exploiteddna

ok, im sorry i wish i could help you more, but i dont know what else to say. i personally recommend updating from 12.9 to the latest release, which is 99.1. Download 99.1 from Nexus. Before installing it, Backup: \ModOrganizer\ModOrganizer.ini \ModOrganizer\categories.dat (if you dont back this up, any custom changes you have made - like custom categories - will be gone) \ModOrganizer\profiles\"profile name" (if you dont back this up, obviously you will lose all of your profiles - and if you have separate saves for each profile like I do, your saved games are all stored here too. Be extra certain you have backed this up if your saves are also located here)

that would all be a matter of opinion really. while some of them actually may be inherently more realistic, it is difficult to objectively answer a question like that due to the fact that we all come from different regions of the globe and have all had our own unique experiences, which helps shape our own opinions of what a cave is "supposed" to look like. Â There are many different types of caves in many different parts of the world. At the end of the day you just have decide which one appears to be the most realistic to you. Â Good luck :D

i understand what you are describing. i just don't see it occurring. perhaps your eyes are more sensitive to this type of "effect" than mine are.. i mean, with hectrols i could definitely pick up something similar to what youre describing (even though it may not be exactly the same in this case) ... but i dont get any form of resemblance from this mod.  If you were to guess, would you say this effect youre seeing is being primarily caused by the normal or diffuse maps ?? (i.e. if one were to "fix" it, which map would be the primary target?) Â

this mod doesnt have any relation to UV maps. UV maps are part of mesh files, that tell the mesh how to "wrap" the flat 2-dimensional texture around the 3-dimensional model. mostly any other time, 'maps' is referring to some type of texture. UV maps is the only exception :) (that i know of)

you should definitely be using the powers of ENB Manager. It is a tool that will allow you to do this for any lighting/graphics mod that has some of its files in the main Skyrim directory. MO/Wrye Bash/NMM only install things into the Data directory, so are not suited for this. The ENB manager is intended for this. (well actually its original intent was to swap only ENB profiles, but you can use it to swap whatever you want really.. thats what I do. Its more of a "graphics mod" manager)

such philosophical discussions we have here on the STEP forums, lol

if you are using 12.9, the instructions i gave in my last post may not work. For your version I think there should be an empty checkbox that reads something like "Prefer integrated FOMOD installer". Place a check in the empty box. (I dont remember which tab in the "Settings" window has this option, but it should be there. If you are 150% sure that the option is nowhere to be found (better yet, 300% sure!!! - triple check it), the next step would be to go to your MO installation folder and look for a folder named "plugins" it should be located in ...\ModOrganizer\plugins mine is E:\Apps\ModOrganizer\plugins because that is where I chose to install it. some people install it in their Skyrim or Skyrim\Data\ directory. When you find the "plugins" folder, check to see if you have a file named installerFOMOD.dll or something with the word FOMOD in it. If not, go download MO again from the nexus and reinstall. If you reinstall, make sure to backup all of your profiles and your modorganizer.ini. If you are in fact missing that file, you dont necessarily have to reinstall all of MO, just get the missing file from the fresh copy of MO you just downloaded from the nexus or you could/should upgrade your MO to the latest version. again, if you choose to do this, make backups of your profiles and other important files. if you need help with that too, just ask

ah interesting, thanks :D

go to the "Plugins" tab of the "Settings" window/dialogue. There should be a list on the left side of all the available plugins for MO. Find "Fomod Installer" and highlight it. Once highlighted, look to the right and you will see the options available for the fomod installer; they should be "enabled" and "prefer". Make sure that both of the options (enabled, prefer) are set to "true". If they are listed as "false", click on the word "false" and a drop-down menu will open and allow you to select "true". Hit "ok" at bottom right side of dialogue to save your changes. (this applies to the latest version of MO. may not apply to older versions)

