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Slof's Horses by AlienSlof 
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INDEX:

*Requirements
*About this mod
*Installation
*Known Bugs & Issues
*Incompatibilities & Save game warnings
*Credits & Usage
*Special Notes

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REQUIREMENTS:
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Oblivion (of course!)

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ABOUT THIS MOD:
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I was delighted when Oblvion had horses in it, but then was disappointed when some of them were a bit on the purple side! After a steep, and often frustrating learning curve, and getting my head around a different way of working, I made a start on dealing with the purple issue. At first it was just going to be a simple replacer, just simply replacing textures without needing an esp. This would have been a lot of effort and faff unpacking bsa's or editing invalidation txts, so I decided to go down the esp road instead. Cue more frustrations and a temporary shelving of the project (again) until I could figure it out. Doing it this way means I can provide lots of different options. Firstly, I've made the player-owned horses unique, with their own markings and colours. Where the same type of horse is sold in different places, where you purchase the horse from will have a bearing on its colour.

For example: Bruma and Leyawiin both sell paint horses. With this mod, Leywiin's horses are brown and white, from Bruma they are black and white. This only happens for the player.

I've also removed the saddles from the pastured horses, since a horse doesn't wear a saddle 24/7. They are only saddled up for the player and other riders. Unicorn and Shadowmere are unique. A version with player-owned horses marked essential (god mode!) is also available.

This is the base version, playable and can be used as a modders' resource.

I will be adding a few entirely new horses into further versions, mostly as wild herds and 'easter egg' ones that the player can find and ride.

Shadowmere, the Dark Brotherhood horse, will come as nightmare with flaming mane and tail (bareback).

*Special note: the horse's name can be changed in-game by using the console (~) and typing: setactorfullname horsename - if you want a name of more than one word, then type: setactorfullname "horse name" with the quotemarks. I could change the names in the editor, but this way allows players to choose their own names.

New in v.1.2: Meshes should now all have the correct texture paths - no more invisible horses with pink heads! Ambient lighting settings on heads now match the bodies. Horses are now gendered appropriately: Blossom, Shadowmere and Prior Maborel's horse are now mares as they are referred to in-game. Player-bought horses are now mare, stallion or gelding depending on colour.

New in v.1.3: Reins! All saddled horses now also have reins.

There are more files than the esp's use in this release, as each horse colour now has mare, stallion and gelding models. This is so modders can make use of them and to allow players to change the models in the CS if they want something different. Three sets of reins are also included, black, brown (to match horse armour bridles) and daedric.

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INSTALLATION:
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This mod should consist of:
SlofsHorsesReadme.txt
Slof's Horses Base.esp - base version, no settings changed.
Slofs Horses Essential.esp - marks all player-owned horses essential, so they cannot be killed.
meshes folder (with subfolders)
textures folder (with subfolders)

Just drag all these (minus the readme) onto the data folder in your Oblivion directory and they will go where they are meant to. All the files are nested inside sub-folders marked 'AS' - KEEP THESE INTACT - the game knows to look there for them. Only use ONE esp file.

Paths for the folders are as follows:
Meshes: data/meshes/creatures/horse
Textures: data/textures/as

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KNOWN ISSUES OR BUGS:
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None that I've found. If there are any bugs, let me know so I can fix them.

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INCOMPATIBILITIES & SAVED GAME WARNINGS:
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Will conflict with any mod that alters the horses. Always make sure that you back up your existing savegame file before use.

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CREDITS & USAGE:
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Thanks to everyone for testing this out for me.
HappyHannah and Phoenixamon for helping me to figure some things out
The clever folks of NifTools for the amazingly versatile NifSkope which I'm steadily learning my way around
Bethesda for some of their textures which I have tweaked and used as a base for many of these - and Oblvion of course!
The folks on the ES forums for providing me with reference pics for the more unusual horse types.
Thanks to Arty for spotting the problems with lighting on the horse heads in HDR. These are now hopefully corrected.
Big thanks to jcarl904 for the mare and stallion meshes.
Big thanks also to XMarksTheSpot for making me the reins and tweaking meshes!

Consider this a modders' resource for making new mods from. I don't really mind if any of this is used for or in other mods, but it's nice to be asked (I rarely say no!), and please give credit to me for the textures where it is due. Many of these took me a good few hours of work. Make sure to change any filenames and ID's to avoid accidental overwrites. Please ask me before uploading it anywhere so I can make sure the correct version is used and not an out of date one.

I'm fine with this being made compatible with other popular horse mods, such as Saddle Bags or Call Steed. Indeed, I realise I can't cater to every possible combination, which is why I don't mind it being used in this way. All I ask is that I'm credited with the texturing, as I've spent many hours creating them.

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SPECIAL NOTES:
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Mail me at alienslof@slofshive.co.uk if there are any problems.
Or find me prowling the Planet Elder Scrolls forums here: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetelderscrolls/index.asp
Occasionally I lurk on the ES forums here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php