Presently that BSA does not exist. The Complement BSA is found in any resource update archive, but right now there is no resource update archive as Ismelda recently reuploaded the main resource archive with the last update merged in. As soon as we have new resources for the mod, there will be another Complement BSA, but for now, you don't need to have one.

Hi, I'm running into serious problems using Better Cities 4.5.1. I get CTD's when I run the game with most component esp's enabled.

I will describe the steps I have taken so far to try to solve my problems. First I thought the CTD's were caused by conflicts with other mods, so I disabled every other mod I have installed, except the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. Then I started a new game with nothing else except UOP enabled (not even the files of Better Cities), finished the tutorial and saved outside the sewers, right before the entrance. Then I enabled Better Cities, but I ran into CTD's. I've tested most of the component esp's and got a picture of those causing CTD's and those esp's causing other annoyances:

CTD on the Imperial isle when turning right when you stand with your back to the sewer exit and walking uphill in the direction of the little lake:
Bruma
Bruma FPS
Leyawiin
Skingrad
Skingrad FPS
IC Arboretum
IC Arboretum FPS

Unstable:
Cheydinhall FPS

Purple/black meshes:
Anvil FPS
Cheydinhall
Chorrol
Chorrol FPS

No problems found:
Anvil
Bravil
Bravil FPS
Leyawiin FPS
Better Cities Full City Defences
Better Cities No Leyawiin flooding

I got these results by one by one enabling the esp's and playing the game for a while. I even enabled the FPS patches when not running the corresponsing city esp.

All of the esp's causing the CTD cause them when I walk from the sewer-entrance towards the IC by turning right and walking uphill towatds the little 'lake' on the IC isle. After some 10 steps or something, the game crashes. This also happens when I have no other BC esp enabled, but Bruma's, or Leyawiin's, etc, or only their FPS patches without the corresponding city-esp, but also when I load everything correctly, the way BC is installed when I activate the .omod and don't switch off or on any of the component esp's, but leave everything the way it is installed. The CTD's happen whether or not I switch BC - full City Defences on or off when loading the problematic esp's, and when I switch it off. It also happens when I reinstall BC without the city defences.

I know one thing for sure, it's not caused by the resource pack. Because when I only load the resouce esm and esp, I get no CTD's. The same is true for all the esp's I have listed under 'no problems found'. I can run around and do everything I want when I have for instance anvil and bravil loaded.

Secondly there is another issue, which is purple/black meshes. If this problem shows up, most textures of most objects in the game except for a few (the cathedral) do not show, but instead the object looks purple, black or in some cases it doesn't even show up. When I run certain esp's, such as Anvil FPS (together with Anvil normal), Chorrol and Chorrol FPS, I get this problem. When I disable the esp, things are normal again. I get the same when I run Cheydinhall and walk through cheydinhall (which appears to be stable), but the problem disappears when I also enable cheydinhall FPS, however then the game becomes unstable and I get random CTD's (never at one specific location). I don't know if the CTD's and purple/black meshes are related to each other.

So Anvil without Anvil FPS shows up normal, but Cheydinhall without Cheydinhall FPS is purple/black and with Cheydinhall FPS it shows up normal.

I have Qarl's textures 3 1.3 installed, as well as the UOP-Qarl copatibility patch, I run OBSE 17b, OBMM and Wrye Bash (although I'm not quite so handy with Bash), I have the most up to date catalyst drivers, the game is also correctly patched. I do have several other mods installed, but all esp's and esm's are switched off. My OS is Vista 64.

My PC should be up to the task (running the game with 55-60 FPS) with 4x AA and bloom with a resolution of 1920x1200 with graphics setting at maximum: Intel Core 2 Duo 8400, 4 GB ram, Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 Vapor-X.

Can anyone of you help me, since I haven't found anyone so far who has experienced the same problems as I have? I have seen all the pictures and video's of BC and I would so much love the experience of BC, yet I cannot because of all these problems.

HELLO AGAIN. im trying to install ICEXPANDED and am having difficulty locating the doors. i remember last time i used the mod entrances to the underground levels were located near the temple disctrict entrance. those ponds between the big doors seperating districts were used to enter the underground. has this changed?

I can only think of two possibilities.
1) Your game is corrupt. Reinstall completely.
2) You have too many ESMs/ESPs/BSAs in the Data folder.