Snow and Rocks      >>      aMidianBorn ___  Snow and Rocks          >>          aMidianBorn ___ Snow and Rocks           >>          aMidianBorn ___ I think Snow and Rocks textures often look like someone painted on the walls. A big mixture of yellow/green/orange paint. There is no real texturing on the color maps.. it looks like if i went and rubbed my hand on it, the surface would feel nice and smooth, almost glossy, with no hint of any sediment, dirt, or silt.  The only texturing i see is these little collections of tiny pyramids (see picture below).. like ummm, what are those anyway? Theres notehing in vanilla cave textures that even resembles this type of feature.  And, even though they kind of look neat sometimes, it still doesnt do anything to compensate for the lack of sedimentary/dirt/sandstone-ish texturing and still looks like smooth, polished and buffed rocks with paint. miniature pyramids Sorry for the lack of vanilla compares, i dont have a lot of spare time right now, but wanted to provide enough to at least demonstrate my claim. @CaBaL : I am just curious what is your native language for speaking?

Unlike Hectrols, I believe this mod does stay true to vanilla. I dont think it varies any more than Snow and Rocks or BoS, and that is my merely my assessment.

im a little bit confused, so was wondering if you may clarify.. when you say "iron out all specular in your diffuse and let the normal map do all the work" are you saying that speculars should be in diffuse maps and not normals (for "modern games" like skyrim) ??

frozunswaidon only has the one texture pack right? the one thats new, on the nexus? I tried it out and some of the textures are really really well done IMO. I especially like the pineforest textures that have the pine-needles and pine cones on them. Some of the textures are really *blah* though.. like the pineforest texture with purple/blue/pink plants ... doesnt even look real. ive never seen pink plants (except flowers, but this is a plant with pink/purple/blue leaf parts). I made a post asking the author to remake that texture keeping the plants a "normal" color. Obviously he/she either did not read said post, or he/she does not care about my opinion lol. Anyways, the only other issue I have with the pack is that most (maybe all) of the color maps are oversaturated in my opinion. Not too big of a deal because I can easily fix that in photoshop. I really do like the snow textures, most of them anyways... the author really did a nice job with the snow and some of the frozen marsh textures. All in all, i found about 8-10 of the textures looked very nice and also integrated well into the other landscape textures i use. the rest of the files are 'hidden' using MO.

if something shows up purple, that usually means you are missing a texture. The mesh of whatever is purple is assigned a particular texture, if the game cannot find that texture it will usually present with a bright purple color (i believe from the normal map). already answered lol nvm

based only on the mod page images, i really like the way this looks. i just grabbed it from nexus and will take a closer look in-game. i do tend to agree with those of you that think the current STEP textures are too bright and loud.. i believe these will fit nicely into the repertoire :)

not exactly sure what changes CaBaL made for the recent update, but im really liking these textures. At first I thought maybe the color maps were little bit blurry (which was more than likely a product of, or exacerbated by, the poor UV mapping that runs rampant in a lot of places around skyrim). Nonetheless, Ive been playing my character with these textures for the past week or so and im very impressed. I really think we've got a winner here. IMO it adds more life to the caves than BoS does, but its not too far over the top like the Hectrol caves were. I think these still provide a good flow and they seem to fit in well with the rest of skyrim/STEP

set to true if you want all graphics features/effects enabled. when set to false, only a limited number of effects are able to be used. as far as which ones can and cannot be used with deferred rendering off, i do not know those specifics. EssArrBee may be able to answer that.. not sure

