Searcher7

Did not read entire forum. Did a search, no joy. Installing cities, towns, and settlements portion of pack over core STEP and a couple other mods. Terrific mods, so far. This is a GREAT pack. Anyone having a problem with out-of-order masters in REGS PATCH - RND and 3DNPC? In BASH, the RND patch "seemed" to be telling me it wanted the RND esp loaded before the Resources esm, and the 3DNPC patch complained about load order with REGS - Cities.esp, though I believe I've got the correct BUM settings. A quick fix in TES5EDIT, but I am concerned about correct overrides if I'm missing something. I have to say, the changes are amazing. I'm almost hesitant to test in-game because I want the experience all at once. Again, I'm totally impressed with STEP recommendations and the people who contribute here. Just amazing. EDIT: spelling correction and punctuation

I have a 2GB 7770 (Don't say it) and phazer's suggestion is in the top 3 things I've done for performance and stability. Textures at 1k, normals at 512. Don't optimize body textures. Good textures optimized down still look pretty good. Highly recommended on "lower end" graphics cards.

Melee types have to make a few allowances for their playstyle, but need not switch roles to succeed. Without spoiling, a couple quests will grant things very useful to a hack-and-slash guy without forcing him to change style too much. I feel mages are the most powerful toons, for some of the reasons you describe, but my magicka burners are very leery of Forsworn fighters; they can't take the DPS. I would suggest that a couple resist buffs or items, a little extra stamina, and a couple Shouts (Ethereal, Whirlwind) will let you close with those squishy mages and make quick work of the situation. An extended battle with mages is bound to be, um, frustrating. Get in quick, whack em good, get back out if there's more.

I carried on with my ramdisk mounted, bsa'd, "S" level DDSopt'd Vanilla + HRDLC with ONLY the malebody texture replaced with the original. Haven't found any other texture issues yet, but haven't been everywhere. I have to say, the game looks and plays really well on my lower end machine. After Sheson's Mem Patch 3, I installed most of a CORE (performance) STEP, along with CoT and a personally edited default ENB for shadow fixes and darker nights, all without a single (knock-on-wood) CTD, freeze, or ILS in dozens of play hours. The "S" level optimization improved FPS and game "responsiveness" with little visual degradation. I know that "responsiveness" is totally subjective. My machine chugs along at only 35-40 average FPS, but it is a very smooth, stutter free experience with quick mouse response now. NEVER thought I would get to this point of looks and responsiveness in Skyrim with my budget gaming systems. STEP is a major reason that I was able to accomplish this. Two years in Skyrim and I'm enjoying the game now more than ever.

I have a couple "old school", renamed and symlinked directory, identical Skyrim installs. The mod load in both caused random CTD's and freezes during play and would CTD in less than a minute running Vurt's stress test, prior to Mem Patch 3. Have a manually compiled (VS 2008) default Sheson SKSE patch in one and SSME 1.8 in the other. Enbseries .244 in both with UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true. No stability or fix mods. Trying to follow the same testing process and character path in both. So far, the results are identical insofar as stabilty is concerned. Neither setup will crash during a 16 minute stress test ( at least a x16 improvement) and neither setup has crashed during game play. Unfortunately, I don't have a standard Core STEP load. I'm trying to get a Core STEP load going at the moment, but the testing (and downloading, it seems) will take a while. If there's anything I can do in particular for someone (particular STEP load, etc), just let me know. I have a lower end machine (G2030, hd-7770 2GB, 8GB, Win 7 x64), so we could try a "useable" mod load, or push it over the limit and see what happens. Just offering. EDIT: Have access to most common tools, but will avoid MO for this in order to maintain game independence.

