[Oblivion] I'd Like You To Play With My POOP.

[triggercut]

Guys, I'd like to introduce the Popehat Oblivion Omods Project, or POOP.

I drew inspiration from the GoneGold/OO Morrowind DVD mods project as well as Lum's Oblivion Mods Omnibus from a few years ago and Jason McCullough's never quite released here but similar package.

First off, it's all done. Every mod is packed as an OMOD, and everything you need is in the POOP already--OBMM, OBSE, Wrye Bash, the official and unofficial patches for the DLC and Shivering Isles content.

Here's what's in the rest of the POOP:

World Graphics:
1. Qarl's Texture Pack 3, Redimized and Further Reduced as an OMOD. (Scripted to allow you to pick the sweet spot between graphics and performance)
2. Three flavors of "Color Maps" and three flavors of "Normal Maps" with instructions on what they do to LOD and distant landscape views, how they affect performance, and how to pick out what works best (Qarl's Normal Maps and Qarl's Better Tiling)
3. Three flavors of "Noise" filtering (Koldorn's) to work with the "pepper" caused by patch 1.2
4. Two choices of View When Distant: AEVWD (Almost Everything View When Distant) and a smaller version for slower GPUs: Tamriel VWD + Chapels Extras
5. Natural Environments for habitats and vegetation
6. Atmospheric Weather System for skies and weather
7. Beaming Sunglare for better sun
8. Enhanced Water for those who don't like Natural Environment's
9. Low Poly Grass for the performance boost
10.Weather Inside (Seasons) for weather sounds when inside buildings
11.Gorier Blood
12.Real Lava
13.Illumination Within Revived
14.Clocks Of Cyrodiil
15.Improved Signs
16.Improved Doors and Flora

"Game Fixes"
1. DarNified UI in OMOD form
2. Color Map Mod 1.1
3. Dude Where's My Horse
4. Harvest Flora
5. Harvest Containers
6. Book Jackets + Book Placement (Exclusive to POOP, first time these two mods have ever been OMODed and scripted together that I've seen for easy installation)
7. Durable Equipment/Harder Repairs
8. Denock Arrows
9. Cliff's Better Letters
10. Francesco's Leveled CreaturesItems
11. Francesco's Optional New ItemsCreatures
12. Quest Award Leveler
13. Kobu's Character Advancement System
14. SM Plugin Refurbish (fixes how DLC quests start, rather than bombard you with them in the first dungeon)

Items & People:
1. Kafei's Better Amulets
2. Kafei's Better Rings
3. Better Looking Tools
4. Fine Weapons
5. Rusty Items
6. Imperial Armor Replace
7. VA's Better Gold
8. Visually Enchated Weapons
9. TNR Tamriel's NPC's Revamped, All Races Final
10. Slof's Horses
11.Mike's Clothes Replacer

The Always Controversial Optional Folder:

Unique Landscapes:
1. Ancient Redwoods
2. Ancient Yews
3. Chorrol Hinterland
4. Colovian Highlands
5. Lush Woodlands
6. Rolling Hills
7. The Heath

(Yes, there are more Unique Landscapes out there; POOP feels that they alter the game too much and/or upset the balance of it to the point of breaking it.)

Game Fixes, Or Not (proceed at your own risk):
1. Realistic Ragdolls & Force
2. Action Ragdolls
3. Real Lights
4. Reneer's Guard Overhaul 1.79
5. DeadlyReflex

Side Quests:
1. Kvatch Rebuilt
2. Glenvar Castle
3. The Lost Spires

Finishing Touches:
1. Streamline 3.0
2. Wrye Bash
3. TES4LODGen (this incredible tool snoops your .ini directory and data folder and collects all mods and makes sure they appear as View When Distant too.

Comes with full instructions on how to install everything and make every OMOD here play well together.

Every mod is either in OMOD format (for easy installation and removal) or another single-click push-button format.

This is our initial POOP, but I can attest that everything works, as I did the install three times in a row successfully before calling this a release candidate.

Torrent is here:

http://www.legittorrents.info/downlo...OOP%5D.torrent

[Equis]

How big is the file total?

And do I have to delete all the previous mods to minimize conflict?

