sgtnapalm

Oops. I'll just keep my eyes peeled, thanks for the heads-up.

Was downloading the Standard Optimized Textures last night when the download corrupted, the STEP Nexus page went hidden, and the page came back up about an hour later with the Standard Optimized Textures link removed. Same bug?

I think they mean insofar as settings and usage for this guide go for the standard user, in which case they are correct; To the average end user, this represents not much more than a UI update with some under-the-hood changes that can generally be ignored. No major updates to the CCC guide are needed which is the important part, though down the line it may be desired to remain consistent with current drivers and to not appear out-of-date. (If I was a new member reading this guide and came across the CCC guide 3 months down the line I would assume that the guide was out-of-date and not be sure how to proceed.) As to others commenting on AMD Gaming Evolved, this is essentially AMD's answer to the GeForce Experience. All game optimization does is replace configuration files with community-submitted presets. Now, as far as I know, Performance is meant to give the most framerate at any settings, Quality is meant to give the highest quality at any framerate, and Balanced is meant to give the best possible graphics at a target framerate for your machine (I believe 60). At least, this is what I assume it does because I can find no documentation as to what these presets actually mean. In any case this has no bearing on how the guide works and should not be included. Obviously you would not want the app to optimize Skyrim for you after you've done your own tweaks.

A lot of what you say is true, monitors will look different in different lighting conditions. Some people prefer to play in nice, sun-lit rooms, some prefer the pitch black, some prefer some sort of bias lighting (like myself.) And being user friendly is a big part of this guide. I suppose that throwing in all this additional information may just confuse people with unneccesary information. I, too, have a decent factory calibrated IPS (Dell U2212HM,) and while the Lagom tests report that my monitor is more or less perfectly calibrated when left at default settings, some people might not even use LCDs. (Some enthusiasts still use the Sony Trinitrons, for example.) While I would imagine that most of the brightness, contrast, and gamma tests would still apply it's still unneccesary information that may confuse, and is probably beyond the scope of this guide. So yeah, on second thought the current Photo Friday test might be "good enough" for most use-cases. Also as an aside, calibration can go off as the monitor gets older, which is why your monitor might not agree with the tests anymore. Maybe a line about recalibrating and cleaning your monitor every few months wouldn't be a bad idea.

Hello! I read your screen calibration guide and there are a few things I would like to mention: The first is the relationship between the driver's color management utility vs Windows' built-in color management utility. In your guide you mention that if you should go through the Windows utility so that colors are at their default settings, where (at least in AMD's case,) adjusting colors at the driver level will automatically throw away the settings used by Windows. This makes that step a bit redundant, and I feel like it would only confuse some people. The second is the reference image you provide. I think that a much better guide would be the Lagom LCD monitor test pages. In addition to ensuring that you have proper brightness and contrast, this guide will ensure that you have correct gamma and sharpness. Also, I find the Photo Friday reference image you provided to be too extreme: by adjusting brightness and contrast in accordance to the Photo Friday guide (adjust until the shapes are just batrely visible,) it will make the test fail for the Lagom LCD test for the "Black level" and "White saturation" tests, and makes my screen far too dark and high-contrast. Third, I think that you should at least mention tools such as the Spyder 3 Pro as an option for enthusiasts (and this guide is geared towards enthusiasts,) who insist on nothing less than the absolute best color reproduction their monitor can offer. It won't be neccesary for most users, but I feel like acknowledging the existence of these tools would make it a much rounder guide. Finally, I think that you should mention that apps like f.lux can mess with the color settings because it demands control over both Windows and driver colors and should be fully closed before calibration work is started. Thank you for all of your effort put into your guide! Despite my criticisms, you still have the best modding guide for both new users looking to get the essential utilities and mods needed to start modding their game, and enthusiasts looking to get the best graphics available. I regularly reccomend it to friends, and will continue to do so!

That sounds good. What do I do, just take the overwrite file and make it into its own mod, naming it appropriately for each profile?

Alright, thank you for the help guys!

Hmm, I see. If this is true, what would be the best way to move my MO install to the Skyrim directory? Will I break anything if I just cut and paste the folder into the root Skyrim directory, or will I need to reinstall MO?

I've been using Mod Organizer with Skyrim for a bit now and have come to the conclusion that it's the best mod manager I've ever used across any of the Bethbryo games. I also play and mod Fallout 3 and New Vegas quite extensively, and I'm considering getting into Oblivion modding as well. So I figured I would just use Mod Organizer in one centralized location under C:/Games/Mod Organizer (Steam is also installed to C:/Games/Steam,) seeing as I will be using this software for all my games. So I installed Oblivion this week and I ran into the problem; While I see that the wiki says that Mod Organizer supports Fallout 3, Oblivion, etc., I can't seem to find any documentation for switching the game directories within Mod Organizer itself. I can create an oblivion.exe shortcut in the executable list but it still assumes I'm using the Skyrim directory. Where is the setting for this located? Thank you for your help!

Does anybody know about mods that let you destroy the Thieves' Guild? This seems to be the front runner but I want to know if any of you have any other experiences or recommendations. Because as it stands this one seems to get the job done but it plays fast and loose with the lore in a way I'm not terribly comfortable with. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28880/?

My friends are trying to get me into Devin Townsend. It's working. And now, for something completely different.

