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mikegray

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Everything posted by mikegray

  1. Hey guys! I'm trying to put together a nice, gameplay-oriented Skyrim setup. If you check my sig, you'll see that I have a nice rig - the overclocked 290x gives me some nice performance AND lots of VRAM. I'm running a Dell u2711 2560 x 1440 monitor. I've started with a complete core STEP install, with about half the Extended elements. I ran vanilla AND all mods through ddsopt - 1024 max exteriors, 2048 max interiors. I also have CoT, Supreme Storms and ELFX installed. Without ENB, it plays superfast, buttery smooth. But after installing RealVision B, performance version, My FPS can fall to about 30 in the Morthal swamp. That's not horribe, but I want to try to demanding mods like Civil War Overhaul, and I really want smooth play, So ... I'm looking for some recommendations. - It COULD be that I'll find a setting that is slowing me down - like, the wrong AA stuff or maybe some .ini file shadow settings or a mess-up in enblocal.ini. But I think I'm OK, basically. Or maybe I got too greedy with the pretties (I've got Wet & Cold in and Flora Overhaul alpha 2 - albeit ddsop'd). - How about going back to an older ENB and combine with Hialgoboost. I've had FANTASTIC experience with that mod, and I hardly notice the resolution drop. Unfortunately, compatibility with ENB has been broken since v. 0.143, which is pre-ENB Boost. What do you guys think? Is ther an older ENB preset you'd recommend? - Or is there some other performance-oriented ENB preset (with CoT and ELFX compatibility) that you would recommend?
  2. Eh. I'm kind of thinking about CWO. I've never actually tried it out, and I'd like to. But I'm also thinking I maybe want to wait for the next stable version ... Or the next one after that! I'm aware that Helgen Reborn has some specific issues. (Sort of makes sense!) That is a mod I would definitely add at a later point in the game - like, after I've defeated the first dragon. (Mirimax, or whatever he's called.) Anyway, I meant CWO as a specific example of a more general question about modding best practices: When should STANDARD mods be added to the game? My initial understanding was that they should come in after Helgen cave. But it looks like that may not be the case.
  3. Hey guys! After more than half a year away from Skyrim, I trashed my old Mod Organizer directory and did a complete STEP install from scratch, following the guide meticulously. Time for a brand new start. However, there's one thing I missed: Back when I was modding (and ... occasionally, you know ... playing), installing mods before completion of the Helgen cave tutorial was generally contraindicated. I used to have a "prisoner" savefile parked at the character creation screen and just took it from there. However, I don't see anything about that in the STEP guide. And as I was reading through Apollo's Civil War Overhaul, I gathered that he wants people using his mod to have it in from the cart ride on. (At least, that's what I THINK he said. With his mods pages, I'm never sure what the *%&@ I'm reading.) So ... what's the lowdown these days?
  4. On the Vilja solution: Yeah, that's exactly how I did it. But building the folder structure was kind of fiddly. Good to know that the BSA will improve, not hurt performance, though. Since I actually have less mods in than I did before, I'm guessing that the uGrids experiment is slowing things down. I'll switch back to 5 and see if load times improve ... Thanks!! I HAD had a look at the plugins list, but I only just now realized that I can change the "enabled" setting from "false" to "true."
  5. I'm playing Skyrim again after taking a longish break. In the process of re-installing and testing mods, I just realized that MO no longer unpacks BSA files. After googling some I also read through the very long thread pinned here in this forum. Without getting involved in the greater philosophical questions, I have a couple practical queries: - Is there anyway to make MO unpack at least SOME mods at the time of installation or even afterwards? I'm capable of using the BSA unpacker, but it's a bit tiresome. There are a number of mods where I like to make some manual changes - e.g., swapping out the skin textures in Vilja's face - so at least in some cases, I need access to the individual files. - Could it be that leaving the BSAs packed can increase load times when the entire game is on an SSD? It seems like my load screen times are a good bit longer than they used to be (like, when entering and exiting buildings), particularly for a level 4 character at a file size of 7mb. Of course, the cause could be somewhere else entirely - I'm testing several new and/or updated mods and I'm ALSO experimenting with ugrids set to 7. However, it seemed like my load times were slower pretty much from the get go.