while in some cases it may be acceptable/advisable/appropriate to merge plugins or patches, its not something necessarily has to be done just because the ability to do so exists. When i first taught myself how to merge plugins (manually), I thought it was the coolest thing. I was going to save so much space and remove excess and cluttered load order. The thing is, having separate ESPs helps keep things organized. What will inevitably begin to happen is you will lose track of exactly what changes and edits have been made and merged. It becomes a chore in itself to keep good notes and jog your memory trying to remember what exactly you did the day before last when at the time it seemed like a brilliant idea to merge something, and now you dont really know what's what. Open the merged ESP and you have no idea which records belong to which mod. This may not happen right away, but eventually it will (unless, like i said, youre very good at keeping notes or have a freakishly good memory) Â The other thing is, when ESPs are separate, its very easy to deactivate only those changes that belong to that ESP. With merging, you have to either deactivate the whole thing, or sift through the record manually and delete the ones you dont want anymore (which can be very annoying and tedious) moral of the story is: be very wise about what you merge. merge smartly. merge things that make sense to merge. ask yourself if merging two things is REALLY going to give you that much more benefit than if you simply left it separate. if youre using Mod Organizer, use the "notes" feature to take notes about the changes you make each time you edit it. The end :D

yeah and just for the record, in case you didnt know, you dont actually have to use the extra bashed patch ESPs that come with it ... you can just make a bunch of copies of the main/original bashed patch ESP and rename them to whatever you want, so long as they follow the prescribed nomenclature, i.e. Bashed Patch, ______.esp Bashed Patch, STEP.esp Bashed Patch, SkyBash.esp Bashed Patch, ImAwesome.esp Bashed Patch, 1.esp Bashed Patch, 2.esp etc etc

thats pretty much what i do.I have a separate mod folder for each individual bashed patch, i.e. "Bashed Patch - STEP Testing" or "Bashed Patch - Character Name".  To further distinguish between them (really only for added security measure in case i somehow get them mixed up) I give each bashed patch a different number. So I have  Bashed Patch, 0.esp  Bashed Patch, 1.esp  and  Bashed Patch, 2.esp  etc. etc. Then I use the "notes" feature and add in little comments on each of the separate bashed patch "mods" .. something like "Bashed Patch, 1.esp goes with STEP-Testing profile" The reason for this is because when you rebuild your patch, MO throws it into  'overwrite' by default. So its up to you to go in there and manually move it back into its respective mod folder after each rebuild. Sometimes I will rebuild and forget to move it, which for the most part is fine because it will overwrite the old one that's still in the mod folder and i will see all of the changes in-game. however, this is one of the reasons i also number the patches, so if i forget to move it I will know where its supposed to go when i finally remember to do so. Or so you dont accidentally rebuild it for a different profile that is active. I like the having the separate mod folders for each one because it offers more organization for me. You could simply keep all of the patches in 'overwrite' and let that be their home, but the ones you're not currently using will still always be visible in the plugins window..which i dont like. Having them in separate mod folders prevents that as well :)

yeah, im finished with my final exams as of a few hours ago, but i still have another paper and a half to finish writing and get turned in. but as soon as im finished i promise ill be back in full swing. ill have about 3 weeks of 'break' before fall term begins and will be able to do a lot more during that time :DAbout the same here except my classes and also my documentary won't be done until around August 12 and then classes start again around the 28th. Plus I have woderful mother nature shitting on me (or pissing tbh) every day for the last week (hard too and lightning and power issues...). Anyways if I don't pass out after doing the fish compares I'll try to do some of these. fish? what feesh do you speak of, daniel san?Â

you can use GPU-Z to monitor and log your vram usage, although it does not have an on-screen display for you to look at in-game. You can, however, look at the log once you exit the game and tell GPUZ to stop logging.

yeah, im finished with my final exams as of a few hours ago, but i still have another paper and a half to finish writing and get turned in. but as soon as im finished i promise ill be back in full swing. ill have about 3 weeks of 'break' before fall term begins and will be able to do a lot more during that time :D

Great work man, this is definitely one of my more favorite releases of yours. So you mentioned frozen caves!?!? I can't wait to see that.. as far as i know there is only one noteworthy texture pack that touches the frozen caves and that's Snow and Rocks. Will be nice to finally have another option to consider :) Plus, I often feel the frozen caves turn out with too much blue.. an unrealistic amount of blue. So, I can't wait to see what you do with them :D