mobias

Thanks for the added comments people. I'd just like to say that I do not expect a simple one button, push and everything unfolds mod. That would be a dream of course, but I know i would be overly optimistic to expect this, yet I still kinda hoped this was the direction STEP was headed in. I do not mind working and playing around with mods...its fun in limited quantities of time/effort. I sound whiney because I've literally tried like 3 times in different months of the years to reinstall all the new requested mods, organize them, pour through quick and dirty application setups configs and readme's, tool use and mod readme's...and even for someone fairly savvy on a pc...its is a LOT of time and work...I've complained in the past that the STEP instructions are too enormously complex, and there are gaps where one has to be super intuitive to locate help on how EXACTLY to do the next steps. [Texture compressing/BSA's/ Wrye Bash etc]. I suppose it would be easy for a young guy with no family obligations and RL getting in the way, but I do have these, so when I pour several nights into this...and still feel like i'm only 20% finished with the entire process.....it seems overwhelming...then I quit for a while....then forget where I was at in the whole process [even with my own notepad log] then the mods get old and dropped and new ones added....back to square one again. Where's the shiney RED button! ha

Cool. Well, thanks for the heads up. I had a feeling it might be a bit more than everyone can chew, so I think you're right. I'll grab some beer, sit down on a weekend and go to town. Skyrim has been calling for far too long.

Yes...Mr. Dragon Lord, I am aware there are packs. I didn't say there weren't any packs available. I'm sure there was a lot of work put into those packs, but are they all inclusive? How do you even begin to decide which one to choose? Can you only choose one, do they play nice with say, the weather and lighting pack? That's why I've been waiting. The mod list that's been included in step is what I was hoping was put together in this fashion. While I imagine this is an enormous undertaking, I was hoping this was the direction they were alluding to....I was wondering...when the 'official'...big...Version 3.0.....hard worked STEP version of a pack...including applicable newly revamped instruction page etc. would be released. If it's not going to be for another year, I might as well dive into those other ones and see if I can make something work. Thanks for the links....i'll check them out...

Without finding any other applicable post...and I seemingly can't create a new post...I just wanted to ask as a [want to be] user of the STEP project for years [haven't ever completed a fully functioning install/playthrough] I am wondering, with almost a year gone by without any stable, released packs [v.3.0] WHEN WHEN WHEN are they going to start releasing this stuff!?!? Are we going to have another Bethesda Elder scrolls release before we get to enjoy Skyrim? I've been holding out for almost years now to play a nice stable modded game...but pull out every time as so much changes or gets corrected with each release i get frustrated.Plus, it really is a major ordeal learning how to do it perfectly, with all the apps and compressing textures and and fixes....sigh, anyway. Rant over...I'm just very eager to know when a stable v3.0 will be coming around. I don't see any news regarding it in the announcements..

Guard, I assume that..but I ask about the packs specifically, because I've gone and attempted a couple times already going through the current process..and it is honestly a big pain in the butt. I'm not one to shirk away from the effort of modding, I don't mind spending time here and there modding games, but i'm a busy family guy, it is daunting to try to read through a hundred readme's to try to learn a dozen applications that have their own quirks and processes, then .bsa's and texture compressing, logging FPS tests and BOSS and etc etc....then as soon as I got close to finishing it, they'd remove or add mods or change the entire order of mods etc....just....frustratingly complex. That's why i've been patiently waiting for theses super packs to come out. The best example I've had in gaming, was the old Grey Wolves superpak for Silent Hunter 3....that was an amazing accomplishment, a couple downloads, and .exe, and done....

Without finding any other applicable post...and I seemingly can't create a new post...I just wanted to ask as a [want to be] user of the STEP project for years [haven't ever completed a fully functioning install/playthrough] I am wondering, with almost a year gone by without any stable, released packs [v.3.0] WHEN WHEN WHEN are they going to start releasing this stuff!?!? Are we going to have another Bethesda Elder scrolls release before we get to enjoy Skyrim? I've been holding out for almost years now to play a nice stable modded game...but pull out every time as so much changes or gets corrected with each release i get frustrated.Plus, it really is a major ordeal learning how to do it perfectly, with all the apps and compressing textures and and fixes....sigh, anyway. Rant over...I'm just very eager to know when a stable v3.0 will be coming around. I don't see any news regarding it in the announcements..

So I noticed the available BCF on the STEP guide for this mod was made with the old 1.17 version. I'm pretty limited to using BCF's as opposed to creating them, as the instructions for doing this in the BAIN guide are somewhat confusing to me. Any way to update this?

I too am at this exact point, and can't proceed further until I figure this out. There definitely should be instructed and mentioned a naming structure to be done BEFORE or AS one is downloading them into the mod directory, as I've had plenty of redundant, renaming work to accomplish once I finally get to the utility guides. Anyways, I've read the instructions as you noted, and it still doesn't answer the question that Fazel mentioned. I've named my mods sequentially as well, and it does exactly that, puts D_11 right after D_1 etc. The screenshot still reference a simple 'D_' prefix, and I can't see how that works when setting each group to 'o' , '1' etc, as there were mods in the STEP guide list that were specifically NOT in alphabetical order...

