Nerdy And Loving It

I looked this up recently and found that there wasn’t a lot of information about it, so I thought I’d share.

First, Hearthstone Deck Tracker is a tool to show pertinent information about Hearthstone while you play. Many people use it on stream to show the viewers what is in their deck and what cards have been played. Some people think it’s cheating and refuse to use it, while others don’t use it simply  because they don’t want to rely on it and would rather use their own memory. (Certainly you wouldn’t be able to use it in tournaments, though I’ve heard professional players take notes on paper as they play.)

Either way, if you want to add it to your stream, you have two options:

One is to use monitor capture on OBS. This is fairly straightforward, so I won’t be covering it here.

The other option is to capture the deck window as described below.

1. Go to options -> Overlay -> Deck Windows in the Hearthstone Deck Tracker.
2. Mark the “Player” check-mark. This will cause a window to pop up that shows your currently selected deck.
3. Click on the “Background” drop-down and select “Custom”.
4. In the “Custom hex” text box enter “#00ff00” (without quotes). This will set the background to pure green.
5. Now, open OBS, right click in “Sources” within whatever Scene you want to add this to and select “Window Capture”. Name it something along the lines of “Hearthstone Deck Tracker”.
6. Select the window called “Player”, Select “Inner Window”, Select “Sub-Region”, Click the “Select Region” button, drag down the top of the window so that you cut off the top of the window and press enter. (My settings are Position 0 29 and Size 230 560). Your settings may differ. If you didn’t cut off enough of the window, just come back here and adjust it down further.
7. Select “Use Color Key”. Double click on the color box. Select the third green down from the top. If you want exact settings, I have Hue 80 Sat 240 Lum 120 Red 0 Green 255 Blue 0. Click Ok. This ensures that all of the green background that we selected previously is hidden, similar to a green screen. Click Ok.
8. Now, just position the deck where you want it. I generally line it up where the deck naturally sits in the normal overlay.
9. NOTE: You must not minimize the window. Just leave it up normally in the background.

You can do the same with other deck windows that are listen in the Hearthstone Deck Tracker options menu.

Have fun.

Here’s a list/guide on the oblivion mods that I am using and how to install them.

Oblivion looks kind of bad without mods (especially the potato head character models), so all of these mods will make the game look better. I only use a few mods that actually change gameplay, namely the realistic leveling mod. The normal oblivion leveling requires a ton of micromanagement and is terrible.

 

You MUST follow everything exactly as it is written or you will cause massive headaches for yourself.

Before you start, launch the game once, skip the intro, and make a temporary character. Now go to the video options. If you don’t have a decent graphics card, you might have to lower some settings, but here’s what I do:

Texture Size Large.
Tree Fade Max.
Actor Fade Max.
Item Fade Max.
Object Fade Max.
Grass Distance Max.
View Distance Max.
Distant Land On.
Distant Buildings On.
Distant Trees On.
Int Shadows Max.
Ext Shadows Max.
Self Shadows On.
Shadows on Grass On.
Tree Canopy Shadows On.
Shadow Filtering High.
Specular Distance Middle of bar.
HDR Lighting On.
Bloom Lighting Off.
Water Detail High.
Water Reflections On.
Water Ripples On.
Window Reflections On.
Blood Decals High.
Anti-Aliasing Off.

 

Tools:

Wrye Bash – this is the main tool that we’ll use to manage our mods. (Don’t use Nexus Mod Manager for oblivion). Just run the installer. Also, when you first run Wrye Bash, it will say “Turn lock load order off?”. Click “Yes”.

Oblivion mod manager – We need this for a few specific mods like the character model mods. Just run the installer. I like to create a shortcut to this in the oblivion “Mopy” folder where the Wrye Bash.exe is so that I can launch both from the same spot. (Or you can use the shortcut in Wrye Bash if you really want)

LOOT – This is a tool for Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas that reorganizes your mods so that they won’t conflict. Run the installer. I like to create a shortcut to this in the oblivion “Mopy” folder where the Wrye Bash exe is so that I can launch both from the same spot. (LOOT install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\LOOT)

Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) – you need to install this to get certain mods to work. Copy everything but the “src” folder, txt files, and html file to your oblivion folder. Also, make sure the steam overlay is enabled for oblivion.

4GB Exe Patcher – This external tool will allow you to patch oblivion.exe so that it can use more ram. Go to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion” and make a copy of your oblivion.exe file. Run the tool and select the oblivion.exe file to patch. Now oblivion can use more ram.

