GUIDE Mythic Dawn: Gateway to Oblivion WIP

[AmeerHM]

Lol, say goodbye to ever running oblivion on an SSD then.

 

Would you say you've finished making amendments to the Conflicting Textures section now?

[hishutup]

For now, yes but no promises.

Like I said, I am going to change the instructions around a llittle and there are some other sections that I need to update that I passed up

[AmeerHM]

Alright, cool - I guess I can bid farewell to ideas of actually playing the game then... Haha.

 

I noticed something earlier today that has been prevalent in all my oblivion installs on the pc, there's a whining buzzing sound that is pretty much always present. Do you have something like this? I'd assume it wouldn't be present with headphones but with 5.1 and 2.1 surround, it sticks about.

[hishutup]

Is it possible to record it because I dont think I have?

[AmeerHM]

Turned out it was sound hardware acceleration. :| gotta love it

 

Edit 1: Dude, do you play with deadly reflexes 6? What is your opinion on the mod and what do you think about its stability and wealth of bugs? Lol

 

Edit 2: I had couple suggestions for the combat mods' section of the guide. Perhaps instead of supporting DR6, maybe switch to supporting DR5 as a orange mod and perhaps have a look at vanilla combat enhanced (very new and well-supported mod), it overwrites a few files in FCOM, so it should be installed later. The author also has a magic equilivant (Balanced Magic). Please have a look at this guys mods; I personally find it hard to immerse myself into a TES game where NPCs are dodging like jet li and shield bashing me airborne! This guy has made some great attempts at bringing vanilla combat up to par, almost like some of the skyrim overhauls (ultimate combat and Skyre come to mind).

Edited May 6, 2015 by AmeerHM

[hishutup]

I am not looking at the combat overhauls and my memory is fuzzy on which I liked more.

 

I changed some stuff in the beginning to support unpacking the mod to projects.

Should I have people store the inis as a separate project or leave them with the mod.

The reason for separating is when updating, people dont have to redo any ini edits that they previously made. The downside is that there is a little more clutter.

 

EDIT: I need to do some instruction rewording to support the new method but its pretty minor.

EDIT2: I need to change the method for cleaned mods.

[AmeerHM]

Looks good man.

 

I have some updates for you too.

 

I think you should make "talk with your hands" an extended mod - very nice addition to the game and it doesn't break anything, just adds to the conversations with NPCs. Maybe also put enhanced economy in there as well, there are patches available for Better Cities. Oblivifall mods are also very nice and polished, maybe add them somewhere? My ini file for talkwithyourhands is pretty A*, so if you want that at some point, I'll upload it for you. I found a really good combat mod, I'm sure you've heard of it as you have his other mods in the guide, Duke Patricks Melee Combat. The guy was an RP swordsman or something, he has a book on medievel martial arts combat, his mod is so comprehensive it has a 7000 word guide he's written for it. Best thing is... You only need to install the mod, no dependencies :D

 

I was doing some testing with RoC, UL and LtPD. 

 

The RoC patches are not compatible with UL release 173 - there are some out of place bridges here and there. I'm rolling back to UL 172 and shall give you some updates on that. UPDATE! Rolling back to UL compilation 172 did NOT help, there's still a few out-of-place bridges. I've commented on Arthmoor's mod and hopefully he'll fix the issue; though another user had a similar issue and posted back early this year and hadn't received a reply. Maybe he isn't updating his Oblivion mods now?

 

Also, another tragic identification... TES4LODGEN kinda breaks ROC + LtPD + BC. Water reflections will periodically flash neon green and red, I have a screenshot where I caught it: https://imgur.com/Gvtg2kS - I haven't found a fix for that yet, apart from not running TES4LODGEN or tes4ll; maybe it has something to do with the waters? I'll have to ask the OR creater. UPDATE! This issue is due to enable water reflections of everything in the .ini file; the readme in Oblivion Reloaded has a few "DO NOT DO"s and this is one of them. I think, in the guide, remove that alteration, leave waterreflections=0 on the four you've change to one. This is only a issue if you run tes4ll or TES4LODGEN, though - with vanilla LODs (missing LODs everywhere), you'll be fine.

