KiloWatts

Awesome, thanks... Everything looks good so far. Â The only thing I've noticed is the resolution seems lower when I walk up close to things. Â I'm wondering, are these the "normals" I reduced? Â I've been trying to understand exactly what a "normal map" is, and how I can see it in the game, but not having luck. Â Sorry so many questions - as I said, this is my first mod.

Kelmych, I went ahead and halved my normal maps for the following mods: Skyrim HD Serious HD Snow & Rocks HD Question: Â Does the modified DDSopt.INI conflict with STEP-mod optimization? Â I just realized I left it the same. Â Also, are there any other STEP mods you would recommend to halve the normals? Â Thank you

Cool, I was out for a bit, so I re-did them anyway. Â At the very least I'll see a marginal improvement.

Actually, I thought you meant the performance of the GAME was faster. Â You meant the actual optimization processing is faster. So technically the only reason for me to re-do mine would be to get the Tint/tone-maps, and Parallax-maps using the right compression algorithm. (since that option is missing in 0.7.3)

You weren't kidding. Â I'm actually going to be able to get this done before dinner.

Got it. Â Pre-release 4. Â We can ignore 5b.

Ayiyiyi.... I guess I'll just redo the entire lot then. I noticed there were a couple options missing from this menu, but I thought I must've had a newer version or something.

Pre-release 4? Â I guess I missed that in the guide too. Â I was using the latest release 0.7.3 (not wanting to use a possibly-buggy pre-release). In fact, it barely had anything in the INI. Â Here:

To clarify, my freeze spot was when heading East from Whiterun. Â I pass the Honningbrew Meadery, and right when I cross the bridge is around where it would freeze. Â I only tested on foot - didn't test with horse. Here are the mods which I haven't yet installed, which I'm suspicious of: WATER Wet and Cold (+Ash) Birds Sounds of Skyrim Burn Freeze Shock effects Ultimate HD Fire effects Bellyache's Creature Pack Dual Sheath Redux

A lot of people are having the exact same problem. Â You should peruse this thread for more info. Â There are also a couple other repeatable freeze spots you can test. Â I don't know if anyone completely isolated the problem, but it MIGHT have something to do with un-optimized textures. I no longer have the problem, but I am also not running all of my mods anymore. Â What I did do was optimize my main 7 BSAs with DDSopt. Â I can't say for sure that's the cause of the freezes. Â I'm adding my mods back very slowly one-by-one. Â I have NOT added Birds of Skyrim or the other birds mod yet. Â I've had only one CTD since, and that was after about 3 hours of gameplay (fine by me). Here's my mod list for comparison: Bain Packages:

That fixed it, thank you. Â I simply went through each and every listing in the new INI and copied them to their respective location in my STD 7z. Annealed in WB, and all works well. I don't know which one it was, since there's nothing in the INI that says anything about blacksmithing, so someone must've used a texture from something else to wrap those metal rods. Â Anyway, it's good to know I don't have to optimize everything all over again. PS: Â You're harping on me not reading the directions, but bear in mind this is an incredibly complicated guide for me, and it's often easy to overlook any of the small (but crucial) details. Â I've never modded a game before to this magnitude, so I've been making sure I'm following everything as closely as I can. Â In my humble opinion, the entire process is entirely too complicated, and I never planned to get into it this deeply. Â But obviously once I got a taste of how great it can look, I couldn't quit. Â ;) I believe the process can be simplified greatly, and theoretically it should be possible in the future to release the STEP project as one gigantic single mod. Â I think people are working on it in the other forum here, but that should really be the goal - especially for people like me. Â

Okay, so I'm going to copy all the original textures mentioned in the updated DDSopt INI file into the optimized 7z file, yes?

Thanks. Â I did use non-solid. Â I'm still going to DDSopt everything again soon (with the updated INI), because there might be other problems elsewhere. For now, do you know which texture that is?

Oh man... I just looked through the guide, and it wasn't entirely clear that I needed to download a NEW ini. Â Does this mean I have to optimize ALL of my textures again?

Okay, everything seems to be running fine. Â Played 3 hours last night without a crash. I decided to leave out SMIM for a while, since some people were reporting problems. Â But, I added it today, and here's what happened: I also installed Tobe's SMIM patch, and the ELFX SMIM patch. Â Everything's in the right order, but when installing SMIM, those metal (iron?) textures are missing... Here's my mod list:

Moving everything from RAM to VRAM? What advantage would that have? (my first reaction is "nooo, no more of my precious vram!")

Hmm, I dunno. I'm wary of using 'performance boosters' of any kind. Especially since I've finally gotten it to be mostly stable by optimizing my main textures. The ENB antifreeze patch intrigues me. Are ENBs known for causing a lot of freezes?

Just curious, if the original BSAs are needed, why does the guide say to move them out?

Alright here goes. I've moved Dragonborn, Hearthfires, Dawguard, and SkyrimTextures BSAs back into the Data folder. I've uninstalled ALL of the STEP mods. Launched to make sure it works I'm currently re-installing ALL of the STEP mods. Then I'll run the GenerateFNIS, and the Skyproc patch. Hope this works...

Okay, so to recap: Only move the HRDLC BSAs out of the directory. Install all seven of the new DDSopted 7z files first in Wrye Bash, overtop of the existing BSAs

I'll keep it out for now... Right now my problem is I've moved the Dragonborn/Dawnguard/Hearthfires BSAs OUT of my Data directory, and replaced them with the respective 7z files. Now, in Wrye Bash, those .ESM files are red in the mod list. Is that normal?

To clarify, I optimized Dawnguard, Dragonborn, Hearthfires, HRDCL1, HRDLC2, HRDLC3, and STD. Then, in order: * 7z all of those individual folders. * Move all 7 of those BSAs out of the Data directory * Move all of the 7z archives into Wrye Bash * Install So, do I install the NexusMods HRDLC Optimized mod then, if I already did it myself?

Or, do I install my own DDSopt archive INSTEAD of the HRDLC available from Nexusmods? Thanks

Got it running. If I manually use DDSopt for my main BSAs, do I need to skip the HRDLC Optimized mod in section 2.F.?