Building Oblivion
Introduction
[Difficulty: Hard]
[Not for the Fainthearted] This guide is technical and involved, mainly because modding Oblivion is technical and involved. The aim of this is to give you a good idea of how to approach modding and an understanding of the tools and processes you need; you will have the benefit of my many many hours of testing. You are expected to follow the links, read the readme files and posts - this isn't a simple step by step guide, because a simple step by step guide is not possible. There is a simplified guide available at http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18291473 - if you apply the tuning and 4GB patch to this, it should mostly be okay. If you follow this guide, you should have a platform and the understanding to apply mods of your choice yourself and a game that will make a grown PC cry.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released on March 20th, 2006 on the PC and Xbox 360. At the time the game itself was widely praised for the open world it provided, but was also something of a beast to run. In the 5 years since the game has been released, PC Hardware has moved on a great deal and with the announcement of Skyrim and the frequent cheap availability of Oblivion on Steam I thought now would be an appropriate time to put together this guide to making the most of this game. If you don't have it already, I highly recommend getting "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition Deluxe" from the Steam store. This includes all of the DLC and at the time of writing is £19.99. (The Bethesda pack includes this Deluxe edition, Fallout 3 Game of the Year and Morrowind Game of the Year also for £37.99 also a good deal).
I’ve purposefully chosen not to drastically overhaul the gameplay, the aim of this is primarily to beautify the game and increase the immersion of the world. There are a few optional mods that fix things that I think are flaws in the game. I also haven’t added a great deal of new content to the game, just a couple of new areas that I think add to the world without changing it unduly. By following this guide, you should become confident enough in using mods and the tools needed for them to explore other available content. Wherever possible, the authors of the content have been attributed.
With all of these mods installed, the game will push a modern PC hard. All of this was performed on an i7 920 overclocked to 3.6GHz with an unlocked 6970 2GB & 12GB RAM. Usually the graphics card is maxed out, when it isn't the game is CPU bound. Oblivion is principally designed for single core computers there are some engine tweaks to offload some of the work onto other cores but don't expect miracles. I am considering going 6970 crossfire as the GPU is hitting 95% use frequently with Shaders.
Recommended System Requirements:
This guide was written against the Steam version of Oblivion with all of the DLC, if you are using a different version then there may be different steps.
Register yourself an account at http://www.tesnexus.com/index.php - you will need to be registered to download files > 2MB (and you will download a lot ). I also strongly recommend upgrading to premium. It's a couple of quid for a month and lets you skip the annoying videos before downloading.
This is what we are working towards, click individual pictures for 1920x1200 resolution.
A quick thank you to ImageShack.us for providing Image hosting for this article.
Image Notes
1, 2: Animated Window Lighting System adds smoke to chimneys and lighted windows during night time/storms.
3: Immersive Interiors allows you to look out of Windows (and see the weather outside)
4: Clocks of Cyrodiil adds numerous working clocks to the game.
6, 7: Some shots of the new Physics Sky.
8: Better Cities, Crysis shaders (and if you look carefully a flock of birds migrating)
9: Crysis shaders, Frostcrag Reborn
10 & 11: Better Cities & OBGE Water
12: OBGE Parallax Shaders add a lot of extra depth to a scene.
13: Tamriel NPC, HGEC, Real Lighting
14: Let them Drink!
15: Darnified UI, HGEC, DK Imperials
17: RAEVWD
19: Unique Landscapes
20: Better Cities, OBGE Water
Introduction
[Difficulty: Hard]
[Not for the Fainthearted] This guide is technical and involved, mainly because modding Oblivion is technical and involved. The aim of this is to give you a good idea of how to approach modding and an understanding of the tools and processes you need; you will have the benefit of my many many hours of testing. You are expected to follow the links, read the readme files and posts - this isn't a simple step by step guide, because a simple step by step guide is not possible. There is a simplified guide available at http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18291473 - if you apply the tuning and 4GB patch to this, it should mostly be okay. If you follow this guide, you should have a platform and the understanding to apply mods of your choice yourself and a game that will make a grown PC cry.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released on March 20th, 2006 on the PC and Xbox 360. At the time the game itself was widely praised for the open world it provided, but was also something of a beast to run. In the 5 years since the game has been released, PC Hardware has moved on a great deal and with the announcement of Skyrim and the frequent cheap availability of Oblivion on Steam I thought now would be an appropriate time to put together this guide to making the most of this game. If you don't have it already, I highly recommend getting "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition Deluxe" from the Steam store. This includes all of the DLC and at the time of writing is £19.99. (The Bethesda pack includes this Deluxe edition, Fallout 3 Game of the Year and Morrowind Game of the Year also for £37.99 also a good deal).
I’ve purposefully chosen not to drastically overhaul the gameplay, the aim of this is primarily to beautify the game and increase the immersion of the world. There are a few optional mods that fix things that I think are flaws in the game. I also haven’t added a great deal of new content to the game, just a couple of new areas that I think add to the world without changing it unduly. By following this guide, you should become confident enough in using mods and the tools needed for them to explore other available content. Wherever possible, the authors of the content have been attributed.
With all of these mods installed, the game will push a modern PC hard. All of this was performed on an i7 920 overclocked to 3.6GHz with an unlocked 6970 2GB & 12GB RAM. Usually the graphics card is maxed out, when it isn't the game is CPU bound. Oblivion is principally designed for single core computers there are some engine tweaks to offload some of the work onto other cores but don't expect miracles. I am considering going 6970 crossfire as the GPU is hitting 95% use frequently with Shaders.
Recommended System Requirements:
Code:
CPU: i3/Phenom2/Core2 clocked as fast as they will go
GPU: The faster the better, at least 1GB onboard VRAM
RAM: 6-8GB (4GB free recommended)
HD: Fast as possible.This guide was written against the Steam version of Oblivion with all of the DLC, if you are using a different version then there may be different steps.
Register yourself an account at http://www.tesnexus.com/index.php - you will need to be registered to download files > 2MB (and you will download a lot ). I also strongly recommend upgrading to premium. It's a couple of quid for a month and lets you skip the annoying videos before downloading.
This is what we are working towards, click individual pictures for 1920x1200 resolution.
A quick thank you to ImageShack.us for providing Image hosting for this article.
Image Notes
1, 2: Animated Window Lighting System adds smoke to chimneys and lighted windows during night time/storms.
3: Immersive Interiors allows you to look out of Windows (and see the weather outside)
4: Clocks of Cyrodiil adds numerous working clocks to the game.
6, 7: Some shots of the new Physics Sky.
8: Better Cities, Crysis shaders (and if you look carefully a flock of birds migrating)
9: Crysis shaders, Frostcrag Reborn
10 & 11: Better Cities & OBGE Water
12: OBGE Parallax Shaders add a lot of extra depth to a scene.
13: Tamriel NPC, HGEC, Real Lighting
14: Let them Drink!
15: Darnified UI, HGEC, DK Imperials
17: RAEVWD
19: Unique Landscapes
20: Better Cities, OBGE Water
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The biggest culprit for these are Bethesda themselves, their mods are particularly bad for it - third party mods are typically cleaned properly - whereas Bethsoft just half-arses stuff out of the door.
