alt3rn1ty

Well my two pence worth .. I think Kelmych is right, and I am sure I have seen Ethatron mention the same too who is far more expert on such matters than any of us imho. In the early days of putting Vanilla Reduced Textures together I experimented with DDSOpt ( in its earlier versions ) quite a lot before I decided I could get better detail out of reducing textures with a batch scripted GIMP without it doing mipmaps ( GIMP allows you to export textures in specific formats without mipmaps - Batch a few hundred textures in GIMP applying filters for a little more noise at lower resolution, and resizing, and then add to that mipmapping before it saves them .. It takes ages ! :) ), and just using DDSOpt for its excellent remipmapping of the lot after GIMP has finished them ( plus the odd bunch of normals were put through for increasing Z steepness too ), so these collapsed textures became a common sight. I have tried them, and could not determine any problems in game. However, I also think if the objective is to optimize textures, then leaving these collapsed textures the way they are is introducing unnecessary extra GPU processing on every one of them. Each one now is adding an extra task of upscaling them each time they are all used. To me logic says that = Less optimal than just including the original texture instead of the DDSOpt squished ones. I dont think we will ever be able to detect the difference between the two cases. So is it worth caring over or not .. Toss a coin :) For me I ensured I never get the problem in my textures, it was just a pride thing really about making all the textures the best they could be for my objectives of major VRAM use reduction while preserving as much detail as could be, and optimizing as necessary ( though the latter was not a major part of my mods goals ). I did realise that preserving detail on these particular textures was not a consideration, because they are just one colour with no detail to preserve, but I consider the extra work the GPU would have to do as being less optimal Maybe they would save a tiny bit more VRAM, but consider the types of machines my textures are likely to be used on, I saw one user attempting to get Skyrim running on a Pentium 4, with Geforce 3200 256mb VRAM. I talk to loads of people out there too who mistakenly think that Intel Integrated Graphics on a laptop are good enough for the game, so long as they have a higher than minimum spec CPU .. is Steam really crap at displaying Minimum Specs for a game ?, anyway I digress. If you extract Tony's latest Skyrim - Textures.bsa from the silent updated main file yesterday, the no MO one, and have a look in the Terrain Tamriel folder, sort by size column, and highlight all the 1k files = 518 of them in that folder alone Presumeably that is the STEP procedure results for everyone ? In the sovngarde folder there are 377 In skuldafnworld folder there are 576 markarthworld has 33 deepwoodredoubtworld has 227 blackreach has 74 I have no doubt that the DDSOpt.ini and filtering when used correctly are stopping any others being collapsed, like the colour.dds files in the root of textures, and the odd file like the nail head, but the above is a fair chunk of textures to leave in that state if they are causing extra realtime game engine graphics processing to be necessary Two pence worth. Edit : This mod could be regarded as the STEP official endorsed version if you refine its details as necessary .. Why make another one ?, if you have corrections to any of these BSAs after further adjustments to the STEP procedures .. Just fire back a corrected BSA - Tony has already mentioned ( I think ? ) he would give any of the STEP team Admin rights to edit the mod pages files.

:O_o: I didnt know about that .. Shiny

Lojack put together a post reference Relev / Delev recently https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/996573-skyrim-bashed-patch-pictorial-guide/page-8&do=findComment&comment=15159002 If in doubt : Contact the author of the mod, who will confirm if the mod needs adding to BOSS / LOOT Masterlist of Bashed Tags which Wrye Bash uses.

Isn't WAF one of those mods created before the Creation Kit was released, so the author had to use SNIP to make it, and famously has not been seen since his mod plugin was proven to have corrupt data which was irreversible without recreating the whole mod from scratch ? Or Are you all using the sterling effort Sharlikran has put into solving such problems .. Sharlikrans Compatability Patches Which includes fixes for Headbombs mess, among many others. For anyone who does not know, Sharlikran is probably one of very few people in our community able to solve such problems. If you use old mods with plugins which have an upload date before mid February 2012, then check the patches out for a fix before you use it. It might just save random problems going off like a time bomb later, or record corruption which is unfathomable .. And probably tripping up the correct function of tools like Wrye Bash

:) I think you misunderstood, I am thinking about maybe one further update to my VRT and I am done. Done as a done thing in a barrel full of done. I will still be interested of course but I have achieved the goals I wanted to for personal use in modding. These days I am mostly just trying to find holes in the game to append to the UPP bug tracker, and testing betas where I might be useful.

