STEP installed but CTDs...

[George79]

Hello guys/girls,

 

I just registered on this forum and I want to express my problem with STEP installation. I don't know if any more of you have the same issues and/or if already a post like this exists, but here goes.

 

I followed the STEP guide to the letter and installed all the mods with Mod Organizer (great tool btw). Since I had some weird outcomes with a few of the mods I decided to skip them (e.g. Maximum Skeletons). So I installed a kind of baseline STEP configuration with some extra mods beyond STEP. My rig is not that powerful but I managed to get around 25-30 fps in outdoor areas even with SkyRealism ENB enabled.

 

Here's the issue:

Game runs smoothly but it CTDs and/or freezes mid-game without any obvious cause. I did some digging around the net and saw a few people having issues with the 2 GB limit problem, but that's solved in the latest versions.

 

my specs are:

Intel Q6700 2,66 GHz

8 GB DDR3 SDRAM

nVidia GTX 460 SE 1 GB vRAM /w latest drivers

Skyrim /w all DLCs and HRDLCs and Unofficial patches

 

I've played Skyrim before without any mods and had no issues. Should I just try re-installing STEP see if I messed up somewhere?

[George79]

OK will try it when I get home. I doubt it will solve anything though, I've the patience to really start over the whole SR guide ;)

[torminater]

If you are using MO just keep those mods which require others to work deselected until all required mods are installed. If you followed the SR Guide precisely, you shouldn't Need to go through the whole Process anew. Just delete your skyrim directory and verify integrity of Game Cache via stean, then run skyrim through the steam launcher. Then go to your SR Profile, deselect all and reselect them in Small batches whilst you keep testing.

[George79]

Will do mate thanks!

 

MO is the best tool ever for modding for me so far.

 

One other thing, it says in the SR guide to make a bashed patch with WB, but in my case WB returned an error creating it (of course everything was followed to the letter). Is it really that important ?

[torminater]

You'll not have merged levelled lists and thus NPC/chests won't spawn all items added by the mods installed.

[George79]

hmm I don't know what to do about that error with WB creating the patch... I will come back with more info.

[George79]

OK the error message for Wrye Bash while making the bashed patch is:

 

"This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.

Please contact the application's support team for more information."

 

It appears a few seconds after the bashed patch operation begins while processing the dawnguard.esm file. Of course WB crashes right after I close the error window.

 

Any ideas?

[Kelmych]

If the bashed patch somehow gets corrupted you can have problems when rebuilding the bashed patch. However, you don't actually need the previous bashed patch as it is replaced by the new one. You do, however, need to have at least a basic bashed patch in the Data directory. Get a copy of the original small generic bashed patch that comes with WB; you can find this in Skyrim\Mopy\templates\Skyrim. Put the copy in the Data directory.

[George79]

Now that I studied this error more, I think the error comes from the WB program itself not the actual bashed patch.

 

Edit: It was as I thought, WB v303 crashed on me; tried v304 (experimental) and created the bashed patch normally.

[torminater]

304 might have other issues though... But you'll need WB only for Bashed Patch anyways (afaik).

[George79]

So, I think I found the cause of my CTDs. Seems that I had no idea how DDSOpt works and when I optimized the textures (supposedly), I optimized ALL the textures to 1k. Meaning, even those tiny tiny textures that were originally 96x96 were 1024x1024 after the "optimization".

 

I removed the whole folder, bought the new Legendary Edition, installed and working out the installation of SR again. This time I didn't mess with DDSOpt and I won't use the HRDLC at all. I had modded Skyrim in the past without any issues without the HRDLC and will give feedback as soon as I'm done.

[torminater]

If you follow suite the directions in the DDSopt guide, there is no way you would end up with 1k for all textures... If you only install the 1k versions (or lower) for every mod, you'll definitely avoid any RAM related problems (vram as well), but if you go 2k for all textures... you'll hit the 3 GB margin most certainly. Either you pick and choose the few mods you want higher resolutions for, or you let it be.

[George79]

Well the guide doesn't specify which files the DDSOpt will change (yes I did the checks in the Ignore menu); Only to set the uncompressed/compressed resolution, which I set to 1k in both instances. The thing is that DDSopt changes .dds files and some of those were really tiny and it made them 1k. It doesn't matter, this was the first time I tried the optimization. I enjoyed Skyrim on the normal BSA textures of all mods and it seemed fine to me. No need to do that.

 

And yes all the other mods are at 1k or less if available for smaller textures like small items etc.