Kelmych

Considering the two problem BSAs include sound files... that might be the problem record type.Sounds likely to me. The post on the BSAopt Nexus form about the problem with BSAopt optimized Skyrim - Sound.bsa also said that this was not a problem with Skyrim 1.6.89.0 but it is now with 1.8.151.0 .

I thought Ethatron has said that the bsa code is the same in both. I haven't tried using DDSopt to do the cleanup/recompression. According to the Nexus forum post the Skyrim - Sounds.bsa problem existed with previous versions of BSAopt including the one released earlier in 2012. Perhaps the real problem is with the TESV code that uncompresses BSAs?

In the check I've done of the HRDLC I have only looked at the textures used the main Skyrim game. I haven't looked at the DLC01 or DLC02 directories since they are new are were not in the original HRDLC1 or HRDLC 2. I've been looking to see whether the problems that existed before have been fixed, and only a few have. The DIFF list posted earlier has a list of the revised textures that Bethesda fixed. The dragonbone and draugr armor were there before if you ran the batch file that z posted which put files in the correct directory (among other fixes); they are now in the correct directory in the HRDLC. The updated textures also have higher resolution, which might make them competitive now against the other mods you listed. I doubt, however, they are better than Cabal's textures.

Most of the problems have not been fixed. If you look at the DIFF file that was posted you will see what was fixed, most of which was in the \armor directory. They improved the textures in the DIFF list and put them in the correct directory. Almost all of the rest of the problems remain. There are still duplicates across HRDLC1 & 2, with the STD textures, etc. They moved the \actor directory to HRDLC3 but left some of the problems. They didn't fix any of the textures in the HRDLC that I could see that were fixed in the DLC Tweaks (except one), so all except one of those replacements still apply. I edited the batch file that fixes the HRDLC including adding HRDLC3, deleting the small number of lines that were not needed and did a little editing because of Bethesda fixes, and some other small changes. I left the bulk of it there since that is the part that applies the fixes using the Tweaks textures. The HRDLC_Fix_START.bat and HRDLC_Fix.bat files (edited) are still needed and the one that does the actual fixing isn't a whole lot smaller. I'm testing it to make sure it works.

I went through the HRDLC_Fix.bat and HRDLC_Fix-START.bat, that were used to cleanup the HRDLC1&2, and created updated versions for HRDLC1-3. I'll post them when I've had a chance to test them.

I went through the differences list for the updated HRDLC 1&2 and found the following overlaps with the HD_Texture_DLC_Fix and the two HRDLC Tweaks. In all these overlap cases the updated HRDLC has the at least as good or higher resolutions than those in HD_Texture_DLC_Fix or the HRDLC_tweaks. I thus assume we should use the HRDLC versions when there are overlaps. We'll need to modify the batch files referenced in the guide that are used to update/repair HRDLC 1&2. Should I do this or should z do it (since he posted the original batch file)? Here are the overlaps between the new Bethesda additions to HRDLC 1&2 and HD_Texture_DLC_Fix: actors\parthurnax\parthurnax.dds clutter\woodfires\woodfires01_g.dds clutter\choppingblock\choppingblock01bloody.dds everything in armor\dragonbone\ everything in armor\draugr\ everything in armor\dragonbone\ everything in armor\dragonpriesthelm\ (except helmet_corundrum.dds which is only in the HD_Texture_DLC_Fix) There is only one overlap with the HRDLC_Tweaks, armor\draugr\femaledraugrboots_n.dds, which is also in the HD_Texture_DLC_Fix (the version in tweaks was better) There are still a lot of files in the HD_Texture_DLC_Fix and HRDLC_Tweaks that are not updated in the newly released HRDLC 1&2.

I'll add this to the guide. I've just finshed a series of edits to the guide, and with the new BSAs and information on 1/2 size normal maps I have an opportunity to continue doing so :D.

I think you need to copy the entire Skyrim Mods folder since it has table.dat which has the package installation details. You also need to include the AppData\Local\Skyrim folder (which has the load order and other files), and the My Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder which has the Wrye Bash settings, skyrim ini files, and game saves

What are the mixed-resource BSAs from DLCs ? I have done everything, as per the instructions. Extracted all the BSAs into Extracted folders, then processed them (Optimized) into Optimized folders, did not tick the PNG files, repacked everything into (separate of course) 7z's and installed as they were mods. Then removed the original BSAs (as per new point 8 of the guide). Do I need to do anything else? Thanks ::EDIT:: I also optimized the new HRDLC in the same way (did not extracted TXT files and also searched if there were any PNG files). ::EDIT2:: Please ignore this question, I just got it... Too tired after work I think :) Guess I have some repacking to do, as I packed all the mixed resources from DG and HF into 7z's rather than textures only... I'll expand this is the guide. The DLC BSAs have textures, meshes, etc. I call them mixed-resource. What you want to do with the PNG files is to not process them when you are optimizing, but when done you follow z's steps to add them back in. I don't think there are any in the HRDLC but there are certainly some in Skyrim - textures and the 3 DLC bsa files.Â

