Kelmych

I found that the cart ride failed when I used BSAopt/DDSopt to optimized some of the vanilla BSAs back into BSA format. This was a while ago, and I don't remember if the bugged behavior you describe is the same one I was seeing.

The question, for this and for a number of other mods, is how much loss in graphic quality results from using 1Kx1K vs. 2Kx2K textures and how much less actual VRAM use does this provide in the game. Most of the 2Kx2K textures in BOS are DXT1 (vs. DXT5), and the quality loss when reducing these to 1Kx1K might not be very noticeable. However, the normal maps in BOS are 2Kx2K or 4Kx4K DXT5 textures so it is likely more important to determine how to handle these since they have a significant effect on VRAM use. We might look, for example, at the differences with normal maps: * unchanged * DXT5 compressed at 1Kx1K * R5G6B5 at 1Kx1K BOS was selected, but there were other alternatives that were also considered quite good, so small differences in graphic quality might matter a lot.

I have a slightly different perspective, especially for objects that are inorganic. For inorganic objects I think the color should be related to the real world as well as our understanding of TES lore since physics has a large role in determining color. I also agree it is good to compare shapes, colors, etc. to previous TES games as they help to establish precedent. At the same time I don't feel we should consider the digital artists from previous TES games to be necessarily "correct" when comparing with objects in Skyrim. There are even still arguments between those who far prefer many aspects of Morrowind and those liked Oblivion, including color. After the comment on dwemer metal I looked at some of the texture files in Morrowind for dwemer armor and weapons, and I found some of the vanilla textures (admittedly without looking at these in game) had a lot more intense colors than those in comparable objects in Skyrim. STEP users might not be very happy with these Morrowind objects. That being said, I agree with the comment about preferring a non-gold tint such as more red-brown. I've always considered the dwemer metal objects to have some copper in the alloys, and red-brown is a lot closer to what I'd expect for old versions of these than gold.

SMIM 1.49 includes the WB wizard, so you don't need to use SMIM 1.43 plus an updater any more.

I noticed in the new update 1.95 of Texture Pack Combiner that Cestral added the textures from this mod, and in the batch file they are near the end so they overwrite any comparable textures from other mods.

DDSopt is intended by Ethatron to be part of a set of optimizers, and he uses a single code base for the tools he develops. He has also been developing Nifopt for optimizing meshes; it is not ready for use yet. DDSopt does use some of the folder names to determine how to optimize textures. This is done in the ddsopt.ini configuration file, and also in the DDSopt executable.

Considering only VRAM, as long as you don't exceed 2Gb it doesn't matter. Of course, this limit includes transient situations like spell effects and other short effects so it's good to have some VRAM available for these short term VRAM needs. Some places in Skyrim use a lot of VRAM, so you want to make sure that you don't exceed the VRAM limit in places like Windhelm and near Dragonsreach. In addition, a portion of the VRAM storage is mirrored in RAM so you also need to be careful to not exceed the RAM limits of Skyrim; less VRAM use also means less mirrored RAM use . You will see a lot of threads in these forums discussing the "3.1 Gb RAM limit" that cover this.

Expecting Wrye Bash to read installation scripts of another manager is a little unreasonable as installation script commands are closely tied to the program design; NMM can't read WB wizards either. Wrye Bash has some unique features, notably the bashed patch, that are not available in other mod managers (note that it is possible to use Mod Organizer to get WB to generate bashed patches). There aren't any features in Fomod scripts that cannot be achieved with WB wizard scripts. The Mod Organizer description page says it has "partial compatibility with BAIN and fomod installers".

Other mods modify this script; unfortunately so does the Atlas World Encounters option. This option isn't that important for Atlas Map Markers, and is not part of the Atlas Markers options recommended in Skyrim Revisited. Atlas Map Markers is a useful mod, but I don't install the World Encounters option.

You seem to be making the assumption that the ease of installation of CoT with NMM is an inherent capability of NMM itself. It isn't. CoT has a complex Fomod install script written by the CoT author, and NMM uses this. The author organized the files in CoT to make it easier for a manual installation using Wrye Bash, but the CoT author did not include an actual Wrye Bash wizard (the WB equivalent of an Fomod installation script). If a wizard had been included it would have been just as easy to install CoT using WB as with NMM. The author chose to include only the installation script for NMM. Some authors prefer Fomod scripts and some prefer WB wizards. When a wizard doesn't work, the problem isn't with WB it is with the wizard script. WB (and Mod Organizer) isn't as easy to use as NMM, but NMM has some fatal flaws as pointed out by EssArrBee.

