BOSS for Nehrim

[Psymon]

Hello ... I bring news from across the pond ... the Oblivion Load order sorting tool known as BOSS: Better Oblivion Sorting Software now supports Nehrim!
Bethesda Forum thread for main area of support: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... or-nehrim/

This post and thread is mainly to inform you of the thread that exists on the the Bethesda mods forum as this is the forum where most of the BOSS development happens and where I am. I have stepped up to make updates to the BOSS masterlist for the time being and time permitting.

BOSS: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516 is a load ordering tool designed to automate the sorting of mods. This one click utility sorts some 10,000 plus mods at this time. Quote:

A simple "one-click" program for users to quickly optimize and avoid detrimental conflicts in their oblivion mod load-order.
Features:

• Correctly positions over 10,000 mods and counting, including all the mod files found in such popular mods as FCOM, OOO, MMM, Better Cities, Open Cities, Race Balancing Project and many other large mods.
• Checks all the mod files used in an 'FCOM Convergence' installation, including partial or complete installations of OOO, MMM, Fran's, Oblivion WarCry, Bob's Armory, Loth's Blunt Weapons for NPCs, Cobl, Tamriel Travellers, Exnem's Runeskulls and more.
• Detects common FCOM installation mistakes and warns the user about them.
• Differentiates between FCOM and non-FCOM setups.
• Provides Wrye Bash Bash Tag suggestions that are automatically applied by Wrye Bash.
• Provides useful load order notes for many mods.
• Displays the version number of mods when it is available.
• Sorts mod files ghosted by Wrye Bash.
• Is mostly right (most of the time)!
• Allows easy user customisation of mod positions and the messages provided.
• Is under constant development and improvement by a team of modders and Oblivion experts.

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Better Oblivion Sorting Software (BOSS) will reorder your mods to their correct positions (as listed in the masterlist.txt database file), putting any mods it doesn't recognize after them, in the same order as they were before BOSS was run.

BOSS is designed to assist in the installation and usage of mods, especially more complex mods such as FCOM and MMM, and help mod users avoid serious conflicts. It is not a complete solution to load ordering issues, as there are far more mods out there (estimated at about 30,000) than BOSS knows about. To properly place mods BOSS doesn't know about, a good working knowledge of Oblivion mod load ordering is still necessary, for which some research and documentation reading will go a long way.

The purpose of the Bethesda thread and to an extent this one includes:

• Suggestions for mods to be included on the BOSS Nehrim masterlist.
• Corrections to the exising masterlist.
• Posting information about mods unrecognized by the current masterlist.
• Discuss load order logic with Nehrim.
• Discuss comments to be appended to mods.

Regarding this last point, Since Nehrim is a special case when it comes to mods. With Morrowind, Oblivion, fallout3 and soon New Vegas these games are official and established and most mods are designed to work with each game. While it is true that mods are being made specifically for Nehrim many of the mods used with Nehrim were originally designed for Oblivion and have been found to work with Nehrim either as is or after some altering. As such I'd prefer recommendations and commits to be about mods that are found to work with Nehrim and not mods that only partially work.

If you would like to help contact Arthmoor, PacificMorrowind, or WrinklyNinja to get signed up. They are found on the bethesda forum in the main BOSS thread: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... -software/

My commitment level: While I check in for a while most days I cannot say that Nehrim is the kind of game that I'm absolutely bonkers over and will likely not play it twice. As such I'm not gungho to test every mod that comes out nor am I the sort that likes every mod that comes out. So please be patient with me if I don't get to the updates right away. Also many times I may not do anymore than take your word for it that a mod does indeed work.
BOSS Credits

[+]

CREDITS:

Sources for the mod list and its order include: Agiel's Annotated Load Order; Fivefries load order; dev_akm's official expanded FCOM load order (FCOM 0.9.9); suggestions and instructions from Mart's Monster Mod, Better Cities, Open Cities and Open Better Cities developers; suggestions and instructions from many other modders; lots of advice and information from users. Some people have gone out of their way and provided continuing, expert and detailed help - thank you very much!

Thanks go to Wrye for implementing the importing of BOSS's Bashed Patch tag suggestions into Wrye Bash.

Thanks also go to the Beta Testing & Analysis Guild at TESAlliance and Surazal for testing and giving feedback on v1.6 prior to release.


PROJECT MEMBERS

BOSS since the middle of 2009 been a collaborative project on Google Code using the SVN version tracking and editing engine.

Google Code Administrators:

• Arthmoor
• PacificMorrowind
• Random007
• WrinklyNinja

Oblivion Masterlist Developers:

• Alithelord
• Arthmoor
• PacificMorrowind
• Random007
• Riddling Lynx
• Tokc/Tokc.D.K.
• Vacuity
• WrinklyNinja
• ZiggyX

FO3 Masterlist Developers:

• Alithelord
• Arthmoor
• jacksonleist
• Mosanger
• PacificMorrowind
• Valda

Source Code Developers:

• Random007
• Alithelord
• Leandor
• Leus
• PacificMorrowind
• WrinklyNinja

Most project members can be contacted on the Bethesda Game Studios Oblivion (and FO3) modding forum. Most can also be contacted on TesNexus.