  6. Hi guys! I just picked up Dragon Age Origins, and, of course, I'd like to mod it too. Since I haven't had nmm installed for a very long time, I downloaded v.0.46.0 and installed. I found my way to this thread and tried to use nxmhandler.exe to register MO for Skyrim and nmm for Dragon Age Origins, but I must have messed up pretty badly! When I use "DOWNLOAD WITH MANAGER" on a DA:O mod, I get a "no handlers found" popup message from MO. ("No application registered to handle this game.") When I use "DOWNLOAD WITH MANAGER" on a Skyrim mod, I get an error message inside of MO: "Fail to request file info from nexus: error downloading." Can anyone get me going in the right direction?
  7. I'm a little confused on one point - but I'd better back up first to explain what I've done so far: - I'm working through a new set of mods I've downloaded from Nexus - most of them are STEP mods that give NPCs a helping hand in the beauty department. - I've run "4_Mod_Sorting&Pre-optimization-beta.bat," which has separated the various textures into their respective folders (exterior, normal maps, mixed uncompressed - etc. - I'm now ready to run ddsopt. - I've setup ddsopt according to the tutorial here: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt#tab=Using_DDSopt. THE QUESTION: Having done this can I now run ddsopt on every single mod, with those exact same settings - except for my own personal choices regarding resolution limits - or do I need to change some of the other constraints for each folder? I'm particularly interested in this question since most of these mods relate to things like skin, eyes, etc.
  8. Ah. The Mod Optimized folder is what I had missed. Next time I do this, knowing that will definitely simplify the job. OTOH, for current testing purposes, I'm happy with what I've got: Every mod I ddsopt'd now has two folders in the Mod Organizer mods directory: The original version is followed by a second folder (exact same name + "OPT") directly under it in the load order. I can activate or deactivate the OPT folder at will in MO's left-hand pane, which is helpful right now. (For instance, I noticed that my ddsopting Warburg's maps to 1024/512 was a bad idea. So i just unchecked the OPT folder.) The only hassle was getting all the OPT folders moved to the right position in the load order - but now that they're in, they OUGHT to stay in play, even when I copy in new version of the ddsopt'd material.
  9. Heya! I have a decent machine (win7 64, i5 2500K@4.5, 8g, 2 SSDs, HD 6950 2g), but I like to run scripted mods, and am hoping to get better stability by getting serious about texture optimization. I've recently transitioned from a full TPC installation to an almost full STEP set. I'm hoping that setting my Bethesda stuff to 1024 /512 and dialing my STEP mod textures back to "standard level" will give my game some more breathing room. Two questions: 1) I've already followed STEP directions about fixing, optimizing and reducing my Bethesda material to 1024 / 512. (I.e., vanilla, dawnguard, heathfire, dragonborn, hrdlc1-3.) However, I recently noticed "Bethesda Hi-Res Optimized" is on the STEP mod list. Is there any reason to use this or can I just ignore it? 2) I've followed directions, used the batch files and created the following set of directories: OPT Mod Exterior Normal Maps OPT Mod Exterior Textures OPT Mod Normal Maps OPT Ordinary Textures OPT Uncompressed Textures While I was at it, I took the opportunity to reduce the textures of several other mods. (Like: Craftable Cloud Storage, Vilja, Arissa alpha, Falskaar, Helgen Reborn, Footprints, Frostfall, Wet & Cold, Real Skin - Women & Men, Inconsequential NPCs, Winter is Coming.) (BTW, I noticed that Automatic Variants didn't "take" - i.e., the batch file didn't see the texture files hidden away in its "AV Packages" folder. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to drop this mod anyway, but it would be nice to have it in the batch file.) However, I'm not quite sure how I want to go about putting the material back into Mod Organizer to try it out. My current idea is to add the individual mod directories from all 5 folders into a single .7z file, extract them into a folder and run a batch rename - e.g. "Visible Windows" would become "OPT - Visible Windows." Then I could copy all the folders to my MO mod directory and put each "OPT - " folder directly below the original version in MO's left hand pane. A little bit fiddly, but this would allow pretty decent control over which reduced texture files get activated. What would you recommend?
