exploiteddna

ive found some of the game's fog textures in textures\effects\ but ive only found two, neither of which are used (i dont think) by the fog that is targeted by Boris' volumetric fog code. If anyone knows the name and/or location of the textures i am referring to, please let me know, thanks edit: just to clarify, ive found: - dimfog.dds - fxfogheavy.dds both in textures\effects but neither seem to affect the volumetric fog appearance

the mods getting stuck at 0% will happen to me from time to time, but not very often. When this happens, the best way to resolve the issue is to manually delete the mod file and its associated meta file (i.e. delete AwesomeModName.rar and AwesomeModName.rar.meta). These files can be found in the downloads folder of your MO installation directory (or whichever location you chose in Settings). Close MO before you do this, then delete the files, then reopen MO and they should be gone. If they are still there then you should now be able to get rid of them from inside of MO. As for the frequency at which you are experiencing this issue, i would look at your MO settings that pertain to the Nexus servers and server preference and make sure you dont have anything messed up. Then, if all else fails and you are 100% certain this is not user error, file a detailed report with Tannin's bug tracker. Another thing worth mentioning is that when this behavior happens with me, it seems to be caused when I attempt to download a file that is already in my downloads, it asks if i would like to proceed and rename the new one, I choose 'no' in an attempt to cancel the new download, but then the download goes into its perpetual 0% state.

i know this hasnt been commented on for a week now, and i dont like unnecessarily reviving dead threads, but i have some peace that would like to say on the off chance the author (or anyone else close to the mod/author) reads this. I just wanted to say that I have the utmost respect for this author and the level of quality that is found in the vast majority of the textures, regardless of tastes or preference. Also, I can certainly appreciate the many hours of work she has put into these textures. I do believe that there are many textures that would fit very nicely into STEP, some in Core, some in Extended; then there are some that dont fit the STEP bill at all. That's not to say they aren't good textures because most are; it just means the style deviates too far from our goals at STEP. Because of this, and due to the current testing protocols and the general structure of STEP, it is impractical to continue considerations for this mod. Who knows, perhaps it will be a better fit sometime in the future.

i like it! i think youd be the perfect person to author such a pack.

lol. that is a lot of very "heavy", game-changing mods! good luck to you

basic

i agree. but that's not always a bad thing. i think the author (mystery modder) uses the Super Bladepro filters and similar texturizer plugins. He's posted a few images showing some of the plugins he uses, but i dont remember where i saw them. I think this technique works well enough for fantastical type applications and materials (like giant mushrooms and falmer architecture for example), but not so much for objects you want to have a realistic appearance.

i love these responses! lots of food for thought here!

If you're anything like me, you love Skyrim and you love all aspects modding it. Sure, we all have different styles, but the passion is still the same. Inevitably, from time to time, we all run into that wall where we think we have seen every cool mod on the Nexus and have maybe even searched TESA and other similar sites known to host Skyrim mod packages, but just can't find anything new and exciting to install, tweak, tinker, etc. I know for the longest time I have had a few mods in my load order that I know are not the most popular mods, but good enough to where I very rarely (if ever) remove it from my load order. This got me thinking, 'surely im not the only one with the hidden gems tucked away', and decided to write this thread. It should make for interesting conversation and, who knows, maybe we'll all find something "new" worth checking out. So, what hidden gem(s) are you always sure to have in your load order? Ill go first. One mod that I always make sure is in my load order (unless im doing official STEP testing ;) ) is More plants and recipes for Hearthfire including Dawnguard and Dragonborn plants For whatever reason I love having the ability to plant and grow these additional food and alchemy ingredients. I use the smaller version that only includes vanilla items. The other version adds brand-new ingredients to the world of skyrim, but im not a fan of this. Anyway, this is my first hidden gem :D

Yeah I know most log errors are harmless but thought I'd err on the side of caution

i know this probably will not be well-received, but it's how i feel. I think this whole mod should be scrapped from testing, and here are my reasons: - it is way too diverse, covers too many things, in too many areas - as such, it conflicts with nearly every texture pack currently available to some degree - it is an advanced users pack and, per the author's description, not intended to be used as a whole - because of this, the amount of time and resources required to properly test is increased tenfold If we decide to continue with the testing, the only foreseeable solution would be to maybe approve individual textures/components and maybe build a BCF that installs only these textures (if possible), the likes of which i think is unprecedented in STEP (i.e. a mod is usually approved or not approved, rather than a 'partial' approval) I dunno.., like i said, i dont expect everyone will agree, im just hoping someone will see my point

oh yeah. i do have it set up in a BAIN format since i am an ex-WryeBash user myself, but the compare shots are only in the fomod installer (for MO and NMM). I would like to get a WB wizard setup for it, but that is yet one more thing I have to learn how to do from scratch as I have no prior experience with writing WB wizard code. Ill maybe include a screenshots folder in the next update that wrye user can at least see from the root folder. and again, if anyone knows someone who can write these installers (*cough* williamimm *cough*) send them my way :D

just looked into it and i do have a compare jpeg in the installer. 'Fine' ash is the original and 'Dense' ash is the new. Maybe ill just call them type 1 and type 2 and reflect that in the installer and on the mod page to avoid any confusion. sorry

