Shadriss

I'm already up later than I should be reading this... but given it's potential impact not just in Skyrim, but across the entire spectrum of moddable games, I felt compelled to read it all. I don't usually do that - usually, I'll skim unless it directly relates to me. This time, I read every word. I don't really have anything revolutionary to add - the key points are all up in the myriad posts above me. I've made reference to the fact that I spent about seven years of my (much) younger life doing mods and maps for other games, mostly in the Jedi Knight series. I poured hours, weeks, even over a year in once case into individual projects. The concept of being paid for it was, as has been mentioned, a complete non-started. It simply wasn't permitted. The fact that donation were finally allowed a few years ago was, I feel, the right way to go. Modders, as a whole, are generally in the game because they love it and enjoy it, not due to any real thought of gain. As put in Tron:Legacy... the Game Has Changed. Chesko made a point that I wish to re-enforce: This was going to happen, with or without his (and, by definition, any other modders) direct participation. As he said, when Valve contacts you directly, you listen. And when they tell you to be quiet about it, you listen (though I agree, this was a HUGE point against him and Isoku in particular). I don't, as a ex-modder myself, feel that they made a bad decision. Chesko, in particular, was very clear about how he would continue to keep his mods free... after a period of time. Honestly, that's likely about as good as it would ever get. I've had the morning to think this over. A large portion of mods, in particular recolors, retextures, and similar, have no buisness being paid for. Plain and simple, to my mind. Others, however, akin to Frostfall, Falskaar, and even iNeed add entire new SYSTEMS or WORLDS into the game. They do stand as equal to, if not better than, the official release DLCs. These, I can see supporting as Valve has pushed forward... but not in the fashion that SW itself works. We all know how finiky Skyrim is, and the need to masage the data into it's correct place to make it work even tolerably is... well, it's a lot. And part of that massage is data management, which the SW environment doesn't really allow for. Legalities and licences aside (many of these are rapidly being resolved while we sit here flapping our gums, I'm sure...), even with what I've just said, I have no choice but to side with the vast majority of mod creators and consumers - this was ill advised. Modding has been, and I think will always be at it's heart, a work of love. It's not about cash - it never was for those who took up the tools. Even if this paid-for wall continues, and I have no doubt, sadly, that it will, those who trully love the game will continue to create the content we love and release it as it has always been released. WIth hope that it is well recieved, and the prayer that it didn't have too many bugs left after it left you own hard drive. Best of luck to those who attempt this in the early days... but they will be dark ones.

Update: (Read that as: Still randomly CTDs) SPM has confirmed that it's not memory related... at least I have yet to see any memory reading that gets over 2900Mb. CPU usage is low - mid 20 to low 30s, GPU cruises along at a crisp 50-60% usage at right around 70 degrees C, so no issues there, nor would I have expected any. This leaves me, as I feared, with the tedious job of mod troubleshooting. So, to that end, I post below my Load Order. File Load Order (Sorted by LOOT with user rules only as stated in the Guide) As far as I can tell, I have all appropriate patches and so forth. Any thoughts? (Also, thanks to whomever ninja'd into the post and put in the spoiler tag - you are a ninja among pirates.) EDIT: This gets odder and odder. So, for the heck of it, I played tonight fully expecting to CTD about ten minutes into it. As a precaution, I d-loaded and installed the Autosave Manager mod, disabled all the standard auto saves in the settings menu, and set it to autosave every 10 minutes. I doubt this, by itself, did anything. But three hours later - still going. Even had a memory usage spike that went up to about 3.8Gb of VRAM for about ten minutes, and no crash. More and more, I'm thinking mod issue, and even more likely a script issue. TO that end - easy ways of looking at the papyrun logs? Dunno how to turn on the logging or where to look for it afterwards either. Please? :)

I had it outputting to a mod folder IN the MO file structure. That count? :D (Probably...) Will try to run it to a diff location.

Seems to have fixed the problem. On a related note, you'll also want to look at the TAVE files for Solitude, Riften, and Windhelm, as well as the Cities and Towns Enhanced Markarth Plus as well. I imainge they would result in the same errors. Just to be safe, I treated them the same as the Whiterun file. I did get one error this time during the script run process though - the LOD Gen stopped working for some reason. Stopped the whole process and started from scratch a second time, got the same error. COuldn't really see what it was doing at the time, so I can't really provide specifics, but it looked like it was trying to write to a protected area of memory from the small area of the CMD window I could see. UAC is off, and hte output was set to a non "Program Files" type folder regardless, so not sure what the deal was there. May not be anything to worry about - no issues so far, so the patch worked to this point, anyhow. THanks again for you assistace.

That would be the one. Whiterun is just so BLAH without it. No sence of a major commercial area at all, plus... well... all the pretties! I'll give your suggestion a shot. With any luck, you'll not need to burn out any additional brain cells trying to dumb this down for me after this. I'll give you the results in about an hour or so... Though, on the subject, SHOULD I be generating LODs for EVERY worldspace listed, or should I keep it confined to the Tamriel and Soltheim worlds?