LICENSE:

Better Oblivion Sorting Software and periodic updates are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported copyright license, some rights reserved, 2009-2010. Copyright is owned wholly by the Better Oblivion Sorting Software development team (see list of project members).

• BOSS may be copied and distributed freely as long as it is not changed and includes all the original files including this documentation.
• Commercial use of this software or masterlist.txt file is not permitted without permission.
• Publishing derivations and customizations of the program or masterlist.txt file is not permitted without permission. Ask first.

... Now manages about 100 plugins

[Psymon]

So while I am probably not going to check into the forums here that often I do check in most days at Bethesda forums.

I am also the author of the thread Nehrim and Mods: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... -and-mods/ which chronicles some of the work done on that forum regarding mod porting from Oblivion to Nehrim. Much material presented here is also there, except I focused much more on how to set up multiple installs of the Oblivion game. Please do check out that information and let me know of anything I may have left out or overlooked.

The main answer for multiple installs is a took called mTES4 Manager: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... 4-manager/ a Tool I cannot recommend enough.

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For making recommendations on mods to add to the BOSS masterlist please keep in mind that I'm not at all versed in German. I'd prefer the list to stay catering the English mods, but that does not stop you from contacting the BOSS team and starting a German version of the masterlist.

At this point we have sorted about 100 mods.

The following is the load order logic used to determine where the mod will go:

[+]

\BeginGroup\: ESMs
\BeginGroup\: Earliest mods
\BeginGroup\: NPC face mods
\BeginGroup\: Vanilla fixes (most likely will be used for English version tweaks)
\BeginGroup\: BSA tricks
\BeginGroup\: Loading Screen Alternatives
\BeginGroup\: Base Mods (often includes following types)
\BeginGroup\: Weather mods and overhauls
\BeginGroup\: Water tweaks
\BeginGroup\: Sound mods
\BeginGroup\: Lighting
\BeginGroup\: General Base Mods (alphabetically)
\BeginGroup\: Base A -Z
\BeginGroup\: Base Late
\BeginGroup\: Load Order Independent Mods
\BeginGroup\: Map marker Tweaks
\BeginGroup\: Hotkeys
\BeginGroup\: Body replacers
\BeginGroup\: Items (armor and weapons)
\BeginGroup\: Body Replacer Armour & Clothing
\BeginGroup\: Not For Free Armor
\BeginGroup\: Horse Mods
\BeginGroup\: Only Name changing files
\BeginGroup\: Overhauls (most likely not for a long time)
\BeginGroup\: Quests and Locations (alphanumerical)
\BeginGroup\: Landscape and City overhauls
\BeginGroup\: Overrides
\BeginGroup\: Alternative starts
\BeginGroup\: Realism
\BeginGroup\: Magic
\BeginGroup\: Alchemy
\BeginGroup\: Enchantment
\BeginGroup\: Thievery, Sneaking and Crime
\BeginGroup\: Combat
\BeginGroup\: Skills, Attributes and Leveling
\BeginGroup\: Pose and Animation Mods
\BeginGroup\: Semi-final overrides
\BeginGroup\: Beauty Packs & Race Changes\Addons
\BeginGroup\: Companions
\BeginGroup\: Race Overrides
\BeginGroup\: Message suppression/changing overrides
\BeginGroup\: Respawn & day length overrides
\BeginGroup\: Shader mods
\BeginGroup\: Pre Bash
\BeginGroup\: Bashed Patch
\BeginGroup\: Post Bashed Patch

I have included some German mods but mostly those that require no reading and are mostly armor and weapons.

I have also set up comments for mods that require renaming the master to Nehrim.esm ||| Wrye Bash 290 is Nehrim friendly (does not require Oblivion.esm to load)

If you would like to submit a mod for inclusion let me know, but keep in mind I may not install the mod so please read this:

Making a commit (telling me what is unrecognized).

For fastest results when telling me about unrecognized mods please include a link to the mod that is unrecognized. This will help in recognition and inclusion of mods. Just posting the name of the mod could work but it is kind of rude. Thank you for understanding.

* Please have correct spelling.
* If you already have a pretty good idea of what order the mod should be in please let me know.
* If the mod was meant to work on Nehrim, naturally works flawlessly, requires editing, or has issues working in Nehrim please post that information.
** I'm really undecided about whether to include mods that need more editing than reassigning masters as that seems more what the userlist is for.

Suggestions about tagging and comments to append to mod entries

At this time Wrye Bash does not really work fully with the Nehrim.esm. It does load and you can create a bashed patch that has basic tweaks (I use mostly camera tweaks) but I'm not aware that mod merging, leveled list merging, nor the importing of records into the bashed patch works at all at this time. Certainly the bashed patch tweaks are not designed to work specifically for Nehrim. Due to this bashed tags are probably not going to be necessary. If a mod has them though on the main masterlist then I will port them over if ever these functions are made workable.

The kinds of comments that I want to include are along these lines:

* Reassigning the master to Nehrim.esm is required for this mod to work.
* This mod requires a patch to work with Nehrim.
* Make sure to use the Nehrim version.
* Certain features of this mod have been problematic with Nehrim.
* Whatever suggestions you may have for more!