EssArrBee

I don't really think that any recommendation should be made for STEP. Core or Extended. Just leave that for the Packs and people can make lighting packs that fit together and take away some of the compatibility problems.

Well, a couple of those Papyrus tweaks need to be tested with scripted mods. I think giving Update Budget might be a good one to look into and do some proper testing. I do subscribe to the "Less is more" rule, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't test some of those Papyrus tweaks since that is what causes people to freeze and crash now that ENBoost helps with the memory problems.

You might wait until the new SSS stuff is implemented a bit better. It seems to me that getting the right balance for nose, eyebrows, skin, facial hair,... are all a bit touchy at the moment. The new feature is really quite good, but the implementation needs a bit more time to figure out. I've used it bit in game and the neck seems are bit hard get rid of, and the children have really bad neck seems. There will be another ENB patch from Midflux for the candles and I really like they those look in game.

See I though fotorealism was when you took a foto with your fone. So do these textures have that same color in game, or are they just like that in the screenshots on the nexus page? I would like the colors stay a bit more gray than those shots that have a red-brown tint, unless those are sunrise/sunset pictures in which case I say "Hell yeah!".

There are so many version now that it is very hard to say. Pick two or three version and I can tell you what is going to change. As for the ENBoost part, I think Boris pretty much did all he could for the moment, and I haven't really had any major memory CTDs in a while. Now I just get them from trying to get corrupt saves going or trying to use to many scripted mods together. I even saw some SPM logs of someone with about 1GB RAM usage and 5-6GB of their Titan's VRAM being used for like 2 hours. The ENBoost stuff is definitely better for high end systems though.

Three plus a dog, one of those Dawnguard dogs. I think I like teams of three from playing all the awesome Bioware RPGs over the years. It's really conditioned me that way.

He didn't remove it he just moved a couple sections to enblocal.ini, it's in the release notes. Even though his release notes are pretty vague and short.

I just opened up the default enbseries.ini from .218 and .219 and neither has the AA section. You may need to update every file in your ENB when going from one version to the next. Don't skip any files.

I have not yet done the Enbseries.ini section. I'm working on it, but it's not done yet, also the Troubleshooting section is not done either, all that stuff is pretty much obsolete for anything newer than v0.168. I'll probably update the enbseries.ini part by tomorrow.

Well, then someone is going to have to make quite a few new textures. Maybe we can have colors other than gray and grayer for rocks. Just speaking as someone who sees mountains from their back yard, they look like red, gray, about 20 shades of brown, and even some purple (Jesus Marie!). I know Pannonian was working on something like that, but he hasn't been around in a while.

Well, the realism debate really makes sense when you start you next statement with "A dragon...". One of the things that has always drove me nuts is the quest for realism in terms of our world and not adapting it to the TES world. If you have the soul of a freaking dragon, you should be able to get up pretty freaking fast.

Umm... there was a big shift in STEP a while back, around the time my brother first introduced me to the project, and all the armor and clothing stuff was dropped in favor of a vanilla-esque approach. Various guards makes all the guards have different armors than vanilla, and since it probably uses a plugin for that you can install it after this mod.

... I stand corrected :PCan you make a 2k version available through the wizard too?Doesn't exist.

At the very least it will be a good Stormcloack replacer.

Well, that throws a wrench in the testing. I think I'm just going to wait for a couple of people to tell me what is the best combo of textures for this one.

I would personally use the basic version too, but I love those bent tree's for some reason =-)Yeah when you have new character and come out of Bleak Falls and there is that giant, barren tree, it is hard to go back the basic version. It is not like FNV where the two extra version had thousands of UDRs and IDMs in the plugins and can't be cleaned.

Well Book of Silence is 2k except for gauntlets and boots. I do understand wanting 1k, but with ENBoost and some of the stuff guys like Altimor seem to be finding on the back end, 2k is just fine now. EDIT: And Yes, Cabal said it was good.

The extra files won't hurt anything, so you can extra them out if you aren't using the plugin.

UltraHD - Stormcloak and City Guards by FrankFamily Vanilla > UltraHD (2K with fix file) I believe someone was saying something about no one doing a retexture of the Stormcloacks earlier today. I guess this is one of those speak of the devil moments then.... Anyways these are 2k or 4k pretty much like BoS and would help the most ignored armor ever. The shots look good, but I think they are using an ENB and even crap can look good with ENB.

Well, you should always use the source for doing the down res. The originals aren't going anywhere unless you delete them afterwards, which you shouldn't so unless you are sure you don't need them anymore, not the case while testing. There usually isn't harm done to textures that run through DDSopt many times, but it's probably better timewise to just keep the originals in a working directory to reduce and optimize over and over. If you go from say 4k to 2k and decide you want to 1k then delete the 2k and run the 4k through again with 1k limits.

Well, as a part time teacher with two TAs and two peer leaders for two classes, I'm pretty much just a guy that talks to students for 3 hours a week. I even check out reddit and STEP forums while giving quizzes or group work. Anyways, yes, you will be taking up more space with the second copy if you decide to keep the older ones around. When I was first learning all the optimization stuff I had a working folder of at least 200GB with all the crap I testing. If I was you I would start with the big landscape stuff like Skyrim HD and Serious HD, plus the HRDLC. Those take up the most VRAM while in outdoor areas. Interiors usually don't need as much optimization due less cells being loaded and generally less VRAM usage.

I thought the the specular was the _s.dds textures and the SSS affected the _sk.dds textures, which is what No Bronze changes to three black 64x64 textures. All in One Face has an optional for the female skin so I'll have to see how that works.

The ddsopt.ini that is linked on the DDSopt Guide is up to date. I wouldn't change the size of the IA or IW textures, but optimizing them wouldn't hurt anything. I think they are mostly vanilla textures assigned to the new armors/weapons for most pieces. You are correct about the way those limits work. Does not resize anything at or below the limit, only things that are bigger, and also never use a rectangular size limit on textures, like 2048x1024. I see lots of people on the forums while at work, hmm... Are you guys teachers that make the TAs do everything too?

Well, you need to use the current ddsopt.ini or you will not force DDSopt to skip certain textures. Any type of monochromatic texture gets messed up too, they are usually 128x128 or smaller, but get reduced by DDSopt to 1x1. Also, water textures and some uncompressed normals that are really noisy get messed up. If an author has said not to optimize the textures it is because they might have already done it. If you need a smaller size of texture ask the author or you can reduce the size with DDSopt, but it's a trial and error type thing to see if it works correctly. Not every texture will be okay with what DDSopt does, nor does reducing every texture in size work out properly. You should be safe to so with about 99% of textures, so don't worry to much about it.

Maybe Glorious Daedric as replacement for Extended until a release is found. It looks a bit like steel and leather in some places, but it's not wacky like the current mod. There is also Daedric Reborn, but I haven't used it in game, so I can't speak to its quality.