Kelmych

After completing the vanilla optimization a few people combine everything into a single archive file, but most users prefer to create one archive file for each of the original BSAs. The is some redundancy in that the STD and 3 DLC archive files will have lower resolution versions of some textures that are in the 3 HRDLC archive files, but the mod management programs will only provide one version for Skyrim itself. By the way, if you follow the steps in the DDSopt guide and use the batch file for creating archive files after the optimization is completed, you will get one archive file for each BSA.

If the pre-optimization batch file doesn't find files where it expects them it finishes very quickly. If you can, either take a picture of the directory tree of your Vanilla Extracted folder before (or after) running the pre-optimization batch file and post it or just post the file and folder count for each folder inside Vanilla Extracted.

Mods have many textures, and each mod in the STEP list is included for a portion of the textures in the mod. It isn't an either or question for mods; we DON"T ask modders to choose one mod in the STEP list vs. another. STEP uses some textures from all the mods in the STEP list that include textures. The installation order is chosen so the textures that STEP wants to include from a particular mod overwrite any similar (but not as good) textures from the mods installed previously, and so that these textures are not overwritten by mods installed later. There has been a lot of discussion and planning in the semi-automated STEP threads on how STEP could pull only the desired textures from each mod in the list; current approaches like manually created batch files are very difficult to maintain.

WB is only able to detect conflicts in resource files. Mods like AOS and SOS that are not just replacing vanilla audio resources have large esp plugins and the conflicts that occur are between objects in these plugins. If you want to view the conflicts you need to use TES5Edit.

I downloaded the BCF on the wiki to check and it is indeed not the correct BCF; it is a previous version from early 2013. I tried to revert to the version that z uploaded an hour earlier which does have an updated bcf.dat as well as a wizard and fomod but apparently I don't have permission to do this (probably because I'm not the uploader).

Wrye Bash was developed by a mod developer and programmer named Wrye for the Oblivion TES game. It has been ported to support other Bethesda games, but some of the references are to capabilities for Oblivion. I'm assuming you already read the STEP guide for Wrye Bash. Personally I find the documentation here to sometimes be the most useful (in addition to the STEP guide). OBMM is Oblivion Mod Manager; there is an equivalent tool for Fallout called Fallout Mod Manager. You will also often see references to FOMM in mod manager discussions. A package is the archive file containing all of the resources for a mod. A subpackage is a folder inside the "package". A BCF is a file used by Wrye Bash to contains the instructions to allow Wrye Bash to transform the folder structure (and associated contents) of a mod "package" into a structure that is compatible with Wrye Bash.

The DDSopt guide describes how to use DDSopt to optimize vanilla and mod textures. The DDSopt guide does not describe how to use a mod management program (Mod Organizer or Wrye Bash) to manage the vanilla resource archives and BSAs once the optimization is complete. For Mod Organizer you will find this discussed in the forums on Mod Organizer, and there is also general information in the Mod Organizer guide on the Wiki. You should be able to find the specific discussions using the search features on the forums. You might also find some useful information for installing the optimized textures and vanilla plugins with Mod Organizer in the Skyrim Revisited Legendary Guide. Note that the instructions for optimization in that guide are different than those in the DDSopt guide; the instructions in the DDSopt guide provide a more detailed selective optimization. Personally I use the DDSopt guide optimization approach and I use the archived optimized vanilla textures (7-zip format) vs. providing the Skyrim - textures.bsa or the 3 HRDLC BSAs to Mod Organizer, and the 3 plugins associated with the HRDLCs are not activated. There are descriptions in the forums on how to install and clean the Skyrim esm plugins, and how to load any DLC BSAs being used. To answer one of the questions there are some duplicate files in the HRDLC which are deleted as part of vanilla texture optimization in the "Repair the Vanilla HRDLC Textures" subsection here. I expect (or maybe just hope) that someone will assemble the material from the Mod Organizer forums on how to install the vanilla resources using the optimized textures from the DDSopt guide, and put this into either the DDSopt guide or the Mod Organizer guide.

Steam automatically installs the High Res DLC as part of the Skyrim installation; you don't get these as separate mods. The STEP guide includes HRDLC Optimized for use with systems that are unable to handle the additional computer and graphics card loading that result from using the High Res DLC. The STEP mods will overwrite some of the High Res DLC textures, but there are many textures that are not overwritten.

I haven't run the cart benchmark test with unoptimized vanilla textures (including HRDLC) and no mods installed compared with optimized vanilla textures. The benchmark tests I ran were primarily testing optimized vs. unoptimized mod textures, and these showed significant differences; all of these tests used optimized vanilla textures and the mod optimization included reducing the size of normal maps. Z's benchmark tests from last year showed a small reduction in VRAM using optimized vs. unoptimized vanilla textures with the optimization reducing the max texture size to 1Kx1K. The notes didn't say whether the reduction was on all large textures or just tangent space normal maps. The optimization should also improve quality, but I'm surprised your tests showed a VRAM increase. The test that should be tried is the cart benchmark with all of the vanilla textures unoptimized vs. the same textures optimized, with no additional mods installed. The results should be similar to what Z found in his test. With this test the VRAM use should be a little less for the optimized case if the optimization included some texture size reduction. For the vanilla textures the DDSopt guide suggests reducing the tangent space normal map texture (*_n.dds) size for any 2Kx2K textures. Lately the recommendation has been to reduce most of the exterior textures (not just the exterior normal maps) to 1Kx1K max to help reduce VRAM use. This has already been done, for example, with the optimized SRO version mentioned in other posts. The exterior textures in STEP core and extended mods overwrite a large percentage of the large vanilla exterior textures, so the effects of reducing the size of large vanilla exterior textures are often small when using the STEP mods. Of course, the vast majority of vanilla textures are not large exterior textures, so optimization is still useful.