There is a limit to the number of ESMs/ESPs/BSAs combined that can sit in the Data folder (active or inactive). If you go over that limit, the game becomes unstable, some textures appear purple or black. If you go way over, the game even fails to load at all. The first limit is something like 350, while the second limit is around 400. Since you're seeing purple & black textures, I suggest this as a likely possibility. Also, the objects which appear purple/black are random, so you may not see the same object purple/black each time you enter the same area (this happens even without quitting and relaunching the game, though usually you just get more things turning black the more times you visit the same location).

BTW you cannot use the FPS patches without the corresponding City ESPs. The FPS patches are dependent on the City ESPs. Trying to use them without the City ESPs will either cause the game to CTD on startup, or else will automatically enable the City ESP relating to that FPS patch before launching the game (depending on how you activated the FPS patch).



You have to run a console command don't you? Check the readme for ICExpanded, I'm sure that's the mod with the console command for compatibility with BC.

Thanks for the help. The combined number of .bsa, .esm and .esp files is 511, I'll first see how I can reduce that. I thought there was only a limit on the number of active files, which is a reason why I had already been merging many of my clothing/armor mods into one, using TES4Gecko.

When I enabled and disabled the ESPs, I assumed the fps patches are of no value without the corresponding ESPs, since I'm a modder myself. I suppose they remove stuff that is being added by the corresponding city mesh and make it easier to load that way. I merely activated the fps patches without the corresponding ESPs for diagnostic reasons, because I assumed the problems were somehow caused by conflicts between those ESPs and something else, like other, non-BC resources. I was hoping to identify a pattern that way. I activated the fps patches through OBMM and often I also launched the game through OMBB and only a couple of times directly through the OBSE loader shortcut on by desktop. What I noticed in the game was that when I disabled the city ESP but had the corresponding fps patch enabled, the city would show up in the customization menu. From everything I've seen about BC to far, I like it as you guys provide it and didn't want any customization, so I didn't further explore that menu and just clicked it away. In any case, enabling the fps patch without the corresponding esp does not cause a CTD on startup.

It worked. The problem was indeed the high number of esp, esm and bsa files. The mod looks amazing. I'm dazzled by added content to the Imperial City alone! I'm wondering how I'm going to make my way through it and whether I'll be able to find everything. The IC is now a real city rather than a village-turned-into-a-huge-fortress. Looking forward to exploring the other cities.

Just interested.

How do you have further decreased the amount of bsa, esp and esm beside merging esps.

I had over 150 of such files which I was not using at the moment. Several were older files which had been made obsolete by patched versions to make them compatible with mods such as Better Cities, Natural Environments, etc. There were also files changing the same thing, such as natural water and enhanced water. Previously I was using only one of them, of course. I have copied all these files which I don't use to a new directory in the data folder: "unused esp esm and bsa files". If I want a change back I can easily find an alternative file or predecessor.

A general piece of advice, which I learned as a modder, is to always keep old resource files, like .nif and .dds. Take for example robert's male body, which uses the texture footmale.dds. Oblivion also comes with a default footmale.dds. It is in the textures.bsa archive and can be found in the /data/textures/characters/imperial/male/ folder once you unpack the bsa archive. When installing robert's body, you can of course overwrite such a file, but you can also rename it to malebody.original.dds. That way you always have a backup file.

I merge BSA's using OBMM to decrease the number of BSAs. Just extract a bunch of them to one folder and then create a new one from it. Name the new one appropriately so it will load, IE if you have shivering isles you can call it "DLCShiveringIsles - Merged Stuff.bsa" and it will load. Then get rid of all the bsas you merged.

Is this compatible with Tamriel Travellers?

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387

absolutely yes

Is this compatible with Dragon Captioins: The Elder Council and that series of mods?

Also, to install OBC (Open better cities), do I do this?:

1. Uninstall BC
2. Install OBC
3. Install BC again

I couldn't understand the install instructions that well on TESnexus.com.

I don't think we care about those mods. Most of them are "compatible" though.

OBC and Bc are mutually exclusive meaning that you can't have the same city in OBC and BBC. You need to choose to install one or the other but you can have Chorrol in Open Better Cities and Cheydinhal in Bananasplit's Better Cities. You just can't use the same town with both mods.

Plus OBC is no more maintained so you might get some quirks here and there (if we changed things but i don't think we did) and you will need to use the latest esm and bsa which are provided in Bananasplit's Better Cities to ensure all works correctly at least with Better Cities part.

