Better Cities:Readme

Better Cities

v6.2.1
BC Team: Vorians
Retired BC Team members: Ismelda, Bluepie, Nernie, Emerald Demond, Sigurd Stormhand
Original Better Cities Authors: Max Ischreyt (a.k.a. Bananasplit), Reckless, Wolfslady
Authors of larger mods merged in: Jadraxs & Sjors Boomschors, jlf2n, Reaper9111, SilentResident, Ryan O.Hershey, Acros and ANDORAN team
Download from Nexus
Visit the Better Cities Wiki

Better Cities is a compilation of the following mods, integrated together to resolve conflicts between them all, and with literally thousands of minor glitches, bugs etc. fixed. We have also made enhancements to all of these, adding our own layer of modifications including new dialogue and quests. And we're still working on it!

• Bananasplit's Better Cities Anvil, Bravil, Chorrol, Imperial City Market, Leyawiin, Skingrad
• Reckless' Better Cities Cheydinhal
• Wolfslady's Better Cities Bruma
• Wolfslady's Better Arboretum

• Anvil Bay Expansion by jlf2n.
• Blood & Mud Dirt Deluxe Anglais by Ryan O.Hershey.
• Bravil Docks by jlf2n. Nernie has replaced a number of the interiors.
• Cyrodiil Rebuild: by Acros and ANDORAN team.
• Cyrodiil Rebuild II: Imperial Isle by Acros and ANDORAN team.
• ImpeREAL City by SilentResident.
• Let the People Drink! by Qazaaq & Khornate.
• Leyawiin Port by TheXanadu & TheLastVoice. Vorians has filled all the empty interiors.
• Nernie's Bravil River Shack & Village.
• Nernie's Waterfront Market.
• New City Leyawiin by Furryvolka and Seryj2.
• Imperial City Waterfront Tunnel Entrance by Jadraxs & Sjors Boomschors.
• Delivery Job (a.k.a. Gold Horse Courier Service) by Manargo & Zaldiir.
• The Bank of Cyrodiil by Zarkis.
• Reaper's Arcane University by Reaper911.
• Reaper's Waterfront by Reaper9111.

A number of smaller mods relating to the cities have also been included, please see the document Credits.txt in the “Docs” folder.

Requirements

Better Cities Requires Oblivion patched to version 1.2.0416.
Shivering Isles is required. The game may fail to launch or may crash without Shivering Isles.
Enable General Dialogue Subtitles from the in-game options, as one or two quests contain unvoiced conversations between NPCs, which you will miss if General Dialogue Subtitles are disabled.
Disable region borders in Oblivion.ini to access some quest-related locations (find line bBorderRegionsEnabled and set this to 0).
The Better Cities in-game menu requires OBSE v16+ to work. Without OBSE, the menu will not be available, but you can still use the in-game console to trigger the same options.
The Gold Horse Courier delivery quests require OBSE v19+ to work. Without OBSE, you will not be able to play the GHC quests.

Load Better Cities near the end of your load order and after any mod that alters the city worldspaces.
Read the Installation section of this readme. Even if you find it too detailed, just read it anyway, some people need this much detail to install.

Before Uninstalling

If you toggled any city to be Open, then before removing BC from your game, you must first toggle the city closed again.

Installation

Below are four different installation instructions, for Wrye Bash, Mod Organizer 2, Vortex, and for manually installing the mod. Scroll down to the section that applies to how you intend to install this mod. These instructions are also available on the Wiki.

After installing, adjust your load order so that all Better Cities ESPs are near the end of your load order, with "Better Cities - IC Imperial Isle.esp" loaded before "Better Imperial City.esp" or "Better Cities IC Elven Gardens.esp".

All Replacer ESPs should be BEFORE the Better Cities ESPs.

All Better Cities Patches should be AFTER the Better Cities ESPs, starting with the FPS patches, then the compatibility patches.

Highly recommend using BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) for this. Do not use LOOT instead of BOSS, as LOOT does not work well with Oblivion, and tends to place most mods in the wrong place.

If you want more information about what a specific ESP in the BC archive does, then read the file titled "What Does Each File Do.rtf" in the "Readmes" folder.

If updating from an older version, please ensure that you uninstall the old version before installing the new version.

Sometimes with an update we announce that a clean save would be wise when upgrading from a previous version. If we don't say so when we release a new version, then you probably don't need to do this.
How to make a Clean Save when upgrading Better Cities to a new version:

1. Load your game with your old BC plugins activated.
2. Go into a cell (a house or a cave or any inside place not related to Better Cities, preferably not a house in any of the cities).
3. Save your game in a new save slot and quit the game.
4. Uncheck/uninstall/delete the plugins related to Better Cities (the ESPs with "Better Cities" prefix; you shouldn't need to remove/deactivate our ESM).
5. Load the game and choose the save you just made.
6. Once in the game save again (in a new slot). This is the clean save.
7. Exit the game and install the new version of Better Cities.
8. Load into your clean save and enjoy!