 

Wrye Bash Setup:

Unless otherwise noted, all mods go in the Wrye Bash installer folder. (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Oblivion Mods\Bash Installers)

After putting mods in the Wrye Bash folder, open Wrye Bash, click on the “Installers” tab. Click yes and wait for the tab to load. Right click on the mod and select install. If there are any conflicts, hold control and click yes to agree to all. Some mods will have options you can set here. I’ll note which ones in the mod descriptions. On the right, the UI may be all smushed up. If so, just drag the divider above the comments down to see the “Sub-Packages” and “Esp/m Filter” boxes.

Some mods may conflict with each other. Right click any column header and select “Anneal All” to fix any conflicts. You will also have to do this when you are try out different sub-packages.

Now that the mod in question is installed, go to the “mods” tab and check the green box to enable your mod. (Do NOT check the “Bashed Patch, 0.esp”)

When you have installed a number of mods, you should open the LOOT program and click the sort button that has an icon with three bars. It will show a progress bar and then an “apply” button will appear. Click this and close the program.

 

Mods:

NOTE: Download the zip or 7z file instead of the OMOD unless otherwise noted. Also, download everything manually. Don’t use the NMM link.

Unofficial Oblivion Patch – Fixes bugs in the game

Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch – Fixes bugs in the game

Unofficial Oblivion DLC Patches – Fixes bugs in the game

Oblivion Reloaded – This will pretty much redo a major portion of the graphics of the game. Be sure to enable HDR and VSync in the oblivion video settings. After install you will want to change your oblivion.ini (these come from the author) (find it at My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\oblivion.ini):

iPostProcessMillisecondsLoadingQueuedPriority=250
iPostProcessMilliseconds=50
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1
uGridsToLoad = 5
uGridDistantCount = 50
uGridDistantTreeRange = 30

I don’t like how dark and murky the water is in the game so I edit the water.ini file for the mod and reduce the variables listed below to 25% of their original value. Adjust yours to taste. (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Shaders\OblivionReloaded\Water\water.ini):

[Default]
turbidity         = 0.18
depthDarkness     = 0.025

[BravilWorld]
turbidity         = 0.56
depthDarkness     = 0.05

[Vilverin02]
turbidity         = 0.20

One more edit for frame rate. The mod limits your frame rate to 30 fps. I changed mine to 60. Edit this file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins\OblivionReloaded.ini

[FrameRate]
Average                  = 60

After playing for a while, I have added one more change. I don’t like the menu key to be “o”, so I change it to “Numpad 0”. Edit the following file: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Ini\OblivionReloadedEsp.ini”

set ORMenuQuest.MenuKey to 82

NOTE: Other water mods will NOT work in conjunction with this mod. The mod author has a list of mod types as well as specific mods that you should not use in conjunction with his mod.

Oblivion Stutter Remover (OSR) – Makes the game more stable

LowPoly Grass – Lowers the poly count on grass to give a good amount of fps increase. You shouldn’t notice too much of a difference in the look of the grass. Be sure to install the normal and SI versions of it.

Optimised Distant Land MAX – Gives you a performance boost for distant objects. SKIP the UL patch file (it is untested). Be sure to select the “50 Percent Optimized Distant Land” Sub-Package. If you installed first before selecting the Sub-Package, just right click the column header and select “Anneal All”.

Qarls Texture Pack III – High Quality textures.

Oblivion PolyGone Overhaul – Improves performance with very little cost to quality.

Improved Trees and Flora 2 – Improves the quality of trees and flora. Also, bark. It does that too. Be sure to download the bark file as well.

Improved Fires and Flames – Improves the quality of flames. Be sure to download the optional torch file as well.

Isathars Normalmapped Cobwebs – Improves the quality of…cobwebs. Yep. Cobwebs.

Sounds of Cyrodiil – Adds more ambient noises to the game like birds chirping and crap.

Unique Landscapes Compilation – Adds a bunch of unique landscapes like statues and crap to the game to make it look a little bit more interesting. You MUST choose “wizard” instead of “install” in Wrye Bash. Select Full, Wheat, Low Poly Grass, and No (for LOD). Click the “Apply these selections” check box and then click finish.

Animated Window Lighting System and Chimneys (AWLS) – Animates windows and chimneys. You MUST choose “wizard” instead of “install” in Wrye Bash. Select Advanced Smoking Chimneys, No (RAEVWD), No (don’t pick every freaking window), Yes (we use QTP3), Orange – Brumbek Recommends, Orange – Brumbek Recommends, Default Bright Orange, Blue, No (Bromrets Texure Pack), Brumbrek Yellow Multi-Color (Recommended), Dual Nature (Recommended), Blue-Purple (Recommended), and More Colors (Recommended). Click the “Apply these selections” check box and then click finish.

MenuQue – OBSE Script for menus. We use it for the Oblivion Overhaul and BTmod. Be sure to get the 16b version and NOT the 16a version.

