musicdemon

I did some pretty exhaustive testing according to the recommendations in the STEP guide, and am pretty happy with my final setup. Here's the link to my excel spreadsheet on the wiki, with all raw data from every benchmarking run. There's a "Summary" worksheet that compares the results. I did 5 benchmarking runs for step 2.M, testing out different AA settings. I also did separate runs isolating textures in this fashion: 1) Baseline STEP 2) Optimized Textures (according to this guide) 2) Opt Textures + Reduced Normals My mod list is exactly the same as STEP 2.2.2. No more, no less. The bottom line is that I saved an average of 100MB of VRAM after reducing the textures with DDSopt, and an additional 30MB of VRAM by reducing the normals of 10 packages. These packages were the ones marked as "Note 6" on the Mod Texture Properties page of the guide. I used the default DDSopt settings recommended. These screenshots were taken with no anti-aliasing or SSAO enabled, with all other Nvidia Inspector settings set to the Baseline values at the start of the guide: STEP baseline --> Optimized Textures --> Opt. Textures + Reduced Normals   Perhaps these screenshots would go nicely in the Appendix? That was pretty much the only thing missing in the whole guide, so I'm happy to fill the void :) EDIT: My system specs say I'm using a HDD, but I'm actually using a 1TB HDD accelerated by a 60GB SSD with Smart Response Technology.

That's strange. I opened and edited both of those files in both Notepad++ and WB, but spacing was being preserved, either way. Are you using WB version 303? By the way, is it okay that WB skips those vanilla ESPs that I mentioned above? I can see how it might be more difficult balancing texture packs as my STEP modding progresses, if all I have is raw files in the Data folder.

Just following up - I resolved the issue before by "Enabling" the Installers tab. Doh! Keep up the good work, guys :) I'm putting together a benchmark spreadsheet identical to the example given and will submit it once I've completed the STEP process. Where would I submit that, by the way?

Everything's going smoothly, but I noticed that WB skipped HighResDLC01.esp (don't remember actual filenames offhand) and HighResDLC02.esp, but installed HighResDLC03.esp. Is this normal? No other files were missing or had any problems. After scouring the SB documentation, I enabled only the standard textures plugin of that complex package I mentioned earlier and ran some benchmarks without the high-res DLC textures. Then, I ticked off the checkboxes for the HRDLC modules and installed the package again. After seeing the skipped files, I Annealed the package, but nothing changed. Should I "Override Skipped Files"? I'm not 100% sure, but I think those ESPs are still necessary.

Ah, good catch! I can finally see them now. I could've sworn I tried that option earlier, but maybe I had the files in the Data directory at the time. If I were to re-make this into a single, complex package, is this the right format? I'm not 100% on the prefix generation for BAIN packages. Hi-res and Vanilla Textures.7z ....00 STD ........[contents of STD archive] ....01 HRDLC1 ........[contents of HRDLC1 archive] ....02 HRDLC2 ........[contents of HRDLC2 archive] ....03 HRDLC3 ........[contents of HRDLC3 archive]

Thanks for the response! UAC is completely disabled. Here are those screenshots: I also ran WB from the command-line with the debug switch to see if any errors popped, but the error log was clean. Also, I tried switching tabs in WB a few times, but the switches were instantaneous, so maybe the data isn't refreshing properly?

Thanks for making this guide! After Step 7 of the "optimize the Textures" section is done, what should our file hierarchy look like? I moved the four archive files to the Bash Installers directory, but WB doesn't recognize them (they aren't listed). It doesn't recognize them if the archives are in the Data directory, either. Here's what my hierarchy looks like:

Thanks for making this guide! I'm having some trouble, though, getting Wrye Smash 303 to recognize anything other than Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, and Batched Patch, 0.esp. I completed the Skyrim Installation Guide and did all 3 of the optional steps (Remove redundancies in the HRDLC, Optimize the non-texture vanilla BSAs, Optimize the vanilla BSAs with textures). I also configured all of the bash.ini variables by hand. When I right-click the Package column of the Installers tab and select "Open", it takes me right to the folder where my .7z "simple package" archives are, shown below. What am I doing wrong? Here's my bain.ini file. I've tried changing the folder Bash it looks at and adjusting compression settings, but it still won't recognize my archives. EDIT: The step I'm getting this info from is the "Archiving the textures" box on this page.