exploiteddna

yeah i tend to agree.. but of course its a balance.. its nice to have textures that add some spice but its also important to keep true to bethesda's intent

hmmm.. not looking so good, friend

darn, you beat me too it (being the scrooge) :) jk but yeah, umm.. after flipping through all the colors, normals, and alphas in PS it looks to be a good piece of work that, as it usually is with this author, made "from scratch" (i.e. stock textures/photos from somewhere non-bethesda). Â The first things I always look at when im viewing a texture pack for whiterun is the grass. Whiterun grass, to me, seems to be the one texture that can make or break a pack. Â Unfortunately, I don't think im going to like this grass texture. Its very non-detailed and looks a lot like mush/slush without any real 'blades' of grass. Â Who knows, maybe once its rendered in-game it will look fabulous.. but generally i can get a pretty good idea from looking in PS. Ok, so that being said, I think the pack is very nice and flavorful. It adds a little more color to some of the wood pieces and seems to do so in an (semi) integrated way. If nothing else, I may use this pack and then overwrite with a different wrfieldgrass texture. Great work though, CaBaL, as always.

Couldn't agree more. And to call this a "lighting" mod is a complete misnomer. It touches exactly 0 lights. It is not a lighting mod/overhaul. Nothing more than a graphics mod/sweetfx profile. Like you said though, most people only look at results and don't realize that "same" results != same mechanism

Idk.. for me it's an unnecessary cosmetic mod and gives a look that's purely preferential and deviates a little too much from vanilla. Just my 2 cents

Hmmmmm... Maybe the author will release a version without the Easter egg and sans jokes (and maybe replace the merchants name with a real TES merchant instead of his made-up name).