I grabbed your v2 yesterday and had another look, the most obvious bunch is in terrain tamriel have the window you are looking at them in list view to see the files sizes, then scroll right down the bottom of that list .. You will see at least half of them are 1kb, scroll back up and you will find a fair few more throughout that list. I didnt go anywhere else before I deleted them all, but from what I remember of experimenting with DDSOpt before I switched to making GIMP batch scripts to process the lot ( I just use DDSOpt's ability to remipmap everything afterwards, it is consistently excellent at doing that to everything ), it does touch quite a number of files in this way in other folders too. I am primarily interested to see if using something like this aswell as my own VRT, could any more VRAM be gained .. Surprised to see if I use your textures in a BSA to replace the original Skyrim - Textures.bsa ( backed up the original in a BAIN in Wrye Bash ), and then load my VRT BSA afterwards, it does save on average throughout the game between 5-10mb more VRAM. I used Skyrim Performance Monitor 2.66 to test against what I would usually expect wandering around familiar test points. That does not sound too much if you have 1gb VRAM to play with, but when you have minimum spec 512mb, or worse 256mb, and you have to resort to measures of turning off windows aero to preserve between 70-100mb VRAM, a small saving like that is nice to have. I think I might review my ideas and include a lot more vanilla textures in my mod too, instead of just including the ones I reduce and leaving the game to load the originals out of the rest, its obvious more VRAM can be saved. Although I might wait on an official step version to tell people to load before my mod - Would achieve the same goal ( nothing against your mod Tony, I just dont like this editing ini's method of implementation ). How about a fake esm like the Unofficial patches so you can slot it in there and have unofficial patches textures override your textures ? .. Although you do know that the Unofficial Patch Project encourage people to carry forward their fixes into your own mods, so including those textures is not a problem, just give a credit. You can make a dummy esp with the CK, with a description and version and author embedded in it, and then use Wrye Bash to set the esm flag. Easy as that ... Use "Esmify Self" From Wrye Bash Help file "The distinction between esp and esm plugins is not dependent on their file extensions, but by a bit in the file. This command toggles that bit so that .esp files behave as .esm files and vice versa. It is useful for creating and editing plugins with .esp files as masters, which cannot be done in the Construction Set otherwise. Esm files cannot be edited in the Construction Set as esp files, so this command is disabled for them. Warning: Make sure to toggle any plugins back before playing the game, otherwise savegames will get confused, possibly causing bugs and corruption." ( Right click and open the image in a new tab for a bigger image to study ) You may not wish to use any of the above, but there may be options there you did not know how to do before so thought I would mention them to broaden the choices available for people making these things. PS : Those 1x1 textures are not such a bad problem ( depends on the capabilities of the video card on a persons machine ), but they are effectively becoming less optimal than before you worked on them, because now for each of these an un-necessary upscale has to be performed on them by the video card in addition to whatever processes it would normally apply to the textures. There are worse things people can do with textures ( Non-power of two textures for instance ( Bright ideas club moment .. "I know, 512 is too small, 1024 is too big, lets make it 768 instead" ) - NOOO!, some old video cards would choke on them, even newer video cards may have hiccups with these causing stutter ) Right thats enough babbling from me, dont want to take away some of the adventure modding - Good luck with the mod Tony, I thought I may remember more tips which would be helpful, there have been many things found with textures over the last couple of years working on VRT, unfortunately I cant remember them all off the top of my head. And having looked at the DDSOpt routines here on STEP, and the custom DDSOpt settings file which has been made acting as a more sophisticated filter than the default .. I think its a pretty comprehensive set of instructions for the goal of your mod. No doubt you will have some of those "Aaagh I need to upload a few gig AGAIN!" moments :)

;) Alt3rn1ty = Not full of BS ( But wont be worth living with because his head just grew three sizes bigger ) :D Thanks Z, I already link this on my mod description The UPP team have known this stuff for years too, so dont need a heads up.

Yeah I was pretty sure I had seen mention of STEP making their own batch files somewhere, but did not know for sure Well someone may find my ones useful for just operating on those files, if not it doesnt matter. I think though that if your method is supposed to end up with no collapsed textures at all, then Tony has missed a detail in your procedure somewhere. There are a fair few of them 1kb file size 1x1 resolution in the mod. Thank you z, and yep, I thought the result would be favorable, apart from what I personally know to have been said before now, there are far too many mods out there which could be cobbled by Bethesda which for so many years have not been. The guys at BGS use a lot of them personally. They avoid making any public statements in this regard though because its a scary subject, one word wrong could be financially really bad ( especially when it comes to outsourced artists who originally made the graphics for the game and have a legally binding contract between them and Bethesda for that particular game and no others, little details like that could get the company sued if a loophole in what has been said publicly can be used by everyone to take advantage in some way ) GStaff is a he, its on his profile when you PM him.

