Kelmych

I have 2Gb VRAM and it is usually enough, but there are a few places (e.g., on the road near Whiterun) where a little less VRAM use would be helpful particularly in dynamic situations such as combat.

You gave the answer I expected. If it were just a question of examining logs then it would be an straightforward task. Unfortunately, as you know, we need to look at the textures in context as you did in your recent analyses of the impact of optional DDSopt processing parameters. For the nearterm the only way I can think of to determine when to use DDSopt on textures in a mod is based on posts and discussions by the mod author and by other experienced texture creators/analysts that discuss the mod. Based on discussions in this thread, for example, there are certainly a handful of mod authors and associated mods whose textures we might recommend be left alone and not processed with DDSopt. There aren't many 4K textures in the mods recommended by STEP. If I want to have 2K versions of these textures to reduce VRAM use should I use DDSopt on only the normal maps, as you mention above, along with the original 4K textures or should I reduce the textures themself to 2K using DDSopt? Also, while I can certainly see the use of 2K textures for landscapes, if I want to get some additional reduction in Vram use would it make sense to use DDSopt to reduce some of the size of some item textures (e.g., jewelry) that are never displayed in a way that uses more than a small portion of the monitor?

By the way, shadme's three useful SKSE-related mods have been updated for Skyrim 1.8. The previous version do not work with 1.8. I haven't seen a list of the major structural changes from Skyrim 1.6 to 1.8 that might help to help consider Neovalen's question.

You mention SRO as an example of already optimized texture files. Is there some way we can tell from the texture files whether the textures have already been optimized well enough that DDSopt won't help, or do we need to create such a list for STEP based on previous STEP forum discussions and discussions with mod authors? By the way, I haven't seen almost any texture mod authors mention using texture optimization such as DDSopt in the mod description on Nexus or in comments posts.

I have been using it without any problems and, as others mention, it certainly improves immersion.

My understanding is that the long awaited new version of SkyUI (currently in alpha) will include sorting as well as a lot of other UI additions.

I'm now waiting for the update to Fus_Ro_D'oh - Silent Voice; the author said it would be updated once Skyrim 1.8 was released so this should happen soon. The Nitpick description says it is specific to Skyrim 1.7 and the author hasn't mentioned Skyrim 1.8 in the mod comments yet, although he is fairly active in replying to questions on Nexus. Now that 1.8 is released I can try the update to CFM that needs Skyrim 1.8: Categorized Favorites Menu Quicklist and Magic . So far I haven't seen any updates to Oni's (the one in STEP) or other CFM menus based on the updated CFM. I've tried using Oni's menu but it isn't as complete for magic mods as some of the others so I stopped using it. I wonder which other STEP mods are affected by moving to Skyrim 1.8. Sadly I haven't seen many mods updated yet to use TESD5Edit to clean the mod, especially those on the list Fri created of the mods most in need of such editing. Arthmoor has issued updates to his mods that do this, but he seems to one of the few.

For me Skyrim seems to crash regularly if it tries to use more than 3.2 Gb (using the default uGrids=5), even through it is running on Windows 7 64bit. Of course, it can also crashe for other reasons such as when there is a lot of action from multiple NPC/monsters.

You could take the list of updated/new textures and edit the TPC batch file to incorporate the new textures. The syntax of the TPC batch file is quite straightforward. There is one line for each texture that is used. You only need to add a line for each of the new textures; updated textures will automatically be included. Alternatively, if you make a folder with a copy of just the new textures you could take the resulting folder and load it after the TPC textures.

I don't think we need to eliminate Soul Gems Differ when processing TPC with the most recent versions of DDSopt. Ethatron mentioned successfully using DDSopt with that mod in a recent post. I'm not sure when to use the new added selectable options in DDSopt pre5b in the Behave: Textures tab. By default they are not selected (they are not checked). Are there particular mod texture categories for which these are appropriate?

Starac posted a new update for Skyrim Realistic Overhaul that includes updates to some previous SRO textures as well as some new textures.

