DocClox

Probably not relevant, but I noticed yesterday that MO had sorted my HRDLC archives to the top of the data group. If it processes the BSAs in the order they're listed then it would have loaded the HRDLCs and then overridden them with the standard ones. Easy fix: just drag them down to the bottom of the data group. Of course, I'm not currently loading the HRDLCs anyway, so I have no if this had any effect. Might be worth trying though [edit] Actually, that makes sense. If they just have the BSA ticked, they'll load in the order on that tab. If the esps are ticked, they'll load in ESP order.

Hmmm... When I repacked the DDSOpted textures I used "retain" rather than "embed". They seem to work ok ... but then my game's not been entirely stable this weekend ... for what I assumed were unrelated reasons. Even if I repack them, it's going to be hard to say that made a difference...

OK. The external installer is the one used by NMM. So that part's normal. The trouble is that the version that shipped with the last stable MO is broken. There's a "downgrade" link on the nexus d/l page for MO. Install that over your MP folder and try again. That should sort you out.

Interesting. Do you know the difference between "embed" and "retain" as regards filenames?

Yeah, tell me about it :) I just embarked on the liberation of Windterhold. Got to the RV point to find no troops, just a floating quest arrow. So I trotted on into town to find no defenders either - just more quest markers hovering over empty air. Does anyone else find this mod disproportionately difficult? I ha to turn the game difficulty right down before the siege of Whiterun was anything remotely like fun. I'm finding things a bit more enjoyable now ... but then I've added about 40 levels since Whiterun.

OK. Bearing in mind this is purely speculative... Say the game loads a mod called X and that X has masters A, B and C. Now suppose that the load order for A B and C (as sorted by LOOT) is ABC, but that the order appear in the master list is CBA. The questions here are here does X get its master data from? And in what order is that data read? I believe we already know a fair amount of that. The engine loads the masters first, and the mods access that loaded data. The order the masters are loaded is the load order, as determined by LOOT. I would speculate that the engine can't load the data in the order of its own internal master list: where the master lsit order would give confliucting results, the conflicting entries have already been overwritten at this point. So that's my guess at it. For the mod master list to be honoured, the master files would need to be read once for each mod that accessed them (which seems highly unlikely) or else the game would have to keep full copies of the data from each master (which also seems unlikely) or else it would have to accept the data that had already been read using the global load order/ But like I say, that's speculation with no real evidence to back it up. And it winds me right up to see all those orange boxes in Wrye Bash as well :)

That's my understanding of the matter. On the other hand, I'm not sure I fully understand the situation, so I thought I'd go belt-and-braces. Basically, it's an experiment.

@SRB: I copied and renamed one from the HRDLC, then used Wrye Bash to "esmify" it. It seems to work, if Hert's face is anything to go by :) There's an empty plugin somewhere in Wrye's Mopy folder that can be used to create new bashed patches that could probably be used as well. The Brawl Bugs one is another possibility. @Kelmych: Interesting. I guess I'll stick with Archive.exe from now on then :)

Mmm. Certainly there's a difference from that point of view. I think the question before us is more: is there a level of compression above (or below) which the game will refuse/fail to read archives. I have no idea as to the answer, but I can see how the knowledge could be useful

Well, it's definitely not your enb! I rolled back the ENB to the performance one I use usually, and then uninstalled all the recommended mods for no particular improvement. So it looks like the problem has been brewing for a while. It's been a while since I visited Solitude with this setup. I think part of the problem was probably script overload - lot of NPCs in the palace, and I had a rogue Fire and Ice Overhaul script thrashing away. I'll open a new thread rather than drift further off-topic. [edit] I looks like the Culprit was an experimental mod that added HDT physics to Cloaks of Skyrim. Uninstalled that and my FPS bounced back to normal.

It generates a .bsl file (which we don't need for MO) but no esp

Archive.exe seems to do the job nicely. The interface took a little head-scratching but it repacked a BSA and it's loading just fine now. Now for the other folders. Archive.exe didn't seem to take as long as DDSOpt either, but that might well be wishful thinking on my part :)

The RAM also gets used for non-graphics data. Like the excutable code for the Skyrim program and the data structures that keep track of quests and inventories, for instance. To say nothing of Steam, and Windows itself for that matter. There's a lot more pressure on your RAM than simply funneling graphics to VRAM

Now that you mention it, I did that. (This was late last night and I forgot until now). It didn't help much - maybe one or two FPS. So one of the lighting mods, then. I can try selectively disabling them. Should be informative, even if I don't keep the ENB

