Kelmych

I also prefer the translucence of the horn in HORNCANDLES vs. the ones in Tobes. Admittedly I've never seen an actual goat horn made into a candle, but the goat horns in Tobes seem like they are just candle holders.

I play a mage character and I'd like to see this added to STEP; I definitely prefer these robes over the vanilla ones.

I've had it installed for a while since it came up in the Mod forum. It provides a little more more detail and the Hagravens seem a little scarier. I'm haven't seen any other replacement mods for Hagravens on Nexus, and this one seems better than vanilla to me.

This mod doesn't seem blurry to me; I can still see as much detail as with the SMIM textures. To me it seems less reflective than the vanilla and SMIM textures. For that reason I prefer this mod over SMIM slightly, but both are quite close.

I haven't seen this myself in FO3. In Skyrim CTD problems with audio were sometimes caused by corrupted copies of the sound files added by mods. You might want to saving the game just before this happens (if it's predictable) and then try using MO profiles (or creating a custom profile for testing) that have fewer mods, particularly mods that include gunshot sound files. Fallout 3 has always had sound problems. You might find the pages referenced in the guide near the bottom about the stutter problem useful. The solutions for stutter usually involve changing the sound codecs; try using a different codec as discussed on the referenced pages to see if it helps your problem.

You asked the same question on two different threads which isn't a good idea since you might miss the answer (which seems to have happened here). I hadn't seen both or I would have noted this (as Greg later did). I answered the question on the other thread here. Since this is a general question about the guide and not SR:LE specific, the other thread is a actually a better place for this question. As I mentioned in my post, the guide itself is correct and the missing image is a common problem with browsers.

It's g^2.2, and the image shows up fine for me. Try clearing the browser cache; I have had similar problems with images on the STEP wiki and clearing the cache has always fixed the issue.

There isn't uniform agreement on this. First, the only time there is a difference is with uncompressed textures; both constraint sets yield the same result with compressed textures. The first set of values reduces the size of uncompressed color maps, model space normal maps, and tangent space normal maps by 50%. Some users have said they have had corrupted model space normal map textures in a few cases using these constraints, while others feel that these evaluations are incorrect. A few (hopefully un-controversial) comments: there can sometimes be problems with DDSopt optimization of textures, with either set of constraints, that have only a single color; it collapses these into a 1x1 texture but some graphics editors and the creation kit can't always handle these collapsed textures properly.outside of the uncompressed small terrain textures in vanilla Skyrim (there are a large number of these), there are very few uncompressed textures in vanilla Skyrim or in mods. The differences between these constraint options don't affect many textures.the lower set does not change texture file size so it is "safer", but as I said some feel the R5G6B5 textures don't cause problems in the game and have the advantage of smaller texture file sizeSome users have said that the graphic editors they use can't handle R5G6B5 format textures properly. I haven't personally tested this, but I have found that some programs I use for displaying textures don't always handle it properly. I don't know whether the Creation Kit can handle this format because I haven't tried to use textures in the CK.Personally I prefer the R5G6B5 textures because of the smaller size, but I always test the result when I use this.

I haven't seen any road misalignment in my game. I'll try to look more carefully to see if I notice any.

First, I don't see your player character icon on the map screen. The icon with the 4 corners of a square is a mouse icon, not a player character icon. It moves as you move your mouse across the map. It has nothing to do with alignment. Without a player character icon I can't tell if there is any misalignment. Which player character icon did you choose when installing the mod? I went to the end of the bridge near Super-Duper Mart and my player icon (a large arrowhead) showed I was in the same place as the visual picture showed in game.

I'll revise the guide to make it clearer that if it is installed as a separate mod it should be in the the same directory as the FO3Edit or xEdit folder but not in the FO3Edit or xEdit folder itself. As noted in the guide, the recommended way of using does not require a separate folder, it is just entered as a separate executable in MO with different parameters than FO3Edit.

