Kelmych

I haven't had any problems previously between the NPC Project and the NV Uncut mods (as part of NVEC).

I also just installed MO for use with Fallout NV, and used the guide for the first time over the weekend. I could provide a few small comments if it would be useful; I didn't find any significant problems at all (which is great, of course). One of the few mods I'd suggest as a possible addition to the guide is the NPC Project. There are mods for four areas, each of which adds some NPCs and small quests to areas that are otherwise fairly uninteresting. As is true with Skyrim, a number of the NPCs used are in the game file but were not used in the released game itself. The mods are: NPC Project - 188 Trading Post NPC Project - Aerotech Office Park NPC Project - Bitter Springs NPC Project - Freeside

I've also had some problems getting the Flashlight NVSE to work correctly. I followed (or thought I was following) SRB's instructions in the guide for the HUD mods., and I stopped as suggested after installing the HUD mods and started the game with an old save. The first two times I did this I had some problems. Each of those 2 times I found something I forgot to do, which meant I had to remove the HUD mods and start from the beginning of the HUD mods in the guide. The third time I got it right and everything worked. If Flashlight NVSE doesn't work after completing the installation of the HUD mods then in almost all cases I have seen (barring a corrupt file) three possible problems, several of which can be fixed without starting over (if this is the only HUD problem). 1. First, check in Unified HUD for the "menusprefabsincludes_HUDMainMenu.xml" file. 2. Double click Flashlight NVSE in Mod Organizer and look at the FileTree and make sure that the file "menusprefabs"flashlight_battery.xml" is present. If it isn't (which has happened several times to me) you can reinstall Flashlight NVSE using the FOMM - Fork. Once Unified HUD is installed, re-installing Flashlight NVSE will not cause any problems with the rest of the HUD setup. 3. Double click One HUD in Mod Organizer and look at the FileTree and see whether the file "menusprefabs"flashlight_battery.xml" is present. This is not the version of the flashlight you want, so hide it if it is present. If present this will cause the error in MCM about the flashlight being misconfigured.

I've used AWOP in my playthroughs in the past and there are some mods that help to make it compatible with the mods used in this pack and (equally important at least for me) improve the balance with the rest of the game by reducing the stats of AWOPs weapons/armor and making AWOP much less generous with items like skill books, etc. However, there are still other good quest mods that aren't part of this pack yet that are closer to the vanilla game.

Many mods have textures stored as loose files in archives with compression (usually 7-zip, zip, or rar). With these mods you would just use an archive program (e.g., 7-zip) to extract the loose files into a folder. All of the mods used in the example in the lower part of the QuickStart guide have archives which include texture files (a few also have file types such as meshes, but the optimization process will simply copy these into the output folder since DDSopt can only optimize textures). You can thus do as you suggest in your last paragraph. OK?

The only way to know for certain is to look at the mods in TES5Edit to see whether they happen to use the same FormIDs, and this can be quite tedious. Generally this means you need to look for forum posts by users who have tried merging the mods. Often it isn't practical (at least for most of us) to merge some mods (e.g. mods with significant conflicts, mods with overlapping navmesh records)

I use Victor's Shack until I move into the Chef's House. The shack you mention isn't especially convenient as a player house, at least for me.

The batch files for optimizing vanilla textures add "_opt" to the end of the file name when the archiving batch file is used to create 7zip archives. Perhaps the batch files should do this for the folders so this is added even when the archiving batch file isn't used.

Nooo. That's a problem. I hadn't looked carefully at the screenshot. The full STD folder can't just be copied into the individual folders. The best thing to do is to temporarily move all the folders except "STD" out of "Vanilla Extracted" and delete the STD folder from the other 4 "Vanilla ..." folders. Run the "2_Pre-optimization_2.74.bat" file and it will copy and sort the vanilla STD files into the proper folders. It won't affect the HRDLC or DLC files in these folders. If the HRDLC and DLC textures have already been optimized, then run DDSopt with input being the STD folder from each the 3 sorted folders (Vanilla Ordinary Files, Vanilla Normal Maps, Vanilla Uncompressed Textures) with the "STD" folder in "Vanilla Optimized" as the output (you may need to create an empty "STD" folder in "Vanilla Optimized" before doing this). The batch files expect that none of the folder names are changed, by the way. After all of the optimization is done, as phazer mentions, you can rename anything you want.

