Glossary

This is a glossary for terms and abbreviations that are frequently used in this Wiki and among modders -- but (mostly) are not described in their own pages. Before adding a term here, see Content under Discussion.

A

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

A term used to describe the computer-controlled NPC's ability to "think", by evaluating its current situation and choosing an appropriate response.

AI Package

A single AI behavior, e.g. "sleep at home", "eat at the Feed Bag". A single AI package indicates the type of behavior to engage in, the place to engage exhibit it, how to react to the player if the player is nearby, etc. and conditions under which the package is to execute (time, day of week, quest conditions, etc.) An NPCs full AI behavior is largely characterized by the AI packages assigned to that NPC.

See AI Package

Active Effect

A Magic Effect currently running on a reference. The active effects on the player are listed in the active effects tab of the Spell menu.

Alpha Channel

A component of a 2d image, similar to the Red, Green and Blue components, and is used to carry extra data in an image. Alpha Channels are grayscale images ranging from Black (0) to White (255), or can be 1-bit; which is either Black (0) or White (1). This functionality is dictated by the program exporting the image, and what is supported by a given file format. It is common to simply refer to this as 'Alpha', as in: "Tone down your alpha's brighter areas"

• In Oblivion, the Alpha Channel is used to control special effects in the shaders:
• In the base image, it can control the level of transparency if the .nif has enabled this. Or, if the .nif has instead enabled Parallax Shading, the levels of black/white control the strength of the effect.
• For Normal Maps, the alpha channel acts as the Specular Map, which governs how reflective the image is.

B

Base Object

The common or shared definition for objects placed into the game world (references). Changes to a base object will affect all instances of that object in the game world.

BSA (Bethesda Softworks Archive)

BSA files are archives that contain resource files (meshes, textures, sounds, etc.). TESCS does not allow creation or editing of BSA files, but other tools do.

See: BSA Files, BSA Unpackers.

C

CTD (Crash To Desktop)

Game failure that results in game executable dying and dumping user back to desktop. In contrast to failures in which game is still running, but is frozen or otherwise unplayable.

Cobl (Common Oblivion)

A library mod for use by other mods. Cobl is particularly useful for sharing certain types of information (PC state signals, etc.), and for providing easy access to complex features (e.g. Alchemical Sorters, Death Handling, etc.)

See: Cobl Modding Guide, Cobl at PES

.

Console

The programmers console that can accessed during gameplay by pressing the ~ button. Console commands are available to view debugging information, toggle game engine features, manipulate game settings and objects, etc.

See: Console commands

D

DDS Files (DirectDraw Surface)

Image files used for textures, icons, maps,etc.

See: DDS Files

DistantLOD

Low-poly versions of landscape, buildings and trees seen from a distance. Often used to refer only to VWD buildings.

See: Landscape Generation, Landscape LOD Tutorial, Category:Tools: LOD.

E

ESM and ESP files (Elder Scrolls Master/Plugin Files)

The core data files of the gameworld. These are the files created/edited by the the construction set.

See: TES Files, Esp vs. Esm.

F

Foot

British and American measure for length designating 30,48 cm (=12 inches).

Formid

The eight digit hexadecimal number that identifies each unique record within a esm/esp file. (In lists of records (objects, cells, references, etc.), the formid is always shown in the second column -- widen the column to see the formid.)

Formids have two parts: the first two digits are the modIndex and the next six digits are the objectIndex. While the last six digits are fixed, the first two digits depend on the context. E.g. a record defined in a mod may have a modindex of "02", but in a mod that same record may have a modindex of "A1". The conversion is simple though -- the modindex is simply the order of the source mod in the current context. E.g. Oblivion always loads first, and so has modindex of "00". A mod that is the tenth mod to load after Oblivion.esm is "0A" (A == 10 in hexadecimal).

See: FormID

G

Global

Global variables are variables defined outside of scripts (through the Gameplay: Globals) menu. In earlier elder scrolls games, globals were the primary means of communication between different scripts/objects. In Oblivion, it's generally preferable to use object and quest variables rather than globals.

See: Globals

I

Inch

British and American measure for length designating 2,54 cm.

Item

A carriable object, such as weapons, miscellaneous items, etc.

See: Modding Terminology.

K

KF Files

KF files contain an animation that can be used to animate a NIF file. In Oblivion all biped animations (characters and creatures) are stored in KF files in the same directory as the skeleton.nif file that describes the actor's skeleton. All object animation are stored in the NIF file together with the object itself. This can be done with NifSkope by using Attach .KF from the Spells menu.

KF files contain a NiControllerSequence block as root, a NiStringPalette, a NiTextKeyExtraData and an Interpolator of some kind for each bone. Each Interpolator block can contain a Data block with the actual animation data for that block. The NiTextKeyExtraData contains bits of text data at specific times that can be used by the engine to do perform actions associated with the animation. For example; playing a sound or starting a facial (morph) animation.

L

LOD (Level of Detail)

Describes technology that is used to save memory and processing power by using lower detail models or textures for objects in the distance. The Oblivion game engine makes extensive use of LOD, and the CS has some functions to create and manipulate LOD objects.