• BAIN Install - Installing using Wrye Bash, recommended
• Manual Install - not recommended

Customise your Better Cities

Before launching the game, edit the file “Better Cities Resources.ini” which should be in the Data folder. OR If you have installed the mod LINK, then after loading the game, use LINK's in-game menu to access these same options. Note that there are two ways to access LINK's in-game menu, one is from the game’s title screen (where you can Continue, Load a save, start a New game etc.), the other is after loading a save. The LINK menu in the title screen will only affect starting a NEW game, changes made here will be ignored if you then load an existing save.

- Options to toggle a city open will let you skip the load screens when entering any city (except the Imperial City). This can have some impact on FPS in and around cities, and may prevent access to content from other mods which edit the cities. See the next section of this readme for more details.
- Options to enable guards walking on top of the city walls do exactly as described.
- Options to force BC-added NPCs to wander in their homes should only be used if you experience really low FPS in the city streets (including the Imperial City). These options are aimed at reducing the number of NPCs wandering around in the streets when they are idle, as NPCs on-screen impact FPS.
- There's not much of this content, but if you don't like to see the gory aspects added by Better Cities, you can toggle them off – this one option affects all cities.
- In the Imperial City, if you feel that there are too many location markers displayed on the compass, you can hide these. Has no impact on location markers on the compass when not within the walls of the Imperial City.

Open Better Cities

All cities include an option to toggle on Open Better Cities, which means that all Better Cities content (excluding the Imperial City) found in the enclosed city worldspaces will be transferred into the Tamriel worldspace, removing load screens at city gates, and giving the chance in some places to climb over the city walls or pass through water drainage arches below city walls instead of using the gates.

Prison: When you are released from prison in any city, you are now placed outside the city, near one of the city gates, instead of in front of the castle. This will happen even if you have not enabled the "open" version of any city.
Toggling Open Better Cities Option: You shouldn't enable/disable these options while in the city being toggled, nor when in the Tamriel worldspace. Go into an interior to do it, or trigger it from another city which you are not opening (the Imperial City would be fine).

Better Imperial City

We moved the Imperial City Districts to a different parent worldspace to allow the IC to have its own landscape without conflicting with any mod which changes the land outside the city walls. The advantage of this is that any mod altering the Imperial Isle landscape will not affect the IC Districts as we designed them (as long as that other mod is loaded before BC), and BC will not affect any mod altering the Imperial Isle landscape outside the city. The disadvantage is that you can’t fast travel from within the Imperial City walls to outside. You can still fast travel between the Districts though. If you want to fast travel to any location outside the IC, you will need to use one of the City gates first to get outside.

You MUST have the IC ESPs loaded in the far end of your load order to ensure no mod will add something in the IC by error and change the worldspace back to the regular Tamriel and thus cause landscape issues. The easiest way to check whether your load order is good when in the Imperial City, is to view the world map. If you see our map which shows only the Imperial City, then all is correct, but if you see the normal world map showing all of Cyrodiil, then you have another mod loading after the BC IC ESPs which needs loading before them instead.

Animated Window Lighting System (AWLS)

Better Cities is fully compatible with AWLS - any building meshes we provide in BC have been adjusted so that AWLS will trigger their windows lit. They are unlit by default so if you don't use AWLS you won't notice any difference.

Additions

The additions are additional plugins (as their name suggest).

• FPS Patch (The FPS patch removes objects from the Imperial City Waterfront to try to help improve FPS. You should only use the FPS patch if you actually need it)
  
• Imperial Isle (BC adds a new Imperial City District and extends the walls of the Arena District, this ESP makes these changes visible when outside the city walls. Additionally an aqueduct is added south of the city, and quest content originally from the mod Let the People Drink! is enabled if this ESP is active)
  

Integration Files

Integration Files are entirely optional. These are not required to make the mod they relate to work with BC, but rather they offer certain features from that mod to work in Better Cities.

