Jump to content

alt3rn1ty

Citizen
  • Posts

    493
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    7

Everything posted by alt3rn1ty

  1. Your ENBLocal.ini guide has gone out of date quite quickly recently https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB#tab=Editing_Enblocal_INI V0.217 of ENB .. FixPhysics= Gone There was a problem with enabling RemoveBlur=true - If you were only using ENBoost ( with UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true ) - That has now been fixed And there have been approximately 3 re-uploads of v0.217 The fix section now includes the following .. [FIX] FixGameBugs=true FixParallaxBugs=true FixAliasedTextures=true IgnoreLoadingScreen=false IgnoreInventory=true FixSsaoWaterTransparency=true FixSsaoHairTransparency=true FixTintGamma=true RemoveBlur=true FixSubSurfaceScattering=true I have no in depth knowledge of those new settings. -------------------------------------- Can anyone else corroborate something I have found experimenting with ENBoost .. My machine Specs Minimum requirement for this game - Win 7 x32, Core 2 duo 2.2 ghz, NVidia 8600m GS 512mb VRAM, 4gb system RAM Three settings of interest are these .. [MEMORY] DisablePreloadToVRAM=true ReservedMemorySizeMb=256 VideoMemorySizeMb=0 I know by everything I have seen on these settings that I should set the last one to = VRAM on graphics card, and I saw the equation to raise it further. However I find having it slightly less than the cards VRAM max works better for me. On my machine, I get far better performance if I have them set .. DisablePreloadToVRAM=false ReservedMemorySizeMb=256 VideoMemorySizeMb=350 So the game still preloads, it has a cache of system ram to supplement VRAM, and the allocated VRAM setting for ENBoost is less than the graphics cards max ( the reason I tried this was that it didn't make sense to me letting ENB take charge of all the VRAM, if windows also needs a slice of that pie up to circa 150mb ) .. To my surprise it works well.
  2. Â Many thanks Z Just a few notes from experience using it .. And lots of monitoring with Skyrim Performance Monitor v3.4 With the 256 option installed, the most VRAM I have seen being used is 235mb Does not give much leeway for modding, but I manage to use my body mod ( Severe Option ) plus a fair selection of mods including all the UnOfficial patches ( except any hires or Hearthfire ) and a few other replacers as loose files and never go over 240mb VRAM use now ( But thats also with windows Aero disabled, Classic theme ). 16mb VRAM to spare just in case :) Having upgraded to have 512mb VRAM on my laptops Graphics Daughterboard, I have extensively tested the 512 option too Most VRAM being used with this option I have seen is 315mb, which gives a fair bit more leeway for modding and adding other replacers without going too daft, and also gives enough spare VRAM to turn windows Aero back on ( which takes circa 80mb VRAM on my laptop, although I understand that is variable per machine and can range between 70-150mb VRAM - I guess it also depends on other windows settings like Performance Options / Visual Effects / Fade or Slide menus animations etc etc, and probably also varies between OS Vista/7/8 ) Certainly enough gain there though to run slightly higher res body mods for example ---------------- OT/: Speaking of body mods, you have probably seen Calyps and Nuskas Heroic Form ( CNHF ) - Keep an eye out for v2 ( although I think its going to be v2.5 ) - Apparently its imminent. The new textures are done ( I think Nuska finished those a couple of weeks ago ), and the hold up has been a bit more work on meshes weight painting. Lower poly use than either UNP or the heavier poly count CBBE in the meshes department ( with CNHF v2 I understand they are going to be only slightly more than vanilla meshes ) And the new Textures which Nuska has done for v2 I have no doubt will be amazing and seamless, she works as a commercial game artist, and her Tips and Observations for Modding blog is spot on . So glad she allowed me permission to rework one of her Real Skin for Women textures in Alt Navetsea UNP Seamless. Anyway, CNHF is definitely one to look forward to. /EndOT
  3. Reference conversation starting here Looks like the mesh path will be changed in UDGP, so either way my mod has it covered when the next UDGP comes along, because the two textures are in both locations as of this v3
