First off thank you for being patient with all my stupid questions. I know I ask the same questions more than once, but some answers actually dont make sense to me. I think part of it is that I dont get the lingo. I have read alot of stuff and did the STEP install. See below for what I have done so far and where I am at.
After I get a better understanding of this, Ill post a faq (which you may want to sticky) for utter newbs. It will be stuff that I had trouble getting. Part of learning something new is getting used to the lingo. I think some of the stuff I can post may reduce redundant questions since Ill word it in a different way for people who don't even understand the basics. I have worked professoinally as a DBA for 14 years. This is kind of my process for learning new tech skillsets. Please bare with me. I really dont want to monopolize the forum. I also understand you guys are busy and have lives.
Current State of my STEP
STEP installed and running with a few extra graphics mods. I have them named properly so I can take them out if I see issues. No conflicts in MO.
2 ongoing issues
1. Need to install a SkyUI patch. Seeing an error. Nexus was too slow last night to download
2. Issue with Better Question Objectives. I think this is a MO v99 issue since it didn't let me do a manual install. Not a big deal. Disabled 1 .esp for the Paarthumex Dilemma. Everything else is fine. Will go back to v12.9 with NCC add on in future.
3. Cant get new idles (often called FNIS) to work. Intro doesnt work. No NPCS. Helgen gates dont open .Cart runs into gates and falls over (comical enough for youtube video). ran the fnis.exe script. For now, just disabled it. Ill figure it out eventually just for knowledge. Mod isnt that important to me.
Started with mostly 1024k graphics mods. Seeing how the game runs and swapping for higher resolution. Using good naming conventions so I can switch back if I have issues.
My PC
intel i5. not overclocking
Radeon 7850 2gb ram
16 gb ram (shame I can only go to 3.1 gb ram with skyrim).
My Mod Naming Conventions (based on STEP)
Based on STEP, but goes farther than the pictures. I have found proper naming conventions to be CRITICAL to keeping this sutff ordered. Thanks for the tip on this. This is what I am doing.
Base Naming Convention: D_1_
When I have to install a mod with patches/options I do
D_1_Mod_Name
So I would have
D_1A_MYMOD
D_1B_MYMOD
When I want to to try different resolutions. I uncheck, but keep the lower ones installed and use:
D_1_1024_
D_1_2045_
Or low or high. I keep names similiar to mod names.
Mod Name Changes:
Some Mod Authors do not use file names with the mod name so I change them to:
D_1__file_name
So its easier for me to go back to STEP list and know what mod this is.
For my 'add in mods' I do
_EXTRA__MOD_NAME
So for immersive weapons I did
EXTRA_1_IMMERSIVE_WEAPONS.
I added to the end. If I was to move to a group, I would add a letter at the front.
Current Tools:
Mod Organizer v99 -- will revert to v12.9 and add in NCC. Had issues with Better Quest Objectives. Forced me to do a fomod install.
BUM: run from MO
BOSS: run from MO
SKSE: run from MO
TES5Edit: run from MO
Wrye Bash (303. Had issues with 304) run from MO
Not using
DDSOPT: I dont want to dig into this until I understand the other stuff. Please dont confuse me by talking about it yet. I will get to this in the next week or so. Please give me time.
Stuff I have read/watched
STEP wiki for MO, Wrye Bash, STEP, Skyrim Revisited (to learn it), a few other guides
TES5Edit guides. cleaning guide and general guide.
Creation Kit Guide (briefly skimmed to get an idea what people were talking about. ).
Youtube videos
Several MO videos (Ill add linls in my Q&A)
Several Gopher Videos
Wrye Bash Patch videos. several
Tes5Edit (2 videos)
STEP forums (scoured and searched)
Nexus Forums about mods. Read quite a bit of stuff. Went through large parts of the monster MO thread, etc... alot to learn. took notes.
Stuff still confusing to me. These are my questions
1. What is a Wrye Bash patch and a lingo question? (I post my understanding below.)
Is a 'merge' a Wrye Bash Patch or is that from TES5Edit? In some posts I see people drop the word 'merge'. What tool do they refer to?
How do you tell when you need a Wrye Bash Patch? There are conflicts I can resolve in TES5Edit and conflicts I can resolve in Wrye Bash. I see references to 'lists of items' that you 'bash' together with Wrye Bash. I know I asked this before, but its confusing.
2. TES5Edit Patches
As part of STEP, we do 1 TES5Edit patch. I see we did this for a mod when I opened them up had 'red' in the header and the same header name. What does this mean?
I saw a video on the web about a script you can use to 'merge' mods with TES5Edit. This is what a merge is right? When you use Wrye Bash, that is a 'bash'. Want to make sure I get the lingo right.
Did we do a merge in STEP? When we created the ASG-AWE patch? Or is that different?
3. How to find when you need to do a Wrye Bash Patch
Do I I have to go through each mod and look at conflicts? Or can I have Wrye Bash run me a report on the mods so i can get one text file with conflicting mods? How do I know if I need to Bash mods together or not? There are alot of conflicts in STEP and no Bash Patches.
4. How do we know when to do a TES5Edit patch?
The one we did for STEP, showed entries that had the same letter number combination (What is the lingo for this?). Then we dragged together. How do we find them short of opening up and eyeballing? Can we generate a report?
5. Getting Wrye Bash working from MO
I have Wrye Bash configured to work from MO. I saw some references in several different places about options settings/we need to change to make sure that Wrye Bash doesn't do something to interfere with MO. Can someone post them here? They were in separate locations and I can't find them.
There was also something I need to do to get it to work with BOSS too.
