Kelmych

New Jewels for Circlets, like Better Circlets in STEP 2.2.8, contains only textures while True Circlet Gems contains only meshes (as mentioned earlier). True Circlet Gems can potentially be used with a number of circlet mods (including the two mentioned) that only provide textures, assuming the textures are compatible with the meshes.

That's fine as an additional display of mod data, but I feel that having all the information about a mod, including all the pack-related information, displayed in a single page is even  more important (as I mention in the comment I added on the Data Dictionary page)

I'm not at my computer so I can't check right now. I ran the batch file on some other mods yesterday and the two exterior folders were created. I'll check later today with Skyrim HD. EDIT: I ran Skyrim HD with 4_Mod_Sorting_Pre-optimization_2.73.bat and the exterior textures are sorted to separate folders. Is it possible you didn't enter a "Y" at the prompt when asked about whether exterior textures should be sorted into separate folders?

One the Enchanting Awakened page egocarib recommends these two alchemy/food mods: Phitt's Alchemy & Food Overhaul and a newer mod Miko's Alchemy & Food Overhaul They are more extensive than Dynamic Potions, but you can still use one of these with Dynamic Potions as most of what they do is different.

We are also testing the bodies in Better Males (see the Mod Testing subforum). I'm optimizing these with R5G6B5 to see how they look.

As far as choices for optimization, Z already mentioned them. The uncompressed textures that are particularly large can be optimized to R5G6B5 at existing resolution, at half size with full precision, at half size with R5G6B5, or with DXTx. It's best to keep at least the model space normal maps uncompressed. As several of you know, optimizing the uncompressed vanilla male body model space normal map to half size causes problems, but using R5G6B5 did not. I'd suggest we first try seeing how it would work with R5G6B5 for the uncompressed textures in game. Run DDSopt on the body mod (Underwear - Default-2488-2-3-2) using the constraints tab parameters from here .  Using these parameters the optimization of both compressed and uncompressed is done is one pass. The resolution limits for compressed and uncompressed are independent.  This will change the body itself to a 2Kx2K compressed texture since it's already compressed. If you prefer the original 4Kx4K body change the compressed resolution limit to 4Kx4K. Try using the same parameters for optimizing the head (Faces - GeonoxFaces-2488). EDIT: I optimized the mod with DDSopt using the lossy uncompressed parameters mentioned above. These reduced the combined size of the textures by roughly half. Using the Preview mode in DDSopt to compare the original and optimized I couldn't see any differences in the textures I examined.  They still need to be looked at in the game, of course.

To me, the vanilla Wisp Mother isn't very wisp-like. It's too opaque and more like a ghost.

I've always felt that one of the ways that TES games nerf magic users is not having staves that can hold high level enchantments and still act as two handed blunt weapons that are effective in melee fighting. This mod allows using the magic from a staff longer; perhaps in the future it will also make a staff a useful blunt weapon.

I've used it and like it; a number of the animation mods add a lot of immersion without a big performance hit. SR:LE includes this, and also suggests eliminating the shiplarge*.nif files.

Thanks for the detailed post on results of optimization. We don't have as much feedback from people using 1Gb or less VRAM vs. 2Gb or more, so it's especially useful to get results from systems with 1Gb or so VRAM. We'll be interested to see what you find as you continue playing/testing, and any results from using the mod optimization process. The 2Kx2K uncompressed malebody_1_msn.dds texture is not changed during vanilla optimization. For improved performance when there are a lot of NPC on screen you might want to optimize it Optimizing to R5G6B5 or 1Kx1K with R5G6B5 seems to work well; there are reported problems when optimized to 1Kx1K at full resolution.

The values you mention (512/256) seem to be usually recommended ones for the Skyrim memory patch 3.0 we have been testing vs. the new SKSE alpha 1.7 which has different values recommended. However, it's certainly worth trying different values. The SR:LE guide is using the new alpha SKSE and has the 768/256 values in the skse.ini it creates.

