MadWizard25

Well 4GB system memory RAM is quite low for modded skyrim + OS. 2GB VRAM on GPU is fine. Im not sure if ENBoost would help too much with 4GB RAM. However, ENBoost includes other game fixes so its still generally useful. If you play with CORE and all lower quality texture options you might not need ENBoost. If you do anything more though then you might have problems. Before any of this though, ae you sure you tried the Injector version of ENBoost? Most people use the Wrapper version; the Injector version is more suitable for Optimus laptops

There is a new TES5Edit Merge Script addon for download at nexus. There is a post on it in the STEP forums as well. Its apparently much better than the default merge option, and also seems safe as of the latest version. Im going to experiment with it shortly. There is also a large list of successfully merged mods in a link on the nexus forums from the mod page.

As far as I know ENBoost is primarily useful if you go over the 3.1GB RAM limit when the game loads. It circumvents the CTD this would normally cause by utilizing your GPUs VRAM to add to a separate pool of additional memory in your remaining RAM. Because of this its not easy to say if ENBoost is necessary for you. It would be good to know how much RAM and VRAM you have. It also matter what STEP version you install; CORE or EXTENDED. Also, did you go with low quality versions of mods or high? If CORE and low quality, this will allow the lowest RAM/VRAM load and would reduce the necessity of ENBoost. If you have low RAM amounts then ENBoost may not help so much either. But hey, Im not an expert on this subject, so take this explanation with a grain of salt.

Im facing a bit of an issue. Im currently trying to set up SR:LE, REGS, Requiem, and STEP Extended plus a handful of other mods. Needless to say Im way over the 255 plugin limit, currently have 350. I did not assume this would be a unsolvable problem, just something that takes time. Once I installed and ordered all mods I wanted to do a large conflict resolution patch based on the SR:LE and REGS guides. However it seems that TES5Edit will not load more than 255 plugins, which totally defeats the possibility of a overview of all conflicts. I can work around this by using the TES5Edit Merge Script addon. I will merge as many mods as possible and then attempt to do conflict resolution with the merged patch plus leftovers. This brings me to two questions; 1) Is there some way to force TES5Edit to load and/ or show more that 255 plugins? What occurs is that TES5Edit will load all the plugins, but will only show 255 in the left hand tree panel. 2) If I create a merge patch (assuming its a safe and functional patch), would this make a conflict resolution patch more difficult? Would all the conflicts for each mod that was merged show up in the merged patch? As far as i can tell the TES5Edit Merge Script preserves each mod within the merge patch, but since I have limited understanding of the tool I may be making an assumption mistake. Or maybe somebody else has a better way of playing with an overburdened plugin setup, any thoughts would be welcome

Nope, no packs for STEP. This would require permission from each mod author in the STEP list, which is very difficult to do with so many mods. You really do have to go through everything one by one, and it will take a long time (for me usually a week or 2). Thats the price you need to pay for the most stable and best mod guide there is. Once you go beyond just STEP and add your own mods it takes even longer, since you have to be much more careful about potential mod conflicts. Its entirely possible to spend a month setting up a custom mod setup, especially if you are new to it.

Its probably mod conflicts. I would learn how to make a conflict resolution patch using TES5Edit. A good guide is SR:LE, which has a whole wiki page dedicated to creating this patch. It gives a good idea how to look for conflicts and how to resolve them. With enough practice you can resolve conflicts with mods that are not in the SR:LE or STEP guide. Watch the youtube vid on TES5Edit conflict search as well. A list of records that do not need conflict resolution can be found on the STEP forums somewhere. Additionally, in the newest Wrye Bash html guide, there is a list of most records and what they mean; invaluable if your wondering what this conflicting record actually does. This really helps reduce CTDs post ENBoost/ Memory Patch. IMO its a must do operation if you are adding mods on top of STEP.