I think the info provided earlier reference mod ini's might not be quite right, I found the Creation Kit reference : https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/INI_files Mod Defined Mods can define INI files to override settings from Skyrim.ini. Mod defined INI files should have the same name as the plugin file and are only applied if the plugin is loaded by the game. So Mod ini's can change settings you would ordinarily find in Skyrim.ini I guess that means if you try to include anything in skyrimprefs.ini it will not work. bFloatpointrendertarget would be out, but the archive stuff should be working according to that logic Although in skyrim.ini it starts with sResourceArchiveList= not sResourceArchiveList2= [Archive]sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsasResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa Never touched these lists for skyrim personally, not since Bethesda gave us the new Load Ordering mechanisms anyway which are a lot more mod author friendly than the old system, so I am floundering around here and not being much help :) Edit : Will give Arthmoor a heads up with this

@ Tony - And S.T.E.P community ( For Attention of whoever does the DDSOpt guide here ) I have not had a look at your DDSOpt everything routine which Tony has applied to these, so you may have something similar already .. I have a bunch of batch files which may be helpful, I made them for separating the Terrain Diffuse textures from the Terrain Normal maps Have a look at them with a text editor first, but if you have all the necessary files in a copied folder of all the terrain textures where these batch files expect them to be, then just double click one of the batch files to perform the deletion operation for either diffuse or normal files, you end up with a folder with just the desired textures Repeat on another copy of the same textures with the opposite batch file to delete the other set of textures If you use something like Notepad++ you can use its advanced search and rename options to edit the location in these batch files to where you want to put the working folder on your system ( Auto-Repeat procedure of changing D: to E: for example if you have a different drive partition setup, or even remove that part and just drop the batch file inside the folder it will work on .. I'm sure you will get the picture ) Here are the batch files https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86040572/Terrain%20Textures%20separation%20Batch%20scripts.7z There are two batch files for Skyrim textures, two for Dawnguard and two for Dragonborn Feel free to include them somewhere on STEP if they have not been made before, and Tony use as required Every single file you would expect to find in vanilla terrain textures are included ( But does not include further sub folders of Objects and Trees .. This is just for the LOD and Map textures ). I primarily made them because I needed to make a set of everything for people with only 256mb VRAM ( like my laptop used to be ), and a set for people with minimum spec 512mb VRAM So because I did not wish to reduce the Diffuse maps too much, but could afford to reduce the normals a little more for these textures for my 256 options .. Separating them for different batch scripted filtering in GIMP became essential. Its also useful for those diffuse textures in Terrain folders which DDSOpt has a habit of collapsing to 1x1 pixel textures, there are some which are already that size in vanilla textures which shouldn't be, all you need to reproduce what should have been the original is the colour value from that one pixel and then just resize them with GIMP to the same size as the rest and remipmap, separately from the rest, then paste them back in after other processing is done on these. Anyway : TL;DR .. Anyone can use the linked batch files as they wish ;) Edit : @ EssArrBee - I like your comment response on Nexus reference textures going out of date :), didn't you know they get moldy and dusty, and if the computer screen is left in the sun too long the colours of the textures fade to blue and white like old packets of cornflakes in a corner shop window

@ Tony - As I understand it .. Both : So you can have a value in there that would affect skyrim.ini, and another that would ordinarily be only found in skyrimprefs.ini = Modname.ini settings override both default ini settings. I havent tested personally but it would be easy to do, and logically it makes sense ( I think I saw it mentioned on the CK wiki somewhere but cant remember where, Arthmoor confirmed it in a topic on AFK Mods ). @ Z - I have seen GStaff mention it was okay before .. However memory and search fails me to find a post that was probably about 6-7 years ago. Would be nice to see the result of that PM public instead of PM .. Could you ask him if he would be kind enough to confirm it in the link where CCNA ( BGS forum moderator ) confirmed it previously https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1481184-is-it-legal-to-edit-bsas-nifs-etc-and-use-it-in-modding/?do=findComment&comment=23197662, and append a reply to that topic ? @ SRB - It matters that it should be positioned after the UPPs in my case, because I always also include any textures extracted from the UPPs which have been fixed, but reduced for the purpose of my mod. If the UPPs followed mine then there would be a few textures taking the VRAM count back upwards again. Although there are a couple which I dont touch, because they are the same size as I want them, or because to do anything with them would ruin them ( for example lnki textures, the manhole grating in Solstheim, and the Bridge Road Edge texture .. Both of which were a pig to figure out what was wrong with the vanilla versions, lnki did an excellent job on figuring the mipmap alpha problem out on these, and attempting to reduce / optimise these loses the fix )