@Neo or anyone familiar with DSR is ~30-40 lines of papyrus log spam (all DSR related) normal at every game load? Havent really noticed before and im not having any explicit problems, but just want to clarify everything is set up correctly and in working order

the difference between original and new is two completely different textures. the original is the texture i released with the initial release. The new texture is a completely different texture that was made from scratch instead of using the vanilla ash textures as a base (which is what i did with the 'original') I'll see if i can update the installer to have screenshot of each. There should be compares on the mod page, maybe i didnt mark it as clear as i thought. Im not very good with xml coding and thus not proficient in NMM installers, so i will see what i can do about getting compares into the installer. If anyone knows a guy (who knows a guy, lol) that can do this type of work and would be willing to lend a hand, let me know. yes, everything Aiyen said. Uncompressed maps are never compressed (conceptually similar to how zip files are compressed to smaller sizes) and thus are not subject to artifacts that can arise from compressing and uncompressing the image data.

I've always wondered what the _sk maps are I only ever see them in the body texture sets. They are maps specifically for SSS? What does the sk stand for, and how do you properly make them? (I've never seen any generator output that looks similar to the sk maps, using crazybump and another map gen app I use)

Well additional script(s) should not automatically preclude a mod from Core. I don't actually think you meant to imply this but wanted to clarify

heh just saw this thread. oops. was so busy during initial release i wasnt on here very much and now things have slowed down. yea, 4k to most will be a waste. from sufficient distance away you cant tell any difference between the texture sizes. obviously the closer you get the more pronounced things like artifacts, noise, pixelation will become. I tend to be very much a perfectionist in that ideally i would like to be able to have my nose pressed against a surface and not see any pixels of the texture, and still be able to make out what is being portrayed (in this case microscopic ash particulate which is inherently hard to simulate based on the single entity size that lays somewhere in the micrometer order of magnitude). On the other end of the size spectrum, consideration had to be made for the large amounts of UV stretching that occur on some meshes still (even though a lot has been fixed - smim and similar mods). I personally think that a texture with more pixel data is able to be stretched a little more (or more accurately/smoothly) than a texture with 25% the data (i.e. 1k vs 2k). At the end of the day, while it may not look as though there is a difference, there is. How much difference that actually translates to in-game is a matter of debate i suppose. Most people will never notice, or ever care to notice, the difference between the 3 different sizes. That being said, some people do.. and for those people, the option is there. It never hurts to throw up extra resolutions if it makes more people happy. Nonetheless, thanks for the feedback

wow i just went through the update process for book of silence and wow i am really impressed. SOOO much new stuff. I am loving all of the new creatures, the bonus dragonborn dlc stuff (acolytes and masks), the vanilla dragonpriest masks, draugr (ancient nord) weapons, etc etc etc. Its almost mind blowing how good some of the stuff is. As am amateur texture artist myself i look at some of these pieces of work and im just in awe of how it was done. It would take me many more years of practice to be able to make something even close. ' its funny ive been working on my own set of dragon priest masks because i wasnt happy with psychosteves or apophysis (just wanted some plain ole HD masks without all the added paint and flare) and then just like that at the drop of a hat cabal releases this and crushes me haha ;) anyways, good stuff. im very pleased to see all of this good work! and, like many other people, i too would love to see the daedric set come out very very soon (hint at cabal)

One other thing I've experienced during testing that wasn't in the report was that there would be collision object issues with the dead birds, which I know was an issue in the past but thought was resolved. I guess I had forgot about it and didn't include that. But it was moot based on the mod not being accepted. The other thing is that I have gotten a few random CTD in the time between now and when I first reported on the mod. However I have not had any telling papyrus log errors so can't definitively say skybirds is the culprit (although I strongly suspect it is)

depending on how advanced the mesh work is youre referring to techangel, i may be able to help. i use the meshes myself and think theyre great, but if you could elaborate more on what would be ideally changed/tweaked, i could determine if it's above my experience level. Also, if i need to use the BVH meshes as a base, id need the author to at least reply to grant permission, unless he said its ok on his mod page (which i havent looked at in a while)

agreed. my testing of the combined version has led me back to the current, separate tools

my vote: * STEP Core = vanilla * STEP Extended = legible road signs nice work, to all involved edit: voting is for Core, correct?

Is it just me or are the fish bigger with this mod? I'm not at my computer so I can't check to see if it included mesh replacements.

ok will do. i will compose and send a message asking about it and see if we get any response