Tried this out last night. I don't use CoT so I installed the vanilla version along with Dramatic Clouds, ELE Interior Lighting, Enhanced Lights and FX and the Particle Patch as recommended on the Nexus page. Very happy with the results until I hit Solitude, at which point my FPS dropped from 61 to 25. Entered the Blue Palace and it hit around 12. I'm assuming this isn't most people's experience, so I'm guessing I missed something. Any ideas? I don't run any mods that affect Solitude particularly, or even cities in general. (I've got a 2Gb gtx770, so there's no shortage of power there. My CPU and mobo are a bit old though, and I only have 4GB of ram if that helps any).

Well, I gave this a shot last night. DDSOpt does indeed repack BSAs. Just give the optimised folder as the source and and empty folder and non-existent filename for the BSA. Then I copied the esp from one of the HRDLC files, renamed it to match the BSA and used Wrye Bash to set the ESM flag. Moved the pair of them to a new MO folder, activated the mode ... and Skyrim crashed on startup. Repeatedly. When I delselected the new "mod" the game started normally. So, something there didn't work. I didn't have much time, so I've yet to investigate further. I'm not sure that Wrye is the best tool for false-flagging; most discussions seem to recommend TES5Edit, but I couldn't get that to work at the time. For that matter, I'm not sure if the esp is needed at all, false flagged or not. I'll experiment further tonight. It may well be that DDSOpt's repacking is at fault. I agree that Archive.exe is the safest way. I just hope it has a "select all" option somewhere as I don't fancy hand selecting a few thousand archive files. Anyway, I'll post an update tonight.

It occurs to me that a STEP metatdata file for LOOT might be very useful here. No need to worry about ordering, just sort with Loot.The problem would be that any update to Loot's "masterlist" (if it's still called that) might overwrite the STEP ordering.I wonder if Loot would be willing to consider multiple cascading metadata files...

If you can handle java, it might be worth looking at skyproc. It's mainly used for patcher, but I expect you could use it generate a CSV file fairly easily.

Last night I finally bit the bullet and ran DDSOpt on my vanilla textures. So far so good. Now then: I've been following the thread about Mod Organizer and BSA extraction with interest, and loose files don't seem to offer the advantages under MO that they did with Wrye Bash. So what I'd like to do is repack my optimised textures into new BSA files and give each one its own mod folder under MO, each with a dummy esp like the HRDLC archives. Between that, and copying the official DLCs into their own mod folders, I hope to be able get the optimised folders to override the vanilla textures, but not any fixes in the unofficial patches (or any other mods for that matter) So I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for repacking BSAs. I know I can do it with Archive.exe in the CK (but I'd prefer not to) and I assume the DDSOpt will do it if I choose an optimised folder as my source and specify whatever.bsa as the output file. Most of the other tools I know of aren't fully compatible with Skyrim BSAs, or at least complain about unknown header values) In any event I'm away from the computer in question. So since I can't experiment directly, I thought I'd try and pick a few brains. Has anyone got an easy or efficient method for repacking these things? Are there any caveats I should be aware of? Any help greatly appreciated.

Ah, I may have misread his post. I've just ddsopted my vanilla textures and am considering repacking them into new BSA files. Because I was thinking about it, I thought that was the case noobzor was discussing. Re-reading, it seems he's just reverted to standard, as you say. My mistake. I'll ask elsewhere :)

Interesting. I'm contemplating doing just that when I get home tonight. How did you do the repacking? Give ddsopt an optimised folder as input and type in "whatever.bsa" as the output? (If all else fails there's Archive.exe in the CK, but I'd as soon not mess with that...)

Sounds good. Many suggestions have relied on having a list of mods that needed special consideration. This avoids the necessity of maintaining an up-to-date list as more mods adopt the technique.

The way you wrote that, I read it as "Modor Ganizer". Sounds like Facebook for Ringwraiths. Sorry, couldn't resist. Dreadfully off topic I know. Exits muttering something about "One mod to rule them all,one mod to find them ..."

Broken mipmap?

I have to say, I like your design priorities. That said, if it comes down to making things easier for STEP or easier for the more general case, I'd say go for the more general one. Any group that expects its users to understand ddsopt shouldn't have a problem relocating three ESP/BSA pairs :)Of course, I'm new around here so I may not reflect the orthodox STEP viewpoint :)