Something else I forgot to mention earlier which I was going to post .. Ethatron did extensive tests on BSAs, the results of which are mostly included in his linked documentation, but one that will not be obvious is on the NIFOpt documentation page .. ( To find the above its here https://obge.paradice-insight.us/wiki/NIFopt - Scroll way down the bottom, and back up a little from there to the paragraph titled "A little calculation" ) Highly compressed BSAs are brilliant, especially for old laptops like mine which is minimum specification for this game. Just dont go highly compressing any sounds, music or scripts, Bad things happen ( Bethesda use a much lower compression ratio in their BSA's - BSAOpt as you know can squash the hell out of files much more than the official Archiver ). Textures, Meshes and Animations seem fine compressed to BSAOpt 10, anything else avoid compressing so much. Edit : Probably too much information, going off topic slightly, my apologies

INI edits done the same way as USKP also take priority over default INIs They do not change skyrim.ini or skyrimprefs.ini, but the ini named the same as your mods esp and bsa will be loaded by the game last overriding the games default ini settings files And just like "Load Order and You", if you had two mods both with custom ini's in your data folder, and both of them edited the same settings .. Loaded last wins if they have different values for the same setting. The only thing with your mod .. You would want it to load early so that users can have mods with their own textures win over your all encompassing texture overhaul. So there is potential for other mods with ini's to override your settings even though its a bit unlikely. Also give the guys in the LOOT topic a request too, to give your mods esp a negative priority, and a Load After condition for Cutting Room Floor ( in case there are future developments with vanilla textures included, which you may want to optimize and include in your mod ) .. They did the same for my VRT ... .. Only if you want to do it this way of course

I believe you are just here to pick fault in what people say and have an unconstructive argument. "someone else can put out a mod that uses those optimized Dawnguard textures." Why would that be a concern to the texture mod author ? The intended use as per the description without sneaky third party modder up to mischief is not a problem in itself. You are saying nobody can put a mod out there if there is potential for a third party to make it break rules .. Rubbish. Nobody will ever be able to do anything. And I realise my definitions do not matter, all we can do as laymen is individually interpret what we have been given .. You said it needs to be more detailed, personally I would prefer they leave it as is and we all carry on modding TES as we have been doing since Morrowind was released without any legal problems so far.

I cant see Bethesda re-doing the Creation Kit EULA, it would cost to employ legal beagles to reword it. The only definitions we have to go on are in there. I take modified to mean any alteration of the original file. If that results in a CRC change to the file, a slight shift in Z height of normal maps, a few pixels dithered a little more because of a filter in GIMP .. Its modified.

Fair points ( I did not know of the White Phial Replacer - What was the issue there ? ) If I am not providing a plugin plus meshes to load the textures .. Then in my mods case it is true. Yes ? I see what you are saying, they could be made to work in a game that does not have the DLC. But then you are not using them with the game they came with ( the game + DLC ), so I can see them being banned in that case. In my case, and Tony971 mod too, they are not going to work without the DLC. If GStaff comes back with bad news in this regard .. There are an awful lot of mods out there need taking down.

All textures have to be modified, if they were unmodified uploads that would be grounds for banning them Same applies to any assets like meshes from the original files, you can only upload them as part of your mod if you have in some way modified them. Requiring plugins as masters, I do it with my mod, but if I were to release them as loose textures I would just specify in the description that the relevant DLCs are required .. They are not going to work in game without them Also consider all the texture replacers for Oblivions Shivering Isles expansion ( for example CorePCs excellent Vibrant Textures which has a Shivering Isles set / Bomret famous for his Detailled normal maps also did Bomret Texture Pack for Shivering Isles ), and Morrowinds Bloodmoon / Tribunal etc There have been a lot of modified texture replacers for every part of each game and their respective DLCs with no take downs for the last 8 years to my knowledge.

Dont worry about the legal stuff, it will be fine so long as every texture has had some form of process to alter them in comparison to the original .. Passing them through DDSOpt will do that even if the results are barely distinguishable See this topic https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1481184-is-it-legal-to-edit-bsas-nifs-etc-and-use-it-in-modding/ My Vanilla Reduced Textures would have been pulled a couple of years ago if that was not the case :) Edit : And if anyone does not accept CCNA's word as a BGS Forum moderator in that linked topic, tell them to read the Creation Kit EULA, its all in there ( same as it was in the Construction Set for Oblivion and Morrowind, Bethesda encouraging us to mod is beneficial to them because it increases the longevity / life expectancy of the game, and attracts far more customers buying the game as a result of seeing all the things modders have created for the game ).