First, thanks for the explanation of the problem. It's comforting to know that Bethesda took the lazy way out, so we don't have to (ie, CAN'T). WRT your fixes: 1) As far as I'm aware, none of my mods add trees to the Tamriel LOD of Whiterun. If they did, by your explanation, I would have seen this MUCH earlier. Unless it is somehow a side effect of generating the new LODs somehow? I have two mods that MAY have done this (EtaC's Whiterun Exterior add on and TAVE - Whiterun). The first adds stuff to the Whiterun approach (gate and crossroads area) and the second is strictly the Whiterun interior area. Thoughts? 2) I've gone through the Manual, and see nothing on how to do what you suggest here. I see several explanations on how to split atlas LODs, but nothing on how to tell the system to treat trees as objects for LOD, nor what the tradeoffs of doing so are. Am I missing it (yes, obviously...) somehow? A little more direction here would be useful. Thanks again to both you and Sheson for the work - Obviously, I'm a bit denser wrt this mod than most users are...

So it appears to work with a small exception - so far anyhow. I walked into Whiterun and had about 6-10 floating distant LOD trees... one growing through Adrianne's roof, one next to Breezehome, one outside the Huntsman, one about six feet in the air outside Kynareth's Temple, and a few others here and there. Backed out and rebuild the patch (fresh .esp and from an interior save, per in-game instructions) using only the Tamriel and Solstheim world builds with no change. Any ideas?

Thanks for the clarification... though I wish I'd seen that before I started the script process. I ran it on all listed worlds (mistake?) and kind of hoped for the best. Guess I'll find out.

1) Actually, I'm WANTING Skymills/Falls. Just from the way it read, this mod only needs the meshes and textures for the LOD generation, and after that's done I can essentially turn it off. Is this not a correct statement? 2) I have the billboard downloads you mentioned - I have them in a seperate mod in MO, alongside the one for Skyrim. I did NOT see one for Dragonborn however, so, based on what you just said, I still need to do that process for that DLC, correct? Also, would this not apply to Dawnguard as well? It's areas are Skyrim, as far as I know, but it does add new areas, and I have no idea if the tree LODs carry over. 3) I appriciate that there is a video... or, rather, that you too the time to do so. I am, however, in a rather increasingly small group of people who can't stand instructional videos. Is there really no 'text only' step-by-step procedure for using this? I'll take a look at the quickstart as you suggest... Hopefully that will remove any other questions and render this whole discussion moot.

You aren't so much installing them as rearranging them. MO (which STEP preaches usage of) allows you to alter load orders. By placing them in the recommended order (and cleaning the files indicated), You get an effect where each DLC is building off the fixes to the main game. Now, as to if the DLCs need to be in that particular order, I imagine not, since none of them, to my knowledge, uses assets from the other two. That said, they were released in that order, and I imagine that they had the previous ones installed when they were developing the next, so it only makes sence to keep them in that order.

The two hotfixes you mention are fixed by another STEP file later on, and thus aren't needed. If you install them seperately from the main mod and watch thier flags, they will eventually get the white lightining icon of 'Redundant', meaning that they have had all thier files overwritten by another mod... in this case, the STEP Extended Patch, I believe. The only hotfix of the three on the page you need is the one listed in the detailed instructions for the BoS.

I'm facinated by this program - and utterly mystified by it. I think I was fine going through the manual until I read the Tree LOD thing - and now I am so freakin' lost even Garmin can't fine me. As I understand it, SKYFalls/Mills won't require any special action from me apart from disabling the original mod when it's all over. Check, easy. With SFO 1.87 Basic installed... I have to split the heck out of some LOD atlas thing... and the directions for doing so are pretty unclear to me. In fact, if I understand right, I actually have to do this three times - one for Skyrim.esm, Dragonborn.esm, and the SFO esp. Is that more or less correct, and if correct, how does that process actually work? I tried to read the manual on this, and, as mentioned, can't make head or tail of what I'm actually supposed to do. Also, is all this supposed to happen BEFORE running the scripts through TES5Edit (I imagine so, but the way the manual is written, the bits and pieces required are spread out all over the place, and I can't get a clear picture). The idea of the manual is great - please don't get me wrong - but as an instruction set, I can't make head or tail of it at the moment. And that's coming from a US Navy Sailor who has to follow non-sensical proceedures all the frickin' time. I get lots of practice in interpreting oddity. Any chance of getting a condenced, less tech-termed set of instrcutions on implementing this?

From what I can tell (just did a rebuild myself a week or so ago), we're down to just the two LOOT meta rules now. I doubt that it's deletion would be an 'oversight'... it's hard to miss the fact that you just deleted something. Not updating a rule, sure, but deleting? Pretty sure it was intentional. So, either LOOT does it that way normally now, or they determined that it didn't matter. *shrug*

No significant difference that I've noticed, though others will tell you that, as a general rule, less scripts = better. Pick one and go, really - and if you run the scripted version and have issues, swap it out (though NOT mid game... had to throw that disclaimer in there.... one that I completely ignore myself at times...)