1. Check for updates is tricky. Many mods do not have the correct version format, so sometimes when MO flags a mod as out of date its a false positive. Best practice is to download a mod from nexus, install it, and if you see that MO thinks its already out of date (which it is no, because you just downloaded it), manually change the mod version number in the mods MO options. This way, as soon as the mod updates, at least MO will flag it properly. If thats all correct, then yes, it is recommended to update the mod. However, BE SURE to read the README on the site. Some mods have special update/ install/ uninstall information. If you dont follow these there will be trouble. However, in 80% of the cases you can just download the update. Once you install it with MO, it will ask if you want to replace the old mod with the new version. Simply accept the replacement and it will overwrite the old mod with the newer version. No need to uninstall the mod first. 2. The overwrite folder contains files that are generated during MO operations. Any files in this folder should overwrite all mods that are higher in the list. A good example is FNIS. When you use the FNIS program, two folders are generated; tools and meshes. They will be placed in the overwrite folder. You should clear the overwrite folder. To do this, create a empty mod called FNIS Overwrite and place it in your mod install order somewhere (where is up to you). Now once you run the FNIS program, take the two folders in the overwrite folder and drag them into the empty FNIS Overwrite folder. Now FNIS is properly installed. Basically, any mod that 'generates' something, will appear in the overwrite folder. Common examples are the bashed patch from wrye bash, FNIS, SKSE logs, etc. As long as you have a mod installed somewhere where you can drag these overwrite files to, you will be fine. I have a FNIS mod folder as well as a Bashed Patch mod folder. Every time i add and install a new mod, i run FNIS and bashed patch again, then move generated files out of the Overwrite folder to their respective mod folders. Essentially you want an empty overwrite folder at the end. You can get rid of the HDT files if the mod is gone, and you can also delete any log files. The CBBE meshes shouldnt be in the overwrite folder. You can either drag them into the CBBE mod, or delete them. I would reinstall CBBE in this case as well. Caliente Tools, again, create a mod and add it (install). It will be empty, then drag the files from overwrite into the empty mod. Load/ install order is up to you. 3. You should leave BOSS order as it is. SkyUI after Dragon Soul Absorb is fine. To be able to manually order mod esp and esm files around requires a lot of modding experience. If you are asking these questions you dont have enough experience, sorry. Manually moving around these files to custom order can create a lot of problems. 4. Generally, if you want a mod to overwrite another mod you should not replace the original mod. Just install it after the 1st mod. In this example, install inhabitants of skyrim, then install oblivion hair pack after as a new mod with a name that is not identical to inhabitants of skyrim. In this case, oblivion hair pack should be lower in the install order. By lower i mean closer to the bottom of the MO mod install list. This is generally how overwrite works. Any mod that is installed lower/ beneath another mod will overwrite the higher mod. Of course a overwrite only happens if both mods use the same file. Be careful though, some mods require other mods to work. You may not like Apachii hair, but double check the Inhabitants of Skyrim mod README that Apachii hair is not essential for the mod.

I just tried the torrent link from the STEP wiki guide and im getting speeds up to 2MB/s. Its either your connection or for some reason you cannot connect to the peers that offer fast dl rates. Did you try running the setup wizard in utorrent? Also make sure you are not forcing encrypted peering, try disabled encryption with allowed incoming legacy connections.

Glad to hear you solved the problem. I just clean installed windows 8.1, so thank you very much about the update 1 info. Had no idea. Now i have it installed as well :)

Do you not make a bashed patch using wrye bash? Its in the STEP wiki instructions...

Could you check your performance with Skyrim Performance Monitor? That way we can see resource utilization, even though im inclined to say with your hardware i doubt it. Which leaves perhaps the issue of script lag. You can use Convenient Horses script lag tool to measure it. But having such script issues that you lag so badly is also unlikely. Which leaves you with hardware issues. Its possible that some of your components are faulty. Try playing with normal clock speeds for GPU/ CPU/ RAM. Stress test and check your hardware for issues. Finally, it may just be Win8, as you already pointed out. Its entirely likely that Skyrim may not like win 8 architecture. Ive never heard of issues, but then again the number of people how play heavily modded set ups on 8.1 is probably quite low compared to win 7. I know Win 8 has problems with some games. Ill soon be upgrading to 8.1 from 7, so this is of extreme interest to me once i start modding again.