You don't need to run Free Commander, just run any executable through MO like FO3Edit or even Wrye Bash that uses the MO virtual file system. I'd also suggest unchecking the bash patch until more mods are installed since it won't provide any use until some of the other mods are in use, especially until the load order is correct. UIO is used to manage menus provided by mods. I don't think the 4 UI mods you listed (certainly not Dynavision) are affected by UIO. They wouldn't be on the list of mods tested with UIO unless they have menus. If they don't add menus then they should be installed after UIO, and if so I suggest not adding them to your testing until you have the game loading through MO with vanilla Fallout 3 and after that with just the mods that use UIO (as per the guide). There have been reported issues trying to use Dynavision in FO3; I didn't look at the other 3. Dynavision does need an additional Fallout.ini parameter added, by the way.

I expect you have done this already, but review the Troubleshooting section of the guide. I've included all the problems that other users have noted. If you are having problems starting the game with FOSE using an MO profile that has only the Steam-installed plugins (Bethesda ESMs or the cleaned version of these) there aren't many things that can cause a CTD. The only INI problem I had was when the multicore tweak wasn't used; you should try starting with and without it. Are you using an English version of FO3; there are sometimes problems with other FO3 versions as users have discussed in the Mod Organizer Support forums on the site? If the LAA addition didn't get set right it would cause a CTD. I'm assuming you are not using ENBoost since you didn't mention it. To see if Mod Organizer virtual file system is working properly try using Free Commander, setup as an application within Mod Organizer. It you look at the Fallout 3 GOTY\Data directory you should see the mod plugins and resources in the current profile. Some of the mods in your list are not ones that are listed on the UIO page as being supported. You will need to check these to see if they are being setup correctly by UIO.

That's great. This and the other INI guides have been one of the most useful and unexpected additions to the STEP guides. Thanks so much for spending all the time it took to build this.

Thanks. I'll put this into the guide.

The DarNUI fonts don't normally replace this particular font, but the recommendation is to replace this font with a DarNUI one.

You need to extract the contents of Fallout - textures.bsa into a folder named "Fallout_textures" in the "Vanilla Extracted" folder. If there isn't already such a folder in "Vanilla Extracted" add it.

It looks like the behavior of FO3Edit and MO have changed since this section of the guide was written. The guide has been revised. The cleaned ESM files are in the Mod Organizer "Overwrite" folder, and the original ESMs are in the "FO3Edit Backups" folder inside "Overwrite".

The optimization process can help with a mods that didn't use the most efficient compression or forgot to include mipmaps (a set of smaller versions of the item) in the texture file. It also helps, of course, when you need to reduce texture size. For Fallout NV VRAM use isn't typically nearly as high as what your card supports, so reducing texture resolution isn't usually necessary.

There is one record in the STEP Extended patch that includes The Paarthurnax Dilemma. Changing this to instead support Paarthurnax Bypass looks fairly straightforward. I built a version of the STEP patch with this substitution, but I haven't rested it yet (I don't think it's easy to test).

Thanks. I am always interested in possible additions to the guide. I'll look at these. I've tried to keep the guide reasonably lore friendly based on the what Bethesda produced. Mods with better quality items (resolution, accuracy of item model and textures) are always of interest. As part of this the wear and dirt (or lack of it) on textures is important consistent with the type of object; it's been a long time since the bomb dropped. For example, items like weapons can be expected to be well cared for. At the other end of the wear spectrum I would expect many clutter items to show a lot more wear and/or dirt. There aren't any mods in the guide that have only 4Kx4K versions of the textures since these are only of use to a small subset of the potential users. If there is interest in these a new Ultra high resolution category could be added. There aren't very many mods that have 4kx4k textures that don't also have lower resolution versions.

I din't have the problem in my current playthrough, but I have had problems with Big Town in the past.

Optimizing the vanilla textures will likely provide a small difference in game staibility, not a large one. When you extracted the textures did you get the same file and folder counts as shown in the "File Tree Screenshot of Fallout 3 Vanilla Textures after Extraction" screenshot? I added some more detail in the optimization guide for those using options 1 or 2. See if these additions answers your questions.

For me the advantage of the new Ini tweaks is for testing the effects on my game for alternativ values. Instead of having to enter them into the Ini window I can check and uncheck in MO. When I'm done I might want to put them into the Ini save.

I've found that walking on that road is a frequent source of CTDs (even more than Dragonsreach for me), although not just at night. Have you used GPUz, Fraps, and/or other tools to monitor the CPU, RAM, and VRAM use when this problem is happening? I've found that I need to allow more margin below full use of CPU, RAM, and VRAM than is ordinary needed when walking on this road.