And now, the Step Forum version of "Where's Waldo".... "Where's Brumbek?" Unfortunately, for all the experiance I have in modding games, this one isn't one I have any talent in altering. I never was able to figure out 3D meshes, but give me a Q3 Engine shooter, and watch me map...

For Load Order (IE, the left panel in MO): Load in the order suggested by STEP. For Plugin Order (IE, the right panel): LOOT will take care of it, so no worries. If you are running the full extended, you also don't need to worry about the TCIY patch, since it was incorperated into the STEP Extended Patch IIRC. If not using this, be sure to grab the compatibility patches for BCS as well - they are on thier own seperate page (believe linked from the main mod page).

Surprising the amount of discussion this just spawned. That said, Hish... don't think you're gonna get your wish on the STEP inclusion. This one looks be to a matter of personal taste. Some will argue it's a fix, some an improvement over vanilla, and others say "works fine, why mess with". Whatevs... Still looks nice. Also, the elk now has a slightly less surprised look on his face... at least in my game. :)

None. Only the standard notes I get every time, not warnings. As an update - I installed the Skyrim Performance Monitor just to keep an eye on memory loads (Hadn't done this before because I don't like the data on screen for normal play). Ran for two hours with no CTD, which is a solid record on this build. I even bumped uGrids up to 7, with no issues. I'm hoping this is a case of "Well, now that I 've asked for help, I don't need it", but continued testing will bear that out. Can't see why that would change anything, but meh...

OOC - Why WASN'T Splash in already anyhow? I must have missed that reason somewhere. Oh well. Looks like it's in by definition now. :)

I've also come to this conclusion in the last hour or so. It was just another step in my troubleshooting process. If you think you can help, I have a thread open over in general support with more details.

That's actually the reason I dropped ELFX a while back - too many compatibility patches to keep straight. Heaven forbid you update a series of mods and can't recall which have patches, which don't, where they are hosted (as not all patches are hosted on the affected mod's site... or even the affecting mod's site... or even...) RS doesn't have that problem - I think I have maybe one patch for it in the lineup.

Gentlemen... I've just completed a complete rebuild of Skyrim on a SSD. All STEP Core/Extended installed per the guide, substituting mod compilations where the original no longer exists (Ruffled Feather, Wonder of Weather, etc.), along with a small collection of additional mods. Additionally, I trimmed down my last load order by the order of something like 25-50 graphical mods and another 5 to 10 that altered gameplay on some level. The original load order worked flawlessly. This one, as you may have surmised, does not. It appears, on the surface, to be a memory issue of some sort - the only symptom is a straight CTD. With that as a starting point, I quickly found out that the SKSE Memory Patch wasn't being correctly applied. Fixed, tested, same result. Following the memory path, I revisited my ENBLocal. My current system (4GB GTX980 and 16GB SysRAM on Win7) yeilded me a VideoMemory of 7740MB, which was up from the 4096 that was originally in the INI. I also dropped the reserved from 512 to 128MB. TechAngel, based on those numbers presented in another thread, has said that those numbers appear to be correct. The CTD still occurs. With no other memory-related items to examine, at least to my knowledge, I am now considering that there may be some kind of mod conflict causing the issue. I am reluctant to think this since, as I mentioned, I actually pared my current list down from a much longer list that had no issues. But, as in all other troubleshooting, you go where the indications take you. I am not looking for a one-shot bandaid miracle solution here - what I am looking for is some know-how... which I lack. I am aware that TES5Edit can be used for conflict identification and resolution via patches - what I am not aware of is HOW, exactly, this process works. I have, in the past, put my little toe in these waters and found myself completely out of my depth. Googling and searching on this forum has, as of yet, not given me any simple, easy-ish to understand guide on this subject. Based on these forums, as best I can tell you were all born knowing how to do this. So, please, if you could - some direction on this use of TES5Edit would be great, as would any additional insights on exploring where this CTD is coming from would be appriciated. If it is required for intelligent discussion, I can provide the mod list from MO on request. I don't post it now because I am pretty sure the specific mods are irrelevent to the solution at large, but hey - I've been wrong before.

So having read five pages of comments, I'm still not really sure on this mods reception - is this really worth the effort, or will it be relagated to the dust bin?

Running the newest RS alongside the ELE Lite package provided by Vividian. I know that I'm seeing ENB, which you won't, but it's still a good look and no issues here. Yes, I still get a few odd light flickers happening with EtaC, but they are, for me, fairly rare, and worth the slight break from immersion.

All that, AND adds in splash or rain as well, which I was also running. Score another easy inclusion/replacement for my mod list. Seconded as a replacement, especially in light of the fact that Isoku just changed the version numbers for these mods on Nexus to NA. Pretty sure those are gonna be vanishing sometime soon.