IMO it would be good to include the files from the Creation Kit in the screenshot of the Skyrim directory, or show a version with it as an alternate. The Creation Kit includes Archive.exe which seems to be the only guaranteed safe way to create a BSA for Skyrim.

My interruptions were family and house maintenance related; yours sound a lot more fun.

I had high hopes of doing more mod testing this weekend, but there have been so many interruptions it has been difficult to make much progress on this.

Apparently that part of the guide wasn't updated when the file name changed to make it clear that it was for the vanilla textures vs. the batch file used to compress textures from mod files. The guide text was updated to show "3_Compress_Vanilla_7z_2.7.bat" for this file.

Do you have either Steam or Skyrim installed in User Access Controlled (UAC) directories such as C:Program Files (x86) ? I'm not sure whether this would cause your problem, but having Steam and/or games in UAC folders will cause various problems.

You can find some representative values for folder sizes of the optimized vanilla textures. Look at the file tree screenshot in the figure "Working Folder Directory Tree after Completion of Vanilla Texture Optimization" in the DDSopt guide . Your values you have are consistent with these. A BSA is a compressed archive so the size of a BSA is typically less than the size of a folder with the individual files. The difference between loose files and BSAs won't have much effect on VRAM use since only a small portion of the textures are loaded at any time, and because Skyrim needs to extract any texture files being used from the BSA since the GPU doesn't use BSAs. There are some posts that describe the effect of optimizing the vanilla textures; these generally show some noticeable and useful VRAM use reduction, and less volatility in VRAM use. You might also want to try running the standard STEP benchmark using the cart ride at the beginning of the game to get an idea of the differences. This would allow comparing your results with others who have optimized the textures. ENBoost does not reduce VRAM use and may increase it a little, but it reduces the CTDs and other problems that all too often happen when VRAM use is close to the total VRAM available on the graphics card.

With some mods the ITMs are intentional, but I'm not sure whether they are or are not for this mod.

Based just on the screenshots I prefer the STEP+trans; admittedly in general I do like objects that are blue. I'll look in game to make sure the blue doesn't seem out of place.

I like the AMB/Real Wood combination except for the doors. I'm not sure that the door should be quite as close in texture to the surrounding wood as Tech wants. While there might not be any work on the rest of the wood, I'd be surprised if there were never any (admittedly infrequent) cleaning or scraping on the door that makes it a little more inviting and smoother especially for an inn. The AMB doors my be a little too smooth, but they seem slightly preferable. However, to really make a good choice I need to look at these in the game (which I'll do) since it is a difficult choice for me.

Based on the screenshots, for the icicles I prefer the Transparent & Refracting. In caves they seem more like the cave walls and less like something different that is glued on. On roofs they seem more random and more like actual icicles than the other two choices, at least to me.The current STEP choice seems to have dark banding, and the vanilla seems unrealistically "smooth". I also prefer this for the Ice Wraiths; of course it's always hard say anything much about ice wraiths since they are so dynamic. For the Frost Atronach I also prefer the Transparent and Refracting. The STEP seems a bit too blue but the vanilla has has regions that seem uniformly dark with little randomness in color which I don't like.

The only way I remove a master is to remove all references to it then select "Clean Masters". If all references to the master are gone TES5Edit will remove that master from the list of masters. Otherwise there is at least one remaining record that references that master, and just removing the master from the list of master files will cause the problem that CJ mentions.

I updated the DDSopt.ini with these textures. The path is needed in this file, but these particular ones were easy to find. Let us know if it works properly. I recently added a Skyrim Sewers texture and it isn't being ignored.

I'm also using 2.2.9 with SRB's patches, LOOT sorting, and I have not seen any problems. As additional mods need testing that I feel I can help with, or get consensus I've been adding them

There won't necessarily be a lot of additions to the examples since many of the mods with textures being discussed in the Mods thread are already adequately optimized. I have been looking at mods in the Real Explorers Guide to Skyrim pack where there seem to be some opportunities for texture optimization.

The examples in the QuickStart guide included only mods that could benefit from optimization. Any mods that were already sufficiently optimized weren't included in the example. As CJ mentioned, SRO does not need any further optimization. The examples will need to be updated for STEP 2.2.9 when it is published.

I mentioned the order of Oblivion Gates and More Immersive Dawnguard Gates in part because, at least for me, LOOT ordered these in the wrong order.