I added a comment in the nexus BSAopt forum mentioning that there was a problem with the optimized Skyrim - Voices.bsa. I included the problem with sprinting, but I didn't include the shaking tree problem. By the way, there is also a problem with the BSAopt-optimized Skyrim - Sounds.bsa (a CTD) in case you didn't know. Both of these problems are mentioned in the new tab I put in the BSA Extraction and Optimization guide (Optimizing BSAs tab). One thing I've never fully understood about BSAopt and DDSopt is how duplicates are removed when the duplicates are the same resource with multiple different names. Do you know how this works?

Personally I agree more with Tech and MontyMM about the purpose of the lighting mods. I can understand why Bethesda chose their vanilla lighting to provide at least a minimum (and unrealistic) level of lighting everywhere vs. having some areas that are so dark that casual gamers wouldn't use the game. I'm not adverse to fantasy - hey, I'm playing a computer game about a non-existent place - but I'd still like to see lighting that is generally a bit more realistic, especially in the total dynamic range of light, while still making the game fun. I'd like to see some fairly realistic flickering and shadow effects that help immersion. That's as far as my "requirements" go, however. I find the discussions about the strong and weak points of various lighting mods very useful to help decide what I should use; I also doubt that others will make the exact same choices I do.

I have two monitors and I also use a Pantone Huey Pro to calibrate both. On both monitors I did notice a significant change in the before and after versions of the baseline picture that the Huey shows.

For a change as simple as this I'd prefer a version that doesn't use an esp. Are there any that just replace the sound?

Since reducing the size of normal maps seems provide a good tradeoff between performance improvements and graphics quality based on the results using some of the STEP mods, I wonder whether we should include this as an option in our discussion of optimizing the vanilla BSAs in the DDSopt and Texture Overhaul guide. Many of the vanilla textures are overwritten, but there still a lot of vanilla (including HRDLC) textures that remain even after the STEP mods are added.

I ran Dragonborn.bsa through BSAopt. It reduced the size to 972,498,067 bytes. The logs seem to show there was a lot of duplicate removal. Bethesda used multiple copies of the same resource with different names. There was also some compression improvement in BSAopt.

How much of the file size reduction in Dragonborn.bsa was due to elimination of duplicate copies of resources?

The DDSopt and Texture Optimization guide, which discusses the cleanup/optimization of the HRDLC and other vanilla texture files, does include both the  HD Textures DLC Fix and the HighResTexturePack DLC Tweaks. The other DLC are also discussed in that guide.

Thanks for the comments, and as you get any additional information on how well methods like reducing normal map size work we would appreciate hearing about it. I fixed the typo, added some comments about model space normal maps, and did some other cleanup. Next I'll add some examples of processing just normal maps.

That's also my preference.

When I edited the guide I forgot to add information on this. I did so today.

I added the DG and HF bsa optimizations as options in the DLC tab; you can remove it or move it if you don't want it there. The DG and HF BSA contain a mix of resource types including textures. For these I've been suggesting that the optimized resources be repacked into a BSA since the textures are only a small part of the BSA, unlike the guide recommendations for the vanilla textures BSA and the two HRDLC BSAs which have only textures.

I'm a little surprised the author hasn't provided a merged esp, but unfortunately most mod authors with multiple optional esp files don't seem to provide merged esps. Since they are related it's often fairly straightforward, but time-consuming, to merge the esps. Someday TES5Gecko will do this ...

I got the "too many connections" error for a while also

The vanilla ivy, with a lot of purple on it, looks like a variegated ivy and is a different color than a lot of the ivy I've seen. The HD Ivy has more green and is more like the ivy I'm used to which is not typically variegated and even the variegated ivy I've seen doesn't typically have the the purple and dark green that the vanilla ivy has . It would be easy to reduce the size of HD ivory to 1Kx1K if we think the HD Ivy coloring is more realistic for Skyrim.

High Definition Ivy - 2K replaces the vanilla ivy texture with a higher resolution texture. The author created it since he hadn't seen any high res replacers for this texture. I checked the mods I use and I don't have a replacement for the vanilla Skyrim ivy texture in any of these mods.