Version 2 of Antz in my Pantz was released. The author says that the UDRs were eliminated, and Wrye Bash doesn't detect any UDRs in the new version. TES5Edit detects a number of records that are identical to master. The new version has interactive ants that can have ingredients used in alchemy formulas.

The new update adds lanterns in some additional places.

It looks quite interesting. I don't remember any of the environment mods mentioning rainbows, and the mod description doesn't mention any conflicts.

Is there some way to categorize textures such that DDSopt behavior is likely to be different on the different categories? Fri suggests starting with representative textures from three important categories. Would it be possible to suggest some additional categories and then select a representative texture from each to test after Fri's three are are done. For example, we might recommend textures from one of the AMB weapons (since they are fairly complex textures relative to those from many of the other weapon mods) and from one or more body mods such as Eyes of Beauty and Better Beast Races.

Based on discussions in this thread earlier this year, I'm not sure how DDSopt handles providing the correct set of mipmaps for textures that are rectangular. My impression was that these need to done in a separate run through DDSopt with the "Don't eliminate lower mip levels" flag checked. If so, it would be useful if there were a flag that caused this for rectangular textures only ("Don't eliminate lower mip levels for rectangular textures") so that the processing could be done in a single run with DDSopt.

The approach given in the mod description seems to have kept the best parts of the Oblivion character system and, thankfully, eliminated the strange way that major and minor skills were used (major skills affected level progression while a mix of minor and major skills affected abilities). How useful it for existing characters or is it primarily useful when starting new characters?

The enemies in vanilla TES 4 (Oblivion) were almost all scaled. The game was greatly improved IMO by mods that changed this into more reasonable behavior. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO), for example, changed it using a strategy I prefer to see in computer role playing games. Enemies had a minimum level and a maximum level, and had scaling between these two limits where the scaling depended on the player character level. The problem for me with fixed levels, a strategy that Oldschool Roleplaying Overhaul seems to use, is that combat is only interesting IMO over a narrow range of player character levels. If the enemy is much too high or too low a level relative to my character level then combat is either much too hard and frustrating or nearly trivial. Since you don't usually know what level the enemies are in any particular quest, it is hard to know when to do that quest. Allowing limited scaling such as that used in OOO gives a range of character levels for each quest over which the quest is interesting and challenging. Of course, if you play RPG board games then either the quest itself was often setup (sometimes based on player character levels) so fixed enemy levels worked fine or the gamemaster could provide some scaling during setup if needed.

There have been a number of comments over the past few months concerned about the realism of the Skyrim trees when Lush Trees is used. I have some similar concerns about this mod; to me the trees in the video don't seem consistent with the climate characteristics in most of Skyrim.

Discussion thread: Consistent Older People by Winterlove Wiki Link Have you noticed that some NPCs are clearly meant to be elderly if you look at their faces, but their bodies seem to be more appropriate for a younger person. Furthermore, this is not consistent - some older NPCs have bodies and faces that match. Now, this may or may not bother you, but the visual disparity annoys me. What most people might have done is make the fake-old NPCs younger. Instead, I reckoned that generally the NPCs are generally supposed to be the age their faces look, so decided to make their bodies match their faces. I've been following Consistent Older People for a while since it makes bodies and faces of a number of the older people in Skyrim reasonably consistent; this helps in lore friendliness at least for me. Previously this mod required using SkyBash because of the race edits it made. The new version removes the race edits, and the need for SkyBash which hasn't been updated in a while, so it should be more compatible with other mods.

It conflicts with some other mods that I prefer such as the smithing improvements in ACE

I've not had any problems with it.

Z, the links work today; perhaps there was a nexus problem when I tried them.

There are a few mods in the current STEP list that are in categories other than Safe to Use including several in the Do Not Use list. How should these be handled?

By the way, the URL pointers to the two DLC tweaks (3.2 and 3.1b) in Zs message on Sept. 10 don't work for me. Both should point to HighResTexturePack DLC Tweaks . In addition, the customized batch files only refer to a single DLC tweaks folder vs. the two that Z mentioned. Z mentioned having two folders in an earlier post, but he later modified it to use a single folder.