Skyrim Revisited Pre-Release Feedback

[skyrimnub]

Has anyone fought the Wispmother near with South-whatever Pass with Skyrim Revisited? Whenever she dies, the screen goes totally black except for mana/health/stamina bars. The game isn't frozen. One of two things happen:

 

1) If I ESC-Save, it immediately CTDs; or

2) If I wait for about 15-30 seconds, it CTDs.

 

Without Skyrim Revisited[1], this does not happen. Any clue? I don't have the energy to try and disabling a hundred-some-odd mods to figure it out.

 

Cheers.

 

[1] There are some mods I can't seem to disable without CTD on load due to state information in the save. So it's a "mostly-not-SR" save.

[Solist]

Silver Swords are now available as of 2/23 for aMidianBorn Book of Silence.

[haelfix]

Regarding DDSOPting normals.   I just did this with about 15 of the major memory packs (foundation, armor, architecture, landscape etc).  I am a little dissappointed with the results.   Yes, the amount of stability gained is enormous.  However i'm not sure its worth it, b/c the loss of graphical fidelity is also high.  It looks like i've just dropped down half the resolution.  

 

Worse the packs I did keep that are still high texture look weird now, b/c they're not the same quality as the rest.  Consequently you have some textures (like eg HD moss) that are 4k by 4k and look ridiculously awesome, and then you have some SRO normals that are 1/16th the effective resolution and don't look quite like they're part of the game world.

 

In other words the quality differential is high.

[PCG4m3r]

Regarding DDSOPting normals.   I just did this with about 15 of the major memory packs (foundation, armor, architecture, landscape etc).  I am a little dissappointed with the results.   Yes, the amount of stability gained is enormous.  However i'm not sure its worth it, b/c the loss of graphical fidelity is also high.  It looks like i've just dropped down half the resolution.  

 

Worse the packs I did keep that are still high texture look weird now, b/c they're not the same quality as the rest.  Consequently you have some textures (like eg HD moss) that are 4k by 4k and look ridiculously awesome, and then you have some SRO normals that are 1/16th the effective resolution and don't look quite like they're part of the game world.

 

In other words the quality differential is high.

Hey haelfix,

 

I agree, there is definitely a trade-off in terms of some quality loss vs. performance, but if the game isn't stable, then reducing normals may be the best option for those who may have issues with high VRAM usage. If you can run stable without having to reduce any normals, then you may want to revert back to the orginal sizes and see how the game plays for you.  

 

I did a comparison a few weeks back using AOF mountain textures, showing the difference between 2048K for both *.dds and *_n.dds VS 2048K *.dds + 1024K *_n.dds VS 1024K for both *.dds and *_n.dds. The reduced normal showed an acceptable middle-ground, as long as the *.dds texture remained a higher resolution. See the following post (bottom half):

https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=1392&pid=22130#pid22130

 

The mountain images are in the link in that post. I recommend opening each one to full resolution in separate tabs and then jump back and forth to see the results clearly. For me, I didn't really notice degraded quality while in-game. It was more apparent when comparing those images back to back, with a slight blur, which you can see more clearly in the foreground textures.

[Aiyen]

Generally you should not do it to the vast majority of your textures since then you will of course get something where you can see a clear difference.

Also AOF mountains and LOD textures should not be touched unless you go to a lower res in general. This also applies to WATER and body and armor textures. Due to the special shapes and function etc. the optimization and half sizing will make a very visible impact.

Instead of doing it on everything go with one thing at a time and try to play though to the first dragonkill... Riverwood requires so much memory now that if your system is not really stable you will not be able to run back and forth all the time without crashes.

 

If you have to ddsopt and half size every single texture mod to get good stability then it is more worth it just to use the 1kx1k packages of many mods instead since then you get the middle ground between performance and visual experience... but yes it sucks to go to that once you have seen the 2kx2k beauty.

 

Also I can highly recommend an ENB with just a DoF (That is not to invasive.) if you got a small gfx card. Should not affect VRAM but rather the general processing power of your gfx card. This will make sure to blur out most of the stuff you are not focusing on and hence make sure the apparent lower res textures are not that apparent while running about and fighting etc.

[walkman80]

Screw it, I'm just going to use the EVGA Step-Up program and get 4GB cards. I wish I would have started with lower textures and never witnessed the 2048+ types :D

[Smile44]

I can't escape Castle Dour! Having reduced the normals for all key packs I no longer get CTDs with the Giant at Pelagias farm or at the stone near Whiterun. Unfortunately the other issue I found before Ddsopting was a never ending load screen when trying to leave Castle Dour. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

 

Ideas gratefully received.

