GUIDE [WIP] DDSopt & Texture Overhauls

[z929669]

Discussion thread:
DDSopt Guide by STEP
Wiki Link

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GET DDSopt:
Github Pre-release versions
Official Nexus versions (select pre-release update 4)

[z929669]

Hmmm, can't help you there.

 

I agree with your propose INI adds though.

[Kelmych]

Perhaps when Ethatron has some time again he will have some suggestions.

[torminater]

OK, can someone/anyone tell me why I get an 0xc000007b Error when trying to launch any DDSopt x64 version above 0.7.3? All of the x32 versions and the 0.7.3 x64 version works perfectly OK...

I remembered that it couldn't detect msvcp110.dll and after I downloaded all of that crap and put it in SYSWOW64 and System32 the 0xc000007b error happened all the time...

 

Wooooooooooooooooooow, ok.

So here is how I fixed the issue:

installed vcredistx64 and vcredistx86 - nothing happened. Installed framenetwork from microsoft - nothing happened... Went to System32 and saw that I had msvcp110.dll and mscvp110_clr0400.dll... I renamed the latter to msvcp110.dll and voilà!!! there it is. up and running again!

 

 

On Github is a new version of DDSopt: 8.5b

Is it recommended to always use the newest version or not?

[z929669]

I had to use a dll-dependency tracing app to fix the dll problem I recently solved. PITA.

 

You should always use th latest version, but I wonder if the Nexus has this same version?

[alt3rn1ty]

Quote from Ethatron nexus comments ..

 

Github closed the file-download feature, so I continued here with a fresh number. Update 4 would be about "pre10", if Nexus doesn't rename the zip, the zip is named like that as well.

 

DDSopt is not only for fixing files to me, I want a properly identified list of textures-channel usage (if it's special, or heightmap, or transparency). So the "preview" versions are all trying to take advantage of such knowledge, for as long as this knowledge-collecting is not quite complete it's possible that it just goes off bad on a texture.

 

But as I actually wait to have some sufficient confirmation that BSAopt 2.0 isn't borked (mainly zip-support, Morrowind-support, XP-support) I feel free to use the time to stress the DDSopt-core a bit, afterwards I will merge the i/o-part of BSAopt back into DDSopt, and probably offer some option to allow knowledge-db based optimizations.

The beta's on nexus are now the latest versions. The pre-release betas on Github are 4 months old.

[z929669]

Thanks for the info, alt3rn1ty

[Dark]

Got CTD at the exact moment when Dawnguard Crossbow is equipped and unsheathed, by player or by NPC.

 

Spend quite some time figuring the cause...tried switching off dozens of mods but nothing helped, finally I remembered that I've used DDSOpt to optimize vanilla Dawnguard textures and repack them back into Dawnguard.bsa according to this guide.

The crashes were gone when I restored original Dawnguard.bsa from the backup.

 

I also tried to rebuild Dawnguard.bsa again to make sure that I didn't missed anything, but it still crashed.

 

Guess it should be mentioned in the guide that one should never repack mixed vanilla BSA archives with DDSOpt or he will get a CTD. Loose files shall be used and original mixed BSA archives to be left untouched.

At least until tool is fixed.

[torminater]

Thanks for the information! I'm sure Ethatron will fix this when his BSAopt is stable.

 

Short question: I unpacked Skyrim - Textures.bsa, HighResPack01.bsa, HighResPack02.bsa, HighResPack03.bsa, Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn. I optimized them with DDSopt. I want to zip them into archives and install them with Wrye. I already unpacked UHRP and will let it overwrite the vanilla files.

My question is: Do I now have to unpack all of the bsa including textures, so they can overwrite the Skyrim Vanilla Textures or is this step not needed???

[alt3rn1ty]

My question is: Do I now have to unpack all of the bsa including textures' date=' so they can overwrite the Skyrim Vanilla Textures or is this step not needed???[/quote']

Short answer = No

 

Long answer = There are as you know thousands of textures in the games BSAs', the game engine treats those BSAs' as if they are folders

 

The game has to decompress them obviously to look inside them, but each BSA is essentially another Data\ folder.

 

Within the BSA it will find a Textures\ folder at the root level of the archive, and the path/filenames of all the original games textures within

 

So looking at one texture say ..

 

Textures\Actors\Character\Femaleorc\femaleheadorc_msn.dds

 

That exists inside Skyrim - Textures.bsa

 

A replacer can be defined as a file with the same folder path and filename as an original game file

 

So another BSA also containing ..

 

Textures\Actors\Character\Femaleorc\femaleheadorc_msn.dds

 

Will end up in game ( because it will be loaded by a mods esp, and therefore load later than the games original BSA )

 

You could have ..

 

Skyrim - Textures.BSA

USKP.BSA

MOD1.BSA

MOD2.BSA

 

all containing the same texture, but the one you will get in game ( assuming MOD2.BSA is loading last ) .. Will be MOD2.BSAs' version of that texture

 

If you also had a loose file ..

 

Textures\Actors\Character\Femaleorc\femaleheadorc_msn.dds

 

No matter how many BSAs' you have with the same texture included, the loose file will win.

 

See these two topics if you have not seen them before ...