Did you have the 3 High Res Texture Packs esp plugins enabled in the Before case? Are you using any other mods that affect exterior textures? The VRAM numbers seem fairly high if the vanilla textures are the only ones being used.

You also need to backup the ini files for Skyrim since they will be overwritten when you restart the game in the new location. You need to let it do this so Skyrim puts the new program location in the registry. Additional changes are typically needed depending on which mod manager you are using. I don't remember whether any files in the folder with the mod plugin order file are also overwritten; backing the folder up is also a good idea.

First, make a backup copy of the Skyrim folder on the SSD somewhere on the HDD so you don't lose it. You might want to make use of the Steam capability that supports having Steam and games in multiple locations on a system; of course, each individual game can only be in one place. You don't have to uninstall Steam in the first location before adding it at another location. Details are on the web on the Steam site and some forums. When this is done there are several ways to get the game running in the new location. Web searches usually provide pointers to some useful descriptions of how to do it. Some of them describe how to move the game from one computer to another; the process for that is similar to what you need to do.

DDSopt optimizes textures, and textures are generally a cause of instability only if there are enough large textures in use that VRAM use is getting close to the max value the graphics card can handle, or the texture storage in RAM causes RAM use to exceed the max value that the game can handle (see threads on the 3.1 Gb limit for more about this). RAM use depends a lot on game scripts and other factors as well as texture use, so there are no specific recommendations other than doing some monitoring of RAM and VRAM use to see if they are potential causes of instability. We don't have a good writeup that suggests how to do texture optimization in stages and in particular how big the stages should be. There aren't any good intermediate approaches in the current DDSopt guide, for example. If you (or others) have suggestions on this let us know or add them to the wiki pages.

The DDSopt guide serves users with a wide range of experience in gaming and using mods and software tools as well as capability of the systems used to run the game, and across this range of users the desired level of detail varies substantially. We have not found a single approach that all users find useful for presenting the information, so several approaches are included in the guide. It was created and evolved by users of the guide based on discussions in the STEP forums and on guide user comments, and there isn't always a clear single formula for using DDSopt that works for everyone. The guide is also trying to provide information for users who want to optimize mods that are not in the STEP guide, so sufficient explanations need to be included to allow users to extrapolate the processing to optimizing mods that are not explicitly discussed. If you have a clear idea of a particular way of presenting the information that you feel would be very useful to other users of the guide, I'd suggest creating a new page with the information organized in the way you feel would be useful for all or some subset of the users. This is a wiki, and user participation is strongly encouraged. The Quickstart guide was added because many users wanted at least a short overview to help understand what was being done. The page you suggest can be another alternate presentation of the guide material, and if users find it a lot more useful it can become the main way the guide is used. It can start as a tab in the existing guide (since this is very easy to add) or as a new page. If you have some specific comments on the steps such as which steps you feel should actually be multiple steps we can try to edit the steps to provide this.

This guide has a brief overview of what is included in the Wrye Bash bashed patch and the TES5Edit Merged patch. The bashed patch has patches for the most important items, namely leveled lists. The Merged patch does include some compatibility patches not included in the bashed patch.

Thanks. That helps a lot.

That's certainly useful, but generally if I want to use multiple terms they are not always adjacent. Â This is probably something I should already know how to find, but is there a description of the use of the search window in Advanced Search somewhere?

For optimizing mods in SR:LE that are also in the STEP guide there will generally be a lot more discussion and recommendations in the individual mod threads in the Mods forum and the DDSopt threads vs. SR threads. The recommendations in the current SR:LE guide involve using DDSopt with a high max resolution limit; this uses DDSopt to replace the mipmaps in the textures in a mod with improved versions. SR:LE recommendations may change, of course, as the SR:LE guide evolves. The DDSopt guide provides more detailed recommendations for some mods aimed at improving game performance while preserving graphic quality.

is there some way to create searches that require all terms vs. one?

I've sometimes had performance problems with spells when I use some of the spell effects mods. These mods often add additional scripting that affect CPU and RAM use (resulting in FPS drops) for a short time, and graphics that can noticeably increase VRAM use for a short time.

The current order of mods in the table is the same as the order in STEP guide, so when a user is following the STEP guide it makes it easier for them. Several users requested this. A little while ago I requested that as the site evolves the material in the columns be added to the data stored on the wiki page for each mod. When this happens it will allow seeing the information on the individual mod pages, and even more important it will allow creating lists of mods using Semantic Mediawiki search requests. What you ask would then be easy to create dynamically. It would also make it easier to keep the list up to date.

The STEP is always evolving, so removing a mod from the list could be confusing. The maximum resolution column is the highest resolution of the textures present in the mod, not the recommended resolution of the post-optimized mod. It needs to be explained better in the guide. Consistent Older People has 256x256 uncompressed textures. Many users when optimizing use the default DDSopt constraints tab parameters, or expect that these parameters won't cause any problems. The default parameters will change the textures from the uncompressed ones provided by the mod to a compressed format, potentially causing a loss in quality and no noticeable performance improvement.

Choices like this are based on user gameplay preference, and gameplay preferences aren't typically put on the wiki mod pages for individual mods unless it is considered a fix of a problem with the vanilla game.

This section of the DDSopt guide has a table with recommendations for determining which mods in the STEP guide list are improved through DDSopt processing. Many of the SR:LE mods are also in the STEP guide. The additional mods from STEP packs including SR:LE will be added when it it seems fairly certain that the mod will be in a pack. The recommendations are typically based on properties of a mod, such as the information in the DDSopt log when optimizing the mod, as well as user community experience with the unoptimized and optimized versions of a mod.