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Post by jgf on Jul 28, 2019 11:34:28 GMT
I actually own a Skyrim disc for Windows. I don't know how old it is, but I've never been able to use it. A guy on our local on-line auction site sold it to me years ago, but omitted to tell me that once the game disc has been registered to the original owner it can't be used by anyone else. I don't know if he genuinely didn't know, or was instead hoping that I didn't know about the registration, but either way I ended up with a coaster. It's in its jewel case with the book and everything so I kept it. For the money involved it wasn't worth chasing after it. I've got more than a few old games in their boxes in a bookcase in my living room. My two children played them quite a bit as they were growing up and I've certainly played them more than a bit myself. I was heavily into the original classic Tomb Raider games and played them for hours until I discovered Morrowind. You probably have a Steam disc of Skyrim. There was a major outcry a few years ago when they offered game discs of several games on ebay and Amazon that looked exactly like the original releases but were nothing but Steam versions on DVD or CD (of course there were no "original" Skyrim discs). You'll find numerous threads on TES sites complaining of getting stuck with a Steam Morrowind when they thought they were buying the original. The online pages carried no mention of Valve or Steam, the discs and labels were exact copies of originals, but once the game installed, along with a couple hundred meg of Steam software, you had to register via Steam ...so the used discs are useless. ebay at least was refunding when people complained, "This is just a damn Steam version!" No idea how many games they did this with but have heard of Morrowind, a couple of race sims, a special edition of Flight Sim, and a few others. About ten years ago Electronic Arts announced they would do everything possible to stop the trade in used games, because every sale of a used game cost the developer the sale of a new game. (By that logic we should abolish used car lots and libraries.) EA/Origin games on installation register to the email of the purchaser, only that person can get updates, tech help, etc. You can install and play most used EA/Origin games, but you cannot register them so cannot update, and most DLC/expansions require a recent update. If you contact customer support you will be told to buy a new copy; press the issue and they will offer to sell you, for $20, a new manual which has a valid registration; continue to pressure them and they may (seems about a 25% chance) erase the original registration and allow you to register your used game. (But this was a few years ago, they may not be as amenable now.) A nice thing about enjoying these older games is that our computers now easily surpass the recommended requirements, and all bugs, cheats, patches, etc. are easily found online. Downside is the communities are dead. I remember the Tomb Raider games; played one briefly, an issue with my vid card prevented me from swimming through underwater openings (same problem with the first Thief game) so didn't progress far.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 28, 2019 15:14:07 GMT
My daughter has Skyrim for the Playstation 4 and she's played the main quest through about eight times now. Having watched her play a few times I have to say that the graphics look really nice, but the game itself doesn't appeal that much to me. As an invalid herself her Playstation is very much how she keeps herself occupied, but then she's not a modder or interested in mods so it suits her fine. So my Skyrim disc is a Steam fake one (KILL IT WITH FIRE!). Oh well that explains it then. I've never seen or heard of another one like it here so I guess they must be a rarity in this corner of the world.
The original Tomb Raider games were a bit demanding on computer resources and it was pretty much a ritual; - buy the latest release, - rebuild your computer before you can use it. Their level designer at the time had been a civil engineer so that was why the Tomb Raider game worlds were downright amazing for their time despite being linear with only one path through them. Age of Empires was always a big hit with my children and I played it quite a bit myself too. Pharaoh (which you mention above) was another one I liked as well.
I agree that game studios trying to ring fence used games so they can't be purchased and played is just plain stupid. If someone buys and plays a second hand game and likes it they might be drawn to seeing what the latest releases are and buying a new copy. And as everyone who is a gamer knows there are websites on the internet full of cracks for various games (though these days you have to fight your way through the malware to get them) so it's all a bit pointless really. I don't hold with piracy, but once or twice I have looked for a crack so I could use a game I purchased new, but won't run anymore due to lost registration details & etc.