DDSopt II - In Search of Normality Used: DDSopt.ini (1/17/2014) v2.63 batch files Current Wiki Guide Everything was optimal (1); no errors, counts okay, etc. Performed the Vanilla Uncompressed Textures optimization at S3 (1024x1024). SAME issue with malebody_1_msn.dds: "Black" in-game skin textures, totally transparent image in GIMP. Surmised that most users were probably more interested in Quality than Performance. Re-optimized Vanilla Uncompressed Textures to a test directory using S3 Constraints, but selected 2048x2048. (H3, I guess) Don't know if that just did a pass-through or actually processed and saved the texture. It works fine in-game and looks like a common normal map in GIMP. Something about reducing max resolution breaks the texture on my machine. As an aside, pulling up the uncompressed texture in DDSopt by dbl-clicking in the Browser tab and trying to save from the Preview tab using R8G8B8 1:1 at 1024x1024 (same as the S3 Constraints tab settings) results in a Failed to Convert Texture error. EDIT: I pulled up the optimized HRDLC3 texture in an ancient Compressonator. It loads okay, shows as an ARGB8888 (with Alpha) file, and is totally blank. (Just checking the GIMP plug-in.) The Extracted texture pulls up fine as RGB8888 (no Alpha). (1)Wiki Guide--> "Using DDSopt" section: Main Menu Settings-->Settings-->"Write Logfile" is selected. "Vanilla Texture Preparation" section: "Working Folder Screenshot" - file counts do not include 7 log files which were written to my Vanilla Extracted directory. Actual file count of Working and Vanilla Extracted directories is 77,123 vice 77,116 as shown in screenshot. May be confusing for new users.

The descriptions of the process have changed to try and make them clearer, but the processes themselves haven't really changed. Recommendations for Constraint menu settings have been edited a bit so the default values don't change very many textures, but most of the changes don't affect any textures in the vanilla set of uncompressed textures. The current recommendations would still produce the same texture you are using (1Kx1K uncompressed texture). If that isn't the best choice the recommendations can be changed once we have enough information to do so. For users with enough VRAM, 2Kx2K for a model space normal map is likely better. Okay. Remember, I have an ulterior motive; to get as many textures as possible into my ramdisk. I only stumbled upon this issue by trying to reduce as many texture resolutions as possible, while trying to retain as much texture "quality" as possible via the DDSopt guide. Certainly, I will modify the process to retain "critical" textures at max resolution. I just had no idea which textures were "critical" when I started. Learning curve thing. However, it seems I managed to produce a broken texture my first time through (see reply to Aiyen). I'm gonna try it again and see if I get the same result. Thanks a lot for sticking with me through this, I appreciate it.

I never even thought to open the textures in Gimp. I have 2.8 with the DDS plugin. The vanilla optimized STD texture (683KB) opens up and displays like a "normal" DDS normal map. 11 layers, RGB, 1024x1024 The vanilla optimized HRDLC3 texture (5462KB) opens up without a problem as an 11 layer RGB 1024x1024 image with mipmap layers, but only displays Gimp's default transparency background (checkerboard). A Histogram shows no image data whatsoever in any channel (Pixels: 0 Count: 0) You have to prompt us lug-heads to perform the obvious much sooner. FWIW EDIT: Before you ask, the Vanilla Extracted HRDLC3 texture opens fine as an 11 layer, RGB, 2048x2048 image and looks like a "normal" DDS normal map. EDIT2: I notice that the empty optimized (5462KB) image opens in Gimp WITH an Alpha channel (I can Remove it). The option to remove Alpha is not present in the original (Vanilla Extracted HRDLC3) texture.

I only have DLC and UOP's installed in this setup along with a .244 enbseries with a tweaked RealVision in this Skyrim directory, but I currently have UsePatchSpeedHackWithoutGraphics=1 in my enblocal.ini. I have been testing another setup with Sheson's mem patch, and another one with the Nexus SSME mod, and I am a little distracted from having a stable, highly modifiable Skyrim. :) (Kid-in-candy-store syndrome) It seems the DDSopt Wiki process has changed a little since my OP and I have not optimized under the new procedure. Allow me a moment, and I will setup a pristine vanilla Skyrim (no ENB)/DLC/UOP environment, run the current DDSopt Wiki Guide, and report back. I'll keep my current DDSopt Working directory tree for comparison.

Totally random observation - the "black" textures are not a solid black color. I forgot about the loose file I had added and went in-game to look at something else. Balgruuf and his brother had their black skins, but as I moved out of Dragonsreach and my point-of-view changed, so did their skin tone. I wound up outside Warmaidens and a loin-cloth clad Courier was just standing around. If I moved around him (and he didn't turn to face me) the black texture varied from black, to a lighter gray, to a much-lighter-than-normal skin texture complete with detail (hair, etc). Its like the "normals" are not normal (perpendicular) to whatever surface (skin?) they're supposed to be normal to anymore. I don't know what a *_msn.dds does for a material/surface, but my "bad" one appears to affect surface reflection/emittance angles making the surface appear dark (black!) in most light-object-viewer relationships, but actually reach an almost normal (sic) appearance at some viewing angles. I have no point of reference for all this, so I can't be more precise. I only mention this in the hopes a 3D-guru might recognize the issue and, perhaps, know the cause and cure.