  4. Notes: Vanilla Reduced Textures DG 512 / 256 - DawnGuard - v3 ------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe not quite final :) An update to the Dawnguard options to include more work from the UnOfficial patch fixes to textures Reduced appropriately for this mod. And thanks to Princeshroob on BGS forum, I have now placed the DG Prisoner clothing correctly in the folder structure ( these two dds files in the official BSA are in textures\dlc01\clothes\prisoner, but the 'mesh path' for these textures ( if you edit a mesh with nifskope you will see paths for the textures the mesh needs ) is actually textures\clothes\prisoner .. So the Dawnguard DLC without the UDGP will not show the correct clothing texture for the prisoners clothing mesh. Now it will. And obviously if you are using UDGP ( highly recommended, as are all the UnOfficial patches ) my reduced textures will replace the UDGP ones now too. They are actually duplicated ( in both folder locations within my BSA ) .. Reason for this is at some point after I put this up and UDGP team decide to solve this by making the mesh point at the texture as it is placed in the Dawnguard BSA folder structure instead, then one of my duplicates will cover each location as a replacer. And additionally, if you as a user of this mod install somebody elses idea of where the mesh should be pointing, that will also use one of my duplicates. The one not in use as a replacer texture will just be redundant in the BSA, and after being compressed in the BSA is not really taking much room at all A few more textures have been done besides those two aswell. I did not include any of the dawnguard facetint textures, UDGP already fixes the ones that need to be fixed, and there is no need to reduce/include those for this mod ( vanilla size 256x256 ). Fingers crossed - Now its Final.
  5. Notes : Vanilla Reduced Textures v18 - 512 and 256 -------------------------------------------------- DG and DB have not been touched with this update, just the VRT 512 and 256 Reason for the update .. Caves textures have been bugging me. Back in version 11 of VRT I went on the hunt for better mountains and rocks better in the detail at lower res which were also close to vanilla, and Yurils Alternative Rock and Mountains were perfect for the job .. For a couple of month I have been trying Hectrol's Caves Deluxe They are very close to vanilla in the detail They are high res ( to reduce from, unlike vanilla textures ) They have excellent normal maps And look better detailled than vanilla textures when reduced to the sizes I need for this mod. Go have a look at the originals for comparison screenshots, a couple of them are slightly different in colouration to vanilla, but work really well with the rest of VRT at lower res. Having played with them for a while now before doing this update the overall feel of caves is slightly darker. I have visited many different caves which use these textures, including Falmer themed caves, and I think this is a nice complimentary addition to VRT without deviating too much from vanilla textures. What has been done with these additional textures - Using Hectrols 4096 textures : For the 512 option .. Reduced and remipped diffuse maps to vanilla size 1024 ( same as v17 VRT, I dont reduce everything ) Reduced and remipped the normal maps to 512 For the 256 option .. Reduced and remipped diffuse maps to 512 Reduced and remipped the normal maps to 256 No difference in VRAM use between v17 - v18, just much better looking caves at low res. To get the best out of them though see my description reference .. Recommended mods - No Stretching mod by Langley The meshes in that mod correct a lot of texture scaling which cannot be done with textures alone. ( These may be included in the Unofficial Skyrim Patch at some point in the future, keep an eye on changes ). Just in case anyone does not like this change for some reason, I will leave v17 up as old files on Nexus. But even if you dont like the idea initially, just humour me and give them a try, I dont know if Hectrol is a professional graphic artist but he has done a fine job of making higher res more detailled cave textures which do not deviate too much from the vanilla flavour. Permissions are in accordance with Hectrol's wishes in his description, mention author and link back to original. There have been a few other changes since last update I have tinkered about with over the last few months, I dont recall them all but maybe just a tiny bit more VRAM saving overall, and a couple of textures redone. Some of you will know I have now upgraded my laptop to have 512mb VRAM ( same machine but the graphics daughterboard is upgradeable ) .. And maybe curious if the 256 version of VRT is still getting the same love - Yes it is, and is still my preferred option for a smoother / cooler running machine, I am using the 256 option. Now its Final ;).