And yes some of the old games just look soooo good on modern computers and there's no longer any problems with having hardware good enough to run them.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 28, 2019 20:10:02 GMT
Well that was all a stunning waste of time. The game is still as buggy as hell and to top it off it crashes if I try to create a new character. I've tried everything I can think of and I'm going to give up. I'm seriously thinking of reviving my old Windows XP machine that's fitted with a fast late generation 3.0Ghz dual core processor and use that to play Oblivion on. I don't connect this computer to the internet by the way so it doesn't have anything in the way of spyware/nosy parker ware on it, - and certainly not Steam! The graphics card is only average, but it will be fine for Oblivion. It was my gaming computer for a good while so I know it works without any problems (or it did when I last used it). Remembering back to when I last played Oblivion over three years ago now I never used tools like Wrye Bash, just OBMM and nothing else. I installed the mods I wanted and I played the game and I never had any problems. Perhaps I'm trying to be too smart for my own good with thinking I have to BOSS, Clean and BASH everything. Playing computer games is supposed to be fun and it's not at the moment
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Post by dogonporch on Jul 28, 2019 20:17:58 GMT
Well that was all a stunning waste of time. The game is still as buggy as hell and to top it off it crashes if I try to create a new character. I've tried everything I can think of and I'm going to give up. I'm seriously thinking of reviving my old Windows XP machine that's fitted with a fast late generation 3.0Ghz dual core processor and use that to play Oblivion on. I don't connect this computer to the internet by the way so it doesn't have anything in the way of spyware/nosy parker ware on it, - and certainly not Steam! The graphics card is only average, but it will be fine for Oblivion. It was my gaming computer for a good while so I know it works without any problems (or it did when I last used it). Remembering back to when I last played Oblivion over three years ago now I never used tools like Wrye Bash, just OBMM and nothing else. I installed the mods I wanted and I played the game and I never had any problems. Perhaps I'm trying to be too smart for my own good with thinking I have to BOSS, Clean and BASH everything. Playing computer games is supposed to be fun and it's not at the moment Yes...KISS is in play re: Oblivion. I never clean...never use Wrye Bash...sort my own plug-ins...works great except for frickin' Chorrol which is a crashy place and can't determine as to why.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 28, 2019 20:50:10 GMT
I've never had any luck with mods that do anything in Chorrol either so I just leave it alone now.
If I remember correctly I should still have a working Oblivion install on my old XP machine so that would be good. If I'm really lucky it might have some old mods on it too that are no longer available, but we will see.
I think these on-line versions of Oblivion tend to be flakey anyway with the conversion stuff that's done to them which makes them more sensitive to the game's faults. Anyway I need to sleep again, so later on when I wake up I'll have a look at getting my old XP computer up and running again.
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Post by jgf on Jul 28, 2019 22:10:01 GMT
"when I last played Oblivion over three years ago now I never used tools like Wrye Bash"
The logical next step is rebuilding your game without Bash.
Despite virtually everyone on other TES sites lauding Bash with near religious fervor (I've been told, "even if you only have two or three mods you should make a Bash patch"), it has been nothing but trouble for me. Every time i use it I end up with a game that either will not start, crashes frequently, or has noticeable bugs; in fact, every time I've run Bash I've had to reinstall Oblivion. FWIW the only systems on which I've run Oblivion were Vista 32 and win7 32 (both with a mere 2gig RAM) where, once aware of its idiosyncrasies, it has been acceptably stable, even with a lengthy load list.
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Post by blockhead on Jul 28, 2019 23:37:16 GMT
When I had Oblivion installed, I did have Wrye Bash in, but ended up using it just as a launcher. The idea of making bash patches or of using it to combine mods just seemed silly to me, so I never tried that.
My theory is that so many people religiously use Wrye Bash is a holdover from Wrye Mash in Morrowind. Wrye Mash was (still is) essential for keeping character saves and mods clean and sorted, because Morrowind by itself did not handle them as well as Oblivion.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 29, 2019 0:04:41 GMT
I have to agree. What I've found is that while I may manage to create a stable bash patch, should I have to rebuild it in any way because I've made a change with some mods it will screw up.
My computer of choice for ages was a hotted over late generation 3.0Ghz Pentium P4 running Windows 98 with two gigs of RAM (Wow!) and an AGP video card with 1Gb VRAM I picked up cheap in a sale because PCIe cards were starting to make an appearance. I played all the classic Tomb Raider games on that as well as Morrowind and Oblivion. The thing was an absolute piece of cobbled together rat tech and that's what I called it, - 'the Rat'. It produced so much heat that it had six case cooling fans and when entering a graphics/resource intensive level they would all wind up like a jet taking off. My daughter (who ran her own software troubleshooting business at one time) was much bemused by it and could never understand why I clung onto using it when it was fast becoming a total computer evolutionary dead end dinosaur. In the end I replaced the Rat with the XP dual core machine I mentioned earlier and swiftly became a dual core processor fangirl. I do still have the Rat, now tidied up into a more modern case without bits hanging off the sides, but I haven't used it for a long time so it lives in honourable retirement in our computer parts storeroom.
And as I said with both computers I never used any utilities until I eventually started using OBMM. So yes, KISS will be my guiding principle from now on.
