Oblivion

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LprMan

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LprMan

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About this mod

THE MOD: I made this mod, because I wasn\'t happy with any of the available water mods. They all make the water look unrealistic/silly: -water is too easy to see through (tired of seeing the bottom of the sea while standing on the top of the nearby mountain?) -The water is given a light blue/green/turquoise color. It might be just fine in fe

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Permissions and credits
THE MOD:

I made this mod, because I wasn't happy with any of the available water mods. They all make the water look unrealistic/silly:

-water is too easy to see through (tired of seeing the bottom of the sea while standing on the top of the nearby mountain?)
-The water is given a light blue/green/turquoise color. It might be just fine in few places, but often it looks plain weird.
-Unrealistically long underwater view distances. I understand making the view distance too short has negative impact on playability, but it is possible to find a good setting between the 2 extremes


~~~ NOTE ~~~

Shivering Isles add-on now available!!! Grab it here:

Enhanced Water v20 HD - SI Addon

Many thanks to halo112358 for creating it. I couldn't do it, as I don't have SI expansion.



CHANGES:

v2.0 (this is most likely the final version of the mod)

-Some changes to colors and waves
-Fixed the weird looking water at nighttime
-Minor changes to ripples
-Some changes to dungeon & sewers water

v1.5

-Changed the surface reflections, waves and colors a bit

v1.1

-I created a completely new water type for the small pools in Imperial City to fix the issues with the previous version

v1.0

-tweaked water colors, reflections, waves...almost every setting which changes the way the water is rendered in this game in attempt to make it look better and not have any of the drawbacks of other water mods.
-changed the water ripples caused by swimming player/NPCs/monsters and rain drops
-IC south-east sewer tunnel now correctly uses SewerWater instead of DungeonWater01



INSTALLATION & ACTIVATING

The package includes:

Enhanced Water v2.0 HD.esp
Enhanced Water v2.0 ND.esp

+3 older versions of the mod (v1.0, v1.1 and v1.5)


If you are running the game just fine with high water detail, use the HD version, as it looks the best. Those who do not have good enough hardware to run high detail water should use the ND version. It makes the water look more like high quality water, but without the performance loss of real high-detail water.

Of course, you can try out any combination of my esps and in-game video settings to find out which combo you like most. The setups mentioned above offer the best performance/image quality ratios in my opinion, but you might think otherwise. Feel free to experiment :)

Extract the esp(s) of your preferred version in your Oblivion/Data folder, and activate one of the esps in the Oblivion launcher or Oblivion Mod Manager. Don't use more than one esp at once, as they override each other. You can activate/deactivate the mod anytime, it shouldn't break your saved games. If you are really worried about your saves, backup them before you start messing around with plugins.



COMPATIBILITY:

This mod is not compatible with any other water mod. If you have 2 or more water mods at once, the mod which is last in the load order will be in effect.



ISSUES:

-By default, the water only reflects the landscape and sky, plus few selected things. Because of this, the water reflections are bit weird at few areas. The small ponds in Imperial City and Waterfront are good examples of this. For example, at Waterfront, the water doesn't reflect the curved walkway at all, but it still reflects the ground under it. But keep in mind, this not a bug in my mod, it works like that with all other water mods and even with default water. The way I have changed the water properties ony makes those things easier to spot. There is only one reasonable solution to fix this: open your oblivion.ini, and set the value of bUseWaterReflectionsStatics to 1. More on water ini tweaks later...
-The water is bit too reflective and the opacity is tad high too. I set the values that way to prevent water murkiness & seeing to the bottom of the sea. I played around with the values for a really long time, literally trying dozens of different combinations, and I believe I'm near the best balance it is possible to achieve. To make the water even better, you'd have to add scripts to change the water properties on the fly while playing, depending on weather/lighting/depth of the water/etc...I don't know if that is even possible.
-Don't even think about using this mod if you don't have water reflections enabled! It won't be pretty. You've been warned!!



OTHER:

-You can try enabling the extra water reflections by modifying your oblivion.ini (\Documents and Settings\[User]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion). Backup the ini first in case you screw up!! Change the following values as shown:

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=1
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=1
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1
bUseWaterReflectionsActors=1

Enabling these will have some effect on game performance. The extra reflections will only be seen when you go near enough the objects so it causes some "reflection popping". Sometimes minor graphical glitches may appear. It is up to you if you like the extra reflections and if they are worth the performance loss. Try them out and see for yourself! I like to use them, and the extra reflections are enabled in the screenshots as well.

-This mod shouldn't affect performance in any way. This mod uses the same variables as the original water, I just tweaked the values to make it look better.

-If you have any suggestions/ideas, or if you just want to say thanks: sirenian84(at)gmail(dot)com

-If you are going to release this mod as a part of your own mod, or if you do minor tweaks to this mod and release it as your own mod, please give me credit. It is not necessary, but I would appreciate it :)

-Here is a link to the release thread of this mod at the official forums:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=595598



CREDITS:

-myself for making the mod
-TemeXis for being a beta-tester
-Mr. Tissue Box for ideas, bugreports and being active in general
-Bethesda for making the game
-All other modders for their fantastic work
-Those who have given feedback so I could improve this mod even more
-You for checking out this mod, and forgiving all the grammatical errors in this readme (english is not my native languge) :D