A few questions

[POMC S117]

I recently got Oblivion on the PC. I have it on the Xbox but I wanted to try modding out. I have a few questions.

I made a small mod. The only things changed were in the Anvil Bay area. I shifted one of hte boats over slightly and added a tree. I saved it as "Test Mod". When I started the game, I went to data file and selected Test Mod as well as the normal Oblivion game. When I went to Anvil, there was no tree and the boat was in its usual position. Why is this?

Also, how do I make custom weapons, armour, NPCs etc.

[VirtualWeasel]

I don't know why the mod wouldn't work...

But, custom items, NPCs, etc. involves duplicating existing NPCs/Items and renaming the duplicate as well as change their ID.

[Vendetta]

Sometimes weird like that happen in modding. It works for me to just delete the .ini and start a new character.


Next questions: If you are talking custom custom (New weapon meshes) You are going to need to dedicate a couple years to learning an animation program such as Blender or 3DS Max. Just putting in a weapon or piece of armor with different defense levels/enchantments, is as easy as importing the .nif of it and editing its object data.

NPCs are a slightly more complex process of which I forget how to do, here is a link.
http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Ba ... n_Tutorial

[POMC S117]

I was talking about meshes.

I found out how to work the mods. I was running an older version of my game. It was unpatched. I patched it and now it's up to date with the Construction Set.

I made an NPC called Slave. His only dialogue is:

"My name is the Adoring Fan's Brother. My three siblings are Bob, Bob's Brother and the Adoring Fan."

He's very tough. He killed a bandit ringleader with his fists.

[VirtualWeasel]

Yeah, custom meshes involve you devoting half your life to learning a 3D Modeling software. Can't say the results won't be amazing of you do, though. If I could make custom meshes, I would.

[POMC S117]

No custom meshes for me.

How do I set dialogue for NPCs?

[VirtualWeasel]

Dialogue is difficult.
I've only messed with it once, and it's sure not an easy feat. You gotta learn a lot about variables.
Here, this should answer a lot of your questions: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Main_Page

[POMC S117]

I tired it. I fiddled around with it successfully but it didn't appear in game.

I made a new place.

An island called Galadiel, located off the shore of Anvil. It has a small priory with some Altmer monks. It's been plagued by bandits.

[Deandra]

You may be surprised how much you can change the look of weapons by doing nothing but texture/normal map work. For example, compare Rugdumph's sword and a regular silver claymore.

[VirtualWeasel]

True, but excellent texture editing takes time to learn as well. (Though, not nearly as much time...)
If you want to make mods, basically, you have to commit.

[POMC S117]

I can never edit mods that I made. It says something about a master file. I had added a questline for my island and then I couldn't save it. And to make matters worse, my island has been deleted.

[Deandra]

Did you base it on an .esm file that you deleted afterwards? Like something with resources your mod needed?

[POMC S117]

No. I went to overwrite a previous version, though.