Oblivion Remastered

[AndalayBay]

Oblivion remastered has been released. It looks awesome! It also looks like Oblivion XP might be obsolete. We'll see what the impact on mods will be. I can say there are a lot of mods I won't need anymore.

[AndalayBay]

It looks like it’s a moot point: no mod support in the remaster.

[Vorians]

No official support. But it still uses ESM/P and BSA files, and supposedly the ESM/P files are identical to those from the original game (there are new files and directories containing new filetypes overriding the original files).

It is technically possible to mod the game using ESPs, but the majority of existing ESPs (or any created with existing tools) will crash the game. Some 3rd party tools will need updating or creating, and the override files will need to be identified as to how they work first.

 

The game's too expensive to interest me without at least an 80% discount.

[AndalayBay]

Yeah, Slof and I were chatting about it and we feel the same way. Wait for it to be on sale. Also wait to see if there are some patches to stabilize it.

[AndalayBay]

Well I'll be taking a look at it sooner than expected. A fan of Oblivion XP just gifted me the game.

[AlienSlof]

Hello!

Had my first CTD yay!

Looks pretty nice so far, though i wish there was more choice in the character creation.

Love the Borg theme - I feel at home as I have a bionic hip!

[AndalayBay]

Yes, you have been assimilated. Welcome aboard!

I'm really not liking the new NPC/character look. My guy is an ugly bastard no matter how many randomizes I select.

[Vorians]

Then you'd better wait for OCO to be ported over. I've already been asked to transfer Better Cities into ObRe.

[AndalayBay]

I saw Arthmoor on Steam last night so I guess he's looking at stuff too. It will be interesting to see how much work we have to do.

[Vorians]

ESM/P files will simply (technically speaking) work straight from the original Oblivion. It's the new files added in ObRe which alter the original ESM/P content for the new hybrid game engine which needs making sense of, and then apparently ESM/Ps require JSON files to be loaded by the game.

[AlienSlof]

I quite like my khajiit guy, but cats are generally cuter than people anyway!

I'm really quite impressed with the horses this time - they move like real horses, turn their heads when we turn and they have a full set of gaits. It's pretty chill to just trot steadily through the landscape in no particular hurry.

I'm already thinking about new textures for them...

[AndalayBay]

7 minutes ago, Vorians said:

ESM/P files will simply (technically speaking) work straight from the original Oblivion. It's the new files added in ObRe which alter the original ESM/P content for the new hybrid game engine which needs making sense of, and then apparently ESM/Ps require JSON files to be loaded by the game.

Some folks have clearly sussed out more than we have. Where is this discussion taking place?

7 minutes ago, AlienSlof said:

I quite like my khajiit guy, but cats are generally cuter than people anyway!

I'm really quite impressed with the horses this time - they move like real horses, turn their heads when we turn and they have a full set of gaits. It's pretty chill to just trot steadily through the landscape in no particular hurry.

I'm already thinking about new textures for them...

I haven't been able to play that much yet. I'm already looking to skip the tutorial.

[Vorians]

And I don't own the game, so must take your word for it that the horses finally look good.

 

There was a news post yesterday on Nexus providing some info, and before that I read on afkmods that Arthmoor did a CRC comparison on the ESM/Ps and found they're the same files, and that there are new files and folders within the game directory.

Somewhere I read that most existing ESPs dropped into the folder either crash the game, or simply don't change anything (this is believed to be due to those new files overriding the ESM/P files). But some people have released ESP mods so it is possible to make certain edits appear in-game.

Another person posted a screenshot showing an Oblivion mod copied into ObRe which contained placed objects in the worldspace (I think it was a house mod). Some objects existed where expected, most were missing, and attempting to enter the mod-added interior crashed the game.

[AndalayBay]

Jimi is working on getting Gecko pointed to the new game. Steam family sharing has been enabled, so we can both install and play it.

My focus is on Black Marsh.

[Jimi diGriz]

1 hour ago, AndalayBay said:

Jimi is working on getting Gecko pointed to the new game.

I just added some code to handle the new directory structure for the Steam install.  I've had a quick look; no surprises so far.

[AlienSlof]

I'm sorry to say that no matter what I've tried, the game simply will not start. I followed several online guides to try different things, with no success whatsoever. I'm going to try with a tech-savvy friend this afternoon, but if it still doesn't work, that's it.

I won't be modding it any time soon. 😞

Sorry if me playing again got anyone's hopes up.

[AndalayBay]

You can't get it to run without any mods? What OS are you running? What are your machine specs?