[Aiyen]

Screw it, I'm just going to use the EVGA Step-Up program and get 4GB cards. I wish I would have started with lower textures and never witnessed the 2048+ types

Before you throw alot of money after that please also remember to look at the rest of your hardware... It would be so sad to spend alot of money on just a gfx card when it is in truth the entire computer that matters when you run the game engine at these extremes! Heck even Neo have to halfsize the majority of his big textures mods, and his computer is almost as close to the best of the best as you can get today. Which just proves that the stability of SR is not purely dependent on having a great gfx setup. 

 

I can't escape Castle Dour! Having reduced the normals for all key packs I no longer get CTDs with the Giant at Pelagias farm or at the stone near Whiterun. Unfortunately the other issue I found before Ddsopting was a never ending load screen when trying to leave Castle Dour. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

I currently have a problem with silly loading times just outside of Riverwood, the problem is fixed if I load another savegame first and then load it. But if I just load that first from the main menu then it will just show me a loading screen and I have to restart the game. 

Hence always have two or more savegames so you can circumvent this problem, assuming it is the same thing. 

[Smile44]

Problem is if I wanted to join the legion it would need me to go into Castle Dour which I then cannot leave. If there is an issue with certain locations it will need to be resolved - perhaps an error in my install but a new problem. I will need to check Joravaskr as I have had the same problem there in the past.

[xouspring]

Hello and thanks a lot for this great guide ( huge work! ) which complements nicely the STEP guide. 

 

I have a small SSD for Skyrim which is beginning to fill up dangerously. Especially since I've started extracting and optimizing the bethesda bsa. 

My question is to know if once i've optimized and added the textures back through Mod organizer mods, i could delete the Textures.bsa and HRDLCs.bsa from the data folder so i can save some place. 

 

Thanks.

[runsbuns]

Great project.

I noticed after extractin the new "wet and cold" v. 1.121 bsa, that it doesn't contain the script  ski_playerloadgamealias.pex.

[NotARobot]

So I just finished adding all of the Dragonborn weapons and shields to DSPSOB, and it seems to be working completely with vanilla skyrim + the 2 expacs. I'm not really sure what to do with it now though... I'd like to share it with everyone but I dont know what the protocol is on that. I didn't do it as a patch, I did it as a straight upgrade to the mod. Any thoughts?

[walkman80]

Screw it, I'm just going to use the EVGA Step-Up program and get 4GB cards. I wish I would have started with lower textures and never witnessed the 2048+ types

Before you throw alot of money after that please also remember to look at the rest of your hardware... It would be so sad to spend alot of money on just a gfx card when it is in truth the entire computer that matters when you run the game engine at these extremes! Heck even Neo have to halfsize the majority of his big textures mods, and his computer is almost as close to the best of the best as you can get today. Which just proves that the stability of SR is not purely dependent on having a great gfx setup. 

 

Nah, was just a tongue-in-cheek comment. Wasn't being serious :)

[Aiyen]

Hello and thanks a lot for this great guide ( huge work! ) which complements nicely the STEP guide.

 

I have a small SSD for Skyrim which is beginning to fill up dangerously. Especially since I've started extracting and optimizing the bethesda bsa.

My question is to know if once i've optimized and added the textures back through Mod organizer mods, i could delete the Textures.bsa and HRDLCs.bsa from the data folder so i can save some place.

 

Thanks.

In general it is a bad idea since that will alter the vanilla data dir, which the whole point of this is not to do so you always can go back to vanilla. Do you not have a normal disk that you use for storage and put the textures there instead?

Problem is if I wanted to join the legion it would need me to go into Castle Dour which I then cannot leave. If there is an issue with certain locations it will need to be resolved - perhaps an error in my install but a new problem. I will need to check Joravaskr as I have had the same problem there in the past.

I will try to play the Legion story line later tonight and see if I hit the same problem and then report back! 

 

So I just finished adding all of the Dragonborn weapons and shields to DSPSOB, and it seems to be working completely with vanilla skyrim + the 2 expacs. I'm not really sure what to do with it now though... I'd like to share it with everyone but I dont know what the protocol is on that. I didn't do it as a patch, I did it as a straight upgrade to the mod. Any thoughts?

I would guess you first try to contact the original author and ask if he is working on the issue and planing on making an update, or if you can get his permission to upload it for him. If he does not respond then just upload it yourself but make it very clear in the description who made the original and give proper credits etc. As long as credit is properly given no modder can be offended as long as its only the nexus you upload too. But that is just what I think, might be possible that its totally wrong! :) 

[Neovalen]

Now that I'm actually home I will see about making some needed updates... leave for 2 days and everyone updates! Figures. :P