GUIDE Stuck at "Performance Tuning, benchmarking step

[SmashingQuasar]

Hey!

I've been using STEP for many years now and had a few years of pause before coming back to it. I decided to go from scratch after formatting my computer and followed the guide to the letter and installed everything within it. I went the ENB route.

When I arrived to the Performance Tuning part, I followed all instructions but that 3. Launch SkyrimSE (I assume using SKSE) Skyrim simply loads infinitely on the main menu. It's clearly not frozen as the fog stills goes on and the loader moves but it won't ever do anything.

The console is not accessible so I really don't know what to do at this point.

I just want to point out that I had to deviate slightly from the guide because some mods were updated and the guide was not so there were a few mods where it was not possible to follow the guide to the absolute letter.

 

Thanks for your help!

[z929669]

"Loads indefinitely" ... how long did you wait? It can take as much as three or four minutes to load the ENB shaders for the first time. Your driver software should have a setting to cache shaders, which may help.

Also be sure to check out the suggested enblocal.ini that comes with the Step ENB as an optional. Just rename it. It has

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
ShaderCache=true

[SmashingQuasar]

I have waited for over 30 minutes (actually did my workout whilst waiting) and did not budge.

 

I decided to redo the last 3 steps of the guide from scratch by deleting all mods and reinstalling them and it finally worked. I most likely have messed up something at some point but I just don't know what.

 

Thanks for your quick answer though, really much appreciated!

[DaveD2023]

Sorry for the necromancy, but I joined this evening specifically to tackle this very problem, which I am also suffering: At the Performance Tuning step, getting the spinning circle on the first screen, with the Skyrim symbol and fog/smoke billowing, but never getting to that very first menu (I've waited up to 45 minutes). I'll try to give sufficient detail here in my first post.

First off, I'm absolutely amazed at the enormous effort that goes into making any one of these. Very grateful there are folks willing to put in this kind of time!

First time using a STEP guide, but I've clocked over 1000 hours in Skyrim over the years, plus thousands more in other Bethesda games, using tons of mods (back before there were mod managers!), so have a decent idea of how stuff works. Followed the guide very closely, and at the "smoke test" step, everything was nominal. The instructions said "don't run the game again until specifically instructed to do so", and that time comes at the Performance Tuning step. So I duly worked through the list of several hundred mods, installing them in sequence with the only deviations being a) cosmetic choices wholly permissible by the guidance or b) left just a couple of mods out because they didn't appeal to me, and none of those few had a color stripe indicating their requirement by one of the STEP patches. 

It is my intent to try the Post-Processing section of mods, but by definition don't have any of that installed yet, because the purpose of the Performance Tuning is to establish the parameters for use in setting up ENB and LODGen. Haven't reached that stage yet. However, for the handful of mods in prior sections having options for ENB usage, I did enable those options knowing I would be trying it out. Similarly, have not run DynDOLOD etc, that too comes at a later step than PT.

There was some output I found a little confusing from the Nemesis run. The messages went by very quickly, but I saw something that ended with "all mods revert to unchecked" or something like that. I went ahead and hit Update Engine, and then Launch Nemesis Behavior Engine. I didn't understand the output from that either, seemed like error messages, but then it ended with "Behavior generation complete"  as stated in the guide. Again, uncertain on these details, but it didn't look "right".

EDIT: I re-ran Nemesis just now, attaching a screengrab of the window. It shows "complete" but that sure looks like a progress bar labeled "336 animation(s)", and the little green bit just sits there, never moves, just glows and pulses. Did something get stuck inside Nemesis??

I saw that the OP here included load order, ini files etc but I'll hold off on that until/unless. Sure hope what I've got here gives someone some ideas... thanks in advance.

Edited July 5, 2023 by DaveD2023

[silverdrift_]

I have followed the guide thru install the 20- mod group from a clean install of skyrim 1.6.640 +dlc.  
The initial game startup (at the beginning of the guide) went fine.

I did a full install of the mod list including all "optional" mod groups.

At the Benchmarking step following the 20- Mod group, I disabled A Clear Map... and made the INI adjustments in SSE Display Tweaks.  I do not have G-sync.

Benchmarking Step 3 says to launch skyrim, but does not say to run LOOT and Nemesis first- that seemed like just an oversight in the instructions because I have never had a successful game launch with this many mods unless I run loot and Nemesis first, so I ran LOOT and Nemesis as normal.  LOOT kicked back a mess of errors, missing masters, etc, but I ignored this assuming it will be adjusted later in the guide.  Was I literally supposed to not run these?

Snips of the MO2 Missing Masters errors attached,

The game will either: try to launch but CTD without actually launching at all, OR it will launch to the first display of the Imperial icon, but no menu about 15% of the time.  Then CTD.  

Load order, modlist and plugins files attached from MO2.

Thanks for any help.  I'll keep poking at this, but would really appreciate any thoughts. If any other files help, let me know.

loadorder.txt modlist.txt plugins.txt

[silverdrift_]

update:  I went thru additive testing to determine the mod or plugin causing the CTD.
Turned all mods off:  Game starts to menu
Add mod groups 1-4 > LOOT > Game starts to menu

ADD Mod Groups 5-8 > LOOT > Nemesis > Game Starts to Menu

ADD Mod Groups 9-12 > Loot > Game Starts to menu

Add Mod Groups 13-18 > LOOT > Game Starts to menu

Add Mod Group 19 > Loot > Game starts to menu

Add Mod Group 20 > Loot > Game launches to imperial icon and CTD

Turn off bottom half off group 20 > Loot > Game Launches to menu

Add mods line by line repeating this result until

Add "Step Patch -Lighting and Weather" > LOOT > Game launches to imperial icon and CTD

Turn on ALL mods except above step patch > Loot > Game launches to menu

Attached ESP is the issue causing the CTD.  What I don't know is if it is this plugin's issue or a conflict with something else.