M

Message Spam

Tes4 displays messages to the player whenever: 1) spells are added to, 2) items are added to or removed from the player. For some scripts such messages are very undesirable (e.g. for an alchemical sorters which adds/removes many items). Hence, message "spam".

See: Avoiding Message Spam.

Mod

Several definiitons:

• A module file, i.e. an esm or esp file.
• More generally a set of files which modifies/expands game play in some way. E.g. a texture pack, though not including an esm/esp file is a mod.

N

NPC (Non Player Character)

Describes in game characters that are not controlled by the player but can be interacted with. In Oblivion they are defined as a class of actor that can engage in dialogue, commit crimes, wear armor or clothing, or be pickpocketed - in contrast to creatures.

See: NPC

NIF Files (NetImmerse File Format)

File format for three dimensional objects. Also known as the "model" or "mesh". These are found in the Oblivion\Data\Mesh directory and/or in BSA archives. TESCS cannot create or edit these, but third party tools (e.g. Blender) can.

See: NIF Files, NifTools Wiki.

Normal Maps

Normal maps are textures that are used by Oblivion's render engine to give a model surface an appearance of additional surface detail. In its effect it is very similar to bump-mapping. The normal map is used in shading the model and provides a convincing relief effect to surfaces, making the model look like it has a much higher polygon-count than it actually does.

See: Normal Maps

O

OBMM (Oblivion Mod Manager)

A utility for managing/installing/uninstalling mods; browsing/editing BSA archives, etc. Complex mod install/uninstall procedures can be controlled by scripts -- but only if the user has OBMM installed.

See: timeslip.chorrol.com

Object

A word with too many meanings. May mean (depending on context):

• An "object" as perceived by the player. E.g. a thing that can be picked up or an activator (but not a wall or spawn point).
• An "object" placed into cell. E.g. walls, items, spawn points, etc.
• An "object" defined in the TESCS object window. E.g. statics, water, etc.
• A "base object" as opposed to a reference (placed object).

Because of the multitude of conflicting meanings, you'll need to pay attention to the context to understand what is meant by "object".

See: Modding Terminology

P

Package

See: AI Package

Player

The representation of the player in the game. Also known as the "Player Character" or PC (in contrast to Non-Player Characters (NPCs)). There is both a player baseObject (formid 0x00000007) and a player reference (0x00000014).

Two oddities to be aware of:

1. The player base object is present in Oblivion.esm, but the player reference is not.
2. Uses of "player" in a script compile to the player reference instead of to the player base object.

See: Player.

R

Reference

An instance of a base object that has been placed in the render window. Each base object can have multiple references (the count of references is displayed in the object window). If any of the properties of a base object are changed in the object window, all its references are also changed in-game. However, references also hold some data that is unique to them. The simplest example is the position data. It's unique for each reference, and is not stored with the base object information in the object window.

See: Reference, Modding Terminology

Retexturing

Objects as seen in the game are essentially combinations of shape (the mesh file) and textures (dds files). Retexturing an object involves changing the textures of an object but not the shape.

See: Retexturing

S

Specular Map

A texture effect that controls the specularity, or shininess of the model/texture. It can be found in the Alpha Channel of the Normal Maps. This image has 256 levels of gray when used in a DXT5 DDS, or 2 (Black/White) When used in a DXT3. In Oblivion's shaders, black areas are dule (not shiny), while white is shiny (fully reflective). Oblivion also features a few shaders for models that use Environment Maps for a glassy effect; Specular Maps will also control the visual strength of these effects.

SubSpace

Subspaces are used to create pathing-separated areas in a cell. Normally, if an actor is trying to move from one part of a cell to another part, they will try to find an in-cell path. Subspaces are used to indicate to the actor that no direct path is possible (e.g. from a balcony to the street below), and hence the actor must instead find a path through load doors to reach the destination.

See: SubSpace.

T

Tes4Gecko

Tool with commands to:

• Merge Plugins, Merge to Master - Plugin merging.
• Split Plugins - Split esp into an esm/esp pair.
• Display/edit/copy records in and between plugins
• Convert between esm and esp.
• Generate empty voice files
• Move worldspace from esp to Oblivion esm (to avoid land display problems).

See: TesNexus

Tes4View/Tes4Edit/Tes4Trans

Tool designed to fully view all records from selected mods and compare changes and coinflicts between them. In addition, Tes4View has a number of specialized ways to search for and modify records (batch edits can be made using a scripting language). There is also a specialized function for generating merged LOD files depending on the users current setup.

See: TesNexus

, UESP:Tes4View

Token

Unplayable Items, usually designed to effectively add scripts to NPCs.

V

Vanilla

The word vanilla is used to describe Oblivion without any mods. It's the original game without any changes.

Vertices (plural form of vertex)

The points at which lines meet in a model, two points (vertices) connected makes a line, three lines forming a triangle is a face/polygon.

The "nodes" in the landscape mesh (heightfield). Can be manipulated with the Landscape editing tool.

W

Walking (through a list)

Walking refers to looping through any list - i.e., a list of inventory items, a list of nearby references, an array, etc.