Enhanced Hotkeys – Allows you to easily assign a ton of different hotkeys. To use in game open your inventory and press a hotkey such as “1” and then click the item/spell you want to assign to the key, then press the key again to close the pop-up. The upper right of the pop-up has special features like equipping a bow and arrows together. You can also equip multiple items to the same slot by simply clicking more items. Pressing the hot key will cycle through them. Clear a hotkey by clicking the X for every item in the hotkey.

Keychain – Adds a keyring item to the game. Keys are automatically added to it. To take the keys off of the keyring, just click the keyring. Same for putting them back on.

Display Stats – Displays more detailed stats when you mouse over items. Select “00 Core” and “01 Vanilla or BTmod” under “Sub-Packages”. Make sure “Display Stats.esp” is checked under “Esp/m filter”.

BTmod – Basic UI mod that allows you to see more items at a time in your inventory. Works well on lower resolutions like 720p. Download the file that says “rar file” in the description. Be sure to UNCHECK “Compass-Disable_both.esp”, “Compass-Disable_POIs.esp”, and “Compass-Disable_QuestMarkers.esp” under Esp/m Filter.

Dynamic Map – Changes the world map to be much more detailed and nicer looking. Select “00 Core” and “01 Color Map” under “Sub-Packages”. Make sure “Dynamic Map.esp” is checked under “Esp/m filter”. Open “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Ini\Dynamic Map base.ini” and change the following to enable zoom in and out on mouse wheel:

set tnoDM.zoomIn to 264
set tnoDM.zoomOut to 265

Fast Exit – Allows you to save changes to settings and quit the game without it crashing every god damn time like it normally does. Be sure to download “Fast Exit 2” and NOT “Fast Exit 1”.

Auto Update Leveled Items And Spells – Automatically levels certain items that normally are set to the level you were when you first found them. This makes it so that you don’t have to wait to do these quests to maximize the value that you get from them.

Alluring Potion Bottles – Makes potion bottles look better.

Improved Signs – Higher quality textures for signs. Be sure to download the “ImprovedSignsComplete” file and not the others ones.

Exnem Reznod Mannequin – Allows you to add mannequins to your house in order to create an armor collection. There are two female mannequins that are flesh and look like normal NPCs and two male mannequins that are marble and wood textured. You can put any weapons, armor, and/or clothing you want. Download the “ Exnem Reznod Mannequin” file and the “2nd Female Mannequin” file. When you install the Exnem Reznod Mannequin file, be sure to UNCHECK “Reznod_Mannequin_HD[Eng].esp” under filter esp/m. The “2nd Female Mannequin” file should be installed normally and it’s esp checked automatically under filter esp/m.

Improved Fruits Vegetables and Meats – High res texture pack for fruits, vegetables, and meats.

VAs Better Gold – High res texture pack for gold coins. Not sure why, but this one is an executable instead of a rar/7z file.

Better Horse Eyes – High res textures for horse eyes…because why the fuck not?

Enhanced Magic Effects – High res textures for magic effects.

Improved Amulets and Rings – High res textures for amulets and rings.

See You Sleep – Lets you actually sleep in beds instead of next to them. UNCHECK “P1DseeYouSleep – VVAdvanced.esp” from Esp/m filter since we don’t use the vim and vigor mod.

Enhanced Camera – Allows you to look down and see your body in first person mode.

I change the following values in the file “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins\OBSE_EnhancedCamera.ini” to give what seems like a more correct perspective for the character. (i.e. you can’t see your own collar bone):

fCameraPosY=14.5
fCameraPosZ=4.0

ChaseCameraMod – Removes the elasticity from the camera. I find the normal camera annoying in fights and some people can become nauseous from it.

Trifle – Allows you to see your shadow when in first person mode.

Chargen With Numbers – This will show numbers in the character creator. It’s useful if you want to fine tune your face and write down the numbers for the settings so that you can recreate it or share it later. It will also allow you to copy other people’s created faces using their numbers.

007 Vanity camera smoother fixed – Makes the mouse speed slower when you hold R or middle mouse in order to see the front of your character (it’s normally stupid fast). Unfortunately, this mod also reduces the delay until the camera starts spinning around you to like 7 seconds. We’ll fix this later with another mod.

Book Jackets: Oblivion Standard Res – High res textures for books. Be sure to download the “Book Jackets Oblivion High Res” file. UNCHECK the “Book Jackets Oblivion – BP.esp” under Esp/m Filter.

Pluggy – OBSE plugin that allows the Map Marker Overhaul mod to backup your map markers.

Map Marker Overhaul – Adds useful map marker functionality like showing whether an oblivion gate is closed. Also allows you to ctrl click the map to add your own markers. For some reason the wizard doesn’t seem to work for me in Wrye Bash, so select “00 Core”, “01 Borderless Icons”, and “02 SI additions” under Sub-Packages.