[LesJarvis]

I have started Oblivion several times now only to give up because I wasn't smart enough to get all the mods that make it worth playing to work. Is this something that allows a retarded person like me to just click one button and make it go? Or maybe a few buttons, like 5 max?

[triggercut]

The file is 3.4 gigs. My Oblivion install footprint with these is 12.7 gigs.

I recommend absolutely that if you want to play with POOP, you do it by starting clean; you can always use a different drive or partition though, I guess.

[magnet]

Are these compatible / advised for use with Open Cities?

[triggercut]

Originally Posted by LesJarvis

I have started Oblivion several times now only to give up because I wasn't smart enough to get all the mods that make it worth playing to work. Is this something that allows a retarded person like me to just click one button and make it go? Or maybe a few buttons, like 5 max?

A little more clicking than that to install POOP...but each step of the way I wrote instructions to make it "click this. Now click that. Now click this. Now that." Every individual mod installs with a single click, at least.

[triggercut]

Originally Posted by magnet

Are these compatible / advised for use with Open Cities?

You can use Open Cities, but you'll have to disable Illumination Within Revived. Since I think the lights in IWR look amazing at night, I didn't include Open Cities, but you can sure use Texians Window Lighting and be fine.

[triggercut]

Here's the text from the introductory Readme, posted because I tried to give a nice shoutout to the site here and those who inspired the creation of POOP.

A Brief History Of POOP:

Coming up with a community-distributed mod package is nothing new. The popular "Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul" is rather the same thing. Going back to the days of Morrowind, a brilliant fellow named Blackhawk came up with a DVD’s worth of essential mods that could be burned to DVD for ease of install.

For me, I picked up Oblivion the day it came out, and was immediately enthralled by the possibilities. The game world was beautiful, the possibilities for gaming goodness seemed limitless...and then like any cranky gamer, after a few hours I started to notice some warts. My Athlon 3000+ CPU and Nvidia 6800 GT video card—not slouches by 2006 standards—struggled with the graphics at times. There were framerate stutters, as well as anomalies with popup trees and blurry distant landscapes. Leaving the graphics aside, I think (and so do a lot of folks) that the designers of Oblivion made one of the most questionable game design decisions in modern history with the game’s leveling system. In an un-modded game of Oblivion, the monsters and NPC’s level with you, and it was entirely possible to level up based on non-combat skills and find yourself at level 20 getting slaughtered by water rats and mud crabs if you weren’t careful. (I exaggerate, but you get the picture).

Enter Lum, a poster at Quarter To Three. Lum put together the first unified pack of Oblivion mods—in the OMOD format (more on that in a sec) that I’d seen. Sadly, my problems with not having the hardware horses to run the game with all the mods Lum included was frustrating and I dropped the game again. A few months later Shivering Isles came out and rendered some of the mods in that pack obsolete.

Along came Jason McCullough, another Qt3 poster. He had the next unified pack of Mods I’d seen all ready to go...and then Bethesda patched Oblivion to version 1.2, again breaking a lot of the mods. Ouch.

And so here we are. I figure this is a good time for this for the following reasons:

1. Lots of us have the hardware horses to handle Oblivion now—an E8400 dual-core CPU will only set you back $180 if you shop around.
2. I think Bethesda is done with new versions or patches for Oblivion, so no need to worry that a new version of the game or expansion will break these.

The Tao of POOP: Why These Mods And Not Those?

Ask ten hardcore Oblivion players who sling mods around their game which of those are essential and you’ll get ten different lists. The lists change, too, as newer mods come out that build on what previous mods were able to accomplish. Worth considering too is the advice of Blackhawk, creator of the GoneGold/Octopus Overlords Morrowind Mods DVD. Many of us have pestered BH over the years for his list of Oblivion mods, and every time he’s demurred by explaining that Oblivion is a totally different animal from Morrowind. With Morrowind, things were a bit more cut and dried, but Oblivion is so open-ended and moddable that mods make it possible to play the game however it suits your individual taste.

That’s a great philosophy, but it sucks for me and players like me. After upgrading my rig, I’d set aside an entire empty weekend to really get into Oblivion...only to be paralyzed by the sheer freedom of choice the thousands of mods out there offer. I’d read about a mod and think "That sounds kind of cool", only to install it and have someone with more game experience than I say "Sweet Moses, no! That mod conflicts with This Mod, and This Mod is essential!" I’d end up never getting the game off the ground, honestly.