  10. Say guys, I recently started a new game based on SkyRe and ASIS, but now, somewhere around level 30, I've come to regret the decision to use ASIS. No matter what I do (including setting "no extra spawns" to 625, all the other spawn settings to 0!), I get regular increasedSpawns.psc errors in my logs, and I have a very strong feeling that the mod is causing instability. Moreover, the thing I really wanted ASIS for was to get some fancier spells, perks and potions into my NPCs' hands. However, I've since realized that some of the combat mods (Revenge of the Enemies, Supernatural AI, Sands of Time, OBIS) do a more precise job of dialing up NPC badassery. So ... does anyone have any insight on how to get ASIS out of my game once it's there?? - The Nexus page says it's OK to just remove the whole thing - but when I try, every new papyrus log gives me 500+ lines of errors. I read soomewhere that that's actually OK ... but it scares the heck out of me. - Another idea is to leave in ASIS-Dependency and just remove the proccer file. I've tried that, but I still get regular increasedspawn.psc errors. - Ditto with creating a proccer fiel with all the checkboxes turned off. What has and/or hasn't worked for you guys? I REALLY don't want to lose this save!
  11. Shoot! I thought I had it right this time ...
  12. First, I'd better fess up that I'm crossposting this question from Nexus Forums - I'm thinking I may have better chances of getting an answer here than there. However, in my defense, I'm in the process of transitioning from TPC to STEP - although the game I'm currently testing on is NOT a new game. Anyway, here goes: I'm getting a lot of these "negative delta" errors in my papyrus logs in game that seems to be running just fine otherwise. (Just fine means: as far as can tell, at this point, for the time being, cross your fingers and knock on wood!) I tend to get longish clumps of them, and they don't seem to connect to any other kind error or warning. They can come right in the middle of, say, Frostfall messages, right before or after a VM freeze or anywhere else. Here's an example of a few lines: [11/23/2013 - 01:08:48PM] warning: Negative time delta during VM update - clamping to 0. (Current: 259419, Previous 259420, Delta: -1) [11/23/2013 - 01:08:49PM] warning: Negative time delta during VM update - clamping to 0. (Current: 259527, Previous 259528, Delta: -1) [11/23/2013 - 01:08:49PM] warning: Negative time delta during VM update - clamping to 0. (Current: 259536, Previous 259537, Delta: -1) I think "VM" means virtual machine, and I'm pretty sure that the message means that for some reason the game is having trouble keeping itself in sync. ("In sync" ... with ... um itself, I guess.) I'd be perfectly happy to ignore the whole business, but (a) I want to understand what's going one, and (b) since the log now and then generates about 100 lines of this stuff in 4-5 seconds, I'm thinking that it may not be completely benign. OH: I've switched mods in and out for hours, and I can't seem to connect the problem to any one mod, or any other set of circumstances. MY one - very, very vague - idea is that alt-tabbing out of the game could have something to do with this - or maybe even the SKSE plugins in that help that work better on my AMD card ...Â
  13. Heya! How about a little love for Supernatural AI - Vampires and Monsters? The mod is developing very rapidly right now, which makes it difficult to patch for compatibility - but it has some very interesting stuff going on. (The vampire bat spell is particularly neat: If you get in too close to a vamp and start overpowering it in melee, it will re-materialize somewhere else ... ) https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/38370/?
