Tes4Mod:Cobl

Contents

 

Site Overview
;Discussion/Suggestions: Discussions regarding Cobl are best carried out on   on the official forums. Suggestions can also be made on the Cobl/Projects page here. If the Relz topic becomes locked, you can search the forums for topics for the current Relz topic.
;Cobl for Modders: If you want to understand how to use various pieces of Cobl, check out Cobl/Modding (i.e. "Cobl for Modders"). 
;Cobl for Players:If you want to use Cobl as a player, then see  .

Cobl Overview
Common Oblivion (COBL) is a shared mod for Oblivion modders and players. The idea of COBL is that rather than each mod separately defining common objects, they're defined in COBL, and the mods then draw those objects from COBL the same way that they draw standard objects from Oblivion.esm. COBL's shared library approach: simplifies modding; avoids duplicate/conflicting definitions; provides a single point of override; etc. (See Why Cobl? for more discussion.)

Direct Additions: In addition to COBL's shared library functionality it directly provides a number of additions to the world:
Alchemical Catalogs: A series of books that list all ingredients and their effects.
Lore Books: Hundreds of new books are now available in bookshops and in loot lists.
Lore Ingredients: Morrowind alchemical ingredients are now available through all alchemical vendors.
Grinders: Grinders are available in all mage's guild halls and some alchemists shops that will grind gems, bones and some minerals to alchemical equivalents.

Modder Resources: In addition to using the items (books, ingredients) that COBL adds directly to the world, modders can also use:
Alchemical Sorters: Sophisticated alchemical sorter containers. The default implementation covers vanilla Oblivion ingredients. An OBSE version which covers ingredients from all mods will be available later.
Factions: A few (Companion, BanditFriend, AllFriend) are defined, but this is mostly still in development.
Survival/Crafting: Water well activators for use with survival mods. Use these with house mods to support compatibility with survival mods that require water sources.

Why Cobl?
Most resource mods are not downloaded directly by the user, but rather are incorporated into the mods that use them. While this makes life simpler for the end user (one click install), it also has some major limitations. COBL sets out to correct this by providing a single common library of commonly defined and used objects. More specifically, the advantages of COBL are... 

; Easier Modding
: Rather than copy the contents of some resource mod into your mod, you simply draw on Cobl Main.esm. When those resources are complicated and/or large, this can really make the modders life easier.

; Avoiding Duplication and Conflicting Definitions
: If two (or more) different mods separately add the same object (e.g., Morrowind lore books), then after a while the player will find themselves with two (or more) different copies of the same item, with possibly different weights, different values, different covers etc. With something like books, this is just annoying, but for something like ingredients (e.g., Morrowind ingredients) this can be a real hassle, since different ingredients may be defined in different ways in different mods. 

; Single Point of Override
: Suppose that you like a particular alchemical sorter. You get a new house mod which has an alchemical sorter, but not ~~your~~ alchemical sorter. Now you're faced with the prospect of editing the house mod to use your alchemical sorter (even if you know what you're doing this is a lot of work). However, if the house mod uses COBL's alchemical sorter, then you don't have to edit the house mod at all -- instead just load a mod which overrides COBL's default alchemical sorter. And presto! Every house mod that uses a COBL alchemical sorter will now be using your alchemical sorter.

; Mod Communication 
: Esps cannot directly communicate with each other. E.g., suppose that I build a house mod and want to include a bed that any companion can sleep in. In order for that to happen, the bed has to belong to a common companion faction defined in an esm. Oblivion defines no such faction -- but COBL does. So if both house and companion mods depend on COBL, they can cooperate without directly knowing about each other.

;Independent Upgrades
: The alchemical sorter demonstrates another advantage of COBL -- independent upgrades. Suppose that COBL's alchemical sorter is upgraded. If sorter had been merged into a house mod, then the house mod would need to be upgraded as well to get the new advantage. But with COBL's single definition, simply upgrading COBL automatically upgrades the alchemical sorter for all the house mods that use its sorter.