A few months ago, though thread at the late(?), lamented Octopus Overlords forum on Oblivion Mods finally coaxed Blackhawk into posting his loadout. Others posted their respective loadouts as well, and it became obvious that, 2 years after release, there was actually some consensus forming on which mods were worth using. Over the next few months, with a ton of trial and mostly error, a group of a half-dozen or so of us at OO and Popehat’s forums came up with a list of mods, and I stupidly decided to try to put them together in an omnibus fashion.

So what mods made the cut and why? You can put these mods into several categories, but my biggest yen here was to come up with a list of mods that made Oblivion really sing, graphically, for modern dual-core CPU’s and GPU’s. I’m a fan of "gameplay", and love old-style games from the day...but face it: anyone who owns an Nvidia 8xxx card or higher is a graphics whore at heart. First and foremost, many of the mods in POOP will help you embrace your inner graphics slut. Having shlupped around Tamriel for hours through a variety of weather and terrain, I think the mods here make a pretty game look downright gorgeous. The world of Cyrodiil, post-modding, will fire your imagination, like almost nothing else in gaming.

The next big category of mods were mods to address gameplay issues. The biggest of these involves stuff that changes the odd and (in my opinion anyway) rather dysfunctional experience/leveling mechanic. There are mods for NPC behavior, mods that fix un-fixed and unpatched areas of the game, and even a few housekeeping tasks.

Finally, there are some very involving, very, very enjoyable side-quests included. Install them all, or install none, as you like. The quests are well-written, graphically stunning, and don’t break the play balance of the game.

The other goal I had for this was to make installation as easy as possible. I found that even if you had a list of mods and a central location to find them all, that you’d still spend hours upon hours upon hours loading them, rearranging them, fixing botched installs, etc. Etc. One of the things I wanted to do with this was to make it so that a person, given maybe a free evening or two could get a vanilla installation of Oblivion modded up heavily and still have time to, you know, play the dadgum game. Thankfully, a third-party utility called the Oblivion Mod Manager (hereafter known as OBMM) makes installing a snap, thanks to using proprietary files called OMODs which, if scripted by someone correctly, should install with the click of a mouse. For everything in this big pile of POOP, push-button installation was a must.

As Marty DiBergi would say, enough of my yakkin’. Let’s rock.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The whole crew at OO and Popehat who encouraged and contributed and tested to get this done, especially Brian_HBZ at Popehat who did some of the most awesome scripting for OMODS I’ve ever seen. Blackhawk, rrmorton, RunningBrian, Ken, and so many others I’ve forgotten to thank did yeoman work to put this POOP in your hands.

Thanks too to the crew at QuarterToThree. Still the most thoughtful and braniacal gaming forum I know of, even if you do have to wear a flame-retardant suit at times. Lum and Jason McCullough and Kunikos (who is probably even right now typing up a post there bemoaning that there aren’t at least 75 other "essential" mods included in POOP...;)) especially for original inspiration here.

Thanks also to Dev_AKM. His site at http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/home is amazing, and was a tremendous resource in explaining how to get this solid mass of POOP to run, and suggesting the best in texture mods.

Finally, most importantly, thanks to the Modders. The pieces that make up this splendidly large POOP are as professionally done as any professional developers, and almost all of these were done with people’s spare time, and for free. Thanks a ton guys, the fun I (and hopefully soon, others) will have playing with their own POOP can’t ever be repaid.

[Derek French]

Is there going to be a different way to download it? 0 seeds, and 6 leachers with a 0.079 amount of availability shows that I have about 9 days remaining in my download.

[triggercut]

Not sure why it wasn't showing me seeding before, but it should now.

If I can get my webhost to respond to my service ticket, I may be able to leak out a few direct downloads by drips and drabs tomorrow and the next day.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Thanks, trigs. Been wanting something like this.

[Vesper]

Excellent.. the huge amount of mods meant I never actually got to play much Oblivion.. I spent all my time figuring out which mods to install. Exactly what I needed!

