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I grabbed the latest BAT and began reading the Q-S guide ... got caught up revising that section to be a bit less wordy and found that all of my time had gone away ... TBC.

Points taken. Look forward to future work ... also, public polls on mods will likely be a thing of the past around here. Too subjective. I like the new stuff, but the only way to really tell for these kinds of textures is to play the game. It is so much different in game, and I am not convinced what I like the most personally. I just know that the vanilla nature models suit me most of the time.

I haven't run all the scripts, but the DDSopt takes longest for me (about 30-60 min tops), and just a bit less for LZMA2, fastest, non-solid 7z packing via the GUI. I am running all operations on a software RAID0 drive.

SLFH looks waaaay too fake, IMO. It's like every character has just stepped out of a shower, added some gel, carefully sculpted their hair with a fine comb and let it dry into a bullet-proof helmet. Even AOF does this somewhat, but at least that mod adds a few strays into the mix. Based on this very-good comparison, I think that each of the modified versions does significant discredit to the original vanilla style (which looks much more realistic and thoughtful). I will NEVER use another hair mod, TYVM.

Yep, that is understandable. I have experienced many of the same woe's in dealing with Beth textures, although not at the same level of detail as you. Regardless, we'll inevitably create a performance version of STEP:Core once we situate everything.

I've not had this issue today....or any time. (Firefox)Ditto for me. S4n would know most about this sort of thing.

That is always a possibility ... let us know when it is ready!

This is why I have not really been interested in most of the lighting mods ... they are not 100% coverage. Just saying that updates for the sake of newness is just silly IMO (because some people will view your previous statements that way) ... I am sure that you are not one of those update-happy nonsensical types ;)

Just want to note that if a mod's coverage is complete, then it is "finished" and does not need to be updated. I advocate artists and modders that STOP by leaving well enough alone. I have seen too many great works of art ruined by too many edits/changes.

RE BoS similarity to S&R: I am looking at the vanilla shots in comparison to these two. Since vanilla cave walls are different than these two, then these two are not using vanilla but rather the same textures ... or BoS is overwriting S&R and the latter's cave walls are shining through (which means that the BoS compare is not really BoS). I don't see any reason not to ditch all of these for STEP:Core, since I see no problems whatsoever with the vanilla textures ... and they neither look better nor worse than the others (it is purely subjective, and barring any obvious cheezy vanilla mistakes, vanilla is just as "good" as the others, and vanilla is the closest to vanilla ;) ) I like a combo of aMB and Hectrol's for STEP:Extended, since they are the most realistic and "pleasing" IMO. I am not impressed by either BoS or S&R for many reasons, most notably the smearing-painted look of many of the textures (IMO).Fixed phazers links in the OP (neglected to copy from source)

The threads in here get little attention unless there is active dev or testing RE the mod in question. Since we are not really addressing lighting mods in STEP right now, such threads have been inactive. There may be talk in Neo's Skyrim Revisited forum though (we ask them over there to direct users to these threads for posting about specific mods, but it does not really work well under the current forum config).

I can't get the Sort Masters functionality to work either, but no errors for me. RE BP: I am not fluent enough in the mechanics of LL and plugin conflicts to answer. You would know more about the possibilities than I, but there may be some BP-specific idiosyncrasies (or missing functionality in Wrye Smash as yet) that only the WB devs would know about. I would ask over on the current WB relz thread and hope that whomever is currently working on the project would know the answer.

Maybe i would look at them if i knew how to work with preview tab. I tried to select a texture from the tree, but nothing shows up on preview tab.The easiest way is to move up the backup TPC folder, replace it with current, load it with mod organizer. This will show if the problem is related to ddsopted tpc or to vanilla/HRDLC optimized textures :D. EDIT: Looks like it's not TPC texture :|. In DDSopt, from the Browser tab, with both source and destination folders selected, find the texture in the lower pane (they should all have a strikethrough if already processed and "skip existing" is a selected option) and double-click on it. Voila!