  6. V5.1 NEWS: V5.1 - I have Uploaded a fixed version of the LITE option. Thanks to Archer on Dark Creations forum for spotting a rogue file where it should not have been in the installation ( if you selected the Feminine Normal map, you also got a colour map installed for the skin texture overriding your previous choice ( shaved / landing strip etc ) and it was lower res than the LITE version of the same texture - Tired moment I think :) )
  7. :) Yeah visually thats what struck me about it too, old Oblivion TGND fan myself ( no idea if Luchaire will be back for Skyrim, seen her knocking around BGS forums occasionally over the last year, but not posting anything ), I did the BAIN for that mod.
  8. I have just discovered something Bookmark this beauty https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/34213 Nuska and Calyps teamed up to do a body mod Its fast developing, quite a few options in the pipeline, and I personally know that seams bug the heck out of Nuska who is doing the texturing work .. No doubt it will be fully EEO compatible at some point ( maybe even now, I haven't tried it yet - Downloading :) ) There's an alpha for smaller breast sizes option already, and it looks like they are accommodating diverse tastes. Bouncing is not supported yet ( personally those things dont bother me, I just want a highly compatible nude body mod so the natives of skyrim are more native immersively ) .. But calyps is doing the meshing = I think this looks very promising.
  9. Another update : Vilja Reduced Textures V2 uploaded - Includes the new textures Vilja 1.4 incorporates
  10. Notes : VRT v17 / VRT DG v2 / VRT DB v3 --------------------------------------- With the expansions to the game ( Dawnguard and Dragonborn ), it became obvious that tweaking just their own texture sets was not quite enough in some DLC areas, and needed a few files reduced a little further in the VRT files aswell as DG and DB files. All done, and VRAM saving is more consistent throughout. Found a couple of specific DLC textures ( normal maps ) which could stand a little more reduction too.
  11. I haven't got one yet, but recently my laptop was in the repair shop to replace the inverter, and I had a long conversation with one of the engineers on the subject who pointed out they can still be ordered for my machine, he has a similar model laptop and had previously looked into doing the same upgrades safely for his own.
  12. :) Yes there are probably a lot of people out there that could really benefit from using it too, the objective of the mod is not really about performance, but it can give a heavily modded game more of an edge / smooth feel about it even for machines which would ordinarily not need such help with just the vanilla game. I am currently tempted to giving my laptop an upgrade, its one of those rare laptops which has an MXM II compatible daughter board setup for the graphics card .. Which means its replaceable. I cant go daft with the upgrade, limited space design and heat dissipation efficiency in laptops .. the balance has to remain stable and not decrease the life expectancy of the machine, but at the very least I know I can up the model to have 512mb VRAM instead of 256 without any need for upgrading to a hotter running GPU. But if I do, I will still be using my own mod for the more fluid gameplay.