  14. I love watching Gopher's videos - hardly miss one. However, I often find myself wondering how the heck he can get away with switching around so many mods without bombing has savefile. I seem to recall that one of his let's-play saves ended up corrupted (Stiv, wasn't it?) But it seems like the others are indestructible ...
  15. Thanks, Smile! It looks like you're taking the optimizations recommended in the current guide a bit further than recommended in the current pre-release version of SR/LE guide. (I followed that guide to the letter to optimize all of my Bethesda content.) That's interesting. I'll have to read up a little more ... I would like to run some fairly script intensive mods, so I'm interested in finding the right level of prettiness. Thanks for giving it to me straight, Kryto! Like most things in modding, it sounds like it's hard to predict. (Hey - ummm - aren't you the mod author I was just bugging about SkyProc stuff on Nexus?? [Checked] Yeah, you are! Cool!)
  16. Heya! Helpful comments, thanks! - Yeah, I've been using Economics of Skyrim for a while now, and I didn't trust it much even before it hidden on Nexus. It seems to generate an aweful LOT of verbiage in logs. I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I just don't trust the thing. It certainly runs scripts all the time. OTOH, EoS - particularly when used with the SkyPRoc recipe generator - has this awesome function I don't want to do without: For a lot of money, you can have Smiths (a) make any custom weapons and armor set in Skyrim and (b) improve your weapons and armor. I *really* like that feature - in particular because you have to use the console to manually set the smithing level of NPC smiths for them to be able to do much improving. So ... I set Alvor to, say, 50, Eorland to 100, etc. The whole scenario just makes sense. I don't invest many perks in Smithing, 'cause I don't see my PC (who is a mage) as a smith. But I still want to be able to get nice armor and weapons for my followers, sometimes even for myself. If I want high end stuff, I save up some coin, then buy something nice. I really wish there were a newer mod to replicate this and advance it further! For example, it would cool if you could get the same options from potion-makers and enchanters. (Say, order that one, specific kind of potion you need - at 50% markup ... )  Also, as the mod stands the smiths can custom build literally anything - including one-of-a-kind daedric artifacts ... (BTW, EoS also does enchanters - but there's always been something wrong with their prices - waaaay to low!) - Do you mean Wet & Cold or Frostfall? Anyway, I have both - Wet & Cold pretty much sticks to visual effects, and I HAVE heard that it's pretty scripty. And I'm learning to be suspicious of scripts ... OTOH, I really like the way people put on hoods and/or go inside when it rains. Tres cool. Unless I hear about savegame corruption caused by it, I'd like to leave it in. - Oh yeah! I forgot SkyRe. Of course. No way I'd play without it! -Â
  17. Just a thought: Is there any chance that running MO with administer rights could clear up the problem? That solved a few weird issues I was having. I have both SUM and my other SkyProc mods installed as a standard MO mods. SUMfinds them without any trouble and spits the .eps files into the Overwrite folder. I then have MO generate profile-specific plugins. Works just right so far forthe SkyProc mods I'm using/testing: ReProccer, ASIS and Economics of Skyrim Recipe Generator. (Note: Of course, I don't have AV in my chain. However, the AV guys say they're fully SUM-compatible ... )
  18. Heya Smile! Thanks for the friendly lines! Two Questions: 1) Would you happen to have a link to a step-by-step explanation of that whole game DDSOpt fix? (And maybe a few remarks pros and cons!) I found the instructions for my current fix (all Normals to 1024 x 1024) very clear - though following them did entail a lot of work! 2) About the four warnings I mentioned above. To choose an example, the Vilja thread in this area of the forum lists practically every one of them, including conflicts with mods like RLO, which I do run! (Link: https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=2507) I'm just wondering ... how bad are the consequences of leaving the mod as is? For example, is this more like fixing an "Identical to Master" issue in tes5edit (to optimize some more) - or like fixing a deleted record issue (potentially catastrophic)? I ask in particular because a lot of these mods are still in development. I could spend hours fixing all my mods in tes5edit only to discover a week later that three of them have been updated. (For example, the Vilja team is currently working on a new version with considerably expanded content.) Now, if the fixes will make the difference between a bombed savefile and a clean game, it'll be time well spent. But if it's a question of getting a couple extra FPS, I'd rather spend my time playing! ;-)
