frihyland

Normal size is 3MB at start and about 12MB by endgame.

If you want to try and fix it I recommend following Reverting Skyrim to a Pristine (Vanilla) Installation and then run the clean save procedure on the next tab, both located in the troubleshooting guide on the wiki. When complete reinstall STEP.

Yikes... Lets see if I can avoid a wall of text. Unfortunately my understanding is incomplete and mostly untested but here goes: Principally an ESM file is designed for 2 purposes, it is a Master file in 2 important senses. Version Control, modifications can be checked in and out using esps as seperate code branches to merge.Create an entirely new world, with new gameplay, NPC's, quests, the works. Intended as an independent code branch neither dependent on nor overriding other branches.The reasons people are using them are for entirely different purposes and they don't even think about the consequences of all the switches they just turned on without even realizing it.  Mostly what get's overlooked is a subrecord type called ONAM, it's a required subrecord type that I have never seen properly implemented in an esm. It handles the defaults and overrides of the record type its attached too, which tend to be fairly important types (RACE, WRLD, NAV, NAVM, INFO, REFR). The creation kit does not support creating esm's so you have to do a bit of hacking, people think they can make an esm just by changing the file extension, it doesn't crash so it must work!  Even if you hack an esp into an esm "properly" most are doing it with files already full of data, you need to start empty and build it from the ground up so the CK can automatically fill in all the required stuff as you go, or you end up with empty required records and subrecords. Finally, the severity of the problem is completely unknown, anecdotal evidence shows the files appear to work and seem to bypass several of the bugs inherent with using the CK (thus the rising popularity), what is unclear is the how all these gaps in the file structure mess with your game. Final verdict.  ESM files are not inherently bad, its just that there is a tremendous lack of knowledge to implement them properly.  And a complete void of tools to edit them safely.  But theoretically if you build one from the ground up with the CK it should be just fine. Really the way to do it would be to hack the CK to get it to run in Developer mode like Bethesda does so you can save as esm natively.

Yeah but NMM is terrible at downloading and the update list is so unreliable. Best to use the tracking system on nexus for updates and MO as a download manager.

Ok I understand now, you failed to account for the fact that WB appends \Bash Installers. What you need to do is adjust the download directory in MO to G:\Games\Skyrim\ModOrganizer\mods\Bash Installers and everything will work fine. You will need to move anything already downloaded to the new folder. From SIG

Skip the branches. The borders of many textures "tile" and so they cannot be optimized without creating seams.

Ok so WB checks for 2 error types among 4 record types, that's fair. Thanks for the correction. Anyway it will be updated to support most of the records types soon enough. Edit checks... more, check the UESP for all the different record types and I don't even know all the errors edit is checking for.

wb only checks for 1 error type, edit checks for several hundred.

Anyone with some good diplomatic skills is welcome to do so, I find myself a bit abrasive on these occasions so I leave it to you guys. Â If I have the time (not likely) I'll fix them myself and PM to each author. Made it myself :PÂ Unfortunately it doesn't fix yet, just using it for batch testing. Â You can actually get the same results using TESdump.

Not familiar with what mod changes those textures. Probably one of the big 3 in TPC, I would remake your custom TPC zip paying close attention to instructions. Then reinstall STEP to a virgin Skyrim backup. Should be a snap now you've done it once.

You have to have MO running and launch WB from MO.

hmm looks like I missed climates of tamriel, let me stick that in. edit: Done

Well the do not use list is pretty explicit :P The rest is up to you. As for STEP 2.3 they will be removed from consideration until the mod authors fix them. Â Most of them can be easily fixed in 15 min or less.

Here is my results after running STEP through TES5Edit, this test does not check logic, version, or compatibility! Just that the file itself is a good foundation for those other things. Don't panic, this is not impending disaster or anything, just that some of these are not good choices for STEP going forward and you should know what we found.  This is generally not the kind of errors that are gonna cause save corruptions (unless more than a couple hundred errors) more likely its sucking performance and stability.  Also on error numbers, be aware that a single problem can cause multiple unique errors. What we are dealing with at the base of Jenga pile.  Seems like a lot at first glance, but considering there have probably been upwards of a million edits each by dozens of developers using dozens of different CK versions its actually not too bad. Vanilla-You have to use these :P Here are the worst offenders, #1 is the worst mod tested with 2872 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the do not use list. Here are the 2nd tier of offenders, #1 has 14 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the strong warning against use list. Here are the 3rd tier of offenders, #1 has 6 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the not recommended until fixed list. Here are the winners in the pass fail test - no errors found in any of these. This is the safe to use list.

We haven't done the performance testing that you are looking for, I'm using SkyRealism with SSAO, DOF, and Skylighting =false

There is absolutely no reason for them, ever, period. The fact that they are so prevalent is because the CK doesn't prevent them, and even makes it hard to avoid them in several cases, as well as making the workarounds to avoiding them extraordinarily complex and time consuming.

My feeling on the subject is that when you are running 15-20 mods a few mistakes are allowable because the likelihood of them becoming compounded is fairly small, when you get to 250+ mods as we surely will in STEP 2.3 we simply can't allow them. I think of STEP as an architectural project, like building a skyscraper. This is just simply doing a soil analysis and materials analysis for the building, we obviously need the highest level of confidence in our foundation and building materials in order to proceed.

I'm gonna post the results of the full STEP list separately in the bug thread and make recommendations there.

Well at this point she would need to start the mod over from scratch, there is simply no fixing navmesh (you have to do it right the first time) and with the number of deletes its pretty pointless to try and find and repair them all anyway. If she uses the old version just as a template and recreates it from scratch with Open Cities support I'd use it in a second, that is a likelihood about as high as me winning the lotto.

First the good news, out of 1763 mods (down from 4k after ditching the redundancies) only 342 mods contained structural errors. So that's about 1 in 5 mods with an issue, so it could certainly be better but its not as bad as I feared.  This is a pretty good cross section of mods, I been downloading anything at all that got on hot files for the last few months plus anything else I came across that had any potential at all. Remember this test does not check logic, version, or compatibility!  Just that the file itself is a good foundation for those other things :D Here are the worst offenders, #1 is the worst mod tested with 2735 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the do not use list. Here are the 2nd tier of offenders, #1 has 32 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the strong warning against use list. Here are the 3rd tier of offenders, #1 has 11 errors and the rest are in order of structural errors. This is the not recommended until fixed list. Here are the winners in the pass fail test - no errors found in any of these. This is the safe to use list.

Its only doing structural analysis of the file so it can't catch logic errors, version errors, or compatibility errors, but it's a solid first step to finding reliable mods. I'm looking into creating a batch operation with the CK to update all mods to a 1.77 format with proper masters, at first glance it looks impossible but we shall see.

Sooo.... I'm batch testing 4000 or so mods with TES5Edit it'll be a few hours before I get results. Trying to figure out how to organize and present them.

Your describing a vanilla problem with the game, light doesn't actually come from light sources like torches. Its abstractly placed in the scene usually somewhere behind the supposed light source and often of the incorrect type (for realism/ambiance) in order to light the room in a certain way for gameplay/performance reasons. As far as your fix I'd like to see it, but you haven't posted anything at all except a link to a different ENB with no instructions.

they look like good candidates for 2.3, no technical issues I can see.

first off are you using the beta USKP? there is a known alias issue there, use 1.2