Please use DDSopt preview so that we can see the texture names and the conversion info (the logs would also help) EDIT: woops, just noticed that you posted the logs already. I'll need some time to catch up I guess :P EDIT2: Looks like some interesting changes in there. I am particularly interested in the uncompressed conversions to 565, 4444 and L8. This is where it would be best to look at the preview within DDSopt to get a better idea of the results. Then some looks in-game. What are the textures listed above in the screens? The diff of those would be helpful.

All mods that are a PITA otherwise in the STEP Guide have a BCF available, and many of these contain wizards. Otherwise, our team has built many of the wizards that are packaged with mods where they make sense (e.g., SMIM, Soul Gems Differ, many more)

As long as you supply the links to the image assets, someone could handle that ... but I certainly don't have that kind of time at the moment. If you define the sets and blocks and the number of images in each ... maybe an ordered list of the image links ... then it would be fairly fast and simple to create the markup en masse.

We should test the new version with the SFO compat for use in STEP:Core. Need to test against STEP:Core with/without. I have some good SFO-compare-diversity savegames corresponding to these locations.

There are lots of ways you could set it up ... using subpages under the main page: wiki.step-project.com/Screenshots/Caves/Subpage1: =Set1= {{Gallery |enable=Yes |galleryitems={{GalleryItems |url=https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45644759/Screens/Vurt%27s%20compare/100.00%20STEP%20%28SFO%20v175_DT%29.jpg |caption=100.00 STEP (SFO v175_DT)}}{{GalleryItems |url=https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45644759/Screens/Vurt%27s%20compare/100.02-175.jpg |caption=100.02-175}} |align=center}} =Set2= {{Gallery |enable=Yes |galleryitems={{GalleryItems |url=https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45644759/Screens/Vurt%27s%20compare/100.00%20STEP%20%28SFO%20v175_DT%29.jpg |caption=100.00 STEP (SFO v175_DT)}}{{GalleryItems |url=https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45644759/Screens/Vurt%27s%20compare/100.02-175.jpg |caption=100.02-175}} |align=center}} wiki.step-project.com/Screenshots/Caves/Subpage2: ... yada, yada Or use HS Gallery (written by s4n and implemented on our wiki).

I don't know of anyone that has created a converter for fomod XML to wizard script, but it should be possible using reg expressions. I am not sure about the variation and flexibility of the XML though. I don't find that most mods need an installer anyway. Only the really complicated ones. (e.g., visible windows, closer quivers, SMIM)

I personally know next to nothing about body replacers for Skyrim (except by inference from past TES games and what I hear on Neo's threads); however, I do know enough about texture optimization to be impressed by this mod. Definitely, it will be a challenge to develop a STEP:Core solution that minimizes the VRAM as you have managed. Maybe that will be something to which you could contribute once we open up this site to make guide construction simpler. (It can be done now, but it is almost purely ad-hoc like Skyrim Revisited.)

Use the wiki. Here is a link to an example that I created.

I am curious to know what the results were. Could you post your logs? TIA

During the new-game opening cart ride, the first carriage takes a hard left into a boulder just after the cart helmsman barks "shut up back there!" This results in a number of issues resulting in a failure of the game to start. Just an FYI to anyone experiencing this bug. I get it a lot lately during my benchmarking process using the opening sequence. I normally experience it once every 3-4 iterations of the new-game opening sequence and simply reset as a workaround. My last benchmark run testing STEP:Core section I was the last straw when it happened 4x in a row. My guess is that the bug is inherently present with some probability of manifestation that is exacerbated by certain mods (particularly in Section I) and/or some issue with the navmesh after repacking BSAs using DDSopt or BSAopt. Anyway, the problem has disappeared now that I removed the Timescale [10] tweak I had in my Bashed Patch. My guess is that this also exacerbates the bug. I doubt it is gone, but I'll post back any trends I notice.