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cfmdobbie
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 1859
Location: London, England |
| Hints and Tips - Technical |
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A few hints and tips about the Technical side of Oblivion.
Save-game Backup
Your game saves are located in your My Documents folder, under the path My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves. If you're reinstalling Windows, be sure to back this directory up if you want to keep your saves!
The Console
The console is a fun way of avoiding a restart because of a silly little bug. The console is enabled as default, and is opened with the key below the Escape key (either ` or ~ depending on keyboard layout.) Remember kids, consoles are easy to abuse, so try not to get carried away!
Getting de-stucked
Inexplicably wedged between two large boulders? Open the console, click one of the boulders and type SetScale 0.5 to shrink it out of your way.
Got stuck somewhere the devs didn't intend you to go? Turn on no-clipping with the tcl command.
Named saves
Okay, we've all realised by now that Bethesda went for the lowest common demoninator on the UI, meaning you can't even name your saves. But wait! Actually, you can! Instead of using the Save dialogue to save your games, open the console and type: save PutDescriptionHere.
Enabling Screenshots
As with Morrowind, the ability to take screenshots isn't enabled by default. Use your favourite text editor and open up My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini and search for bAllowScreenShot. This will initially be set to 0 - change the 0 to a 1 to enable screenshots. Press the Print Screen key on your keyboard to take a screenshot. If you have anti-aliasing enabled, you will need to disable it before you can take screenshots.
For some reason, the screenshots will be placed in your Oblivion install directory. They are captured in BMP format - convert to JPG if you want to email them or post them anywhere!
_________________
Charlie Dobbie
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Moderator of the Morrowind/Oblivion Forums=
Last edited by cfmdobbie on Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
Sun Mar 26, 2006 9:36 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
- If you have a moderately high end video card (X850 XT here) and attempt to enable 2xAA be forewarned. Things might seem smooth but you can inexplicably drop to 1-2 FPS during combat, even with a single wolf. Can't explain it but that was my issue.
- There is a big visual difference between small texture size and medium, but there is much less of a difference between medium and large. If you are running large textures with FPS problem try dropping that and compare the visuals. I did and I've yet to have a slowdown since (including getting rid of 2xAA)
- Don't mistake disk noise with low FPS. If you run FRAPS you might find you are getting 25-30+ FPS outdoors on a horse while your harddrive is progressively loading. Mine never drops below 25 FPS but I have WD Raptors in RAID 0 which are exceptionally noisy. FRAPS told me my FPS was actually decent. This has me wondering if there is anything I can do with memory caching since I've got a lot of system RAM. If anyone knows tweak settings...
- Not everyone can get screenshots working including myself - and yes I edited the right ini file. I was going banana's over that but FRAPS came to the rescue. Takes 2 seconds to download and install, hit 'F10' to print.
_________________
"For Innos!" |
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Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:57 pm |
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cfmdobbie
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 1859
Location: London, England |
quote:
Originally posted by ToddMcF2002
- Not everyone can get screenshots working including myself - and yes I edited the right ini file. I was going banana's over that but FRAPS came to the rescue. Takes 2 seconds to download and install, hit 'F10' to print.
I've since heard that having AA enabled will stop screenshots from working. Might that have been the problem you had?
_________________
Charlie Dobbie
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Moderator of the Morrowind/Oblivion Forums= |
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Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:51 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
This tip seems to get 10+ FPS gain for all NVidia users without any actual change to quality of graphical setting:
1. Download CoolBits
2. Go to DISPLAY PROPERTIES -> ADVANCED
3. Go to Additional Direct3D Settings
4. Change "Max frames to render ahead" from 3 to 0.
This seems to do very significant difference (see the post below). I think 3 is default value and Oblivion somehow seems to be largely impacted by this setting.
See this for more details:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=282064
IMPORTANT #1
Some games seems to dislike having this set to 0. You may see singificant loss in some other games (HL source 10 FPS loss reported). So be sure to set it back after your Oblivion session. Also some future patch/drivers may change this.
IMPORTANT #2
This seems to work only with vsync off. |
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Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:08 am |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
I just really made the game totally free up and run pretty much like silk, by simply turning the grass off. It ran good at first with the slider at half, largely in the moderate type brush and what have you around the main city, yet once I started getting out into the deeper woods, I started having some slowdown.
Not too terribly bad to be unplayable, but bad enough to be an annoying slowdown. I just turned the grass off completely, and the game seems twice as good looking and smooth, and twice as fast as well since I did. I know, grass is part of the big hype and lure of Oblivion, turning off the grass in this game is like turning off the gore and blood in Doom III or something, but I seriously like it alot more without it on. It was just distracting too in a way.
_________________
“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:12 am |
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Majnun
Village Leader
Joined: 02 Jun 2004
Posts: 89
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Samhain (or anybody else) you might want to try adjusting the .ini grass settings a little bit to see if you can have a happy medium instead of turning it off entirely.
