Searcher7

I hate game problems. That means I have spent a considerable amount of time over the years forcing Skyrim to run reliably. Since Sheson's memory fix, I have had a very reliable, heavily modded Skyrim (STEP CORE and difficulty mods) on my Win 7 gaming rig. Win 10 has "undone" all that work, for me. In particular, Skyrim CTD's (again) and there is something up with different mod animations breaking (freezing, loss of character control). Its really frustrating. Have to admit that the Crimson AMD drivers and Win 10 have given me an across the board FPS increase for every game I've tested of about 15% - 20%. But, SOMETHING is mucking with game reliability and the useless Event error reports are zero help now. Just got done with a major re-install of two game setups (Non-MO); a "difficulty" setup and a "content" setup. Can't see a difference from the older setups in terms of CTD frequency or the (apparently) animation problems. I'm back to saving progress like I was pre-Sheson on Win 7. If it were only Skyrim, I might look elsewhere. But, its like Win 10 has resurrected all the original problems of other games, as well. I hate being a Beta tester for my gaming OS vendor. Just ranting, but I only use Windows for gaming. Not looking forward to re-installing Win 7 and going through the update process.

Just got done rolling back from 10 to 7. All my games seemed to run fine under 10 and, honestly, the AMD Crimson drivers for Win 10 gave me an across the board FPS increase on my little HD-7770 2GB. Not sure why. Unfortunately, my machine experienced freezing in Skyrim. It was the old "stop, but music still plays" freeze. Digging around in the system logs and I noticed that updates were occurring when I experienced the freezes. Not enough info for a statistical correlation, so I wonder if anyone else is experiencing the freeze in Win 10. I rolled back because Win 10 seems like the Beta software release of a system I don't want; a tablet OS. Can't uninstall some apps without Powershell. Apps integrated with the OS (Edge and Cortana). Simply unbelievable data collection with the "Everyone else does it" rationale (Lemming Excuse). Spammed error logs with no solutions to the "problems" (makes it feel like beta software). I'm a Linux guy and only game on Windows, so BASH was an interesting addition. Microsoft's effective monopoly allows them to impose their data mining and advertising philosophy will little user recourse. I couldn't stop several apps from eating up metered bandwidth with "telemetry" without disabling tasks or uninstalling entire packages, which adversely impacted system operation (ie, Cortana and Search). I spent much time taking ownership of files and folders because of the highly restrictive ACL's in Win 10, even on my Admin account. I want an OS that helps me manage my system, not interfere with that process. All-in-all, I'll stick with Windows 7 as long as I can. I have no use for device integration, nor integrated apps. I just don't see Win 10 as an OS; its a simple digital device manager, IMHO. Thank the Divines for Slackware Linux.

Merry Christmas, Best Wishes, and Peace to all.

You're quite welcome. "High" quality textures sets iTexMipMapSkip=0, presumably giving "high quality" textures by using the base image resolution. "Medium" sets iTexMipMapSkip=1, presumably using the next, half-size mipmap. "Low" quality sets the value to 2, apparently using the one-fourth resolution mipmap. Higher numbers (I see 11 mipmaps in many Skyrim DDS files) would probably look really bad up close. Mipmaps are normally used to more quickly texture distant (smaller) screen objects, as I understand them. Good luck on your freeze hunt.

I believe The iTexMipMapSkip entry is influenced by the Launcher Texture Quality settings. A mipmap is a reduced (half, I think) resolution image contained within DDS texture files. Skipping a mipmap causes, I believe, the game engine to render the next lower resolution (next mipmap) of a texture. It certainly reduces vram use on my machine, at least. Raising the number is probably a good thing to try if maxed vram is considered a potential problem cause. All those menu item display textures add up. Did you add ANY mod since having normal menus with merchants? I've had broken meshes (items added by a mod) cause issues like yours. EDIT: Its been awhile, so I re-checked Texture Quality and iTexMipMapSkip values; they are (inversely) related.

If you're into confusion, wasted effort, excess duplication, and hard to find problems, I (Nexus:Lord Garon) described to a curious poster the way I setup six Skyrim installs on my machine. I don't use MO, so only heretics need look at this thread.

