mothergoose729

Skyrim script extender added a feature that supposedly fixes broken saves caused by orphan scripts. The most recent version with this feature doesn't appear to be on the main download page, but it is in the archive. From the skse_whatsnew.txt document included int he most recent version. From a fix implemented in version 1.6.7. Newest version 1.6.8 is archived today, the 20th of february 2013.

:ohmy: Brilliant.Â

I hope the author goes on to fix the moss on all the exterior objects. Ruins and forts don't seem effected by this which is a bit sad.

I disagree Sairven, I think in its current form its perfectly ready for use. Right now it covers all of the interiors in towns, villages, and inns. I don't think this mod needs to cover all the caves and ruins for it to be valuable and consistent for the user. After all, other lighting mods already do that. There is talk in STEP of jumping ship from CoT to RCRN or another lighting mod. I think before this mod is decided on, it should be clear which lighting mod will be with STEP in the near future.

Its a pretty cool mod. Some of the interiors look a bit staged and that kind of sucks. Other interior look absolutely brilliant and completely authentic and natural. Its a great project and adds a lot to the world lighting.

The community is really going to lose out from this. Very sad, but hopefully in the wake more great mods will emerge. Thank you Cestral for your work.

Discussion thread: Better MessageBox Controls by ecirbaf Wiki Link This mod improves the interfaces of various messages and activation boxes to add functionality and consistency. Left and right keys will tab through message options. All message options are clickabe with a mouse, where as some where previously not clickable. Also extends button length, add some text highlighting, and in general cleans up and improves the interface. More detailed list of changes at the link. From the author of Better Dialogue Controls: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27371

Nice!

Its been updated with his newest releases.

Thanks for all your work Cabal. Your collection is the most complete and among the highest quality on the nexus which is why I use it exclusively for my armor retextures :).

That is z929669's guide for optimizing the HD-DLC. Uptomizing any other BSA or the main texture folder is not much more complicated and easily extrapolated from the guide... my objections to DDSopt as a end all can be found in it (not as any discredit to the guide itself). You need a third party tool to extract the BSAs and repackage them, or at least I did. The process is a great deal more involved for what I consider to be a rather modest gain over optimizer textures. DDSopt is a great tool but its not without its problems. Those problems just aren't present in this tool. I optimized enhanced blood textures with optimizer textures and have noticed no problems. I can't say I played much with the mod unoptimized... the colors never seemed off to me however.

Updated the OP with a optimizer textures guide.

I know I am sounding like a broken record here, but Optimizer Textures does provide an easy way to optimize the entire installation; BSAs and all. I will put together a picture guide and add it to the OP as soon as I get home from work. It really couldn't be any easier.

Just imagine this scenario. You are the average skyrim PC gamer. You google "mods for skyrim" because you heard about it. You get on the nexus, and stumble upon STEP. You go crazy installing all the best texture mods for STEP, then load up your game and it doesn't play as smooth as you want it. You look around for a while to try and find ways to make the game run better without getting rid of your cool mods. You stumble upon the STEP wiki, see the texture opimization thing, and download DDSopt. You run the program. No instructions on the download section, nothing intuitive about the interface. Maybe they find your guide on the HD texture pack and use it correctly... maybe. That still leaves the vast majority of their texture mods unoptimized. But this is a persistent uneducated user. They fiddle with the program, run it on a bunch of files, wait a couple hours for it to finish what it does... and now their game doesn't start, because they didn't add esp and esm to the file exceptions. They panic and hit the forums. They didn't create a file back up, so there is nothing to be done. They are forced to reinstall skyrim, and that person probably never uses STEP again. On a scale of 1-10 in terms of how bad an experience can be for inexperienced user, that is probably an 11. Now contrast that with Optimizer Textures... sure DDSOpt does the same things Optimizer Textures does and does it better, but optimizer textures has a much better interface, much better documentation, and most importantly it nearly impossible to kill an installation of skyrim using the tool. It is just not realistic in the slightest to think that STEP users are going to write a script in command prompt. It is also entirely unreasonable for the STEP team to take on the task of testing and documenting every texture. DDSopt is a powerful tool for a powerful user. Its is not appropriate at all for anybody else. Even in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, there is still the risk of creating bad files. If STEP is serious about advocating texture optimizing at all, then STEP should promote the tool that is easiest to use and safest for the user. That is not DDSopt in it current form. A better alternative would be not to recognize a texture optimizer at all, and leave it in the forums, rather than recommend something that has the very real potential of killing an installation.

Hey, just wanted to say great work :).

aMidianBorn Fur Armor by CaBal https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27810/ Another high quality retexture from CaBal, this time for the fur armor set.Â

Thanks. I have always hated that texture.

I have been using this mod for a long time. I like it a lot.

Amazing work for sure. I think it is the best texture work I have seen in any ES game, and I could not be more impressed. I have to agree with Besidilo though. It is not just that articles in the house that seem out of place, it is nearly everything in it. The victorian architecture, the ornate paintings and ceiling decorations, tile mosiacs; in one room there is a working ceiling light. It looks like an aristocrats home from the early 19th century, not anything like 10th century Anglo-saxon architecture that is typical of the larger skyrim. I won't be playing it myself, but I very much appreciate the authors impeccable work.

Ah ok. By the lack of mention about the standard version, it must mean that AOF's mod doesn't contrast. Great, thanks for the update.

This conflicts with Vurts Flora Overhual. I am not sure if the LOD in Vurts more accurately reflects its trees or not... this one does look nicer but someone using both mods might notice some inconsistencies. Something to look into.

I have been using this mod for a while. Sometimes there is a delay between hitting bottles and the animation... only really flaw. I believe it also improves the look of bottles as well, or at least I remember bottles looking nicer after I installed the mod.

Make sure to select your data/textures folder when you optimize as well, if you are not already. If you are struggling for more VRAM using the tool to compress you textures helps a lot, although at a very noticeable loss in quality. I find limiting my textures to 2048x2048 worked very well for me, but you will see a reduction in texture quality in some cases. When I used the tool on my textures folder, I noticed a pretty consistent reduction in file size of about 25%. With texture reduction obviously a great deal more.

This is pretty much my new favorite mod. Chatting with people in the snow now you can see their breath. I don't think I have ever been so thrilled with a mod before. Really, its little things like this that make this game so amazing.

It should be noted that a texture optimizer does NOT improve your fps, it improves mimaps and reduces VRAM usage. Mimaps is what textures look like from a medium distance, before they are generated as LODs. Many textures do not have any mimaps generated and so look odd (like leaves disappearing from a tree) at distance. If your video card is not throttling its VRAM this tool nor another optimizer will have any effect on your skyrim performance. However, for those struggling from a lack of VRAM this can improve performance in that area dramatically.