BSAs and You

and the linked topic

Load Order and You

[z929669]

I actually unpack all BSAs (vanilla and mods) and repack into 7z for load with Wrye Bash. This way, I can see all of the conflicts and load times are not reliant on decompression of the BSA archives. BSAs are nice for mod authors and distribution and patches, but loose files work best IMO.

[torminater]

@alternity: I guess you misunderstood my point. I don't use Skyrim - Textures.bsa anymore since I've extracted it and installed the optimized textures as loose files. If a mod that has it's textures in a bsa gets loaded, will it still overwrite the loose files of Skyrim - Textures.bsa with it's textures or not? I'm not sure whether the new system that loose files win over bsa only applies to official Bethesda bsas or also to all other bsas...

[Kelmych]

Got CTD at the exact moment when Dawnguard Crossbow is equipped and unsheathed, by player or by NPC.

 

Spend quite some time figuring the cause...tried switching off dozens of mods but nothing helped, finally I remembered that I've used DDSOpt to optimize vanilla Dawnguard textures and repack them back into Dawnguard.bsa according to this guide.

The crashes were gone when I restored original Dawnguard.bsa from the backup.

 

I also tried to rebuild Dawnguard.bsa again to make sure that I didn't missed anything, but it still crashed.

 

Guess it should be mentioned in the guide that one should never repack mixed vanilla BSA archives with DDSOpt or he will get a CTD. Loose files shall be used and original mixed BSA archives to be left untouched.

At least until tool is fixed.

Did you try taking the loose files from Dawnguard.bsa after DDSopt optimized the textures and creating an archive file with 7zip or another tool? I'd be interested to see whether this eliminates the problem.

 

There have been other problems noticed with using BSAopt to repair some (but not all) of the non-texture vanilla BSAs and then return them to a BSA format. The problem didn't occur at all with Skyrim 1.6 but does with Skyrim 1.8; the exact same BSAs didn't have any problems being decompressed in Skyrim 1.6 but had problems in Skyrim 1.8. It might be a problem with the BSA decompression code in Skyrim 1.8 when it is processing BSAs compressed using the improved compression algorithm that BSAopt and DDSopt use (even though Skyrim 1.6 had no problems with this).

[Kelmych]

@alternity: I guess you misunderstood my point. I don't use Skyrim - Textures.bsa anymore since I've extracted it and installed the optimized textures as loose files. If a mod that has it's textures in a bsa gets loaded' date=' will it still overwrite the loose files of Skyrim - Textures.bsa with it's textures or not? I'm not sure whether the new system that loose files win over bsa only applies to official Bethesda bsas or also to all other bsas...[/quote']

The BSAs and You article says the loose resources always win over those in any BSAs: "If the file exists in the Data folder, it will always win. It will always be used, even if the same file exists in a Registered BSA or Plugin BSA.". 

[torminater]

@alternity: I guess you misunderstood my point. I don't use Skyrim - Textures.bsa anymore since I've extracted it and installed the optimized textures as loose files. If a mod that has it's textures in a bsa gets loaded' date=' will it still overwrite the loose files of Skyrim - Textures.bsa with it's textures or not? I'm not sure whether the new system that loose files win over bsa only applies to official Bethesda bsas or also to all other bsas...[/quote']

The BSAs and You article says the loose resources always win over those in any BSAs: "If the file exists in the Data folder' date=' it will always win. It will always be used, even if the same file exists in a Registered BSA or Plugin BSA.". [/quote']

Then why does it make any sense to not repack the DDSopted textures pack into bsas I ask myself... I don't think I'll be unpacking all the bsas in my install just because of a "because that's what you can do to gain no measurable profit in performance but theoretically you do!"

I ddsopted my skyrim install all day long.

And what did my benchmark show?

 

 

 

 

Nothing. No improvement AT ALL.

Jesus, I've wasted enough of my life today, I'm going to bed.

[Kelmych]

The BSAs and You article says the loose resources always win over those in any BSAs: "If the file exists in the Data folder' date=' it will always win. It will always be used' date=' even if the same file exists in a Registered BSA or Plugin BSA.". [/quote'']

Then why does it make any sense to not repack the DDSopted textures pack into bsas I ask myself... I don't think I'll be unpacking all the bsas in my install just because of a "because that's what you can do to gain no measurable profit in performance but theoretically you do!"

I ddsopted my skyrim install all day long.

And what did my benchmark show?

 

 

 

 

Nothing. No improvement AT ALL.

Jesus, I've wasted enough of my life today, I'm going to bed.

The main reason I know of to not repack the loose files as BSAs is if there are problems with the repacked BSAs as there apparently are with three of the repacked vanilla BSAs. Loose files can be read more efficiently, but I doubt this has a noticeable performance effect. The advantage of repacking the vanilla BSAs is that you can continue to mix mods with BSAs and loose files knowing that the vanilla resources will be overwritten independent of whether the resources in mods that load later are loose files or in a BSA. If a vanilla BSA is unpacked into loose files, particularly the addon DLC BSAs that have many different types of resources, then you need to unpack the resources from all mods using BSAs that load later (at least for all mods that might overwrite a resource in the unpacked vanilla BSA).