Speedmult of 1500 does give me lots of stutter, even some lag. (But the physics of a running character going over a hill at x1500 make it almost worthwhile.) I do use 1000; it is a stress test, after all. I cheat a little and coc riverwood from the main menu; I don't run a lot of mods during the intro anyways. Most of my mods are added to a save after the start quests fire outside Helgen Cave. Then I role play the Flash for a while, mostly as described by Aiyen. I will also go into cities or interiors changed or added by a mod. I'll stop at a Forsworn camp and aggravate the natives, piss off some guards, check that the mod I'm testing actually does something, and just look for problems. I used to do this for a long time, now I'm satisfied if I get 10 or 15 minutes without a crash; a pretty good indication of early game stability, which is all that this test measures anyways. EDIT: Grammar

The latter, primarily. I also "visit" cities and other interior locations when running around Skyrim like the Flash. A particular modded spawn point, for instance, might CTD each time I approach it. I also find issues with missing meshes and textures, even a mod's NPC not being there. Glitches based upon a certain location are more easily found in high-speed testing than normal speed game play. By repeatable, I just mean in the same location/cell each time. Those are the (relatively) easy mod problems to fix. Random problems occur in different locations at different times during the test and I can't replicate them from one test run to another. The (supposed) texture issue I mentioned was a case like that; the game just drops to the desktop in different places and at different times. Very hard to isolate the cause of those type problems. Its why Sheson's patch didn't show up on 12/11/11. As I said, trial-and-error becomes a useful, if not methodical or scientific, method when your understanding of the process under test is limited. We have limited understanding of the Skyrim/Creation Engine code. That makes it difficult to even develop a methodical test suite; I mean, we're still talking about it four years after release. Vurt's test just allows you to speed through an otherwise time-consuming check of game operation. If we can't run a dedicated test suite, might as well see if it will just run. Its not a rocket science based test, just a quick check on overall game operation. In my experience, though, there is a definite correlation (NOT proof) between Vurt's Stress Test reliability and actual game play reliability. Increasing Time-To-CTD (TTC) in Vurt's test has, as far as I can tell, also increased TTC in my games, be it from removing a shaky mod, changing an ini tweak, updating drivers, etc, etc. On my PARTICULAR game machines, there is a strong reliability correlation between Vurt's test results and normal game play. That's all I'm saying. I absolutely HATE glitches in my games. At this point, amongst all the other modding tools and practices, including Vurt's Stress Test has allowed me to mod (my heaviest modded game is STEP Core+REGS+Difficulty Mods) many enjoyable, (almost) error-free games. FWIW. EDIT: Spelling

I also use Vurt's stress test. I somewhat disagree that it is invalid because a "normal" game will never undergo that level of "stress". Stress testing is a common method used to identify "weak links", rare failure modes, accumulating errors, and other issues not identified at design time. If the process under test were actually purely deterministic, the tools used to construct the PUT were flawless, and the original design perfect, I might agree. However, none of that is true. Operating systems are flawed, compilers are flawed, programs are flawed, hardware exhibits error rates, and users take unanticipated actions. Because of the inherent, and unknown, flaws present in the system, a heavily modded Skyrim game is a stochastic process, IMHO. The best you can hope for is a low (statistical) probability of failure in an environment arrived at through empirical testing. Obviously, Bethesda missed that boat in the QA, alpha, and beta testing stages for Skyrim. Yourselves (STEP), and the modding community in general, have "tweaked" the environment of Skyrim over the years to a fairly low probability of failure. Vurt's Stress Test is valuable insofar as it can exercise a great deal of game circumstances in a short amount of testing time. Repeatable errors are quickly identified and solved in a traditional manner. Random errors during the test, or in game play, are problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is the lack of official game specs. Trial-and-error solutions become the norm and the time advantage of Vurt's Stress Test helps in this scenario. In my case, with a lot of help from Garfink's older testing threads, I stumbled upon a repeatable result in the Stress Test which has a high correlation to my particular game stability; texture sizes. With a VERY reliable game setup, including most proven stability enhancements, my games will CTD randomly in, roughly, 10-15 minutes of stress testing. IF I optimize textures (DDSOpt) to 1k diffuse and 512 normals, the CTD's go away. Like camaro, I can zoom around Skyrim until I'm sick of it without crashing. An unoptimized texture game will randomly CTD about every 20-30 hours of gameplay (1/month). An identical, but optimized game simply does not CTD (0/7 months). I thought this might be a particular hardware/software/karma issue until I repeated the results on a new game machine. I have no idea why this is true on my machines/games; it simply IS. Don't discount testing methods off-the-cuff. Vurt decided upon a particular test for SOME reason(s). It SEEMS to have helped me find an issue with my particular setup. Of course, YMMV.