I have never understood why people see conspiracy theories as any better than belief in a divine entity or force. To me its two sides of the same coin. Your putting your beliefs in context of 'control', be it either by small groups of elite or some supernatural entity. Life cant be that simple, you just need to look at the current theories in physics, or even the structure of a cell to understand how complex life and reality is. Conspiracy theories are a reductionist argument; they compress the complex to simple, and ignore emergent properties and chaos. Not only that, but since these are technically social phenomenon, it completely bypasses the fact that there are vast arrays of people, countries, nations, corporations, ethnicities, institutes, all with competing interests. Think globally, orchestrating something on this scale is virtually impossible. Sheer number of events will outpace any group. Its simply one big chaotic muddle. And its beautiful. Thats not to say all conspiracy theories are wrong, there are certainly grains of truth. One good example is cold fusion. A child of one of these free energy ideas, it was discredited for quite some time. Recently however, enough research has been done to change the paradigm. I believe there is now active interest from DARPA to once again look into CF. That to me is a great example refuting vested interests like big oil conspiring with US gvmt. Countries want cheap or free energy for many reasons, so i highly doubt some tech is being deliberately held back. As to the rest of the free energy bunch, there are excellent reasons they have not been given much time. Under current scientific philosophy, none have really held up to the quality controls. They have run afoul of peer review, bad methodology, extremely dodgy statistics, and so forth. They are ignored because our one avenue of objective (or as close to) view has found them wanting. And I have to say, quoting videos, and news articles as 'proof' just aint good enough. If you have access to actual scientific literature, such as peer reviewed journals, you would see that quite a bit of work has been done in a scientifically valid way regarding these free energy ideas, and free energy has not held up, at all. Another point is the use of bias in this conversation. You cannot be un-biased. Even a scientist views research through a subjective lense, which is why we need to use methods such as falsification, statistical analysis, confidence, peer review, reproducibility to reduce bias. No other approach does this. We divorce as much as possible the subjective from the objective through techniques that are as removed from human bias as possible (such as the use of statistics). People have big issues with this, and usually end of unable to counter argue, and end up with blurbs such as; "I cant speak to you sciency types". Sorry to say but unless you come up with something even more objective you will have to talk on our level. Otherwise its not a debate, its a pissing in the wind contest, you could say whatever you want. This is one of my biggest frustrations. We dont suddenly turn off bias reduction when it comes to special tech or ideas. And if your counter argument is that bias reduction doesnt matter then all i can say is how do you acknowledge the world you live in at the moment, or understand it? So much of our society is built upon scientific approach, we have achieved so much using these tenants, so much so in the past 200 years that I personally find it hard that people can just switch this off, and believe that suddenly these principles dont apply. Of course this all depends on if you actually believe in philosophy of science and the methodology it entails. If you dont then Im not sure how you can even begin to discuss any type of research even in free energy, since its intimately entwined with research. Its like some sort of 1984 double speak/ think if you attempt this. Cant acknowledge one and ignore the other.

Thanks very much Aiyen, that makes perfect sense. Ill just optimize the large exterior texture packs then, and install as you have mentioned. Ty again :)

Thanks for the help :) Im still a little unsure if it really works this way though. If you optimize the mod folder, and create a new folder for the optimized textures, and install that last, there will be over-writing issues I suspect. Optimizing the mod folder means you optimize all textures from all mods. The mod folder does not include over-writing information regarding textures. So if you add the entire optimized mod folder last, it breaks all the over-write settings from STEP which is done by the order of mod packages installed. You would get multiple versions of the same texture in the optimized folder. I think the mod folder contains each complete mod, in an alphabetical folder order, so multiple versions of the same texture would exist. The mod overwriting is done on skyrim load i think. MO is not like WB where installing a mod would overwrite textures in the data directory of skyrim. Im not sure if im being entirely clear, but I think there would be issues just dropping the optimized textures last due to the way MOs virtual folders and overwriting system works.

Due to the way MO works with its virtual folders, what is the easiest/ correct way to DDSOpt all the STEP textures? I used to use WB, where it was dead simple to install all mods, extract and optimize all the .dds files in Skyrim's Data directory, archive the result, and add that archive to WB, dead last in the package list for overwriting. I would think you could install all the textures mods in MO, then extract all .dds files (while keeping the MO files structure) then DDSOpt this, then paste the resulting optimized mod folder over the original? Creating an archive of these optimized textures to install last in MO wouldnt work I would assume? Would like to be clear since its a hideous amount of GBs to optimize to 1024x1024, and normals to 512x.