[Grass]
iMinGrassSize=80
fGrassEndDistance=8000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=7000.0000
The first number (80 in this case) is the density of grass. This is the setting that might help you. The higher the number the less dense though. So if you double that number you will greatly thin out the clumps of grass but will still have *some* grass there.
The 2nd & 3rd numbers represent the Grass draw distance setting from inside Oblivion (the one you set in the options). Yours will say 0.0000 for both numbers if you have the grass slider in options all the way to the left. The numbers here are max using the slider (you can push it higher but nevermind that).
The only number you need to bother with is iMinGrassSize=80 though.
Change it to 160 at first and set the slider half way like you had it before (or even 1/4) and see if it's worth it. The game is still beautiful even with the grass off but having a little bit is better than nothing (to me anyway).
Changing one setting in the ini isn't gonna kill yer game (you can always just change it back). But it's still a good idea to make a backup of it before touching it at all. Oh, and it's the one in My Documents where your saves are that you need to change. |
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Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:21 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
I've considered just turning it off as well. Even with the density adjustment there is still the jarring issue of watching it grow in the distance as you walk. I really hate that - it breaks immersion. Plus I have WD Raptors in RAID 0 and they are noisy as sin with all that constant loading chatter.
_________________
"For Innos!" |
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Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:36 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
quote:
Originally posted by xSamhainx
and I also have a gb more of ram sitting on my kitchen table
That is really the right place for a stick of RAM :]]. |
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Mon Apr 03, 2006 7:07 am |
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argent1970
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 41
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i ended up turning the grass off because too many baddies were getting the drop on me because i couldn't see them. yeah, a bear hiding in the grass, great. ninja bear- lovely. |
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Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:15 pm |
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crotzari
Village Dweller
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Posts: 1
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| How do you add files to folders to change textures? |
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Hi !
I am new to Oblivion (though I played through Morrowind) and the tweaks you talk about seem very good. I have one giant problem though, I simply don't have those folders in my gameinstall that you talk about. This is a part of the readme-file for the texturepack to crisper textures:
"Installation
------------
Unzip and move the Textures folder to your Oblivion\Data folder. If prompted to overwrite, click "yes to all". The Folder path is as follows:
Oblivion\Data\Textures\Landscapelod\Generated"
Ouch!
I only have a path like this:
Oblivion\Data
In the datafolder I find one huge compressed file namned like this:
Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa
Obviously the textures are decompressed each time the game starts but how on earth do I get the files uncompressed?
_________________
"Close Shut the doors of Oblivion" |
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Thu Apr 27, 2006 7:28 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
| Re: How do you add files to folders to change textures? |
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Just look at the zip files in winzip - they should have the relative directory:
Textures\Landscapelod\Generated
So if you unzip them to "Data" they will create the full path when they extract. 
And don't touch the default textures in the Data directory.
_________________
"For Innos!" |
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Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:56 am |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
Gamespot put up some nice ini tweak info for people with RAM to throw around, I personally am running 2 gig now and have found this useful:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6148788/p-2.html
Crack open that initialization file (found in your My Documents/My Games/Oblivion directory) and make a few edits based on the following settings. The settings won't affect your image quality, but they do help with in-game stuttering. You can double the default values if you have 1GB of RAM, and then double them again if you have 2GB of RAM. The first two values (uInteriorCell Buffer and uExterior Cell Buffer) determine how much memory Oblivion dedicates to buffering these areas. You can leave these values at default if you wish, but if you have the RAM to spare, crank it up to at least the 1GB level. iPreload Size Limit determines how much RAM Oblivion gets to play with when it has to load levels.
Default:
uInterior Cell Buffer=3
uExterior Cell Buffer=36
iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400
1GB of RAM:
uInterior Cell Buffer=6
uExterior Cell Buffer=72
iPreloadSizeLimit=52428800
2GB of RAM:
uInterior Cell Buffer=12
uExterior Cell Buffer=144
iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600
If they aren't already set to 1 in your .ini file, change the following settings to 1 for some preloading goodness. These settings allow the game to preload textures and other files related to where you are. Load times might increase a little bit if you do so, but the change should noticeably reduce in-game hitching.
bBackgroundLoadLipFiles=1
bLoadBackgroundFaceGen=1
bBackgroundCellLoads=1
bLoadHelmetsInBackground=1
iBackgroundLoadLoading=1
bBackgroundPathing=1
If you happen to have a dual-core CPU, enable the following settings. They, too, will help with loading and give slight boosts to performance.
Multithreading Tweaks:
bUseThreadedBlood=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1
bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1
bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1
iNumHavokThreads=5
iThreads=9
iOpenMPLevel=10
_________________
“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Fri May 05, 2006 5:45 am |
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