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Ah well. I have not had any chance to work on this today, and will not be online again once I leave in a few minutes ... Christmas madness has me in its grip.

I need to test it myself, but MTichenor does good work, and I like almost everything he puts out. His thing is realism, and this mod is consistent with his previous work. He does mention that orithalcum and iron are left alone, since Bethesda already seemed to indicate a non-shiny intent for those. Moonstone should not be shiny, as it would be more opalescent, like milky glass-stone or something. It is pretty clear though that anything made of a hard and smooth material can be polished, and owners of such hand-crafted and valuable pieces would most certainly have cared for them using water, oils, sand, clay, etc. It is pretty easy to polish things using commonly found materials in the env. As I said on the Nexus thread, I hope that weapons and armor modders consider adopting some of his resources into their work (or at least these ideas). Let's see about testing this one .... EDIT: I just noticed that all of the armor types are parsed into separate downloads so that people can use whatever and test whatever without having to grab everything ... for testing, we will obviously need to look at each armor type in its own right and ask ourselves if looks good and makes sense. If it does, then we will need to compare against the AMB standard. These will need to be compatible with the rest of the game as far as look goes, too.

OK, then if I get some time tomorrow, I will begin preparing for upload to Nexus along with all necessary doc. I'll post status in the Release Admin Forum

OK, just to confirm: Is the current patch ready for STEP:Core 2.2.7, or would you guys rather wait to release for 2.2.8?

Thanks all. I got it ;)

Could someone please draw me a map to this elusive "overwrite directory"? Can it's location be set in the MO config? Can it be renamed? I see only download, mods and cache directories in my MO config ....

I am looking for some details confirming my instinctive approach to installing SKSE via MO, but the "Installing Mods" section does not mention SKSE plugin installation (these install in the Data directory, but MO complains ... Wrye Bash installs these without complaint or issue, so I am thinking MO does too ... ?). I am thinking that this section could be much improved as well, both in terms of the clarity and brevity of information as well as content updates and "passive voice". It looks like this was mostly written by blacksol ages ago ... Content and conciseness being most important for the time being. I (and others) can take a stab at clarity, brevity and writing style once I better understand the content.

First of all, I have to agree with aLaaa one one important point: What's with all this debate over a mod description? We only really care about the mod itself here, so whether or not the description is too subjective or not doesn't really matter. As long as there are detailed instructions for using the mod somewhere in there, everything else is all just text and sales pitch ... I personally ignore most of it (but I too am somewhat off-put by grandiose claims, TBH). Second, I thought I had a penchant for writing long posts, but the passion taking place on this thread is manifest as a gargantuan beast that presses down on the very soul and will to sift through the thread in order to pick out the useful info o_O

Low end guide will be fairly simple to create as a Pack. this will be the only exception to the general rule that STEP:Core be a prerequisite. It will not, as there will be almost complete overlap but for a few mods in the performance guide. This guide will go into detail about constraining textures to 1k and even 512 MB, depending. Something to address later on though unless someone wants to begin constructing the Pack (then we can all pitch in to flesh it out). I suggest beginning with STEP:Core mods to start (or maybe say "install all STEP:Core mods EXCEPT ...") Just post it on the Pack forums please if anyone wants to get started on this ;)

Yes, and we can even recommend up to 4k textures for interiors where they exist (if they don't stick out too much). Correct. As Kelmych stated, I thin that we can put together a low-end STEP Guide later and incorporate alt3rn1ty's low-res vanilla textures and the like, but as long as we have volunteers willing to work on patches and ASI for STEP, we should make it simple and tighten up Baseline, supporting 1 GB VRAM and above and STEP:Core Baseline.

This is still problematic ... I see what you are saying with regard to future changelogs (2.3.0 is not even needed yet). I suppose I'll mess with this :/

Lots of good modding suggestions for Oblivion on TESCosi ... and don't forget PyFFI for NIF optimization.

Yep, that about does it for me ... thanks WI. Marking this as accepted, and we can be done with ASG and EPST. I'll add those to the 2.2.8 ChangeLog.

Keep in mind that since we use a wiki-based Guide, certain updates are best done to the live guide without version update. These would be text changes and fixes. Mod-list changes or paradigm changes cause version updates, so we must keep them separate. The only other way I can see doing this would be by using a "Current Version Changelog" in addition to the version changelog. This is possible, but a PITA at the moment.