Lol. I have no idea why, but your suggestions stopped the lag and "extra" stutter during a long Vurt stress test. I ran around for 15 minutes and things "looked" normal when I stopped and reverted back to default speedmult. I misspelled "tcl" and didn't notice, so I took off on my test at ground level. Pretty hilarious. I wonder how the Flash keeps his feet on the ground in hilly terrain. Thanks.

Another subjective review; I DO NOT have a core STEP installed, but followed the STEP guidelines for installing what I have. I would suspect many players are in this same situation. I will not play an unstable Skyrim (OCD, I guess), any crash at all and I'm troubleshooting, reverting, starting over for the nth^3 time, etc. My "basic" game and machine setup is very stable. My current game has 72 mods including 41 STEP mods, SKSE, ENB .244 (speedhackwithoutgraphics is TRUE for these tests), slightly modified ini files for about 25% more Papyrus loop time budgets and increased draw distances for grass, archery distance, etc. No crazy threading or other undocumented tweaks. No Safety Load or any other "crash fix" mods. Hit a mod load that began to randomly (didn't test that long) crash (CTD's, one freeze), stopped, copied (literally) the entire game setup. The copied game crashes (CTD's) in about a minute using Vurt's stress test, at seemingly random map locations. Applied Garfink's texture resolution reduction "fix" to the copied setup and in-game CTD's stopped. Ran Vurt's stress test 5 times. Average time-to-CTD was right at 6 minutes. Game itself never crashed on me with the texture resolution reductions. Compiled Sheson's default patch and ran Vurt's test on the Garfink'd game with the patch. Did not crash within 16 minutes, but game became very "laggy" at times with considerable stutter everywhere after about 10 minutes (scripts?). Ran Vurt's test on original setup (original texture sizes) with patch, did not crash within 16 minutes, but game was experiencing same extreme lag and stutter at the end. Have about 16 hours play on original game setup with no crashes. Gonna start cranking my texture packages up from Performance level now and see if the game will hold together. @Sheson; thanks so much for this. I value stability over eye-candy, but now, it seems, I can have both.

In case this might be related to some other issue, I offer the following information on my system: OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601 System Model DH77EB Processor Intel® Pentium® CPU G2030 @ 3.00GHz, 3000 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s) BIOS Version/Date Intel Corp. EBH7710H.86A.0101.2013.0516.1649, 5/16/2013 Adapter Description AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series <-- ASUS HD-7770 2GD5 Driver Version 13.251.0.0 <-- AMD_Catalyst_13.10_Beta_V2 - All Catalyst Control Panel 3D options are OFF or Use Application Settings Skyrim Launcher --> Options Ultra Preset (modified) AA 2x AF 16x --> Advanced High High High None - The only Option Box selected is Reflect Sky Vanilla ini files EDIT: Except for registered bsa I did not remove a 244 enbseries with RealVision, but set enblocal.ini: [GLOBAL] UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true Good luck in finding needles in such a large haystack. My hat is off to you guys.

Okay, ran through my optimized bsa process again, and found a couple errors. First, I edited the previous post to correct one error. Feeling pretty stupid about now. I do get a black texture in-game, but its from the HRDLC3 malebody_1_msn.dds optimized texture, not the STD one. Because of a comedy of errors in building and naming my original bsa files, the two textures in question were reversed in my testing and discussions. Right now, I have no HRDLC loaded at all. I have an optimized STD bsa registered in Skyrim.ini to replace Skyrim - Textures.bsa. Everything is fine. IF I take the malebody_1_msn.dds from the Vanilla Optimized\HRDLC3 directory and place it in the Data\textures directory tree as a loose file, I get black skin textures in-game, which vary somewhat depending upon the lighting. I have wasted enough of your time. What I will say is this: There MAY be an issue with the Wiki Guide optimization process involving the malebody_1_msn.dds file contained in HighResTexturePack03. I'm gonna go compile sheson's memory patch and see if I can get rid of issues involving texture sizes a different way.