1. If you follow the SR guide, the bashed patch.esp file usually stays in the "overwrite" part of MO. "overwrite" is nothing more than a folder that sits inside MO install directory, and anything that is in this folder will overwrite ANY and ALL files that it conflicts with. Now, lets talk about how mods are installed into MO. Basically each mod that you install through MO will go into its own unique folder. Each unique folder for each unique mod is structured just like the default Skyrim directory (i.e. ..Data\textures\plants\...). The only difference is MO omits the \Data level and starts at the next highest level. (if this is confusing already, please study what a typical skyrim install directory looks like so you know where each type of game file is supposed to be. an easy way to review this is to look at the 'Data' tab on the right side of the MO window. If you click the Data tab you will see a bunch of loose files, followed by a series of sub-directories that you can click on that will further expand into more loose files and sub-sub-directories. The top level is the \Data directory and contains all of your ESP files and BSA files) like the default Skyrim directory (i.e. ..Data\textures\plants\...). The only difference is MO omits the \Data\.. level and starts at the next highest structure level. So, if you were to navigate to your ModOrganizer main install folder, you will see about 10-20 folders, including "overwrite", "Installed Mods", "Profiles", etc.  When you install a mod and a unique folder is created for that individual mod, it is automatically placed in the "Installed Mods" folder i just mentioned. If you open the "Installed Mods" folder you should find a whole bunch of individual folders -- one for each of the mods you have installed. Pick one and open it. You are now in what the Mod Organizer program treats as the skyrim Data directory. That means if the mod whose folder you are in has an ESP file, it will be located right there. If it has textures and meshes, you should see one folder for textures and another one for meshes. Does this make sense? Ok, so the point of this is to show you that you dont have to actually install a mod using the MO interface.  You can, for example, create a folder titeld 'Bashed Patch - Character 1' and place the folder alongside the rest of the folders for all your other mods, then put a bashed patch ESP file inside of it, open up MO and find your new bashed patch "mod" (probably at the bottom of the mod list window since all new mods are automatically placed at the bottom - assuming your window is arranged so that 'max' priority is at the bottom), activate the new bashed patch mod, then go over to the right side of the window where you activate your ESP files and will find your bashed patch.esp waiting for you. If you want to activate it, you can now do so just like any other mod. Repeat this process for all of the bashed patches you have for all your different profiles/characters. The only drawback (as i said in previous post) is that when you rebuild the patch in wrye bash, MO will place the new rebuilt patch in the "overwrite" folder. All you need to do is open the folder (in windows, not MO) and move the new patch into the mod folder you made for your patch and overwrite the old one that is in there. 2. All profiles automatically have their important data separated into their own folders.  I suggest you browse through the MO install folder(s) so you can get a better understanding of how MO functions and how it keeps all your profiles/files/mods/preferences separate. More importantly you need to learn which of these things can and can not be changed from one profile to the next. For example, you mentioned the MO ini file. There is only one MO ini file. So you can create 50 profiles, but they all use the same MO ini. Contrary to that, each profile has the capability to use their own unique skyrim ini files. Each profile can also have different mods active/inactive, different ESPs active/inactive, etc. All profiles will have the same mods available to them but they dont have to be used. Again, spend some time browsing. Pay attention the folders i listed by name ("overwrite", "Installed Mods", "Profiles") and also open up and read all of the ini/text/cfg files (in notepad/notepad++) and get an idea of how things function. This will help you when youre trying to figure out little tricks to do accomplish the things youre trying to do. 3. No. it needs to be just like i typed (im 99.99% sure). It needs to be 'Bashed Patch, 0.esp'  replace 0 with 1,2,3, etc.  Make sure you place a comma at the end of the word Patch. Again, just like this exactly:  Bashed Patch, 0.esp  Otherwise it wont be recognized by BOSS and maybe not even be recognized by WryeBash. 4. No idea what youre talking about. You shouldnt need to do anything or disable anything. There are some options you could choose when building your patch, but that is only for preference. Oh, and the SR guide/STEP tells you to set the crime radius option when you build your bashed patch. Read this. 5. No. You dont ever add mods to the bashed patch. You leave it alone. It is built using code and instructions from very talented modders and programmers. If you want to "add mods" to an ESP file, download and play with TES5Edit and have yourself a blast. But seriously, ESP files (or "mods" as youre referring to them) should remain as they are. Unless you are making a patch using the SR guide detailed instructions, then you dont need to be adding anything to anything. There is MUCH for you to learn before you get to the point of adding things to mods (or esp files or whatever).  Remember, a bashed patch achieves the exact same thing as the patches you make following the SR guide.  The difference is the bashed patch focuses on leveled lists. It does a few other things, but for the sake of this discussion (and all you should be concerned with), it simply combines the leveled lists from any and all ESP files that are in your load order, this way all of the leveled list features from all of the mods will be present in your game. The patches that Neo has you make for SR are basically the same thing except it is for all other incompatibilities/conflicts OTHER THAN leveled lists. Unfortunately there is no utility that can help with these types of patches. These need to be made by hand. Not a big deal though bc Neo gives very detailed instructions (even though it can be time consuming). And im hopeful that there will be a utility to create the universal patch someday (were getting close with things like skyproc/skybash--but thats beyond the scope of this discussion and i dont want to confuse you even further) I think thats it for now. the best piece of advice i can give you is to investigate things. dig around in your folders to see whats going on behind the scenes. most of this software and tools for modding are pretty simple and easy to figure out how they work and how they are structures, which can only help you.

lol yeah, since using non-vanilla textures is the primary reason for the increased memory usage.. so if we use only vanilla textures, we wont even get near 3.1gb and thus we wont need his 'fix'

yeah i personally use the dwemer metal package of his, which i have pieced together using ~half from 'rust n scratch' option and the ~half from the 'clean' option. I let that package overwrite anything in the Wood, Metal, Stone Workshop.  Also I was using his dragonborn landscape textures, but have taken a liking to the ash landscapes textures from Serious HD, so I let those overwrite Langley dragonborn (which only leaves a few of Langley textures still active). It is all mostly good stuff in my opinion and he really knows what he's doing, meaning Im pretty sure he has some sort of formal training (either that or is a very talented and dedicated hobbyist, but i dont think thats the case). Irrelevant really, but..Â

if anyone needs the old version i can try to find a way to get it to you

So Langley just released an update for this mod and one of the changes is that the mod has been separated into various packages according to content.  The first thing to consider is whether or not we want to proceed with the full mod such that we recommend all of the packages, or do we use this as an opportunity to omit certain parts that don't make the grade?  The other thing we'll need to do is determine which textures have actually been updated and which are still the same.

