical reasons apparently).

Glad you worked it out! Enjoy!

[Renee]

Trying to get CSR (Companion Share & Recruit) working tonight. The mod's been installed and activated, but I can't seem to get it working in the game. The Read Me is written on a program that I don't have on my computer, some office program, and they're asking for $99 a year to get this program started. No Way.

I managed to transform the text of this Read Me into a Word Pad file, but this turns the text into a huge wall. I broke this wall up a bit, but I'm not seeing any instructions on how to actually get this thing started. That's my question: where do I start?

Lady Saga found an NPC adventurer in some goblin fort. The guy is added by MMM, so this could be the reason why there are no options to try and recruit him. Does this mod only work with vanilla NPCs? .. And if so, how do I get it working.


This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Mar 1 2014, 04:06 AM

[Acadian]

Generally speaking, CSR works for NPCs who have 'Rumors' enabled as a topic. These NPC should also now have a 'Friend' topic. If their disposition toward you is reasonable, they will let you go into their inventory or consent to join you.

[Renee]

Oh okay thanks. Gotta be the fact that this is an MMM NPC because his disp was 84 towards my elf. She even bribed him to boost it to this level and there's no Friend option.

Takes care of that, thanks.