This particular Skyrim setup is a manually modded, vanilla based, wholly independent test install made just to check out the STEP DDSOpt texture optimizations and test the prospect of putting optimized textures in a compressed bsa file for mounting in a ramdisk. (I have a bunch of symlinked, batch file controlled Skyrim installs for testing and playing different mod loads. Kinda like MO profiles, only less elegant, much less efficient, and considerably more complicated to use. ;) However, your comments have finally worked their way through my leaden brain. I was confusing your "overwrite" statements in the context of optimizing and not Skyrim itself. The optimized, EDIT: 5462KB malebody_1_msn.dds placed in the EDIT:Vanilla Optimized\HRDLC3 directory by the Wiki Guide process causes a black texture in my game if not overridden by another texture source. I was simply using the loose files in the textures directory to override any other textures in order to isolate the file causing the problem. Unfortunately, I can't seem to produce a 683KB file from the original malebody_1_msn.dds extracted from Skyrim - Textures.bsa. Right now, DDSopt is simply doing a passthrough on it and I cant make it compress the damn thing at all.

I have a few recommended STEP mods; just LOD and Map upgrades, SMIM, SFO, etc. I DO have RaceMenu and CBBE *blush* installed, but they are loose files. I only optimized Vanilla, HRDLC, and UHRP textures (EDIT: and the DLC textures), following the Wiki Guide as closely as possible. There was no textures\actors\character\male directory at all during my tests, I had to add one to get the "fixed" msn file in there. The 683KB file causes the black texture in my game. The 683KB info makes sense in that I selected the 1024x1024 resolution settings when optimizing. However, as I noted above, I could not make a 683KB file by doing either the STD or HRDLC3 malebody_1_msn.dds files by themselves. There is more than an insignificant chance of user error here as I have only done the optimizations once. I have the batch files I used initially. If it would help, I would be glad to try the whole process over and report those results.

Well, I wasn't sure which malebody_1_msn.dds winds up in the optimized output, so here's what I found after optimizing with the indicated settings both extracted original textures (STD, HRDLC3): STD (DXT1 original --> S2 512x512 ): okay in game STD (DXT1 original --> H2 1024x1024 ): okay in game HRDLC3 (uncompressed original --> S3 1024x1024): okay in game HRDLC3 (uncompressed original --> H3 2048x2048): okay in game A problem. I then pulled the optimized texture out of my bsa file and tested that one: black in game. But I noticed that the above single file optimizations produced file sizes: std : 2,731Kb HRDLC3: 16,385Kb The one I pulled from my bsa is 683Kb. Not sure why there is a difference, unless the optimization scripts decided the original file did not belong in the categories I just used for testing. I thought I might be able to help, but I'm over my head here. FYI

Missed that comment twice. I did read it while optimizing, but I was shooting for lower resolution anyways and the display quality warning was not important at the time. I don't understand the alchemy behind dds optimizations, but I'm a little curious. I still have the extracted folders. I'll try some optimizations on the original msn files and tell you if their final resolution affects my "symptom".

I hope I'm not necro'ing this thread. Problem: "black" texture after following DDSOpt Wiki Guide Particulars: Used S1, S2, S3 settings for optimization Result: "Black" textures on male bodies. Discovered it depended on lighting. Replaced optimized malebody_1_msn.dds with same file from Skyrim-Textures.bsa and issue corrected. I recall reading some warnings about Model Space Normal files (and body textures in general) while checking out optimizations, but I can't find it again. I can't find it on the linked-to Wiki page from the STEP homepage, at least.

Ahhh, misunderstood the context of the Wiki warnings; I created new BSA files, did not repack. Wasn't sure of the exact load precedence of Skyrim.ini registered bsa's, so I created "dummy" esp's and moved my bsa loading to just below the default esm's. Still testing, but no repeatable CTD's yet. (Actually, none at all.) EDIT: Will thrash out Dawnguard HQ and see what happens. Thanks for the reply.

I searched for "bsa" as a keyword, too short. Tried a couple phrases, no joy. I, apparently, successfully optimized my vanilla, HRDLC, UHRP, and some loose file mod textures, according to the Wiki Guide. My resulting textures directory was 4.6GB. Game looked fine, Vurt's stress test crashed once (on shoreline west of Winterhold) out of several trials, and I was enjoying some better performance. Couldn't leave well-enough alone. I have a small ramdisk (3GB) and even my optimized texture directory won't fit. However, (and I know this isn't popular around STEP), bsa compression drastically reduces texture storage requirements. I put my textures directory into 4 (a result of testing) bsa files with compression using Archive, registered them in Skyrim.ini, moved the Skyrim-Textures, 3 HRDLC, and the UHRP bsa's and esp's to storage, and renamed my textures directory to disable it entirely. The 4 bsa's (2.1GB total) are now in ramdisk using symlinks. Everything is fine so far; Vurt's test won't crash at all (its amazingly smooth, as well), and that worries me. There are comments in the Wiki Guide concerning optimized textures packed into a bsa causing CTD's. Are there known locations (or known textures) which cause the CTD's? I can't find any problem areas outdoors and I'm getting sea-sick flying around at x1000 trying to find them. I consider my current texture load a "default" setup, so the bsa's aren't that much of an issue for me. I'll put further mod textures in the directory tree, after I get my default game tested. I hate random crashes and am looking to eliminate as many potential sources as possible. Even "good guesses" as to why DDSOpt-imized textures in a bsa may cause crashes are more than welcome. Thx.