I've had no problems running it. I'm on Windows 10. I've actually been running with OBSE Remastered. It's easier to start it that way. I have Steam disabled as much as possible, so no cloud saves and no overlay.

[AlienSlof]

I'll copy what I wrote on Nexus asking for help:

The previous day, I cleared out some dungeons, mines and camps along the way to Kvatch. No problem. Shut down the gate and rescued Martin. Great. Sold all my unwanted stuff, again, no problem. Saved game and quit for the day. Come next day, I get ready to escort Martin to Weynon Priory - straight forward, should be no problem...

...except my game now won't even start up. It either crashes or just black screens and I can't even reach the main manu. Just nothing. I updated any mods that required it - I only have a handful of them on anyway at this point. Still no joy.

I later learned that there is a game-breaking bug linked to Cursed Mine - which just happened to be one of the places I cleared out on my travels. It seems that this particular mine breaks the game completely. There are even memes about it being 'cursed'!

Game won't even start, so I can't even just start again with an all new game. Oblivion is litereally dead at this time, completely unusable in any way.

Has anyone else encountered this, or know of a way to fix it? I'm about ready to uninstall the thing and put the old one back on! Or even just write it off as a waste of effort and go play something else. I know it's not technically mod related, but people here might know or have encountered this issue themselves.

Can anyone here enlighten me or suggest stuff to try?

It was running absolutely fine through OBSE, no problems at all. Come to the game the following day having not touched anything, or updated anything and it wouldn't start.

Today, with the help of my tech-savvy friend I can actually start it, but it runs like crap and freezes after a few minutes, even on a new game with all mods switched off. It is still pretty much unplayable. It won't load my last save at all any more, and even starting a new game, it's not good.

I still have a couple of things to try, but my hope isn't good. I don't know why it just stopped working fine.

[Vorians]

If you installed any "performance improving" INI mods, delete them. They've been found to be worthless and may contain something upsetting the game for you.

Try removing OBSE64 and UE4SS.

If you installed a mod which decompresses the base game's ESM, ESPs and/or BSAs, remove it, and revert to the original files. Verify files through Steam (if Steam-bought).

Delete any of the game's INIs you've tweaked to revert settings to default (as far as I can tell these are now stored in \Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\ not in the Documents folder - and may be completely ignored now anyway).

[AndalayBay]

Yes, as Vorians said. I've heard of the crap about decompressing the game's files. It's crap and doesn't improve performance.

The individual records in the plugins are compressed. You have to decompress them to read them with tools like Gecko.

[AlienSlof]

The only thing Iused was OBSE - mostly to run the 'NL Remover' mod. I didn't touch any ini files or that other stuff. I did run it without OBSE but it ran like utter crap then froze. I uninstalled it!

It will remain uninstalled until it's been patched a couple of times and is stable enough to run mods. A friend of mine is looking into porting some of my mods over, so I'd want those on. Not to mention I'd like to make a Ragdoll Khajiit in honour of one of my noe deceased cats.

[AndalayBay]

I'm using OBSE to make it easier to start the game. I'm too busy with Black Marsh to play at the moment.

Are you up and running again now? I still think it's too early to be using or creating mods.

[AlienSlof]

No, it's staying uninstalled until it's properly patched a few times. I don't want to be constantly having to restart the game should this keep happening. I used OBSE for the NL thing and had just a couple of mods on, passive wildlife and summonable chest (bag of holding sort of thing as it's a drag otherwise!). That was it. Nothing hugely scripty or texture-heavy. Bit of a shame, but it is what it is. I am too old to keep retracing my steps over and over without progressing.

Modding it isn't a big deal as I'm still working on another project right now anyway.  

[AndalayBay]

I'm getting a lot of pressure to get Oblivion XP ported! I told them it's going to be a ways off. I just hope someone doesn't beat me to it.

They're trying to get the unofficial patch working. There have been several releases already. I just wish Bethesda would release a CS of some sort.

[Vorians]

Well you can't port Oblivion XP if it depends on OBSE, there's no script extension yet in OBSE64. Once OBSE script functions/commands are usable I should think Oblivion XP would be fairly easy to port across since (with one exception) it only contains new records, and only places one object into the game-world.

 

As far as I'm aware the UORP as-is is working fine (if stripped back to contain only fixes which are confirmed to do anything in ObRe).

 

I've had multiple requests to port Better Cities and one request to port Open Imperial City over, but both are heavily dependent on content which to date is not moddable, so not happening yet.