In order to honor the release of one of the most anticipated games of 2006, MegaGames has put together a list of the most useful tweaks and mods that will help gamers make the most of their encounter with Oblivion.
Enjoying Oblivion in all its splendor can only be viewed as a tribute to the talented people that have spent countless hours working in order to deliver a top notch game for fans and new players alike and these tweaks should put you well on your way to doing just that.
The first problem when compiling such a list of tweaks is to manage to get our heads out of the game for long enough to discover them, the second being accepting that there are ways to improve the already amazing experience. But we have sacrificed ourselves so that those that follow get a better quality Oblivion.
Oblivion players have been quick to rush to the forums and claim that this or that change has helped them get the most out of the game but you have to remember that many tweaks are hardware dependent so make sure you pick and mix from the ones provided below while always checking to see if they are actually providing an improvement. The best way to check improved performance is common sense although FPS can also help. To view FPS in-game bring down the console and type:
setdebugtext 12
tdt
The Tweaks
1. nVidia owners should go to their card's control panel with coolbits enabled and then navigate to Performance & Quality Settings -> Additional Direct3D Settings. Once there make sure that the Frames to render ahead setting is set to 0 or 1 from 3.
2. Make sure that you set your iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600 (default 2621440)
3. Grass.
According to all players, the main performance killer in the game, specifically in the outdoor areas is grass. Depending on the performance capcity of your machines you should try and control the density of grass. You can chaneg those settings by setting: iMinGrassSize=150 (default 80)
Those of you with lower end machines can even set it to 180 or 200 and see which setting works best for you. Another two grass settings which could prove useful are:
fGrassEndDistance=8000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=7000.0000
4. If you wish to enable shader model 3.0 use:
Allow30Shaders=1
5. Atomicmpc also recommends the following thread tweaks for reducing waiting times although the writers are not quite certain yet about their significance.
bUseThreadedBlood=1 (default 0)
bUseThreadedMorpher=1 (default 0)
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1 (default 0)
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 (default 0)
iNumHavokThreads=3 (default 1)
bBackgroundPathing=1 (default 0)
bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1 (default 0)
iThreads=10 (default 3)
iOpenMPLevel=10 (default 10)
Rememeber these tweaks will not buy you a new system, they are mainly to be used, wisely, in order to improve performance. Try messing around with each setting until you find the one that suits your hardware best. We will keep updating these tweaks as we find more.
Read on for soem exciting mod tweks for Oblivion.
Better Water
One of the most significant improvements we found was that introduced by the Better Water mod. According to its creator... this changes the Opacity of the water in the game and the amount of Fog underwater. We are not sure how the developers missed this one but you can always rely on the game's very active community to come up with a solution.
No Annoying Messages
One of the most frequent gripes of the Oblivion player has to do with the sometimes silly messages that appear. The creator of the No More Annoying Messages mod states: removes annoying messages that appear now and then. For example "Your horse is stabled outside the city gate." and the infamous "Loading area...". Enjoy
Improved UI Mods With No Markers
This mod will help you rid your game of the XBox 360 look and introduce a more PC-like design for the UI. The creator of the Improved UI Mods With No Markers states: By running ImprovedUIwithNoMarkers-v2.02.exe the mod will install all the needed files in their proper places for you. Just follow the on-screen instructions for quick and easy installation.
Camera Mods
One developer has created two mods that will help you improve the way you see the game when in 3rd person mode. First comes the Chase Camera mod which:
- Removes camera swing delay.
- Removes elastic camera when moving forward and backward.
- Removes camera shake when moving.
The Vanity Camera Smoother will slow down or "smooth" the camera movement when moving the mouse to rotate around you character while in Vanity mode.
Brighter Torches
If you are one of the Oblivion fans not satisfied by the level of illumination provided by the torches in-game this little mod should do the trick. Applying the Brighter Torches mod ensures that each torch lights an area over twice the size of that lit by an unmodded torch.
Hunters Mod
This mod was specifically created for those who love to hunt in game and adds new meats and extra features to the hunting. The Hunters mod... adds Wolf Meat, Lion Meat & Bear Meat. Also added more types of hides and tweaked the values of hides again. (increased in value) Made male deer drop antler items so they are more valuable of a kill than the females. Brown Bear Skins are more valuable than Black Bear Skins & added Timber Wolf Pelts that are also more valuable than standard Wolf Pelts. This mod makes hunting more profitable and rewarding without being unbalancing.
MegaGames will keep expanding this section with new mods and Oblivion tweaks as we find them or as you submit them to us, so get moving and let us know of any useful tweaks or mods you may have discovered.