Enable auto backup of map markers by editing: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Ini\Map Marker Overhaul.ini”

Change the following setting:

set tnoMMO.backupEnabled to 2

A To Take All – Makes it so that pressing the ‘a’ key takes all of the items from a container.

No Helmet – Adds an item to your inventory that, when clicked, hides your current helmet or shows it again. Note that this will affect any npc that is wearing the same helmet as you.

Custom Autosave – Creates 3 rotating saves every two minutes and creates 3 rotating saves after combat ends. These are independent from your own saves. Helps if you forget to save a lot and mess up something.

Blockhead – This is a script that works with OBSE to make character face mods work.

Detailed Terrain – Improves the shaders, further improving graphics. Be sure to download the SI and UL files as well. These are OMOD files and MUST be installed with Oblivion Mod Manager. If you double click the omod file in your download directory, it should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add it to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click “Detailed Terrain – Beta II-15245” to install the main mod. If it asks if you want to be notified about conflicts, choose “no”. If there are any conflict notifications you can hold the ctrl key and click “yes”. Double click “DT Texture Pack – Shivering Isles-15245” to install the extra texture pack. Double click “DT Texture Pack – Unique Landscapes-15245” to install the other extra texture pack.

Realistic Leveling –  The normal leveling system is crap. It requires you to micromanage all of your stats and punishes you with lower stats if you don’t. This mod automatically levels your character’s stats based on what major and minor skills you have leveled. It makes oblivion leveling closer to skyrim leveling, but instead of getting perk points to spend like in skyrim, you just get all the perks based on what skills you have leveled. This is not an omod, but IT MUST BE INSTALLED WITH Oblivion Mod Manager. Open Oblivion Mod Manager. Click the “Create” button (one of the bottom row of buttons). Click the “Add archive” button (in the middle group of buttons). Go to the directory that you downloaded the mod and select the mod file. Select “Yes”, you want to import the omod conversion data. The details will automatically be filled in. Click the “Create omod” button (on the lower right). The OMOD will be created and added to your mod list. Double click the mod to activate it. Click “Ok”. Select “Vanilla Levelup Menu”, “Verbose Leveling (Recommended)”, “Medium (65)”, and “Unlimited (100)”. Click “Ok”.

RobertMaleBodyReplacer – Higher quality male character meshes. NOTE: Twitch does not allow for nudity from mods (they only allow nudity that was included in the original game) so for both male and female bodies I choose underwear. Be sure to download “Robert Male Body Replacer v52 OMOD“. The OMOD file MUST be installed with Oblivion Mod Manager. If you double click the omod file in your download directory, it should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add it to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click the mod to install it. Select “Yes” to install body meshes. Select “Average”, “Pants0”, “Default”, “Yes”, “Hairy”, “Automatic”, “Automatic”, and “Yes”. Select “Yes”, “Robert”,  “Default”, “Yes”, “Pack0”, “Pack0”, “Pack1”, “Pack1”, “Yes”, and “Yes”. Select “No” because we don’t want the same textures for all ages. Select “Yes”, “Yes”, “Musc-Average-Blues”, and “Yes”.

EVE HGEC Eyecandy Variants Expansion – Adds enhanced clothes that are compatible with the HGEC mods. We’ll be using other mods for the body. Be sure to download the OMOD file. The OMOD file MUST be installed with Oblivion Mod Manager. If you double click the omod file in your download directory, it should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add it to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click the mod to install it. For “Install Body Textures?” select “No”. Select “HGEC Normal E-Cup Underwear” (Again, no nude mods on twitch). Select “HGEC Normal Underwear”. It will tell you there are conflicts. Hold the ctrl key and click yes.

HGEC Body with BBB – Improved female body textures. The OMOD file MUST be installed with Oblivion Mod Manager. If you double click the omod file in your download directory, it should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add it to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click the mod to install it. Select “No Animations” (we’re using another mod). Select “Underwear – Several Upper&Lower Body Options” (Again no nude mods on twitch). Select “E-Cup” and “Medium”. Hold ctrl and click “Yes” to overwrite stuff from other mods.

NoMaaM BBB Animation Replacer – Better animations plus breathing idle animations. Adds breast physics. Be sure to download the OMOD file. The OMOD file MUST be installed with Oblivion Mod Manager. If you double click the omod file in your download directory, it should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add it to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click the mod to install it. For conflicts, hold ctrl and click “yes”. Select “0.6 (low-key)”. Select “Subtile Breathing – BMF 0.6” (his spelling not mine). Select “Install NoMaaM Flail Animations”. Click “Ok”. Click “OK”. Confirm the conflicts by holding ctrl and clicking “yes”.