  13. Notes: Vanilla Reduced Textures DB 512 / 256 - Dragonborn - V2 -------------------------------------------------------------- A bit of tweaking here and there, and had to reconsider some textures because Bethesda occasionally have some texture sizing inconsistencies, which my G.I.M.P batch processing script does not account for. Sigh. Quite a lot of the weapons are 1024 to start with in Dragonborn, reducing all those to 512 would be a simple process you would think .. if a few of them were not already 512. Which means in V1 you had 512 sized weapons mostly but the odd one like Ashmans weapons for example ended up being 256. I am trying to reduce without losing quality not turn the game into marioland. There were a few more ( Some Armour / Clothing inconsistencies ), and a few textures in V1 which really did not need doing, so removed those few. Stahlrim Armour is another inconsistency, but rather than reducing them too low in V1, some parts of this armour need further reducing. Generally Cuirass / Robes ( whole body covering textures ) you would expect to be larger than Gloves / Helmets / Hoods / Boots. I have seen this inconsistency before, with Dragonborn the Stahlrim Body armours are 1024 .. and so are the rest. So smaller armour pieces could stand to be reduced a little further than the body pieces which was not the case in V1. Skaal_outfit_girl ( body clothing ) is 512 vanilla, and I reduced it for V1 which was not necessary. Now removed. Also I have now ventured a lot further in the DLC, and have been monitoring VRAM use with Skyrim Performance Monitor and can confidently say the highest VRAM use seen so far with the V2 256 set has been 243mb. A little over what I would like to achieve, but I think it only occurs in a couple of places, will continue to study it more see if there are one or two more textures which can get those instances down another 10mb, but for now its safe and will not be melting anyones computer. My laptop is still running cool.
  14. Just a thought .. For anyone experiencing crashes after creating just texture BSAs' - If using BSAOpt or DDSOpt : You are changing the Game menu to Skyrim before creating the BSAs ? If not then that alone will cause crashes, the BSA will be in the wrong format.
  15. Well I did mention that loose files always win, so if all your textures are loose files, they will be in game ( or at least the last ones you installed which overwrote the previously installed replacers files with the same name ). The advantage to repacking in BSAs is the game loads them quicker from a highly compressed BSA. Ethatron mentions tests he did in the NIFOpt documentation here ( scroll way down near the bottom to the paragraph called 'A little Calculation' ) I know its not mentioned in the DDSOpt or BSAOpt documentation, but Ethatron is using the same BSA compression technology for all his utilities, so it got mentioned there as part of NIFOpts experiments. I used to be a fan of all loose files ( especially for Oblivions clunky game engine ), but since reading that, and throughout the development of Vanilla Reduced Textures ( one of those BSAs has over 9000 textures compressed inside it replacing vanilla game textures ), I have found Ethatrons advice to be more optimal for my old laptop than loose files. I have also seen mention of people testing with SSD drives who corroborate Ethatrons findings. I do not have an SSD drive yet, so in my case it makes even more sense having a SATAII HD. There is also the advantage that all files within a BSA do not become fragmented over time, so are quicker to access because there is less searching/thrashing of your HD to do, putting all the fragments of files together again for use. Regular defragging ofc will solve that, but if they are more optimally loaded from a highly compressed BSA .. its extra caretaking thats not required really. Disadvantages to BSAs : As Kelmych mentions there are problems with repacking vanilla BSAs, but I am pretty sure that does not apply to Skyrim - Textures.bsa - Unless you repack the textures BSA and it exceeds the 2gb BSA file size limit that is ( and this being the S.T.E.P forum .. is a highly likely circumstance :) ). I would not repack any other vanilla game BSAs though, string files being repacked are a problem, and also sounds being repacked cause problems too ( I think it varies depending on the compression ratio, probably a critical game load timing thing where the sound has to be decompressed from the BSA, and then decompressed from its fuz format ( which is also very highly compressed ) .. a fraction of time too long and it all goes wrong ) The official archiver I think I have seen mentioned has 7 compression levels, and by default uses its third ( something like that .. I dont use it ) Whereas BSAOpt / DDSOpt / NIFOpt has 10. The default being 10 maximum compression. I do prefer loose files where it gets too complicated for me to visualize exactly what textures end up in game though, and like z, I like to use Wrye Bash's excellent file conflict resolution in those cases so I am sure of what ends up in game out of all the loose texture mods, which are sometimes not replacer textures ( custom textures which do not replace vanilla textures ) and can replace each other from different mods sets of textures ( Bodies male/female/beasts/Armour/Clothing in particular I like to keep a visual track of conflicts as loose files, to ensure which ones end up in game, and more importantly for me - at what resolution ).