For the most part, yes. You'd need to specify exactly which you are asking about other than TEC. As far as I recall, TEC is fully compatible (one NPC will try to stand in an inaccessible location, but he should simply end up near that location instead - the NPC might be from OMG actually, I can't remember and I'm at work so don't have my notes with me); KA is almost fully compatible (don't use the additions it adds in Bruma - there should be an NPC in Kvatch you can speak to to disable these features if they're currently enabled in your game); OMG is fully compatible.
CUO Chorrol and CUO Leyawiin will not be compatible; CUO itself will be compatible; I haven't gotten around to looking at KRis yet; TEC Temple of the One is compatible (might be a lamp post from BC overlapping a bit of scaffold around the temple, but I think I resolved that conflict); and his first mod (I forget it's name, but it contains underground passages - Kingdom of the Somethings?) is fully compatible. I can't remember any others in the series right now.

EDIT
Kingdom of Almar, that's what I was thinking of. I don't think I ever checked Fighter's Guild Contracts for conflicts, so I don't know about that one.
I've had a chance to check some of my old notes...
Kvatch Aftermath - there used to be other conflicts but I resolved them all about a year ago. The only remaining conflict is in Bruma, as mentioned above.
Origin of the Mages Guild - this is the one which adds an NPC whose AI takes him to stand in the Market District daily, at a spot where BC places a building. This NPC will either stand near the intended location, or he'll spend an hour or two trying to walk through the building, before giving up and moving on with his next AI package. There used to be other conflicts in the Arcane University, but I resolved them about a year ago.
The Elder Council - a skooma dealer is placed in the Market District in the same spot BC places a tree. However this is merely the NPC's Editor Location, typically the game automatically snaps NPCs to the nearest pathgrid node, and since there are no nodes under the tree, he should safely appear near the tree instead. In the Arboretum, a rat will spawn above the pond added by BC in one of the TEC quests. Rats can swim, so it doesn't matter. No other conflicts.
Temple of the One - yes, as I thought, one or two pieces of scaffold will conflict with some BC lamp posts. However I might have repositioned those lamp posts slightly about a year ago to resolve. I can't remember now.
The Necromancer - no conflicts.






We haven't provided any install instructions in the readme for using both together
You don't need to uninstall BC first, but there's nothing wrong with doing so. Do install BC over OBC however, allowing BC to overwrite whatever OBC files it wants to. As Ismelda said, don't use the same city files from each mod. OBC doesn't touch the IC at all, so you can use all of BC for the IC.

Well, I had a feeling something was funny when I extracted the new resources from bsa to help work with the meshes.

Found the problem.

Better Cities - Textures 4.5.1 bsa\textures\lowres\architecture\imperialcity

Notice the sizes for all the textures are incorrect. (or most all of them.)

52x208 or 104x208 or 100x52 or 24x24 etc,etc,etc just isn't right.

Don't know if that was something that was intended for the VWD plugin that was made,

but here is a rule of thumb. Texture dimensions need to be X,Y 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096.

When these are corrected I can continue with the _far nifs.

Metallicow

I use BAIN, and I am wondering whether or not the OBMM script renames the B&M Barrowfields patch. I have seen a number of load order that look as though the B&M version of the patch is there, but they have the B&M Full version of BC.


Thank you all for the updates!
- Tomlong75210

Yes the omod script rename any patches to have it named "Better Cities -" and then the name of the mod patched. I like to have things tidy even in naming convention. It allows us to point also people who are doing the manual/BAIN install and those who are using OBMM. You would be surprise how much people use OBMM just for the load order and never made an omod who came claiming afterward that they did a correct install with OBMM.

I really do understand. Thanks for the reply.
- Tomlong75210

For those trying to use Cats and Rats with Better Cities or any of the overhaul mods e.g. FCOM, MMM or OOO without CTD'ing everytime you enter a city, version 2.5b of Cats and Rats from TheElderScrolls.info does the job.

Does the Goth Shop replacer still support Slof's Goth Shop I and II?

No.

It is a replacer for the newest version of the Goth Shop created by AlienSlof.

Okay, I will just use that version then.


Thanks for the reply!
- Tomlong75210

Well I've been fooling with the load order and loading different versions of the Better Cities mod and I can't seem to figure out what's causing this problem. I have all Better Cities esps loaded at the bottom of the load order and the resources esm is the last esm that is loaded. I followed directions to the letter and for the most part it's great but there are some strange occurences. Green Emperor way is missing pretty much everything, the building is gone as well as the walkways and each entrance to the other districts is a loan door floating up in the air. The arena district is missing a wall on the northeast end and I can look freely out into cyrodil. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm running BC version 4.5.1 and resources 4.5.0. Thanks