Oblivion Character Overhaul – Gives the game much better looking faces. This mod is not compatible with ANY other eye or hair mods, so don’t waste your time trying. Be sure to download “HGEC texture compatibility addon” and “Roberts Male Body replacer texture compatibility addon” files as well. This is not an omod, but IT MUST BE INSTALLED WITH Oblivion Mod Manager. Open Oblivion Mod Manager. Click the “Create” button (one of the bottom row of buttons). Click the “Add archive” button (in the middle group of buttons). Go to the directory that you downloaded the mod and select the mod file. For the name, type in “Oblivion Character Overhaul”. Type in version “2.0”. Click the “Create omod” button (on the lower right). Click “Yes” and “Yes” to say you don’t care about author or description. The OMOD will be created and added to your mod list. Do the same thing for the other two files only name them “OCO HGEC texture compatibility addon” and “OCO Roberts Male Body replacer texture compatibility addon”. Double click “Oblivion Character Overhaul” to activate it. Click “No” so that you aren’t warned about conflicts. Do the same thing for the other two files.

Sensual Walks for Female NPCs – Changes the walk animations for all female npcs to be more sensual/feminine depending on who they are and what they do for a living. Be sure to download the “Sensual Walks for Non-Wrye Bash Users” version. Inside the rar is two OMOD files. Open each of them to add them to Oblivion Mod Manager. They should automatically be added to Oblivion Mod Manager. If not, you can manually add them to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\obmm\mods”. Open Oblivion Mod Manager if it is not already open. Double click the “Sensual Walks Animation Installer” to start the install. Select “All BBB female walk animations. Hit “Ok” to choose the “Use displayed mapping” option. Double click the “Sensual Walks for Female NPCs” to start the install. Select “Unofficial Oblivion and Shivering Isles Patches”. Click “Ok” to select all of the files that are selected by default.

Stylish Jump Animation Replacer – Changes the normal jump to a more femininized jump. Jump with weapon doesn’t use boob physics. Unarmed jump does use boob physics. Download both the normal file and the BBB file. For the normal file, select “Feminine” and “Optional” Sub-Packages. For Esp/m filter, select “Stylish Jump.esp” and UNCHECK “DMC Stylish – Specialanims.esp”. For the BBB file, just install normally. Anneal all, if you forgot to select sub-packages. Turning on the optional esp makes it so that only your character has this jump animation.

BBB for EVE HGEC stock replacer – Adds breast physics to the stock armor replacer mod.

Khajiit Female Texture Fix – Fixes the female Khajiit body back to normal since it gets screwed up from all of the mods we installed.

Khajiit Male Body for Oblivion Character Overhaul – Fixes the male Khajiit body to a new texture since it gets screwed up by all of the mods we installed. (Respects nude/underwear settings on Robert’s Male Body Mod).

Toggleable Quantity Prompt – Allows you to quickly sell items. Hold shift to sell entire stacks. Hold ctrl to sell one at a time from a stack. Works when moving between inventories too. Select “00 Documentation” and “01 Main” under Sub-Packages. Make sure “Toggleable Quantity Prompt.esp” is checked under Esp/m filter.

HUD Status Bars – Adds more UI elements like what diseases you have, what your current encumbrance is, and the effectiveness of you spells. Also shows colored enemy health bars depending on how low their health is. Select “00 Core” and “01 Vanilla style” under Sub-Packages. Make sure “HUD Status Bars.esp” is checked under Esp/m filter. This mod will mess up the location of your compass that was set with Btmod, so change the following file “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Ini\Hud Status Bars – base.ini”:

set tnoHSB.hide_weapon_durability to 0

; == compass
; HUDdefault means that HSB doesn’t move/resize the compass
set tnoHSB.hide_compass to 0
set tnoHSB.compass_x to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_y to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_size to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_degrees to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_alpha_reduction to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_size_reduction to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_hide_quest to HUDdefault
set tnoHSB.compass_color to HUDdefault

I don’t like how the encumbrance bar that they add goes down as you become more encumbered so I reverse it by changing the following in this file “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion\Data\Ini\Hud Status Bars.ini”:

set tnoHSB.hud_min to sv_Construct        “0”
set tnoHSB.hud_max to sv_Construct        “(GetBaseAV Encumbrance) – 4”

Mystic Emporium Patch – This fixes a bug where the Mystic Emporium door is always locked due to a bug that happens when you have the two housing DLCs installed. Be SURE to download the “ Mystic Emporium Fix 1.1″ file and NOT the ” Mystic Emporium Fix 1.0″ file.

OCO Oblivion Character Overhaul v2 DLC Horse Armor Fix – For some reason, the Oblivion Character Overhaul mod breaks the horse armor dlc quest, making it so that the npc won’t do anything when you ask for your free horse with armor. This fixes it.

