Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Mod Manager

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Mod Manager

This is a utility for managing plugins, and also for packing them for distribution. It can just be used as an enhanced version of the data files selector on the oblivion launcher, with sorting and load-order reordering capabilities, but there are a lot more features which can only be used when mods are packed as .omod files.

You can easily clean all files belonging to the mod out of your data folder, view the readme without unpacking the mod, e-mail the mod author, visit their website or view detailed information about the file. The main advantage though is that an omod can contain a script which can tell obmm which other mods a mod depends on, which mods it conflicts with, the order in which the esps must load, automatically register new bsa files, make ini or xml tweaks, etc. My aim was to make it nearly impossible to install the mod incorrectly.

So you've just downloaded a mod, and you've noticed that it's an omod file. I bet you're thinking, 'great. It took me months to work out how to open a 7-zip. Now I've got to go through all that again just to install a stinking mod!' Actually, you're probably not. You must know that a omod has something to do with oblivion mod manager, or you wouldn't be here. Presumably you haven't installed obmm yet, or you would know that all you have to do is double click on the omod and then activate it inside obmm. So what are you waiting for. Download obmm now.

Alternately, you could have a deep dislike of installers, and as such have used the 7-zip version of obmm instead. If you have, then obmm will not have set up the omod file extensions, and double clicking on it will bring up that stupid open with dialog. So you should put that open with dialog to good use, and tell it to open the omod with obmm. You could even tick the 'always use this application' checkbox if you like.

Yet another way of getting an omod into obmm involves starting up obmm and clicking load omod. Browse to the omod you want to install and open it.

Now comes the slightly more complicated part. If you've read down this far, then I can only assume that you know precisely what obmm is and how to use it, but have for some reason decided against using it. Things could go two ways from here, depending on the exact reason you refuse to use it.

Lets start with the easy one; maybe you are worried about bugs wiping out your mod collection, don't want to install .NET 2.0 or just prefer to manage your mods yourself. Well, that's your personal decision, so what you need is an omod to zip converter. It just so happens that I happen to have written one, especially for people like you. Don't you just feel so special? Anyway, grab a copy of omod2zip, run it and point it at the omod you want to install. After anything between half a second and a few minutes of chugging, depending on the size of the mod, you will be left with a brand new zip file, which can be extracted to the oblivion data directory like normal. Before installing the mod, check the readme (which will have been saved into the root of the zip file with the name '[modname]_readme.txt') in case the mod relied on any of obmm's scripting functions.

Now for the harder one. You hate me, maybe my breath smells, maybe you just refuse to run foreign exe's on your computer, but for whatever reason you refuse to run even omod2zip. This is where things get seriously complicated. Before reading any further, you are going to need a hex editor, something that can decompress a raw LZMA compressed stream, something that can open zip files and a serious amount of patience.

First, rename the omod to a .zip and open it up in any zip software of your choice. Extract all the files inside somewhere. If there is one called 'readme', stick a .txt on the end and shove it somewhere safe. Next open up 'config' in your hex editor, and look at the last byte. If it is a 0, the 'data' and 'plugins' files are LZMA compressed streams, otherwise they're deflated. Next, uncompress the 'plugins' and 'data' files. If they are just deflated, then you can open them up in a normal zip program. They will contain a single file called 'a', so extract it somewhere. If there are LZMA, then use your choice of decompressor to uncompress them. Next open up 'plugins.crc' and 'plugins' in your hex editor. The plugins.crc contains a number of 'string, uint32, int64' structs which represent each file stored in plugins. The string tells you where the file needs to go, and the int64 tells you the uncompressed length of the file. Go through the plugins file, and extract the files one at a time according to the file sizes given in plugins.crc. The files are stored in the same order in both plugins and plugins.crc. Once that is done, follow exactly the same procedure with data and data.crc.

Now, if you'd rather go through all that than use one of my programs, you must really hate me. (Or if you didn't before, I bet you do by now :p) This raises the interesting question of why you're even dirtying yourself by reading my website.