Here we go... I know that pretty much everyone with the game has wanted this done at least once, so I'm going to try and make some progress in the field by rallying up a team of testers and coders to come to the rescue.
First and formost:
I want to know if it is possible to "Hard Install" mods to your PS3 hard drive for use with TES: Oblivion. I imagine this would be as simple as hooking your PS3 hard drive to a Linux machine and placing the files where they belong - and maybe editing an ini or xml to load the new ESP plug-in file when the game starts up.
I tragically do not have a Linux machine at my disposal, nor to I have a USB2SATA adapter to try and get it working through Windows. So I'm asking if anyone is willing to PLEASE try this and tell me if you've experienced any level of success.
Technical note:
When you're 'hard copying' the mod files over, I suggest VERY HIGHLY that you do it with a GOTY version of Oblivion, that way you can open the files and look for lines of code similar to this:
[On Load]
Oblivion.esm
SHIVISLES.esm
If you can succeed in finding any similar code to that, then after you've moved your mod files over you will most certainly want to add the name of your ESM/ESP to that list. For example:
Like I said above, I'm looking for someone to test my theory. The PS3 demographic has been without mods for FAR too long. The person to test and confirm this as an effective method will undoubtedly recieve a ton of gratitude from the PS3 community.
Future Goals:
Should this method work, what I'd like to see eventually come out of it is a PC application which could compile mods into a format that can be easily transfered and installed to a PS3, perhaps via thumbdrive or direct download. I am aware however, that the sort installer file recognized by the PS3 is not yet know to the bulk of the PS3 modding community and those who do know of it do not yet know how to manipulate it for use with homebrew applications. Still though, the goal is powerful.
As an update to this post, I've recently purchased a USB adapter which will grant me access to any SATA or IDE device. It's really a nifty purchase, so my appreciation of eBay grows every day. It's shipping from Hong Kong but as soon as it arrives, I will attempt this expirement myself and post my findings here.
Well Vicious I really hope this works for you. I read somewhere that you can hard install TES:O on the X360, I'll see if that helps you. Will post my findings back here. Please don't give up.
I ordered an adapter off ebay that allows me to hook up pretty much any IDE, MIDE, or SATA device to my computer via USB -- a nifty little toy for only $13.
Anywho, when it came in the mail, I immediately powered down my PS3 and yanked the harddrive. After hooking it up however, I came to realize that the data on the hard drive is, according to windows, completely unallocated (meaning not formatted and not partitioned). So, before going any further on it, I plugged the harddrive back up into the PS3 and fired up the system so I could back up my saves.
Somehow or another the PS3 knew that I had connected the harddrive to a different machine, even though I had not made any changes to the harddrive what soever. So it damanded that I reformat the harddrive.
Bummed about my save files, I decided I would attempt to allocate and partition the harddrive via windows. That much was successful, and when my PS3 was re-uinted with the harddrive, it still demanded a re-format of the harddrive -- hopefully, however, this reformat will not in any way un-allocate the drive or de-partition it.
As it stands right now, I've got another project under works, but as soon as I get the chance I will backup all of my new save files and attempt the process once more.
I still think however, that someone running Linux might not encounter this "unallocated drive" problem, so any help I can get from a tux fan would be nice.