 

I hope this added info helps narrow it down.

 

Step Patch - Lighting and Weather.esp

[z929669]

MO is reporting missing masters, so be sure that all mods in the left pane and all plugins in the right pane are enabled. Some must be disabled but all should be enabled if you have reached this point in the guide. Per the instructions.

Note that the very first sentence under Step 3 states taht LOOT should be run prior to launching the game if plugins have been added. That said, we can add a reminder here.

[silverdrift_]

Thanks-  I replied just now with added info. the Step Lighting and weather patch seems to be causing the issue (directly or indirectly)  When disabled, game launches.

ALL plugins and ALL mods were activated in left and right panels, except the map mod which instruction said to turn off.  Active plugins list was included in my OP. 
The missing items seem mostly to be CC items, but I only have 4 cc plugins in right pane (I have full version of AE with the AE DLC installed)- is that correct?

[z929669]

5 minutes ago, silverdrift_ said:

Thanks-  I replied just now with added info. the Step Lighting and weather patch seems to be causing the issue (directly or indirectly)  When disabled, game launches.

ALL plugins and ALL mods were activated in left and right panels, except the map mod which instruction said to turn off.  Active plugins list was included in my OP. 
The missing items seem mostly to be CC items, but I only have 4 cc plugins in right pane (I have full version of AE with the AE DLC installed)- is that correct?

That's your problem then. The CC plugins must all appear in the right plugins pane. They should all appear in the left pane as well, but they cannot be enabled/disabled.

How were you able to clean them all earlier in the guide if this is the case?

[silverdrift_]

9 minutes ago, z929669 said:

That's your problem then. The CC plugins must all appear in the right plugins pane. They should all appear in the left pane as well, but they cannot be enabled/disabled.

How were you able to clean them all earlier in the guide if this is the case?

I was able to follow the guide because it says

1. DLC: Dawnguard
2. DLC: HearthFires
3. DLC: Dragonborn
4. ...Creation Club Mods...

So I cleaned the (4) CC plugins that I had, which SSE 1.5.97 did not, and the guide does not quantify how many there are. So I saw 4 plugins with cc prefix and I assumed that was it.  I am new to AE, and have been modding SSE 1.5.97 for a while now.  I can't connect to Creation Club anymore and never had that content in my game.  Did I waste my money on the DLC?  I thought that the paid DLC provided anything not part of the "free" upgrade that everyone got.  Any help appreciated.  I just hope I didn't just waste 3 days putting this together for nothing. 

[z929669]

1 hour ago, silverdrift_ said:

I was able to follow the guide because it says

1. DLC: Dawnguard
2. DLC: HearthFires
3. DLC: Dragonborn
4. ...Creation Club Mods...

So I cleaned the (4) CC plugins that I had, which SSE 1.5.97 did not, and the guide does not quantify how many there are. So I saw 4 plugins with cc prefix and I assumed that was it.  I am new to AE, and have been modding SSE 1.5.97 for a while now.  I can't connect to Creation Club anymore and never had that content in my game.  Did I waste my money on the DLC?  I thought that the paid DLC provided anything not part of the "free" upgrade that everyone got.  Any help appreciated.  I just hope I didn't just waste 3 days putting this together for nothing. 

Just a note on the CC content: We mention the approx number here in the guide:

Read carefully the warning box at the top of the guide and follow those links for the info you need. The 4 CC plugins come standard with the SSE AE update, but the remainder are Anniversary Upgrade CC content. The guide requires AU.

[DoubleYou]

Launch the game outside Mod Organizer. Go to Creation Club and download all. 

[Greg]

11 hours ago, DaveD2023 said:

EDIT: I re-ran Nemesis just now, attaching a screengrab of the window. It shows "complete" but that sure looks like a progress bar labeled "336 animation(s)", and the little green bit just sits there, never moves, just glows and pulses. Did something get stuck inside Nemesis??

I saw that the OP here included load order, ini files etc but I'll hold off on that until/unless. Sure hope what I've got here gives someone some ideas... thanks in advance.

This is a progress bar, but it's not used to indicate progress per se. I think this is used to indicate the number of animations you have in relation to the total number of animations supported by Nemesis and/or the game engine. In other words, it's just saying you haven't reached the limit yet so you're good.

[DaveD2023]

This excellent discussion helped me zero in on finding my issue. The root cause was that something didn't go properly in using xEdit on the FacegenForKids.esp that's part of Simple Children. Using a similar iterative approach to the previous poster, SC was clearly the smoking gun. I had noted when I installed it the first time that it didn't match the guide's description (did not have a Packages(Aligned) section, just Packages, and didn't have the errant entry at all). Reinstalled SC fresh, went back in with xEdit and everything was just as described in the guide. Made the required edit, and have been in business ever since.

Now I have been able to do the benchmarking, and made my decision to skip ENB and just go with LODGen. It already looks amazing, 100+ fps on Ultra (i7/8700@3.2GHz, 16GB RAM, RTX 3070 w/16GB VRAM, SSDs), can't wait to see how it looks with the LOD.