 

Another UPDATE: I've uninstalled the game again (probably like the eighth time in doing so). I will be doing another installation following the guide again in around a weeks time, so I will let you know how the new additions you undoubtedly churn out ;) are. A few things to note though, I think make a warning on roads of cyrodiil; there are a LOT of tears in the imperial isle and it's a bit unstable too, I have CTD'd in the guard houses they've added, the new patches released for it are not up to date. Please think about adding my mod suggestions :p talk with your hands, enhanced economy and oblivifall are amazing for upping the immersion factor.

 

Regardless, peace out, bruh!

Edited May 8, 2015 by AmeerHM

[hishutup]

I keep telling you, hold off on it because there are several things that need updating.

I am still kinda changing stuff around depending on your input because its the more input that I have received in a long time and thank you for that.

 

As you may know the "Refresh Installers" thing is bloody annoying.

There are two options to reduce this.

I can leave "Auto Refresh" enabled and then have people disable the refresh for certain mods OR I can disable "Auto Refresh" and tell people to "Refresh" the mod if they make a change.

 

The auto refresh projects is this. 

and to refresh a mod, rightclick it and select refresh.

As for having WB skip the refresh on a specific mod you can right click and select "Don't Refresh"

 

 

EDIT: BTW disable the steam overlay.

 

EDIT: Apparently I found the source of the crashes, its Mesh Improvement.

[Dennai]

For what is worth, I'll let you know that Better Cities will update soon and its makers plan it to be their last major release. After that, the idea is just to release bugfixes and the like.

 

  LtPD would be fully integrated and optimized in this upcoming BC release.

 

Another thing to keep an eye on is the ever-involving Oblivion Reloaded, that is sucessfully replacing OBGE and on top of that, bringing better performance and estability to Oblivion.

[AmeerHM]

Hishutup, the guide's looking really good, very clear and the pictures you have added really do add some character.

 

Dennai, what would you advise then? Should we hold off installing LtPD and just wait for BC release?

[Dennai]

 

Dennai, what would you advise then? Should we hold off installing LtPD and just wait for BC release?

 First, I am not part of the team who are developping and maintaining Better Cities, so take my opinion for what is worth.

 

 With that disclaimer out of the way, yes, I do recommend to wait for the next BC release, since it will be out fairly soon and it will include not only a LtPD implemented with Imperial IC, but also an updated LtPD.

 

To quote, "display name is already in use", lead developer of LtPD:

 

"Every city (except the Imperial City) will be expanded with newly integrated content either within extended walls or otherwise outside the walls, while the Imperial City will gain an aquaduct and fountains. This is expected to be the last major update to Better Cities, leaving just fixes and finishing up any quests we started on but never got around to finishing for

releases."

 

Questioned about the aquaduct and fountains part:

 

"Let the People Drink has been fully integrated into Better Cities, with permission from Qazaaq, though I have upscaled the aquaduct slightly."

 

And elaborating further:

 

"

Including the quest, yes. However the content outside the IC walls (and therefore the quest itself) will be in "Better Cities - Imperial Isle.esp" which is an optional file. If this ESP is not used, then the fountains within the city will all be working. Our Cobl patch (also optional) will handle the Cobl integration with the water sources being drinkable, so there is no need for multiple versions like LtPD had.

 

Any existing compatibility patch for LtPD will not work with BC, even if it is not dependent on the LtPD ESP, because I have upscaled the aqueduct, which required changing all the points where the aqueduct touches the ground - I have however minimised the edits around the aqueduct to prevent the impact on other mods being more than absolutely necessary.

 

That said, I have no knowledge of any already known conflicts with LtPD itself (such as OOO) - now that you have told me of OOO I shall note that to check with BC before we release.

 

There is already a compatibility patch for UL:II which has/will be updated as necessary, someone else has been working on patches for BC:II so I may leave that to them."

 

   All those comments made this very month. I am asuming that it will be released in a matter of weeks.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Dennai

[dreamer1986]

Great news, Dennai, thank you :) . Once Hishutup updates the guide, I will install Better Cities as well.

Edited May 19, 2015 by dreamer1986

[AmeerHM]

Thank you for that awesome, detailed post, Dennai! :)

 

I had a question regarding the FCOM installation, is there a reason why you don't install OOO's knights of the nine esp file?

[hishutup]

I think I read somewhere that its included in FCOM's

I remember one mods optionals more/less being merged into FCOMs

[AmeerHM]

I think I read somewhere that its included in FCOM's

I remember one mods optionals more/less being merged into FCOMs

Sweet, thanks for the reply man.