Vanity cam less wait – Sets the time where the camera goes into idle mod to 45 seconds. This fixes the reduction that the 007 vanity cam mod introduces.

Umpa Dance Animation – Adds an item that you can hotkey to make your character dance. You can also put up a disco ball and cause npcs to dance with spells.

NOTE: After you are done installing all of the mods, be sure to right click on a column header in the Wrye Bash “Installers” tab and select “Anneal All”. Then go to the Mods tab and make sure all of your mods have their green boxes checked. Also make sure that “Bashed Patch, 0.esp” is NOT checked. Now close Wrye Bash. Open LOOT and click the sort button that has the three bars for an icon. Click the “Apply” button that appears. Close LOOT.

Reopen Wrye Bash and in the “Mods” tab and drag “vanitycamlesswait.esp” to the bottom. This will ensure that the other vanity camera mod doesn’t overwrite the changes of this mod. Next, drag “Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp” all the way to the bottom. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If you don’t do this, orc heads won’t match their bodies and the better Khajiit head textures won’t get used. Now drag “DLCHorseArmor OCOv2 patch.esp” all the way to the bottom. This has to be after the character overhaul esp or it will not fix the horse armor bug.

Launch Oblivion through Steam normally.

Whenever you install other mods, be sure to go through these instructions again. You shouldn’t have to mess with Oblivion Mod manager.

 

BONUS – My Nord Character Creation

This is my attempt at making an attractive character with all of the listed mods installed.

This is for a Female Nord. Be sure to set the age and complexion all the way to the left (to -1000) before doing anything else.

You must follow these instructions in order in order to make the same character that I played with as character customization sliders are tied together and will not cooperate if you want to set every one of them to a specific number.

–Eye Color–
Blue
–Hair–
Loose Braided
Red 95
Green -1000
Blue -1000
Length 1000
–Shape–
Nose flat/pointed to -598
Nose nostril tilt down/up to -152
Chin wide/thin to 672
Cheekbones thin/wide to -497
Nose bridge short/long to 566
Mouth lips large/small to 215
Nose nostrils small/large to -455
–Tone–
Beard flushed/pale to -1000
Beard light/dark -1000
Skin flushed/pale 1000
Skin shade dark/light 350

 

BONUS 2 – My Breton Mage Character Creation

This is my attempt at making an attractive character with all of the listed mods installed.

This is for a Female Breton. Be sure to set the age and complexion all the way to the left (to -1000) before doing anything else.

You must follow these instructions in order in order to make the same character that I played with as character customization sliders are tied together and will not cooperate if you want to set every one of them to a specific number.

–Eye Color–
Blue
–Hair–
Wind Braids
Red -1000
Green -1000
Blue -1000
Length 1000
–Shape–
Nose flat/pointed to -598
Nose nostril tilt down/up to -152
Chin wide/thin to 672
Cheekbones thin/wide to -497
Nose bridge short/long to 566
Mouth lips large/small to 215
Nose nostrils small/large to -455
Chin tall/short to 264
Mouth happy/sad to 19
Nose short/long to -817
Nose nostril wide/thin to 238
Mouth lips large/small to -53
Mouth lips deflated/inflated to 136
Mouth lips puckered/retracted to -345
Mouth happy/sad to -433
Nose sellion thin/wide to -360
Jaw-Neck slope high/low to 563
–Tone–
Beard flushed/pale to -1000
Beard light/dark -1000
Skin flushed/pale 1000
Skin shade dark/light 400

I’ve played the two Archeage beta events before the launch and now that the game has officially launched, I wanted to give my impressions.

Archeage is an mmo that tries to do something new with the genre by making the core of the game about being a sandbox. The problem is that it’s so boring, that you probably won’t reach the end game, which is where the sandbox elements really are.

You start out in the game like many other mmos. You get to watch a video on the back-story of the race and then you begin your questing. There are two factions in the game and they each, in turn, occupy the two major continents. The faction on the continent of Nuia is inhabited by the Nuians, a race of humans, and the Elves. The eastern continent of Haranya is inhabited by the Firrians, a race of cat people, and by the Harani, a southeast Asian looking race of people who are said to never fight a battle they cannot win.

The back-stories are as follows. A woman who became a goddess, sacrificed herself to save everyone. That’s the Nuians. They all worship her and there are some groups vying for power and trying to usurp the throne. The elves had one of their leaders die, so now they’re super pissed and out for vengeance. The Harani and Firrians have a history that’s tied together. The Harani were just doing whatever they pleased and the Firrians couldn’t do much to stop them, being a scattered bunch of nomadic tribes, so a Firrian leader decided to gather all of the tribes and build a big city. They form a strong military and then fight the Harani. They beat the Harani and then start leading lives of indulgence. They get complacent and the Harani come back and beat the Firrians. The Firrians then decide to go back to their nomadic existence and return to who they really are. Kind of goofy if you ask me. The thing about the way the game describes the Harani that’s weird to me is how they “only fight battles they can win.” That doesn’t really say anything. I mean, if they aren’t super sure, do they just give up and leave? Doesn’t everyone not fight battles they can’t win? They’re meant to sound like they’re a race of survivors who’d do anything to not die, but it just comes off and sounding like a nothing statement.

