z929669

cheers for the offer, I might take you up on that, though I'm meant to be working on the several musical & business collaborations I've got going at the moment & to be honest, I just finished my mega modded skyrim config this morning & after spending 2 whole days trying to get navetsea cbbe skin to match nuska realskin navetsea or beauty faces, and failing, i'm a bit burnt out. I have however finally got the desired character diversity & natural looking enhancement I was looking for AND get to keep the Tera armors collection for UNP + 3rd beta male armor pack which I so badly did not want to lose. I found the armor pack works fine with XCE meshes & skins & that I can achieve no neak seam & no plastic shine (2 bains of my modding existence) using better beast races+cover khajiit then ethereal elves (no optional hi res) then XCE+clean skin patch for females then realistic hair+aof believable hair+lighter hi res beards (as per step) then XCE hi res scars+hi res warpaint&dirt for men +hi res eyebrows and finally natural eyes+ran's reflection extended+longer lashes. far fewer steps & a far more vanilla like & generally awesome outcome. sorry to get off topic again. if it helps I've written a decent mod install list incl. skyrimnexus mod numbers so they're ez to look up for download. and the install list is in order. I wanted to post it here anyway but was unsure of the forum rules regarding mods like - swearing mudcrabs, skyhighrim & the cannabis mod, I wouldn't want to post the list without mentioning those mods but don't want to break the rules either. Peace. Post anything you want in the appropriate threads as long as it is not an obvious insult. Our Citizenship guide is on the wiki if you want to peruse. Anything about modding, including mod lists can be posted in fe, Skyrim Related forum. If you do some testing for us in your spare time, you will get Wiki access (soon to open anyway) where you can create your own ongoing material as you please. We only have a handful of common-sense rules around here. Cheers, z

Those paths are examples of various configurations whereby Steam and/or Skyrim/Oblivion are installed on non-standard drives (i.e., D-Z). Comments in INI files are semicolons. Anything placed after a semicolon on a single line will be ignored by the program. I will add clarification on this as well.

I am using "FT DeepDark" like it very much

For any that don't already exist on the Nexus, yes IMO

I configured the necessary parameter in LocalSettings .... see the Admin thread for details.

We can configure specific upload of BCF I think (or 7z)

I modified your wording above, as I was profoundly confused ... does that sound right? I am happy to go with your picks, as I never even compared ANY of this pack against vamilla or other conflicts ;) We should host your BCF on the wiki for direct download (or you could post to the Nexus if you feel like going through the hassle)

Woops, my bad. It looks like they updated the bash.ini file (by ading the skyrim paths) some time ago and I never noticed. Great point on providing an example INI. I will do that now and update the guide again Update #2 complete ... let me know if that clears it up.

OK, I'll take it ;)

Woops, my bad. It looks like they updated the bash.ini file (by ading the skyrim paths) some time ago and I never noticed. Great point on providing an example INI. I will do that now and update the guide again

I will clarify the DDSopt guide if you would please go into that guide and add some notes indicating anything that is unclear. To be honest, you are the only person that has indicated that it is difficult to follow ... some of the specifics no longer apply, and that has been stated. Even better, use the Talk page to provide specifics. I am quite certain that it does not need a completer rewrite, as most of the info there still applies. techangel is not the only one to indicate that the guide is difficult to follow. To be honest, even I have found it difficult to read, and there are a number of users based on their questions and ultimate user error that indicate such as well. Aside from some content that may no longer apply, I certainly believe that the presentation needs an overhaul. You both need to be specific or cease and desist.... Neither of you are offering any constructive criticism at this point I am working on it now as best I can (no thanks to anyone but Farlo!)

WB can be a bit buggy sometimes and *sort of* hide these windows. In my XP, they just get scrunched to the top and you have to drag them apart. Not really *disappeared* but reduced to a separator. I will add more clarity to that since you mention it; however, the intent is that you replace the blocks of text appearing in the quotes: "\Oblivion Mods" gets replaced by "\Skyrim Mods", including the backslash. If you do not include these specifics and only replace "Oblivion" with "Skyrim", you will break the variables (e.g., sOblivionMods & sOblivionPath) HTH

Just want to say that you guys are all pretty amazing (include s4n and a few select others in here). Thanks for the hard work and help keeping this thing rolling along ;)

Ethatron has asked me to stage a Q&A on this thread. Please PM to me your questions about using DDSopt 8.0. Regarding your questions, please ... keep each question as brief, concise and specific as possibleavoid asking multi-part questions. The answers we want will come, and we will even get unexpected answers to unasked questions.please don't ask questions about the DDSopt guide ... stick to DDSopt 8.0 interface, behaviors, results and methods only.I will post each question prominently on this thread, and Ethatron will do his best to respond to each as promptly as time allows. Each Q&A 'block' will be posted on the OP and later used to build a FAQ that will be used by our site admin and Ethatron himself. Ultimately, this will help users better understand the program and Ethatron to better understand his users (at least from a STEP-user perspective). Thanks z

Hi mysty, send me a PM on the Nexus to confirm that you are not a fraudulent mysty and we'll fix you up with proper mod-author recognition in the tune of an enhanced nameplate ;) @Farlo:ninja: As far as the technicalities around spell scaling and perks in relation to NPCs, I am afraid I am not proficient; however, I like the idea of expanding your tweaks for access by the NPCs ... at least to some extent based on level, skill and probability.