UPDATE: Nevermind, sorry. I apparently have a system/driver issue; the ONLY setting that impacts Skyrim FPS is iPresentInterval. No CCC vsync setting impacts game FPS, with or without enbseries installed, with or without Application Profile settings. Only iPresentInterval=0 or 1 impacts Skyrim FPS according to FRAPS or enbseries. Am checking other games now, but this issue does not seem to apply to Skyrim. EDIT: Indeed, my system is running full-bore on other games as well. Looks like an ATI driver install glitch.

Interesting. I quit verifying vsync/FPS long ago as the STEP/enbseries method has worked across several versions and game installs. I had the enbseries FPS display on the other day in Bits and Pieces in Solitude after checking out some out-door texture changes. I wasn't really watching it anymore, until I approached the door on the way out and it kicked way up to triple digits. Then, paying attention to it, I checked out my FPS and discovered vsync was not functioning, much like the OP's experience. I'm also on a .254 enbseries, but have an AMD card and CCC. At the moment, it seems only iPresentInterval=1 or a CCC "Always ON" or "On, unless" setting limits my in-game FPS. (I have a 60Hz monitor) I haven't had any obvious physics issues indoors, but the mod load I'm playing right now is fairly self-limiting for FPS indoors and out, unless I find a "quiet" scene to render. I'll fire up an external FPS counter and check things out methodically, but I can't seem to get enblocal settings to limit FPS, either. EDIT: Do any other enblocal settings impact the functioning of EnableVsync?

Haven't been everywhere, but Whiterun exterior areas aren't an issue, even with the massive Apple Garden overhaul. Some random voice issues in interiors, but its probably just lack of children dialog. But, unlike some, max vram has never caused me any issues, beyond a little stutter. Its flatlined at 2GB again right now. DDSOpt to the rescue!

Have almost got the perfect Skyrim going (actually, I don't NEED what I haven't installed yet), thanks to the tireless efforts of CJ, et al. I don't know how you keep up with it all. STEP core and REGS for looks and exploration, some immersion and lighting stuff, and now some VEGA additions for challenge. Its really nice to get my $#&! whipped while out adventuring and be able to come back to an interesting and lively town where just licking my wounds could turn into a new adventure.

UPDATE: Decided to re-install the Requiem setup and check out Vilkas. Didn't have any saves, started new game, tried to duplicate previous character, but who knows. Went to Jorrvaskr at Level 3. Much different this time; he rarely attacked (my "in" last time) and it was hard to get to him while he was blocking. Did much less damage to him as well. He did the same amount to me, usually a 1-shot if I wasn't careful. Got him to re-heal twice, but was never from bleedout stage. Fights were very short compared to last time. Seemed like a reasonable test this time. No idea why, but obviously glitched the first time through. FWIW.

You know, its not my intent to simply bash here. I struggled with whether to even post my original comments, concerned they might not be relevant or helpful to a Pack discussion, which does seem to be the case. I thought, simply, that expressing a different perception of Requiem might allow some Pack mod choices to round off any rough edges my perceptions might bring up and increase the "availability" of this Pack to players who might hold similar views. Right or wrong, a common perception of Requiem is that it is a difficulty mod and some players shy away from it for that reason. I rant elsewhere, I only wish to contribute to STEP. Indeed, I have not analyzed specific issues, as with Vilkas, to see if they were intended or not. This was my first really focused attempt to play through Requiem, my previous attempts were even shorter, and I cannot quickly discrern glitch from intent. He Vilkas wasn't "easy" to beat up on, but I'm coming off a VEGA equivalent playthrough and am still mob paranoid. And I was (trying to) playing hardcore, so any encounter is not taken lightly. I may reload the setup and check it out, perhaps I can make a real contribution after all. Thanks for the info. @fireundubh: I've played most of the games you cited; none of them even compare to SkyrimRequiem. EDIT: D&D had its own game franchise, those games were nothing like more modern RPG's who simply used "D&D" as a marketing hook. I just can't get my head around Requiem; not even Dark Souls 2 is as frustrating. IMHO, of course. @Smile44: A fellow DM. Your comment got me thinking about the "old" days. I've still got a bin out in the storage shed full of laminated hex grid, pewter miniatures, about a hundred die, tattered copies of DM guides and Arduin Grimoires, and some 5 1/4 floppy disks(!) with my VIC-20 DM helper programs. That VIC-20 was great; it deflected the ire of players getting an unfortunate roll, from me to itself. And saved a lot of player characters by doing so. Well, I will leave, unless asked something pointed. Again, you STEP contributors are simply awesome and are a huge factor in maintaining the popularity and playability of Skyrim. Smile44; the Best of Luck to you and thanks for all your efforts, here and elsewhere. Gaming is a big part of my entertainment and relaxation time; thanks for making it more enjoyable.