The path is supposed to be Skyrim\Data\SKSE\skse.ini. I fixed this on the SKSE page. If you are looking at it on the MO Filetree view then all that will show is SKSE\skse.ini; this view shows contents of Skyrim\Data. This is one of the places you tried putting it, so it's likely there is another problem. You might want to try some different values for the two variables; the ones you used seem like the most common ones being suggested for the new SKSE 1.7 alpha but perhaps you need different values. STEP is still testing with the original memory patch vs. the official alpha SKSE patch.

I agree it should be removed. The recent Skyrim memory patch (and ENBoost) seem to actually address memory management in a way that works, and where the methodology can be explained and seems convincing.

The different texture format settings for the Constraint tab are intentional. The default values on "Using DDSopt"are just a starting point, and for much use of DDSopt on large texture sets I've found that the uncompressed lossless format settings are more appropriate. The DXTx values are appropriate if you are sure that the textures you are converting are all already compressed, or if you want to convert all uncompressed textures to compressed. Using uncompressed lossless format settings will provide the same optimization for compressed textures as using DXTx, without changing all the uncompressed textures to compressed (as I discovered very recently). If you use the vanilla and mod optimization processes in the DDSopt guide the recommended Constraints tab values provided in the guide should provide a better tradeoff of texture file size and graphic quality than when all textures were converted to compressed. Yes, in most cases the new recommendations are using uncompressed lossless formats. Some of the vanilla textures will iindeed be overwritten by other non-STEP mods, but not all. For example, there were previously some comments about the vanilla optimization causing problems with the character asset textures in STD. These are uncompressed textures and in the current vanilla texture optimization process they remain uncompressed. These textures are not typically overwritten by other mods. Without using these revised Constraints tab settings it would not have been possible to create the general purpose process for optimizing textures from Skyrim mods that is now in the guide. Of course, in some cases it is a better tradeoff to convert the uncompressed textures to compressed; as an example the vanilla texture optimization process does this for a large set of terrain color map textures in HRDLC2. There are also some uncompressed textures for which R5G6B5 format might be a better tradeoff between quality and textures size, but lossless is more conservative when optimizing large numbers of textures. Some new text and a new figure have been added to the "Using DDSopt" tab of the guide to (hopefully) make this clearer for those reading the guide. Almost all the DDSopt settings are set once and then rarely changed, but the Constraints tab settings are changed frequently.

How would I use MO to extract a vanilla BSA and then access the resulting files? I don't see the vanilla BSAs in the Mods folder. Does MO skip extracting files from the vanilla BSAs that are going to be overwritten by resources from other mods?

Two suggestions for the Recommended Hardware system in the table in the guide: The current OS recommendation is Windows 7. Based on recent discussions in the forums about Windows 8 and gaming performance I suggest this be changed to "Windows 7 or 8" The current RAM recommendation is 8 Gb . I suggest it be ">= 8 Gb" to indicate that there is an advantage to having more than 8Gb vs. there not being any advantage to more than 8Gb RAM. The forum posts about using ENBoost and the new memory patch mention that RAM usage increases noticeably when using these. In addition, this article discusses how additional RAM improves SSD performance.

Guide 1.E.1 mentions an AMD-CCC Talk page which doesn't exist. Do we (or me) need to create it and add a header comment of some sort, or is the pointer address wrong? 1.E.1.1 says Set Wait for Vertical Refresh to "Always off" and 1.D.2 has in SkyrimPrefs INI  "iPresentInterval = 0" but the referenced Catalyst guide says "Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always on (NOTE: Set to Always off if FPS drop is a problem or iPresetInterval=1 in Skyrim INI)" The referenced INI guide doesn't have a setting in SkyrimPrefs INI for iPresentInterval. I expect that with all the effort to incorporate ENBoost suggested changes into the 2.2.8 guide that it is most likely correct, but I'm not positive. If it is correct I (or someone else) can make the appropriate changes to the Catalyst and INI guide to make them consistent. I'm not sure what this Catalyst guide line should say, however, if the 2.2.8 guide is correct.