Thanks for the article Farlo, was a nice coffee break read! Whats curious is the parallels i draw between PR in the gaming industry and PR with the results produced with various labs ive worked at, including interviews by journalists. After reading the article i quickly felt defensive, and questioned the authors reasoning, but hey im a cynic. The problem as i see it, with any modern knowledge to media/ pr/ journalism transfer is the worry of how you may be brewing a major **** storm with even the most innocent, personal, and honest of answers and responses that are said. I wish we could be more open, but its just ridiculous the responses you get. Its not funny at all, and major reputation damage as well as monetary damages can follow, cancellation of public-private research projects and grants. I imagine the same is possible in the gaming industry. Even if most people are ok, there will always be some few outliers that ruin it. Its just not worth it. Thus by default we go on the defensive. I think the author is a little naive, yeah it would be nice to be more open, but the current environment is just not conducive to such expectations. Whenever the public (or consumer) is emotionally invested in something, its better to just put off being more open. And this is from someone who is very pro-transparency. Too much angst and stress involved.

I thought so lol. With patch 1.5 and 1.6 we got in trouble after patching. Wondering why you all upgrading so quickly after the problems with the last patches. Im scared of skyrim patches :D

Yep, lvlpredatorscript is vanilla, and does not normally indicate a problem. Its just a false positive if you have no mods that alter/ increase spawns. The companionscript spam is very odd, never seen it either, and i have checked a lot of logs from the first 30 minutes of the game.

Who is this michael jackson? Nice coffee break vids, thanks all :)

I added a potential fix for the lvlpredatorscript error in the troubleshooting wiki. Its a vanilla skyrim engine issue, so it can appear when no mods are present. Mods that increase and change spawns also cause this error to appear more, and it has been linked to increased instability such as freezes or ctds.

Nice ideas LMW and torm. I plan to recommend areas that are ctd prone when testing using LAL + coc commands. Well, i think vsync should be on while testing for a few reasons. The first is that most testers and user of the mod will have it on by default. I already recommend default ini files at either medium or high settings. We need to reduce complexity as much as possible for the testing. Im also recommending that even people with end end rigs testong on medium or high, because most step users run a those settings. Additionally, disabling vsync on high end rigs, I have heard it can cause issues if you fps goes over 60 w/o vsync on. Weird physics and timescale issues or something. It is totally possible to have a test scenario for people with high end rigs, but that will only be added after the guide is done i think. Torm, im not sure what you mean by vanilla with hi res dlc, and vanilla without hi res dlc for testing, in regards to tracing the effects of mods?

Ohh nice! Thanks frih :) Will try it out this week sometime, see if it helps

Ah, yeah, i meant using WB to asses the zip structure. And how does one asses the esp in bash? Something along the lines of running BOSS, seeing if correct bash tags are applied by WB? I was under the impression that WB cant really examine skyrim esps I was thinking that up until the cave would be fine, but then remembered that the path from the guardian stones to riverwood is very crash happy if you have an unstable mod(s), as well as one of the most resource intensive areas I have found so far, hence i think we should recommend either all the way from helgen intro to riverwood; Im not the only one who has had issues with that area. Its especially sensitive to mods that run a lot of scripts constantly, or mods that change/ increase spawns, as well as vram loading. Or we can have it as a LAL run through. Coc riverwood command is perfect for it.

OK. Basic workflow expansion in short. General - Make sure gamebooster, defragging, driver updating, etc is all done (refer back to relevant pages) 1. Enable script logging. 2. Switch to vanilla profile using SIS. 3. Inspect mod using WB for structure and conflicts. (thinking about recommending that all BSA archives are unpacked, hence conflicts/ overwrites are easier to spot, dont know if this is a good idea. Its should work fine as extracted, but correct me if im wrong) 3a. When tool such as TES5Edit are released, will probably add those steps here-ish. 4. Install mod using WB or MO and activate. 5. Make sure default medium or high ini for vanilla have been generated (should be part of SIS profile, unless im mistaken, still have not explored the program fully) 6. Start GPU-Z, enable monitors for VRAM, fps, gpu load (any other monitors? Also need to detail logging) 7. Start game, play through introduction until all the way to riverwood until you get the quest to go to whiterun. It for now, let me know if any corrections/ clarifications, switching of certain steps, are needed.