My old HP Xeon dual quad core processor professional workstation computer (Deeper Thought) will now be kept for more modern games which it runs with ease. And I have to say I did wonder if its much more complex architecture was a part of the problem with trying to run Oblivion on it.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 29, 2019 0:13:57 GMT
When I had Oblivion installed, I did have Wrye Bash in, but ended up using it just as a launcher. The idea of making bash patches or of using it to combine mods just seemed silly to me, so I never tried that. My theory is that so many people religiously use Wrye Bash is a holdover from Wrye Mash in Morrowind. Wrye Mash was (still is) essential for keeping character saves and mods clean and sorted, because Morrowind by itself did not handle them as well as Oblivion. Now you mention it I can remember using Wrye Mash with Morrowind and it certainly was useful with that game. Wrye Bash by comparison just seems buggy and makes a horrible jumble out of any mods it's supposed to be processing into being a better game play solution.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 29, 2019 10:05:27 GMT
Woman's privilege to change her mind and all that. I installed the GOG version yet again, but this time with nothing except OBSE and OBMM in the way of extras. No patches, no game engine fixes, no BOSS, no Wrye Bash, no TES4Edit, no nothing. I've loaded just the basic mods I like, OCO, 'A' body resized clothing and armour, Blockhead animation compilation & etc. No additional race mods (sorry Eiolynn), no world changing overhaul mods, no quest mods. I'm not even running a body replacer this time because I don't use skanky armour and clothing mods so there's no need to upgrade the vanilla body. I am using an improved universal skeleton though so the animations work nicely. Why did I have another go? I'm still having a lot of problems with sleepiness and I realised that it would be a lot of work to setup my old XP machine alongside my Xeon computer. For a start I'd need to assemble the dual monitor bracket kit I've got and then there would be cables to find and all manner of other tasks to do and I'm not really up to that at the moment. So far all is good. I started off another Dark Elf character, - T'Saara, - who is younger than T'Jaara and is an Ashland woman. She's an adventurer through and through and is presently poking around in caves and ruins looking for loot she can sell because she's as poor as a churchmouse. Very stealthy, very deadly with a bow, but Ok with a sword as well if enemies close in on her. Sideways cave is an interesting dungeon crawl, but not much good for loot at low levels. I'd forgotten about this right at the end of the crawl though. Loose gold coins scattered about everywhere and evidence of a severe falling out amongst treasure hunters. And predictably the chest they were fighting over has nothing of any value in it.
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Post by jgf on Jul 29, 2019 10:56:32 GMT
...My old HP Xeon dual quad core processor professional workstation computer (Deeper Thought) will now be kept for more modern games which it runs with ease. And I have to say I did wonder if its much more complex architecture was a part of the problem with trying to run Oblivion on it. I've only run Oblivion on dual core CPUs, and setting affinity to single or multicore never seemed to make a difference; though I've read Oblivion is not designed for multiple cores. But could it be Oblivion has issues with that many cores? There are many utilities for setting affinity, some so complex you can manually set each process to a specific core of an eight core system; but that's overkill, windows does a pretty good job of managing this on its own. So I prefer something simple - FlipTIB; when installed it adds two options to the context menu when you right click an exe file: "single core" or "multicore", select one and you're done (you can tell windows to do this in Task manager but it isn't persistent, you must do it before starting the game each time). It seems there is one bit common to all executables that controls whether it will use multiple cores, all FlipTIB (Flip The Important Bit) does is toggle this. Most XP era games don't care how many cores are available, they run the same regardless. But a few won't run on multicores (Thief 3 sticks with the intro video looping, set it to single core and it's happy), many just seem to run more smoothly on single core mode, and I found one that deemed FlipTIB malware - "game files have been altered, please reinstall the game". May not help at all but it's something else to try.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 29, 2019 11:18:47 GMT
That could be well worth a try. The earlier versions of the Trainz simulators get a bit confused when being asked to run on an 8 core machine so it's very likely that Oblivion might be having problems. So far though the game has been running well in its present mildly modded form and hopefully that will continue.
Edit: No go, - my antivirus software goes nuts when I tried to download FlipTIB so I guess I'll just have to keep crossing my fingers while playing Oblivion.
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Post by jgf on Jul 29, 2019 23:16:48 GMT
That's odd, must be something about the site your AV doesn't like; I've d/l'd the file over the years while using Avira, Panda, or Kaspersky and they haven't complained.
Tried to put it here, it's only 18k, and get "Error: This forum has exceeded its attachment space limit. Your file cannot be uploaded."
You can manually set the affinity; start Oblivion, once it's running (just sitting at menu screen), ALT+TAB out to Task Manager and in the Processes tab right-click on Oblivion.exe, select "Affinity", and in the next window assign one core (best not to use Core 0 as windows prefers that one). This will hold til you exit the game.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jul 30, 2019 3:11:58 GMT
Doing a quick check by starting the game and then Alt-Tabbing out (which crashed the game) I was able to determine that Oblivion seems to be running on the second and fourth core of the No.2 CPU. If that is so and it's quite happy doing that I think I'll leave well enough alone and not try to get clever by adding any engine patches to the game or try setting anything in the Process tab.
Thanks very much for your suggestions though.
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Post by blockhead on Jul 30, 2019 3:16:02 GMT
Just adding my two cents here.
Oblivion (and Morrowind and Fallout 3) does not like to be alt-tabbed from, so that by itself can make it crash.
I ran Oblivion on a two-core machine and it seemed OK to me. I've read that this can be a problem for some games, however.
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