No. You can look at the batch file to see what it is looking for. If you are running the 1_HRDLC_Clean batch files then MO may have already removed some of the extraneous files; if that is the case these aren't necessarily really errors. Batch files are unfortunately very fussy, and some things they report as an error aren't really errors. If you want to determine whether the MO extraction is correct you can look at the file tree screenshots in the DDSopt guide that show how many files and folders result when you extract each of the vanilla BSAs. An alternative approach to the sorting and optimization portion of Vanilla Texture Optimization was added as an Appendix in the DDSopt guide. This uses the DDSopt GUI, similar to the vanilla texture approach in SR:LE. The approach in the DDSopt guide has more steps since it does more selective optimization (see Q3 in the General FAQ for details of what the guide's vanilla optimization does). It is based on some recent discoveries I made about how the DDSopt GUI works. Some users may prefer this new approach; the batch files involve fewer steps when they work properly but batch files aren't as robust as we would desire (e.g., I expect the problem SRB is seeing above is that the batch file has no good way of determining when errors occur). The DDSopt GUI approach has its own issues; incorrect entries too often mean the user gets to start all over. I haven't compared the elapsed time for the two approaches. The Output from both approaches is the same; if you have already optimized the vanilla textures you don't need to change anything.

All of the settings are suggestions, and any changes are usually based on feedback from users.

The figure references have been fixed, and some other small updates made. Let us know how these parameters work out. There hasn't been as much testing of the optimized STEP mod textures as there has been with the optimized vanilla textures. I've also noticed that disk related driver updates can make a big difference in HDD/SSD performance. Unfortunately these can sometimes be hard to find since the board manufacturer doesn't always keep these updated on their website. I'm glad you were able to find these for your board. There is a small problem (file name truncation) in the file that archives mods, 5_Compress_Mods_7z_2.7.bat. A new update to the batch files will contain the fix; that will be the only change in the update.

Most of the comments about the vanilla optimization portion of the guide lately have seem to be about how complicated it is to follow, and we're trying to simplify it. The only difference between the Very High quality and High quality settings was that High reduces the size of 5 2Kx2K Skyrim-textures.bsa compressed tangent space normal maps and 5 Dawnguard 2Kx2K compressed tangent space normal maps. These textures are for individual items vs. textures that are used on common items, so it didn't seem that useful to preserve these normal maps at such high resolution. The uncompressed 2Kx2K malebody_1_msn.dds texture, used on all male bodies, is preserved at full resolution. If useful we can simply add a sentence about using 2Kx2K settings for normal maps for those wanting to preserve these. The Very High Quality recommended settings are still there for mod textures. [Edit: a sentence about using higher limits for Vanilla Normal Maps was added to the instructions]

This guide, and the BSA Optimization guide, haven't been getting many updates lately; for example, some of the pointers to other guides are now outdated and some of the recommendations should be modified since we have done more testing since this guide was written. We have been concentrating on the DDSopt, Mod Organizer, Wrye Bash, and a few other guides. Some of the specific topics you mention are covered in the DDSopt guide. I expect this guide will be getting some updates soon since it's in need of attention. Edit: Updates have been made to the Skyrim Installation guide. Key updates were: references to the DDSopt guide have been expanded and updated,HRDLC fix discussion was updated,notice about memory management patches added.Some additional work is needed. The STEP guide no longer specifically references Baseline, Performance, and Extreme STEP so other changes are still needed. The STEP guide does have a recommended baseline load set. The DDSopt guide discusses VRAM-based options for texture optimization choices. With the emergence of the new memory patches it will take a little time before updated guidelines are provided on loading mods.

Did you follow the instructions in the QuickStart guide or the main guide sections; the QuickStart guide is usually adequate and is (hopefully) much simpler? Once the files are extracted and the HRDLC cleaned those instruction shouldn't be too much more complicated than the ones in SR:LE (hopefully). Let us know what seemed complicated or unclear so we can look at improving it. I'm working on a process for sorting/optimization of the vanilla textures that is a simpler, but I haven't finished testing it. Extraction, cleaning, and archiving (if used) would remain the same. The SR:LE guide doesn't seem to archive the files after optimization. I assume MO must not care whether its a folder or an archive. I like to have them archived so they take less space and so they are all together in one place. If you have an SSD the archiving is a lot quicker. If you use the batch file archiver it takes a while, but once started you can just let it run and come back later when it finishes.

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