  19. Hi you guys! I'm coming back to Skyrim after giving up high-level character in a pretty heavily modded game. I have a decent PC: i5 2500K OC'd to 4.5 GHZ, 8gig Ram, Radeon 6950 (modest OC) with 2gig VRAM, everything running from SSDs. I'm running a big screen: 2560 x 1440. Windows 7. I currently have a complete and up-to-date version of Texture Pack Combiner - not quite the same as STEP/SR, but similar in many respects. (I also built it with a GUI designed for TPC - that automatically puts TPC's output through DDSopt.) Here are my main (most demanding) mods: CoT+ RLO, More Hotkeys Please, SkyUI, SkyRe, FrostFall, SkyTest, Convenient Horses, Amazing Followers, Vilja, Dynamic Things, General Stores/Craftable CloudStorage, Footprints, Wet and Cold, Realistic Needs and Diseases, Economics of Skyrim. I have ENB Boost running, but no ENBs. I played the game for a few months and had a lot of fun - but I made waaaaay too many changes along the way, definitely removed some stuff I should have left alone, and by now (somewhere around level 60) the CTDs are just too obnoxious. So, I'm planing a new game and studying up. I'd like a little more stability this time through. (I'm also hoping to replace the Economics of Skyrim mod and The General Stores/cloud Storage mods with mods that are still being updates and are less scripty.) After spending a while studying Neo's SR, I have now cleaned all the vanilla .esm files (including DLC) with tes5edit and cleaned all of my mods. I also just finished putting all the vanilla, HRDLC and DLC files through DDSopt (with 1kx1k normals), storing the new files in Mod Organizer folders. I'm wondering about 2 things: First, are any of the mods above particularly dangerous? Any I should just drop for good or replace with something else? Second, in studying Neo's list, I noticed four kinds of warning that are completely new to me: Warning:This mod does not forward some fixes from the unofficial patches Warning:This mod has an ESP conflict with ... Warning:This mod does not carry forward changes from the various DLCs ... Warning:This mod does not forward some fixes from the unofficial patches ... How important are these warnings? All four warnings apply, at various points, to mods I would like to run! Quite a few of them even apply to Vilja! At this point, I would actually like to stop modding and start playing, and the solutions look pretty cumbersome. OTOH, I'd like to end up with a savefile I can keep using for a while!
  20. Hi guys! I've never actually posted over here before, but I've very much appreciated the expertise shown by people here and read pretty regularly. In particular, I've spent s lot of time reading through the "agony aunt" section, and have found a lot of helpful advise. So I though I'd toss in a contribution for folks with corrupted savefiles who have already tried the 30 day timeout without success: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/31675/ I used the previous version of flexcreator's script scrubber as a last ditch effort to save my current character (level ~40), and I've been very, very happy with the results. That was 3 weeks ago (now level ~55), and I haven't seen any major problems since then, notwithstanding a VERY heavy load of script intensive mods. Now, I know you STEP guys are incredibly cautious and practically never mess up - but in case you should, the guy has a new, considerably improved version of his mod. It's much easier to use AND it's supposed to restore scripts even better than before. I haven't tested the new version on my game, but it looks like a great resource. Caveats: (1) I'm not connected to this mod in any way, shape or form - just a "satisfied customer" - and I wanted to give back a little to this forum. (2) This DOES amount to radical surgery on your savefile. It worked out great for me, but it may not for someone else. Don't just use it for kicks!Â
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