So, that’s the back-story. What about the professions? Once you choose your race, you next choose your starting profession. Basically, the way the skill trees work in the game is that you get three skill trees and they combine together to create a specific class. The classes are just names they’ve made up for every combination. You can change your skill trees whenever you want, but they all level up separately. Changing skill trees doesn’t matter very much at low levels, but at higher levels, if you pick a new skill tree it will always be behind the other two in levels. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can level all of the skill trees. It is nice to have a lot of options for builds to mess around with, though most likely there will only be a handful of “best” builds that almost everyone will use.

So let’s get to combat. Combat is boring. I’m just going to state that right from the start. It’s the same overdone, tab target, stand there and attack, kind of mmo fighting that we’ve seen since World of Warcaft. In the days when action based mmos are starting to become prominent in the market (i.e. Tera and Blade & Soul), this old style of combat is straight up boring. You just sit there and watch your cooldowns. You follow your rotation. That’s it. There isn’t much thinking that you have to do while in combat. And, yes, I know that you have to kite if you are a ranged class, but you don’t have to be aware of your surroundings in the same way as an action mmo. You just run to the side (since running backwards is purposefully slowed).

And that leads me to the questing. It is also the same old, tired, uninspired formula. Go to quest giver, skip what they have to say because it’s just a block of text, and figure out what to do from the quest list UI on the side of your screen. I won’t try to argue that questing in Tera, for instance, is much better, but at least there are bams (big ass monsters) to spice things up. Questing is mindless, linear, and boring. And for a game that’s supposed to be a sandbox game where you can do whatever you want, the linear questing seems entirely out of place. I also wish that quest dialogs were voice acted, but I imagine that they deemed it too expensive to be worth it. I should note that they have one nice thing when questing. For some quests, there are options as to what you have to do. In one quest I had the option to kill bees or to sheer sheep. While this is a nice touch, it doesn’t make up for the questing being boring. They also allow you to “overachieve” or “underachieve” quests. This means that if you have to kill say, five enemies, killing several more will give you fifty percent more experience. Underachieving is the opposite; it allows you to stop quests early that you really don’t like. The problem is that you basically should just try to overachieve everything. This makes the whole thing pointless, since you are going to do it anyway.

Let’s move onto mounts. Each race has their own mount, similar to wow, and you can also earn the other races’ mounts. You can even go to the opposing faction’s continent and buy their racial mounts. That’s a nice touch. Speaking of going to the other continent, by default you can’t communicate with people from the opposing faction. You can however, learn their language and then can speak with them once you’ve done so. One thing I really don’t like about mounts is how they all have different speeds. If you want the fastest mount, you also have to choose the most boring one: a horse. Why can’t our mounts move at the speed of our fastest mount? That way we can choose the look we want without having to sacrifice performance. It’s also nice that mounts have skills, but it’s annoying that you can’t bind keys for the mount that you’ve bound to your normal skill bar. I can’t use my skill bar when I’m mounted so why can’t I double bind them? Oh, I should also point out that the polar bear mount is hilarious.

If you do plan on playing the game despite what I’ve said, I have a few recommendations for you. In terms of skill trees, I’ve tried occultism, sorcery, vitalism, defense, and brutalism. If you are fine with the quest grinding in the game, I’d recommend going with brutalism, then defense, then vitalism. This will basically allow you to face tank everything while you’re leveling up. Get a one handed sword and shield. Vitalism will give you some health boosts. You’ll be pretty tanky and you’ll get multiple stuns and knockdowns. You can basically just chain cc the enemy. You can, alternatively, choose a ranged class, but just be prepared to run, a lot. Also, as I’ve noted above, you run slower when you go backwards, so have fun constantly running to the side while turning your camera all of the time. Another thing you should know, is that you can use any armor. From what I’ve read, stick to plate versus everything except casters. Use cloth armor versus casters. I mostly used plate (once I had access to it) during my play time.

Now, let’s talk about character customization. One thing I’ll say right off the bat, is that I really like that you can store templates of the characters you create. These templates are stored as files, making them easy to share with others. Also, there are absolutely no body customization options. I really wish there were. That seems to be a pretty common trend among mmos. When it comes to customizing the face, the default is very young looking. I wanted to make a 25-30 year old looking character, but it’s next to impossible to do so. You can only adjust the age through the age lines option and all of the age lines make your character look really old. So, those are your options: childlike faces or old faces. Anything in between looks really odd.