It's not in the default version of the ini file, so it is only present if you add it. If you don't have it in your ini file then the default value is used. Unfortunately, as mentioned in an earlier post, if you use mods that add a lot of objects to an interior space sometimes the larger value is needed. The result is that with some sets of mods there is no single value for this parameter that works all the time.

I extracted the files in the current Soul Gems Differ archive and did a search for *.dds in Windows Explorer to show a flat view of the files and, in a different column, the associated folder. I found one or more cases for every soul gem type in tycol1709 folders where the texture name didn't match the folder name. For example, in folders named 212 Petty - Full - * there were 4 cases where the texture files weren't named soulgempetty_full.dds (Petty - Full - tycol1709 - Incandescent\textures\clutter , Petty - Full - tycol1709 - Bluegreen\textures\clutter , Petty - Full - tycol1709 - Blue splatter\textures\clutter ,Petty - Full - Empty - tycol1709 - Violet\textures\clutter). The only non-tycol1709 folders where I found this were in 202 Black - Full - Black (soulgemblack.dds in -with hints of dull red and in - Bloody)

We aren't sure why Skyrim can't read some of the vanilla BSAs that DDSopt/BSAopt has recompressed. It might be because it can't handle the higher compression used, but there hasn't been any testing of this. Ethatron has done some work a while ago on a tool for optimizing meshes, but it is incomplete and he has not had time to work on any of his utilities since the beginning of this year.

I think the only times I've had TES5Edit crashes were when there was a problem with a mod. Did you add any mods recently?

The DDSopt parameters in the STEP guide are likely better; there are only a few differences and some testing was done before they were changed.

it might be hard to tell from dxdiag which components are from which version of DirectX. Most web discussions of DirectX 9 say Win 7 installs most but not necessarily all of DirectX 9. Â You can always install DirectX 9Â in case some components are missing.

DirectX 9 isn't typically installed by default in Windows 7. Running Dxdiag should tell you whether all the DirectX 9 components are currently installed. If DirectX 9 isn't installed, a search can point you to the download site at Microsoft. By the way, you are losing some of the advantages of a 64bit OS with only 4Gb RAM.

The patch needs to be after the mods whose objects it overwrites; it doesn't necessarily need to be at the very end of the load order. It can be near the end.

I haven't seen any mention this problem on the STEP forums, so I'm at a loss to suggest what to try.

Q1: the purpose of a good mod manager is to allow you to install and uninstall individual mods (or groups of mods) while maintaining the proper resource and plugin data in the Skyrim\Data folder. You should be able to install/uninstall mods at any time with a good manager. Both Wrye Bash and Mod Organizer do this; there are advantages and disadvantages for each of these. In using these you will establish an installation order which then allows you to do what you want in Q1. Q2. optimization is best done on individual mods or small sets of mods. You can always optimize a mod and install the optimized version at any time (including after you have installed all the mods) as long as you use a good mod manager. Even if you want to optimize some of the mods it's a good idea to have a good benchmark with no or minimal optimization so you can compare the results and see what actually helped. Q3. I use two monitors, but I have other data on my 2nd monitor (not the game itself; I do have some performance monitor tools on the 2nd monitor as well as a web browser, etc.). This does add a little to VRAM use (probably at least 50Mb).

Claralux hasn't been updated in a long time - there have been several updates to Skyrim since it was last updated - and there were a number of issues remaining with it at the time it was updated. I'm not sure it causes save bloat, but it certainly will cause problems with lighting.

I described how to drag the shader value for these mods using TES5Edit in this post . See if this is an adequate explanation. The general use of drag and drop for editing in TES5Edit is described on page 35-36 of the FNVEdit Training Manual (the most recent available documentation for TES5Edit).

The carriage ride is a good benchmark for the system being used; that is what is used for the benchmarks posted here on the STEP wiki. If there are problems such as low FPS, excessive VRAM use, or excessive GPU use on the carriage ride then we recommend making some changes before actually using the game. There is a lot of discussion on these forums about how to reduce the graphics load (e.g., using lower resolution textures, reducing the size of the normal maps used, etc.) You didn't describe the system you are using or which STEP track (e.g., extreme STEP, baseline STEP) you followed.