BTW- I couldn't tell from the names and since I've been out of the loop so long, but does this include any "balance fixing" type mods? Like the ones that effectively removed encounter scaling, etc.

[triggercut]

Originally Posted by Vesper

BTW- I couldn't tell from the names and since I've been out of the loop so long, but does this include any "balance fixing" type mods? Like the ones that effectively removed encounter scaling, etc.

Oh, heckyeah. Francesco's does that, and Kobu (I also mention in the install docs that ACE works great, too) handles the advancement of your character so you don't end up stuck at 20th level, unable to kill anything.

[Marcus]

I agree this is perfect! Thanks for all the work you put into this.

[Pogo]

I don't own Oblivion, but I read the whole OP just to see where he would next sneak in the word POOP

[flyinj]

Uninterested until I saw a mod titled "dude where's my horse"

[Mordrak]

Originally Posted by flyinj

Uninterested until I saw a mod titled "dude where's my horse"

That was one of the first mods made for the game, iirc.

[Naeblis]

Thanks, i was waiting something like that for some time. Downloading later today.

[Sam Jones]

Originally Posted by Bill Dungsroman

Thanks, trigs. Been wanting something like this.

Totally. The only thing that puts me off reinstalling Morrowind and Oblivion is the thought of trawling through all the available mods again.

Nice work Trigs.

[docvego]

Fantastic work, I'll begin the download tonight.

[Gladguy]

I think this might be the package that finally gets me into the game. I'm exactly like LesJarvis and Vesper... I've never played the game for fear that I've installed the "wrong" mods.

I'll take this POOP as canon, and get on it. Thanks, triggercut.

[Talisker]

Please keep poop cannons to P&R where they belong.

[Sam Jones]

Before we all go in all guns blazing, what's the correct install routine? Is it:

1) Install Oblivion
2) Install Knights of the Nine
3) Install Shivering Isles
4) Install POOP

Do we need to install any official Oblivion patches, or are they err, "pooped"?

[triggercut]

Originally Posted by Sam Jones

Before we all go in all guns blazing, what's the correct install routine? Is it:

1) Install Oblivion
2) Install Knights of the Nine
3) Install Shivering Isles
4) Install POOP

Do we need to install any official Oblivion patches, or are they err, "pooped"?

Do 1, 2, and 3.

Then follow the POOP instructions. I included the last official patch for both vanilla Oblivion and OB with SI installed.

Then you'll install "Unofficial patches" to get them outta the way. In future POOPs, I may rearrange that, since doing it this way will cause you to spend about 10 minutes at the end of the major part of POOP moving some stuff to the bottom of the load order, but for now...it works.

BTW, in addition to my desktop (which is seeding away!), I've got two laptops on the same file-sharing home network that should be seeding POOP by this afternoon. For those of you who start POOP this morning, by the time you get home from work you'll have POOP on your desktop.

[triggercut]

BTW, words cannot describe how happy I am that Brian at Popehat talked me out of the original name of this--Popehat Oblivion Mods Project (POMP)--and into the current name.

[docvego]

Originally Posted by triggercut

BTW, words cannot describe how happy I am that Brian at Popehat talked me out of the original name of this--Popehat Oblivion Mods Project (POMP)--and into the current name.

I'm starting to question what will be more fun, playing Oblivion again or the thread full of double entendres.

[Locker K]

I'd been looking for a definitive mod list before trying to start this game over again. Thanks, this looks all sorts of awesome.

[ElGuapo]

Whut no snail racing? No whey!

Nice list and install, man. Kudos.

Anyone know if there is a REALLY good companion mod out there? Toaster Says Share is pretty good (I think that's the one that adds the share and command spells and has the Generals questline). But I was looking more for some of the cool ones from Morrowind that had detailed stories, custom sounds and voice work and such. Unique companions, that is.

[KieronGillen]

Good work, man!

I take it that you need the expansion kits, yeah? Vanilla Oblivion is out?

KG

[Lake]

Originally Posted by triggercut

For those of you who start POOP this morning, by the time you get home from work you'll have POOP on your desktop.

POOP for dinner.

Thanks for simplifying the process. The amount of available mods out there makes my head spin. Looking forward to trying POOP out.