I actually wrote a BAIN Wizard for that one, as it was very confusing to disentangle all possible options (I like options) It was my student ID# in college .... looong time ago. It just stuck

Preferably, you should have experience with each in game, alternatively, see this post and the following 3 posts for reference screens.

Thanks.... I personally use all of your mods. Keep up the good work.

Understandable, but I would rather use one tool for all I guess.

I will clarify the DDSopt guide if you would please go into that guide and add some notes indicating anything that is unclear. To be honest, you are the only person that has indicated that it is difficult to follow ... some of the specifics no longer apply, and that has been stated. Even better, use the Talk page to provide specifics. I am quite certain that it does not need a completer rewrite, as most of the info there still applies. I think a lot of the problem is that the user's being introduced to the program while also managing all that stuff about unpacking them into the different folders, and it's a little unclear if you're just looking to learn the UI and not follow along with the whole process you have laid out. I believe a one page/tab overview of the program and the basic functionality before diving into unpacking and optimizing the main BSAs would be very helpful. Even though DDSopt can do it, I find it much easier to set BSAs to be opened with BSAopt and just do extraction separately, it makes the whole process seem less complex, and learning BSAopt can also be used as a "launchpad" to learning DDSopt. BSAopt is totally obsolete though, but you make a good point about general use and specifics RE optimizing vanilla textures.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that you are suffering from a case of user error (no offense). Getting frustrated will only increase the likelihood of misunderstanding and mistakes. Read through the SIG and get your rig cleaned up and prepped. THEN, I recommend: forget about DDSopt for now. You need to better understand how to use Wrye Bash to successfully install a relatively simple modded setup.... simplify.Begin by methodically following the WBG, beginning with "Establish a Clean Skyrim Install" ... and follow that to the letter.Once you have a clean skyrim install, launch skyrim and create a new character. Save the game after creating, and you should have 2 saves to use as a base for testing purposes. This will also eztablish the INI files and prove that you have a functional install.COPY YOUR SKYRIM DIRECTORY to another location so that you can easily restore it, and reference the latest STEP Guide to help with pre-install configurationGo back to the WBG and follow along with installation of WB (v302.1) and BOSS 2.0+ (hold off on installing anything else)Carefully read about BAIN structure and the examples of BAIN package restructure (you are not repacking mods correctly if they are not showing their contents in the right-hand panes)follow the guide very carefully and Install only the Unofficial Patches, SMIM a texture overhaul and a couple of mods with plugins using WB. Ensure that these are installed and that your game directory is consistent with what you have done thus far.Run BOSS, and reference the latest STEP Guide to help with post-install configurationIf anything wierd happens, then you have a ghost in your machine, the universe is not behaving correctly ... or you did not reference and successfully interpret and implement the instructions provided in the guides I have referred to. After you get this all behaving correctly, then you can mess with DDSopt, as this may be what is ultimately making your BSAs "dissapear". (it is very easy to mess up BSA extraction and compression locations, as that application is a bit clunky in these regards). HTH

I will clarify the DDSopt guide if you would please go into that guide and add some notes indicating anything that is unclear. To be honest, you are the only person that has indicated that it is difficult to follow ... some of the specifics no longer apply, and that has been stated. Even better, use the Talk page to provide specifics. I am quite certain that it does not need a completer rewrite, as most of the info there still applies.

I recommend the same. Most authors will say that their textures are already optimized. We ultimately would like to get a list of mods that benefit and those that don't play nicely (so that specific textures can be added to the INI) The INI requires the full path under textures ... RE not running body textures through DDSopt. I am pretty sure that the latest version can handle more than previous versions, so I would run all textures through DDSopt to see what results (as in #1 above). Then we are more certain of the INI additions. DDSopt does recognize the file-name conventions of *_n.dds, *_msn.dds, etc, so we only need to add exceptions to those conventions. I am still pretty unclear as to all of the uses of the INI and how it works

Could you define "CPT" and "OPT" ... not sure what you are referring to here. Also, the ride into Helgen may not be the best benchmark for textures. I am not sure how much of this uses the actual in-game textures (??). Better to wait until you clear the first dungeon and benchmark the run to (and through the other side of) Riverwood. DDSopt will not necessarily get you more FPS, but it will significantly reduce your VRAM consumption. What are you using to measure FPS/VRAM? What do your DDSopt logs tell you?

these could be terrain LODs. Looks like vanilla is missing, as even if one of the installs was incomplete, vanilla would still show through. Are you missing any of the vanilla BSAs? or do you not have all plugins activated? Are youusing an enhanced LOD mod? Check HQ LODs mod by Ethatron?