I'll just throw my two cents in... I've been plugging away slowly with this huge STEP endeavor, and as much as I applaud all the hard work that's gone into it- it isn't easy...even for me, whom spent more time messing with morrowind mods than i did playing [or finishing] the game. I told myself i'd not do that again, but to find a simple, essential list of mods to clean everything up and make it look pretty. Well here i am again. I have to keep a friggan notepad to keep track of the dozens of things I need to remember to configure this project correctly, and even with all that, i'm sure i'll have messed something up. Its not the mods themselves, its all the utilities that come with their own in-deph configuration, the ambiguous order of operation [compress textures looks fun- one mod at a time, or all later? or at all??], the quirks and procedures that add to the fun. I'm not a developer or programmer, but it does sometimes feel like you have to be one, or at least VERY savvy. With that being said, I can see this mod list getting bigger and bigger with each release, and the mods selected seem to be just a 'tad' more complex to configure. This one might not be THAT bad...but it does beg the question....do we really want mods that require creating patches and/or known conflicts with other STEP mods etc? Like i said, less is more, and this mod is cool [no disrespect to the author], but if we have to keep a journal of what needs to be loaded in what order, because there's like 15 different mods that require such attention...maybe we need to wait till they are a tad more polished, or finalized... It's going to be really hard to not look at the change log when I'm finally loaded up, to see all the bugs i should be fixing, and trying to update the mods. [contrary to recommendation i know]. Anyways, sorry to rant in this one particular mod's thread. perhaps i should place this somewhere else?

THANK you tormenator! That helps quite a bit! There are just so many guides and little instructions but they're scattered all over. Wish they revamped the STEP guide just a tad more for people like me that just want a clear, what-to-do-next process and all in a row. Maybe i'll work my way up and be a contributor or something, to maybe clear some of it up for future modders! :) [i've just now re-read the spot where I need to rename and number ALL the mods, by section...so that is taking awhile. When that's done i'll take them out of their folders, which are grey and useless as they appear in the Installer tab, and plop them all one higher in the BASH INSTALLERS folder. At least that way I know they will appear so I can work with them.]

I'm going to assume this MCM version is the best one to use for the 'Main' file the wiki mentions...?

In keeping with my very noobish questions: Now that I can see the folders in the 'Installers' tab in WB, I don't exactly know what to do. they have a grey diamond next to them, when i double click on any part of the line it opens up a windows box showing the contents of the mods i have installed there. [multiple by catagory]. Now I see in the instructions that it says to install the packages directly into the Bash Installers folder, do I want to upend my helpful folder structure and just dump all the mod packages directly into this folder? What then will that do for me? I experimented with a couple mods, and it just shows them as a pink square and a grey square... Is this how I want to view them or does it matter? The basic question I'm having a hard time locating in the guides...is EXACTLY how do I start installing these Mods!? for the fixes, I just opened up the packages and dropped the appropriate folders/files in the Data folder..that seemed to populate them [the ones with .esm/esp's anyway] into the 'Mods' tab, but i have a nagging feeling i'm NOT supposed to install them like this? -but rather somehow via WB itself? What is the point of the Installer tab really? Sorry if these seem like dumb questions...It's late at night and I usually beg for STEP by step instructions...

EUREKA! God@mn if that first post there didn't fix my issue!! THANK you z929669 ! ! Now, to figure out what to do with them now that the folders are there....heh.

Thanks for the reply. So at least you're confirming at least half of what I did should have worked, but the problem is, it didn't. I placed copies of a 7zip and a .Rar file in both the Bash Installer folders, and I still see nothing. Do double check what Wrye Bash has actually installed though as sometimes it will get it wrong if the downloaded archive has a weird file structure. Not sure what you mean, I'm pretty sure it installed, as it launches fine [?]. What do you mean a weird file structure from a downloaded archive? I usually just save all my mods into a folder, then I copy/pasted the examples into the Skyrim Mods/Bash Installer/ file. I don't get anything in the 'Installers' tab of WB. I tried into /Bash Installer/Bash and nothing either. I'm thinking though, maybe something did get messed up, and I'll just delete all the bash folders and uninstall WB and reinstall and see what happens. Of note, I think when you first install WB and launch it [which I may have before tweaking the ini., it creates that default folder in "H:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Mods\Bash Installers"..perhaps this is confusing WB as I have it pointed to a different folder. I don't know. It seems like it should be simple but I must've messed something up. I also thought I read somewhere, WB only 'reads' 2 folders deep?? Would this mean I would need those ini location folders pointed to something very near the root level of my hard drive? could this be a reason? But I can't imagine this to be an issue, as the default folder is at least 5-6 folders deep! sigh

Hi everyone. First post. I'm very excited to get this STEP project nailed down. Couldn't find my answer in the forums. I'm going step by step, but am a bit hung up on the Wyre Bash guide, and specifically what to do next now that I have all the mods installed in nice neat folders. I'm fairly good at following directions, but am not getting the expected results it says. 1) It says recommended ini tweaks to the BASH.ini to setup the folders to where WB will look for the mods, but then on the next tab it says you should manually download/install mods into the Bash Installer folder [the one that's adjacent] to the Skyrim 'game' folder (in steam), however, I set my ini up to look for my mods [based on the example ini] within a separate folder. Either way, when I launch WB, I see the mods I've installed into the Data folder [by manually dropping them in] on the 'Mods' tab, but when I click on the 'Installers' tab, i'm supposed to see installers and such, but don't see anything. 2) I've experimented with copying 7zip and .Rar packages of mods into BOTH 'Bash Installer' folders, including putting them within the subfolders I created [to keep them organized] as well as directly loose into the 'Bash Installer' folders. Neither supplies any entries in the WB installers tab. I guess I'm a little fuzzy on the verbiage as well. What exactly do you guys mean by 'packages' and 'archives' and installers' and wizards and BCF's etc. Its almost overwhelming trying to keep this all sorted. Am i installing all the mods from within WB once I figure out how to get them loaded in there properly? or do I just continue droping the mod contents manually into the Data folders etc?? Basically- I need VERY specific folder structures/locations for where to put EXACTLY what. I know I ask a lot ;). Thanks everyone for any help, and for this great modding project!