Alright, so last but not least, my list of random bugs and annoyances. First is the fact that when you talk to an NPC, people can walk into your line of vision. One time when I was talking to a quest giver, someone walked in front of him while mounted and I got to stare at a Harani mount’s butt while I received my quests. Most games hide other players while talking to an NPC. Another problem is that there is constant fighting over mobs and bosses. Once someone has attacked a mob or a boss, you can’t get credit for it. This is slightly annoying during normal quests, but extremely annoying on boss quests. When you are doing a quest that tells you to kill a boss, you show up and see a massive number of people waiting around where the boss spawns. The boss spawns, and one party out of many gets credit for hitting it first and the boss is killed. That team gets to leave this giant waiting room, while the rest (including you) keep trying to get the first hit in so that they can finish their quest. To be fair, this was also a big problem in the ESO beta. Why can’t other companies take a cue from ArenaNet and implement bosses like Guild Wars 2 does? Their approach is, the more the merrier. The bosses simply scale up according to the number of people that are there.

Another annoyance is how loot is shared in the party. Loot is shared sequentially rather than following what a lot of other games have taken to: loot streams. Why aren’t loot streams standard by now? If you don’t know what a loot stream is, it is where you can only see the items on the ground that are intended for you. Your teammates also can only see the items that are intended for them. Another problem this causes is quest items. If you join up with another player or players, you each have to pick up quest items separately. It doesn’t count them for everyone like most other games.

There are two other things that I find extremely annoying and probably wouldn’t have been able to play the game if I hadn’t found a fix. The first is that there is no option for full screen window. This is important because it allows you to tab out of the game instantly to refer to your browser while you are playing and looking things up. The second is that there is no option for inverted mouse. There are a lot of people, myself included, that have learned to play games using an inverted mouse. It’s what we’re used to and it’s almost impossible to play without the option. Luckily someone has made a mod for the game that give these two options back. I’ve done my research on it, and the devs are fine with it. You can find the mod here. You just drop a single dll file into the game directory. You don’t have to directly modify any game files. Using this to get the full screen windowed mode also prevents other program’s pop-ups from minimizing your game. I use digsby as an instant messenger client and whenever I got a pop-up notification, it forced the game to minimize.

The last two things on my list are relatively minor. One is that attacks resolve at the same time. This means that if I’m using a charge attack to stun someone and he starts his stun attack, we both get stunned at the same time. I feel like if I’m charging a guy and barreling into him, he shouldn’t be able to raise his weapon and do some sort of smash move to stun me at the exact same time. The second thing is that I noticed that people are allowed to plant trees in Konbann castle. Kind of goofy.

This brings me to my final point. While you are leveling you get quests that tell you to start a farm. The only problem is, if you don’t pay the fifteen bucks a month, you can’t have a farm. This is one aspect to the open world part of the game that’s supposed to draw people into the game. So, you want players to join your game on the premise that they can own houses, land, and even castles, but then you tell them that they can’t have those unless they pay you. What’s their reason for staying?

I know a lot of people have said, “but you can get everything with gold!” Perhaps once you are max level and spend time grinding out money. Until then, you can’t.

And that’s exactly the whole problem with Archeage. It may have a fun open world that you can explore in the end game, but it’s so god damn boring, that you won’t want to take the time to get there.

If you want a fun mmo, I’d go for Tera instead. Or perhaps Blade and Soul if it ever comes out in the U.S.

On Windows XP:

Disable Startup Movies

Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\WillowGame\Config\DefaultEngine.ini

 

Change:

+StartupMovies=2K_logo
+StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
+StartupMovies=NVidia
; The game will automatically interpret the last entry in the list to be a generic looping movie, so make sure that the list has one… Comment was in the filename when loading.
+StartupMovies=Loading

To:

;+StartupMovies=2K_logo
;+StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
;+StartupMovies=NVidia
; The game will automatically interpret the last entry in the list to be a generic looping movie, so make sure that the list has one… Comment was in the filename when loading.
;+StartupMovies=Loading

Notice the semicolon in front of the lines ( ; ).

Disable Launcher on steam

Right click on properties on Borderlands 2

Click Set Launch Options….

Enter:

-NoLauncher

 

Enable the console and show fps

Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\WillowGame\Config\DefaultInput.ini

Right below [Engine.Console]type:

ConsoleKey=Tilde
TypeKey=Backslash

Now, in game hit tilde (~) and type:

stat fps

Here’s what you can delete from your World of Warcraft folder to free up space without impacting the game from running.

\Updates
\Patches
\Logs
\Errors
\Screenshots

\WoW-xxxxxxxx-downloader.exe
\WoW-xxxxxxxx-patch.exe

Source