wrye bash comes with multiple bashed patch esp files, look around the wryebash installation folder and you should find the extra ones. If not, all you need to do is copy your current bashed patch and rename it. I have 3 bashed patches, one for each of my different profiles. As far as keeping them separate from each other, you have several options. You can either create a unique mod installation folder for each patch (i.e. ..ModOrganizer\installed mods\bashed patch 1\.. ), then activate the appropriate one for each of your profiles. With this method you wont have to rename your bashed patches since each one will have a unique install folder. The other thing to note is that each time you rebuild your patch it will be dumped into the 'overwrite' folder and you will need to manually remove it and paste it into its install folder to overwrite the old one. This method does require more work to set up and maintain, but it has the advantage of not overcrowding your plugin list/load order (since the only bashed patch esp you will see is the one you have activated in the mod list). Your other option is to rename your patches and keep them all in the overwrite folder permanently. Then just activate the appropriate esp for the currently active profile. This method is easier, but has the drawback of keeping all of the bashed patches visible in the load order at all times. If you do choose this method, the names of your bashed patches should follow this format: Bashed Patch, 0.esp Bashed Patch, 1.esp Bashed Patch, 2.esp etc. In terms of a huge patch for all of STEP, it would not work. In theory it does, but not in practice. You end up with way too many dependencies and an esp file with 100 master files. It's just not practical and would be far too much work to maintain and would give very little benefit. With regard to uploading SR patches, it is possible. I have actually thought of this myself before, to help save time for people. Although its good for people to learn how to do these things on their own, so there's that..

yeah thats what i was afraid of. oh well

Does anyone know a way of removing all of the endorsement flags, aside from manually going through each one?? Any clever ideas? Ive tried highlighting them all and endorsing but it only endorses the one you click on. Ive gone through them all in the past, one by one, but I just updated to the new 0.99 beta and now i have endorsement flags for every single 'mod' in my list, which is about 450 packages.. so it will take a long time to manually endorse/not endorse that many. Maybe theres some application that can open the meta file for each mod and add true or false for endorsed status?? that kind of thing is too advanced for me, if such a thing even exists.

Yeah i agree. The hectrol has grown on me. And, even though this is not STEP-approved yet, when you use interior/dungeon lighting mods like ELFX, the hectrol textures come out to look rather similar to vanilla in terms of color. But if you look at the compares i posted (obviously without any lighting mods, etc.), the hectrols are a lighter shade of color than the others. Â If I were basing it solely on the compares, I would probably opt for Beauty. That being said, there is one drawback to using Beauty in my opinion, and thats the fact that the textures being used for caves are extremely similar to the textures he uses for the mines.. such that there would be very little difference between caves and mines. Maybe use hectrol for caves (since that's all his mod covers anyway) and then use Beauty just for the mines

Beauty of Skyrim - Shot 1 Beauty of Skyrim - Shot 1 i just decided to make a new post instead, that way you would know theres been an update in the thread. So these are the same scenes as i posted yesterday, with Beuaty of Skyrim - Caves installed

my only hesitation with something like this is that i think it could potentially cause more problems than it does good. It almost gives people too much power... I think it's really important for people to understand exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it before they decide to use an automated process that does it for them. As such, i think it should only be recommended for advanced/power users and mod authors, not so much for the average mod user. That being said, I think its a great piece of work and I commend the author for the work he/she did on the script. I have tested it out myself and for the most part it does exactly what it's supposed to. Nice work

yeah you can just disable it in the MCM menu without even having to disable to ESP (which could potentially cause problems down the road)

:facepalm:Â its always something i thought the protocol was: Â Vanilla >> Â current STEP >> proposed STEP so i thought that anything having to do with a different proposed mod (i.e. Beauty of Skyrim) would go into its own respective thread. but again, it looks like i was wrong. ^$@$^ Ill get the screenshot for Beauty (in the same exact locations, of course) and edit my post to include that.

awesome. ive just set the same settings in my ini, except im trying out uExteriorCellBuffer=25 (5cells x 5cells) ive also thought about tweaking iPreloadSizeLimit .. where in the past people have messed with it to increase preload size, we may be able to use it to our advantage by actually limiting the preload.

i'm with you on this a hundred percent

yeah, they have grown on me a little bit.. im still not sure though, i still have my reservations

Vanilla-HRDLC Current STEP - Snow and Rocks 2K Hectrol Caves - Med Res 2K Scene: a different shot just down the hallway from where the other shots were taken, still in BFB