I did "beat" him. At level 4. Twice, in fact. The first time, I was afraid he could be killed and eased up. He jumped up from bleedout, fully healed, and whacked me dead. The next time, I beat him down and tried to kill him. I figured it was only fair; he was willing to kill me, after all. Nope. I'd wail on him good while he was down, but he wouldn't die. Then he'd jump up, fully healed, and come at me again. I tried sheathing weapons to calm him down, only blocking, and only attacking (since he was checking "my arm"). I don't know what the quest script is looking for, but beating a senior Companion circle member to the ground should be enough to verify the "arm" of any applicant. The relative difficulty in doing so is immaterial. I gave Vilkas a good thrashing, for real this time. To no end. Its this type of pointless difficulty, prevalent throughout the mod, that turns people off to Requiem and earns it the common moniker of a hardcore difficulty mod. I don't think some people here understand the concept of "role play". Role play is not a characteristic used to describe a required mechanic of game play. It is a combination of player imagination and gameplay characteristics which allows immersion in the vicarious exploits and game world interactions of a free-form character. Grinding skills is not role play, by the very definition of "grinding". A particular role play mod may encourage a particular character type, but Requiem promotes itself as, simply, the Role Playing Overhaul. It is anything but that. The player has to fit herself into a strict and harsh game mechanic. An immersive role play scenario allows wide choice and player devised solutions which match the imagined role of the character. The most common hint for Requiem is; get heavy armor and a bow. No, I want to role play an innocuous looking, dual wielding, poisoned dagger slinging thief. Of course, Skyrim steers characters into particular roles simply from the basic nature of the game. But it is far easier to role play in vanilla than in Requiem because the player has far more immersion enhancing choices regarding character builds and play style. EDIT: Difficulty level has no bearing on role play, IF you're allowed to maintain some relative performance amongst differing character roles. A simple name change would resolve almost every issue I have with "Requiem - The Role Play Overhaul". Just call it Requiem; I'm certain Ogreboss did so originally for good reason (look up the definition). Its beyond me why he insists that Requiem is a role play mod when, in fact, it drastically limits role play choice, options, and immersion. Unless, of course, you enjoy the character builds forced upon you. Then I can understand its appeal.

I tried. Just got killed by Vilkas during the Companions quest start. Beat him to his knees a couple times, but he keeps re-setting to full health. Don't quite understand the purpose of things like that, seems just to be added for frustration's sake. Normally, playing hardcore (dead-is-dead) is the ultimate immersion enhancer for me; it REALLY makes you consider EVERYTHING you do in a playthrough because every choice is a life or death (new game) decision in one way or another. Simply not possible to play that way in Requiem. I've played through a HLE+RotE+DD setup (not quite VEGA) already, think I'll make it full VEGA and try adding the Warzones pack to it. My hat is off to the the Requiem players.

DD on (default setting) Expert is a minimum for Dragons, IMHO; they are suppossed to be an awesome foe. I mean, look at what you can craft from their remains; they SHOULD be hard to kill. Dragon strength is a poor excuse to OP BFB; I look forward to DD dragons in playthroughs, lots of "ohhh, crappp" moments. Been grinding away, actually. Hunting, mining, and gathering; naked, with a only bow and pickaxe so I can carry something of value back. Emptied every barrel in Whiterun, with my buddy Brenuin. Killed by a wolf while in steel armor after it "bit" my Imperial bow (ever handle a good wood bow?) and kept knocking my sword out of my hands. Kiting mobs and critters to guards. Recycling loot to gain crafting skills. Sleep in the ruined house or watchtower to save coin. Quite the escapist fantasy; seems more like my real life than a game.