I can go over them again, but in that last massive run Nearox had me doing should have taken care of that. I'll double check them to be certain of it.MGoose mentions a few in this thread

OK, for STEP:Core mods, I don't think that we need to factor in any customization (see ASI threads on this topic ... it is addressed multiple times by me in several threads ... beginning to turn blue). STEP:Core should be strictly and explicitly defined with regard to each mod, so only one patch is needed. STEP:Extended is more complicated, so you guys can do whatever you want for that. I'd just like to get the main patch and ASI focused around STEP:Core as a starting point if it is not too much to ask. TIA @Tech: We should clean up each STEP:Core Mod note to explicitly define our recommendation if there is more than one option. If there are any 'difficult' decisions to be made, then let's address within the mod threads for each and land on something by consensus.

Can anyone confirm behavior after the latest Unofficial patch without Acquisitive Soul Gems and Enhanced Projectile Soul Trap? Perhaps: an explanation of the original problem,what these two mods did to fix the problem, andhow USKP + Smart Souls is now a viable and preferred option?

Two plugins? Disease Descriptions? 17/18?? Sorry, I am not following that last post at all. I assume that the mod list is a comprehensive list of mergeable mods? We do not need to notify any of the authors of mods like kryptopyr was referring to. We'll still be using their mods, just not the plugins.

I addressed indirectly in my previous post. Basically, it is the patch creator's call, but I think that the official STEP version should address all of STEP:Core in its baseline entirety (like ASI) as a single patch to keep it simple. This would be the Main File on the Nexus. We can include optional files as long as there is a clear need and use for them. I honestly cannot imagine any other variants besides STEP:Extended and versions that accomodate userw without all DLC though.

Sounds good.

This is OT on this thread. Please post on the TESVEdit thread. Thanks.RE incorporation of merge-able mods into the patch: Totally understand that this should wait for 2.2.8, as it will require some Guide changes and maybe some feedback from the mod authors of affected mods (but I think that most do not explicitly prohibit reuse for our purposes). It is probably best to send each affected mod author a brief note on the Nexus that we are consuming their entire plugin into our patch, just FYI ... and welcome them to join us on this forum to express any ideas, suggestions or objections if they have them. Seriously, this is all that is really needed for most if not all of them. If you provide me a list of affected mods, I can do this myself (perhaps that is best anyway). Also, if you (SRB) or anyone else wants to make one big patch for STEP:Core in its entirety, I think that is most appropriate as the baseline, default patch (Main File on Nexus), because it makes absolutely no sense for all STEP:Core mods not to be installed by everyone. As I have said many times previously, if there is some reason that any STEP:Core mod would not be installed by someone, then speak out and let's revisit its place in STEP:Core. I would not bother with STEP:Extended at this point, but it is entirely up to you guys. That has not had any of the staff's attention for some time ... need to clean up all prerequisites first. Any other patch variants are at the creator's discretion, but we will want to keep it all very simple on the Nexus and in the Guide, so any variants should have a very clear and obvious purpose (i.e., if you want to provide patches for users that don't have all the DLC for example).

Some BCFs will remain useful indefinitely, so don't hide them all. I don't see any reason to maintain those that are not static though.

@Tech: I think that we can push this all out as STEP 2.2.8, since we will be adding a file to the Nexus (agree that we can include link to Guide in that file's ReadMe and do away with the PDF). We will also need to update the Nexus text on the wiki to explain what we are doing with the patch and how it should be used. Go ahead and update the "Release Procedures", and I will revise that and other resources as needed (probably on Sunday). Regarding the Guide: I am not yet sure how best to incorporate the patch, but will dive into all of it on Sunday (I think). The Patch ReadMe on Git will provide the details that we can add to the Nexus ReadMe and the Guide (and the STEP:Patch Mod page). Then we can push out the STEP:Core updates and ChangeLog and launch 2.2.8 either Sunday, next week, or the following weekend, depending on your availability. @SRB, Tech, Nearox and anyone else: I like the idea of moving everything we can into this patch, so if anyone is willing to contact the relevant authors and ask, that would be great. You can point them to this thread and/or to me on the nexus for further explanation if necessary. As I said previously, depending on mod permissions, we may not even need to ask some of these authors, so the Nexus file permissions and comments should be reviewed for the "mergeable" mods in question.

Thanks SRB. I will be testing out once I get all of my mods configured for use with MO and updated. May not be for another week or two though. Do you think that the releases are ready for upload to Nexus? I can add you as an admin (or perhaps we can get Tech in here to see if he has any ideas about how we do this) All we need to do is dress it up with some instructions and a slot within the STEP guide, complete with its own Mod page and notes.

I think the Tes Alliance version is the RW version. I vaguely remember checking that out. It is fine to point our users to TA. It is a good site, and users don't have to download the mod if they don't want to. The point is that it is a legit source for the mod.