I just overwrite the .dll and the .exe If there are new options for enblocal.ini they will be added by ENB the first time it is run with the default for the new setting So you can continue with your old settings, and after first run check it for any additional entries If you want to test this, copy your enblocal.ini somewhere out of your skyrim setup, then delete half of the settings in the installed enblocal.ini file. Run the game. Afterwards you will find ENB has automatically written in the missing settings with all the defaults It does the same for enbseries.ini for anyone who uses it. 262 does not have any new enblocal.ini settings. So it will continue using your previous settings quite happily.

You probably got the old Pre5b uploaded 17 Oct 2012 https://github.com/Ethatron/ddsopt/downloads The most recent version is Update 4 uploaded 31 Jan 2013 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5755/? Ethatron was having problems with Github, and switched to uploading the more recent updates to Nexus, since Github came back he has not updated those files. So Nexus Update 4 is the latest and greatest.

Discussion topic: Ethereal Clouds by Gamwich Wiki Link Gamwich has been busy again, this time with Ethereal Clouds. They are double vanilla sized textures and, at time of posting, version 1.1 released. Very nicely done imho

Notes: VRT 256 and 512 Legendary --------------------------------I was gifted Hearthfires, and after having a look at the textures there really is not much that can benefit our goal of saving VRAM ( not enough to warrant making a new plugin and BSA for as a standalone option anyway ). But I decided its about time I did an all-in-one Legendary.These two Legendary options ( 256 and 512 Legendary ) have an esp which is named the same as the first VanillaReducedTextures.esp and has Skyrim.esm/Update.esm/Dawnguard.esm/Hearthfires.esm/Dragonborn.esm as masters ( The original VRT just has Skyrim.esm/Update.esm as masters ). So do not use it if you do not have all the DLCs installed. Missing masters = CTD.It is named the same as the original VRT to make it clear that it should replace the others, and because it will keep the same Load Order position as VRT as far as BOSS/LOOT is concerned ( ie we dont need to go bugging anyone to add a new esp name to any masterlist or give it a priority - It already has them ).So if you use either Legendary option, you also have textures in there which have been reduced for Hearthfires ( a couple of diffuse textures and few normal map textures ).Also you will not need VRT, or DG, or DB installed. So one plugin replaces three plugins.These Legendary options have everything all-in-one. Its uploaded on Nexus Probably going to be a fair few hours before its finished uploading on AFK Mods ( the files are big and I have just started uploading there at time of this post )

Notes: VRT 256 and 512 - v22 ----------------------------Apologies for this one, this is just a bug fix version. It only affects VRT 256 and 512 ( so no need to grab DG or DB options again ). I found a couple of textures in 512 which should not have been reduced as much as they were ( copy pasta from the 256 version )But also a glaringly over reduced wall texture in Bleak Falls Barrow ( and no doubt wherever else it was used in game ). If you have been anywhere near the word wall in there recently you will probably have noticed it.

Notes: VRT / DG / DB - v21--------------------------Final version :) Gamwich gave me permission to use some of his textures and reduce them for VRT. There are a few textures which always annoyed me because I need better textures to start with before reducing .. Dragons textures from BPT AC will be giving us a little more detail up close ( after my reduction of these textures they end up having more detail than the vanilla textures similarly reduced - See the new screenshot images on Nexus ), and I have also used Gamwich's Mountain or Molehill textures and LODs which closer match adjacent vanilla textures than the ones I previously used, and look better in the distance.Just in case anyone does not agree with using these, I will be leaving the old v20 files up on Nexus aswell indefinitely, personally I think v21 textures are much better, and do not veer away from the vanilla artistic design.There has also been quite a few other textures tweaked since last upload, and inclusion of a couple more textures from the Unofficial patches which have been reduced for VRT. Note : Download v21 at either Skyrim Nexus, or the new location at AFK Mods I only wish to support two sites, so unfortunately dropping the files at Dark Creations.

In the guide introduction, you have a link to Orbmu2k, presume this used to be the site the download was on .. The site is up for sale, so the link is dead I dont know if he has moved to another site, but it can also be grabbed from guru3d .. www.guru3d.com/files_details/nvidia_inspector_download.html ‎