Hey, I just wanted to point out a little tool called ShareX. It can be configured to use virtually any host you want (including personal FTP servers,) and then you can use hotkeys to upload files and screengrabs. It will then automatically place the url in your clipboard so you can paste easily. To people who find Google Drive kind of annoying this may be something to take the edge off; you can use ShareX to upload any images and automatically get the URL in your clipboard. I currently use it in conjuction with Dropbox. Also Dropbox does have Gallery support, and I do believe you need to have the link to access the gallery. That might suit you. Though I'm assuming you've already experimented with that extensively.

I'm using a setup similar to redirish. Stealth Skills Rebalanced, Deadly Combat, ACE Archery module, and also Mighty Magick. I like Deadly Combat especially because it's not too distant from vanilla but adds in some interesting skill elements with improved locational damage, timed blocks, etc. The only thing I'm iffy on is Mighty Magick because I feel like it ruins the Illusion tree. Standard, it swaps muffle with invisibility making you far too powerful far too early, and with the extras it turns Illusion into conjuration 2.0. Otherwise, it adds a bit of depth to magical combat if you're in to that sort of thing.

I bought that a bit ago but never got around to playing it. My understanding is that it's very Metroidvania.

I know this is kinda late now but Deus Ex is my favorite game of all time and has been since before Human Revolution came out, and with that in mind I think that Human Revolution totally captured the spirit of the original and is worthy of its namesake, though it's not without its flaws (it rewards stealth a bit too much I think.) I preordered it and it was totally worth it for full price. If you enjoy Skyrim you'll probably enjoy Human Revolution, it's an FPS with some RPG elements with tons of cool sidequests and a killer story. It took me about 50-60 hours to complete the entire game (get all achievements.) Should take like 24 hours to just do a single playthrough if you take your time and explore like you're supposed to. In other news, Thief 4 is on sale. As a fan of the original Thief games there are no redeeming qualities in Thief 4. Give it a pass, even for 50%, 75%, or even 90% off.

Postal 2 Complete is on sale for $3 dollars. I'd highly reccomend it, they recently had a really big update where they implemented a whole bunch of user mods to be official including A Week In Paradise, which is a mod that merges Postal 2 and Apocalypse weekend to be a new game. They added in a dozen or so new weapons and fixed tons of bugs. Steam workshop for mods was added, and they are currently working on a brand new DLC that will come out later this year. It's a lot of value for $3 bucks. Most of these changes save for Steam Workshop will be coming to the GOG version at some time in the future. I would also like to throw in my support for the first two Batman: Arkham games. Arkham Asylum is very fun, and Arkham City is one of the few isntances of a sequel done right; they took every mechanic, improved on it in almost every conceivable way, and made the story larger and grander. I would highly recommend it. I don't know about Arkham Origins, though.

I, for one, will be remoivng this from my personal mod setup. In my opinion, the poor collision physics where you slip and slide around on corpses and get stuck, ocassionally get hurt or killed because of errant physics, and generally having to go out of my way to avoid corpses or get glitched and thrown several feet away into a trap or something ruins immersion far more than being able to walk through corpses. There's a reason why games such as Half-Life 2 figured out that the player colliding with corpses was a bad idea a decade ago. The disconnect between the movement I expect the character to make as a player and the actual, glitchy movement that is a result of interacting with ragdolls absolutely shatters any immersion I might have. There's a fine line between realism and fun, and sometimes concessions need to be made where one must be sacrificed in order to ensure the other. I feel like this sacrifices fun for the sake of realism, and I think that it doesn't do an altogether good job at creating realism either. I don't know how valued the opinion of this lurker will be, but I'm just throwing my two cents in after playing with the mod for a few dozen hours.

I found something that might be a good addition to this guide, or at least maybe the ini guide. https://www.mouse-sensitivity.com/ This allows you to convert your ideal sensitivity from one game to another (including to or from Skyrim.) For example, I play at 1800 DPI and 4.25 sensitivity in Team Fortress 2, or at 2.139 inches per 360 degree rotation. To get similar sensitivity in Skyrim, I would need to manually change fMouseHeadingSensitivity in SkyrimPrefs.ini to 0.026. This effectively takes the guesswork out of setting your ideal sensitivity for games, and as such I believe this would be a welcome addition to STEP becasue it further simplifies getting a fresh install exactly where you need it to be.

I'm afraid not.

There is a very tiny, very simple mod on the Steam Workshop that I believe should be included in STEP. It doesn't do anything special, but I believe that the functionality it affords helps to make what I believe to be an essential mod. Followers Keep Up This simple mod only changes one thing about followers; as you get further away from them while running, they will run faster to keep up. If they get stuck up a cliff, or behind a door, or fall behind whilst you are on horseback, they will teleport behind you. The net effect of this is that your followers will cease to be left behind, and they will always be by your side, just as they should be. This mod changes nothing else. Now, I realize that this is not a Nexus mod, and I was unable to find a similar lightweight mod on the Nexus nor on these STEP forums, but the mod is only two files, a .bsa and a .esp, are only 6kb each, it plays nicely with BOSS, and it does not conflict with any mods in your current release of STEP. I have used this mod for easily more than 75 hours of playtime (maybe even 100,) I have used this mod through several saves and characters, and I have used this mod after changing and experimenting with dozens of mods that alter followers, races, factions, and more. I have never seen it break or cause issues once. The fact that you never have to worry about losing your follower again helps immersion so much that you won't even notice it's there.