Thanks for the info. The only loose files I have (~8) are intended to override everything else. All others were bsa-ified prior to install.

@Smile44 - Well, I have no interest in being an immediate hero; I would just like an opportunity to get through BFB, or any other beginning quest, and experience Requiem and Skyrim together. I'm actually looking for "difficulty". No-nothing mage (clothes only) on vanilla Legendary; no problem. SkyRE; a "difficulty" joke. HLERevenge of the Enemies; okay, getting there. I'm just a guy looking to keep Skyrim interesting after two and a half years. Requiem "seems" to me to be such an interest keeping mod, but it goes out of it's way to make things difficult, not immersive. This has been hashed a million times in the Requiem forums, I don't want to start it again. Thanks for your work on the Pack; it helped me get a stable Requiem + all my other mods game working. I still have the setup; can't quite get rid of it. Maybe I'll enable Faendal and see if I can get through BFB without a week's work.

The good news; everything seems to be working as expected for a partial CORE + partial REGS + Requiem setup. Partial due to personal prefs. The bad news; everything is working as expected. I have tried many times to "get into" Requiem, can't do it. Just a mind-numbing perk grind to get the simplist of characters able to survive a stroll, let alone any quests. I wish it were actually an RP overhaul, some things are intriguing enough to keep me trying, but it has almost zero immersion value for me. Thought the REGS stuff might help, but you can't enjoy exploring unless you can explore. I only decided to post this comment in case others might feel the same (want to like Requiem), but are put-off. The mega-modding STEP community might be able to make it both an interesting RP mod while also allowing you to participate in the game quests and story lines without the incredble grind required just to get through any of the beginning questlines. Yes, I know, "Requiem isn't for everyone". Was just hoping to get it "for a few more".

I've never understood why people unpack bsa's; that changes the possibility of "relative" load and install orders (based upon the position of an esp in the load stream), to a "fixed" load and install sequence (which bsa was unpacked last wins). I've had innumerable issues with adding mid-priority mods which contain bsa's to an unpacked bsa setup. The only way I solved issues was a Chicken and Egg hack; I installed all the mods I wanted, sorted them, uninstalled everything, and re-installed them in the sorted load order sequence. Way too much work. Leaving bsa's packed allows the Skyrim load priority mechanism to work as intended. I quit unpacking a LONG time ago (after a simple bsa repack solved the Esbern glitch) and now I actually pack all loose file mod assets INTO bsa's before installing them. My games HAVE to work (I am OCD regarding game bugs) and, as they were originally intended to, bsa's make priority management very simple. TES5EDIT cleans up any remaining issues far more quickly than unpacking a bunch of bsa's and managing thousands of loose files individually. And I can add/move mods around at will. Besides all that, bsa's seem to perform "smoother" than loose files on my machine. What am I missing insofar as bsa unpacking is concerned? Bsa's make the installation order issue almost moot. I am unaware of any major conflict caused by using bsa's and I certainly don't experience issues that I can attribute to a "packed" game setup. EDIT: spelling

Please don't misinterpret my motivations. If there is an issue and you're aware of it, that's all I wanted to help with. I wish I could do more to help, but just identifying a real issue that I didn't cause myself taxes my modding skills. (Read that: they are non-existent.) Thanks for the info, I look forward to the update.

Quick update: Ran the same load order with the original ETaC esp and everything is okay. So, tommorow I'll pull up the replacer in the CK and look at things.

Well, I happened to fast travel to Rorikstead with a thrall and Lydia. The thrall was stuck back a ways, but they warp into a stable area anyways. Lydia was near me. The thrall was stuck, like with a navmesh issue. We went back to see what was happening and Lydia got stuck as well. I FRD'd both towards the exit and ran down the road. They both ran off the road, back towards town a little, onto the the ETaC store walkway, then went in to the store. I guess they needed a snack or something. Disabling the replacer ETaC fixed the pathing, obviously. Looks like the road navmesh is impassable in the area outside the store (with my suspect load order), but they TRY to get around it. I'm gonna test with the normal ETaC esp tomorrow and see what happens.