I'm a support technician and long ago gave up any hope that users would become familiar with either their computer or the programs on it. Asking a user to follow a README is wishful thinking. The real gamers are different; they'll work to get things running. But most will not. I'm not blaming the MM's either; they do well with what they get. I actually do use Wrye Bash with Oblivion and a little bit with Skyrim, and have tried NMM (nice uninstaller). I'm just a control freak at heart. BOSS was a Godsend, and so is STEP. But the forums are still full of problems that could be solved by simply using BOSS or following STEP advice. Too few do, and that agrees with my personal experience at work. DoubleYou pointed out the fomod/omod; I knew about them but was unaware of how they worked. I had thought they just used a fomm/obmm script for a brute force install and did not know they had an associated XML installation guide. Most users will do one double-click, then call tech support or post in a forum if things don't work. I'm just trying to figure out how to make that one double-click more successful for them. In the long run, its selfish; I want to encourage modders for my own benefit. The easier it is to successfully install and use a mod, the more popular it might be, the more endorsements it might get, the more encouragement for the author to keep going, ...

I knew it was too simple an idea. I don't understand why this hasn't caught on more than it has in the Skyrim community, or with mod authors. MOST problems that I help users with are solved by simple install tweaks or are dependency issues (You NEED Dragonborn..., You need the XXX Dragonborn Patch..., The patch goes AFTER...). Thanks for pointing it out. I'll look around and see if there are some particular reasons why it isn't a more popular mod format.

I'm certain this must have been discussed SOMEWHERE, but I can't find anything related to TES, or Skyrim in particular. Problem: Successful Mod installation (IMHO) is problematic at best. Currently, it seems that more-or-less intelligent "mod managers" are the preferred solution. Different "installer" mechanisms (and logic) are used amongst the different mod managers making mod management even more confusing to new/casual gamers, who experience the most problems with mods. Idea: Put the install requirements with a mod itself via a "standardized" mod metadata file. A mod manager/mod utility could parse that file and automate the install and/or require user input. For instance, mod dependencies could be enforced, or at least presented to the user, during installs ("This mod requires DLCxxxx or XXXX.esp..."). Post facto requirements (ie, FNIS generator) could be automated to ensure completion. INI files could be updated/replaced with required entries (ie, ENB). From the number of "problem" threads on places like Nexus, it is obvious that some install information beyond correct directory structure and load order (even THAT is problematic) is needed for today's complex mod installs. In particular, things like STEP recommended mod adjustments could be implemented automatically with a package metadata file. I'm an old-school, manual mod installer. 7-zip is my goto installer for manually downloaded mods and I actually peruse README files. I cannot say what should be included in a metadata file; mod authors would need to come to some agreement as to what information an auto-installer would need to successfully install their mods. Something as simple as an HTA utility could populate an XML file, for instance, with the agreed upon metadata prior to mod release. Thoughts? EDIT - Spelling errors

Hi. New member, first post. Am working on some general Skyrim troubleshooting hints and associated script files. In the WIKI Installation Guide (Updated: 19:29:35 8 September 2013 (UTC)) -> Configuration -> 2nd para "Additional Skyrim-profile resources are located in %APPDATA%\Local\Skyrim..." Under Windows 7 (Home Premium x64), my %APPDATA% environment variable contains "C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Roaming" "Roaming" is on the same directory level as "Local", hence the given location does not work on my machine. Some googling revealed that Windows 7, at least, sets a system environment variable pointing to the "Local" directory: %LOCALAPPDATA%. My %LOCALAPPDATA% contains "C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local", hence the following points to the desired data files on my machine; "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim". I am not a programmer or anyone well-versed in Windows, but I have found the STEP Guide to contain excellent information so far and just wanted to point this out. I don't know if the original path applies to any other version of Windows or not. You people are great; 42 mods so far and I never expected Skyrim to look so good while playing so well. EDIT: Previous EDIT content deleted, should have known better.