• Cobl, by Wrye & migck (makes BC wells usable in the thirst mods compatible with COBL Changes some BC ingredients to Cobl ones)
• Enhanced Economy, by theNiceOne (changes the price of player-purchasable homes to match the pricing set by Enhanced Economy's House Prices)
• MOBS, by Jaga Telesin, Francesco, Corepc, BFG (changes BC weapon stats to match changes made by MOBs to weapons from the original game)
• Storms & Sounds, by Deathless Aphrodite, lilith & Foghorne (adds weather sounds to BC interiors)
• TIE, by VeritasSecreto (allows the use of Restricted Areas in BC new interiors)

Replacers

Replacers are to be used instead of the original mod's ESP to resolve conflicts with Better Cities. You may need to download these mods separately to get their resource files as we only provide the ESP replacer (some don't have any resource files).

• Against the Zealots of the Nine, by Jolard
• Clocks of Cyrodiil, by WillieSea (resources needed from here)
• ICExpand - Imperial City Expanded, by Captain Chris †
• Mystery of the Dulan Cult, created by Juib Thealas
• Old Crow Inn, by Confidence Man
• Scribe Supplies, by Watchesfromshadows
• Slof's Oblivion Goth Shop, by AlienSlof (resources needed from here)
• Vaults of Cyrodiil, by bkrisher/Guiles

† note that all of the house and shop interiors from ICExpand have now been fully integrated into Better Cities but in different locations above ground, so it isn’t really recommended to use ICExpand with Better Cities any more purely because of duplication of some content. There is no harm in using it however

Compatibility Patches

Compatibility patches are additional plugins your need to add to your list to make the mentioned mod compatible with Better Cities.

• All Natural, by Chong Li, Arthmoor, Brumbek, & WrinklyNinja (patch by Brumbek)
• Alternative Start Arrive by Ship, by Robert Evrae
• Blood & Mud by Ryan (patch for users of BC Imperial City who are not also using BC Bravil)
• CUO Bravil, by Giskard
• CUO Bruma, by Giskard
• CUO Chorrol, by Giskard
• CUO Leyawiin, by Giskard
• Dall's Skyrim Nords by Dall
• Dark Brotherhood Chronicles
• FCOM, by Team Alpha
• Halcyon Island by exilehunter
• Knightly Armory, by Phitt and Ghogiel
• Oblivifall: Losing My Religion, by Cliffworms
• Oblivion Collectible Cards, by Sam Lake and slart
• Order of the Dragon, by Rung, Diener RE, Ryan, Lazarus, and Katan (patch by WalkerInShadows)
• Origin of the Mages Guild, by Giskard
• Reclaiming Sancre Tor, by DarkRider
• Roads of Cyrodiil, by Arthmoor, Ukrr, mariedanj
• Ruined Tails Tale, by Simyaz
• Sexlivion and Sexlivion for Girls
• Skingrad Outer District, by Topimagespoll aka 3beN
• Skyrim Nords, by Dall
• Tears of the Fiend, by Simyaz and Arilita
• The Lost Spires, by Liquidgraph
• Thievery in the Imperial City, by Jog
• Trails of Cyrodiil, by Malachi Delacot (patch by Chaky)
• Valley View Estate, by Glypha
• Verona House Bloodlines, by DTOM
• Vvardenfell Imports, by themythofanst
• Werewolf Legends of the Noth, by StannieDum

Words of Warning

1. Better Cities are more than likely to drop your FPS in cities and possibly in the surroundings around them in Tamriel. This is how it works so there is no need to complain about it. Get some of the tools/mods/optimisers which allow you to get more FPS for Oblivion. Some of them are linked on the Description page of Better Cities. Don't use Anti-Aliasing, this causes a severe FPS hit.
2. Do not use older patches. Only use the patches or fixes currently present in this pack as they are the latest version which is currently working with Better Cities. If a patch you had before is missing, it only means that the conflict has been resolved in another way which makes the patch obsolete.

Load Order Advice

Try to put this mod near the end of your load order (with the most recent date) so the former mods that change the cities in any way would not affect it.
For the most part, ESPs (including our replacers) for other mods should load first, then the Better Cities City and District ESPs, followed by the BC FPS patches, then the BC patches, and finally (if you have one) the Bash Patch ESP from Wrye Bash.
We recommend BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) to adjust your load order.

Legal Use

This mod is currently being worked on and as such is not free for others to modify except for translations to other languages.
Contact the BC Team at the Official forum in case of doubt.

Permission was received from Ryan (aka M.Sydjr) to include all sound, voice and music files from Blood & Mud in Better Cities. The following, copied from the Blood & Mud readme, still applies to these files:
The voice/sound & music files included in Blood&Mud may ONLY and except-less be released with mods of M.Syd jr./R.O.Hershey. The rights of the sound / voice and music files are owned by the depending voice-actors and R.O.Hershey.

A permission to use voice/sound or music files from Blood&Mud in other projects is always needed [from R.O.Hershey or the individual voice actor(s)].