  16. Notes: Vanilla Reduced Textures DB 512 / 256 - Dragonborn --------------------------------------------------------- Vanilla Reduced Textures DB is needed in addition to Vanilla Reduced Textures, so : If you use Vanilla Reduced Textures 512 BSA, Dragonborn users 'also' need Vanilla Reduced Textures DB 512 BSA. If you use Vanilla Reduced Textures 256 BSA, Dragonborn users 'also' need Vanilla Reduced Textures DB 256 BSA. Same deal as the Dawnguard expansion, I want to keep these sets of textures separate, for people who do not have Dragonborn, and also for my own sanity organising what has or has not been done on my hard drive. Which means you will have two esp's in your load order (or three if you also have Dawnguard ). This is not open for negotiation. Amended the installation instructions. Q. What has been done ? A. Everything that needs to be, with a similar formula to Vanilla Reduced Textures, and Vanilla Reduced Textures DG. I am not going to list everything, as usual I need the 256 version to stop my laptop melting so you can be assured if anything else needs doing it will be. I have not progressed very far in Dragonborn, but as expected in game the maximum VRAM I have seen being used by the game so far has only gone up to 214mb, and I am confident I have reduced everything that needs to be. If not .. There will be updates. Enjoy. I have already given the BOSS team a post asking for it to be added to the masterlist for load ordering, but they are swamped with thousands of mods to add .. so it may be a while before BOSS recognises the VRT Dragonborn plugin.
  17. Quote from Ethatron nexus comments .. The beta's on nexus are now the latest versions. The pre-release betas on Github are 4 months old.
  18. Problems I mention in the OP are not to do with clipping So if you know someone who did take the time to correct the BSdismemberment problems I mention in post #10 - Linky please :) PS Dimon I think is kind of forced by circumstance ( Hurricane Sandy messing his life up big style ) preventing attending his mods, thats why he released permissions to the community so long as credits are given. He may not be done with them yet if his circumstances recover for the better.Â
  19. Dragonborn.esm I know deletes a navmesh in there, so taking companions along would be a bad idea. There's a few more problems too which were mentioned early in the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch topic on BGS forum related to qasmoke .. TES5Edit will sort out a heap of problems with the Dragonborn.esm if you have not done the usual clean up bethsofts mess yet of UDRs and ITMs ( there is also a new version of TES5Edit released after Dragonborn ), personally I have no need to go in the testing hall and avoiding it for a while, so cant say if it would sort your problem out.
  20. Oh wait, only the meshes ?, no, the bigger description is on the mods page linked in post #1, the main reason for this mod is to solve head body mismatches with the textures too, no matter which combination of Navetseas textures you choose, normal maps and diffuse textures ( colour maps ), you get a better neck than just trying to throw the original bunch of options together. And those are all included in the installer.
  21. Yep, either UNP 1.2, B2 or the Skinny meshes, I gave all of the meshes the same check and edits as in post #1 before including them in the installer.
  22. I have no idea. I do not use them.
  23. I do not wish to prolongue the off topic, but I believe there is another aspect to popular discourse that the modding community for the elder scrolls has never had to deal with before .. In RLO's case .. Discourse can now be financially damaging if a mob sways opinion based on a random ill thought comment somewhere on the public forums. I dont think RLO is a source of income for any individual, it is obviously being shared among the team for the benefit of the project. Personally I thought the nexus decision to enable people to give donations was a bad one, money being the root of all evil, but it is now pertinent. Possibilities: People posting in the right places to 'encourage' a group targetting across forums to degrade public acceptance of one mod over what could be considered a 'competing' mod .. also receiving donations. I believe there are new aspects as a result of donations being part of the equasion now. But this probably deserves a topic of its own. I only think it is relevant to the discussion in that anyones opinion of 'any' mod can now have other implications. Which is also a good reason to use the mod as intended in the description with the vanilla game and no other factors which could interfere with its performance / user perception.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use.