PC GameSource Blog

I know, you probably read the title and thought, “Huh?”

For those of you who read my previous Oblivion Tip, I hinted at creating a Bash Installer package for your default game files, so that BAIN’s conflict detection will help notify you and preserve your vanilla game files should you wish to overwrite them.

I took this a step further, and created a set of BAIN packages which allow me to completely customize my Oblivion experience without harming any original files. The packages offer multiple versions of the default BSAs (compressed, uncompressed, and with the USIP files packed in), original or cleaned versions of the official DLC, etc.

But I noticed that, even after installing the package, BAIN could not detect the fact that the default files even existed (it would always show Oblivion – Meshes.bsa as ‘Missing’, for example, even though it was there and matched exactly the file in the BAIN package.

This is due to the list of default files stored in ‘bush.py’ in the variable bethDataFiles. BAIN is using this variable as a skip-list so that it does not calculate CRCs or check dates for any default files. My goal was to change this behavior.

This variable, bethDataFiles, is not necessarily only used for Bash Installers, so I did not want to edit it here. Instead, I opened up the file ‘bosh.py’ and found that it is what is actually performing the CRC checks and skipping the default Bethesda files.

There are two places where I commented out references to this variable, and the result is that BAIN treats all files in the Data directory equally… it now calculates CRCs for the default .bsas (which takes a little bit of time) and properly shows matches for my installed files that overwrote the default ones.

If you’d like to have this, too, first let me specify that I take no responsibility for what Bash might do to your default Bethesda game files if you perform this tweak. The reason I did it was to use a set of custom Bash Installers I created which contain the default files, among other variations, so I am not in danger of losing anything. If you do not have such a package, make sure you back up ALL of your data files.

Open up ‘bosh.py’ in a text editor. Around line 9721 look for the following:

if not rsDir and sFile.lower() in bethFiles: continue

Change it to:

#if not rsDir and sFile.lower() in bethFiles: continue

Next around line 9935 look for:

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For years we have been enjoying a well-sorted list of Oblivion mods thanks to the wonderful BOSS (formerly fcomhelper). But Fallout 3 users have been left in the cold, with sparse, scattered, and/or conflicting information about where their mods should go in their load order.

Early on this year, the developers at our partner SingularityShift (eg. mostly myself) released the first pre-beta of FOMS, whose final version (0.6.6.1) was released in April. FOMS used XML templates to facilitate sorting and management of conflicts, dependencies, and related information for Fallout 3 mods. It was very basic with a very limited UI that provided just enough functionality to sort and manage mods, but it had some inherent issues in the fact that it was developed with hand-written tools in a scripting language that has some serious limitations.

Recently, SingularityShift released the first alpha (Alpha 1) of FOMS 2, which is a complete rewrite taking advantage of the robust features of the .NET Framework and WPF to provide a greatly-enhanced sorting experience, including a Template Manager to create and manage XML templates, live conflict/dependency/message tracking, robust backup/restore options, and more all driven by a flexible Preferences system that will ultimately allow users to customize many aspects of the application.

Given that it was a first release, users have uncovered many bugs and submitted many wishlist items and feature requests. Now, FOMS 2 Alpha 2 is nearing its release, and some of its new features that have been recently unveiled are:

• Refactored windows and unified resources for a smaller size, tighter code, and better performance and stability
• The Template Manager is being dumped and replaced by Template Studio, allowing much-enhanced functionality such as template downloads, backups, merging, cleaning, upgrading, and much more.
• Conflict/Dependency recommendations and resolving are now included, so you don’t need to hunt through your list to find and fix the conflicts/dependencies yourself.
• Many smaller fixes and improvements for a better overall experience.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new release!

As always, you can follow along with the software’s development at its project site.
You can discuss it with other Fallout 3 users at Fallout3Nexus and don’t forget to watch the official site at falloutmodsorter.com for release information and more details!

(If I have some shame, can it really be considered a shameless plug?)