6. Uses of TES5Edit
So far I see these
1. tell me where my game will CTD on start up. Very easy and useful
2. Combining Patches that have certain types of conflicts (see questions above about how this is different than Wrye Bash)
3. cleaning files.
anything else I am missing? I see alot of scripts in TES5Edit for advanced users. I have not used them. Just to give me an idea on how this works.
7. MO issue when I need to set a 'data directory'
Watched the MO videos. read the guide. Here is an issue I have run into. A manual install pops up and MO asks me to 'set a data directory' .
What do I do when I several files I need at the same level. If I set 1 data directory, I think the other stuff does not get installed. This is where I ran into issues
Book of Spells (weapons mod). Special instructions say do a manual install and pick certain pieces. Done. I was then asked to 'set a data directory'. If I dont pick the 'skyforge' weapons patch, then this .esp does not get installed and TES5Edit and BOSS show errors.
Should I 'repack' which to me means. This may seem odd to you guys, but the term 'repack' was confusing to me in Wrye Bash. unzip move files around and re-zip made more sense.
1. unzip the mod.
2. create a directory called 'data'.
3. stick everything I want to install in there.
4. re-zip and install.
I did an automatic install and got everything (which just means it includes glass which STEP did not recommend, but does not appear to cause conflicts. So I have a work around.
8. Best Way to backup STEP install so I can easily rollback.
I want to start SR, so I can figure out how to do it, but I DONT want to ruin my STEP install. SR, uses TES5Edit to clean up core files. I am using MO, but I wan to name mods in SR to follow the SR number format. The SR profiles are nice, but there are a couple of short comings.
My backup strategy:
backup my skyrim install before starting (plenty of space)
Backup my MO directory so I can keep my profiles. I think I can just backup my profiles, but why risk it
Backup up boss, so I keep my old masterlist. Probably can just backup masterlist ,but easy enough to get the whole directory.
If I wanto restore a skyrim install using Steam, can I delete it and copy back my skyrim install or do I need to reinstall?
If I do either, can I just copy my Mods back and MO profile back and I am good to start?
Reasoning for this:
1. SR, uses TES5Edit on many mods and core files. I will probably screw this up. so want an easy rollback.
2. MO profiles still keep the existing mods in your profile list, but not active. This turns into a jumbled mess. I want an empty profile list. I dont see a way to make these invisible
3. When I rename Mods in MO, it does not appear to use an alias that is just for my Profile. So for my STEP profile I would want to keep my naming conventions of
D_1_
But for SR, I want to follow his ordering and naming. So Id like to use a clean list of mods.
Let me know if this is valuable/correct/or if Im going to screw stuff up. I dont want to loes my STEP install and want an easy rollback.
I have plenty of disk space. I have two 1 tb Hard Disks I can use for backup. I have skyrim on an SSD that has about 45 gb of space left after STEP install.
Question
youtoo
First off thank you for being patient with all my stupid questions. I know I ask the same questions more than once, but some answers actually dont make sense to me. I think part of it is that I dont get the lingo. I have read alot of stuff and did the STEP install. See below for what I have done so far and where I am at.
After I get a better understanding of this, Ill post a faq (which you may want to sticky) for utter newbs. It will be stuff that I had trouble getting. Part of learning something new is getting used to the lingo. I think some of the stuff I can post may reduce redundant questions since Ill word it in a different way for people who don't even understand the basics. I have worked professoinally as a DBA for 14 years. This is kind of my process for learning new tech skillsets. Please bare with me. I really dont want to monopolize the forum. I also understand you guys are busy and have lives.
Current State of my STEP
STEP installed and running with a few extra graphics mods. I have them named properly so I can take them out if I see issues. No conflicts in MO.
2 ongoing issues
1. Need to install a SkyUI patch. Seeing an error. Nexus was too slow last night to download
2. Issue with Better Question Objectives. I think this is a MO v99 issue since it didn't let me do a manual install. Not a big deal. Disabled 1 .esp for the Paarthumex Dilemma. Everything else is fine. Will go back to v12.9 with NCC add on in future.
3. Cant get new idles (often called FNIS) to work. Intro doesnt work. No NPCS. Helgen gates dont open .Cart runs into gates and falls over (comical enough for youtube video). ran the fnis.exe script. For now, just disabled it. Ill figure it out eventually just for knowledge. Mod isnt that important to me.
Started with mostly 1024k graphics mods. Seeing how the game runs and swapping for higher resolution. Using good naming conventions so I can switch back if I have issues.
My PC
intel i5. not overclocking
Radeon 7850 2gb ram
16 gb ram (shame I can only go to 3.1 gb ram with skyrim).
My Mod Naming Conventions (based on STEP)
Based on STEP, but goes farther than the pictures. I have found proper naming conventions to be CRITICAL to keeping this sutff ordered. Thanks for the tip on this. This is what I am doing.
Base Naming Convention: D_1_
When I have to install a mod with patches/options I do
D_1_Mod_Name
So I would have
D_1A_MYMOD
D_1B_MYMOD
When I want to to try different resolutions. I uncheck, but keep the lower ones installed and use:
D_1_1024_
D_1_2045_
Or low or high. I keep names similiar to mod names.
Mod Name Changes:
Some Mod Authors do not use file names with the mod name so I change them to:
D_1__file_name
So its easier for me to go back to STEP list and know what mod this is.
For my 'add in mods' I do
_EXTRA__MOD_NAME
So for immersive weapons I did
EXTRA_1_IMMERSIVE_WEAPONS.
I added to the end. If I was to move to a group, I would add a letter at the front.
Current Tools:
Mod Organizer v99 -- will revert to v12.9 and add in NCC. Had issues with Better Quest Objectives. Forced me to do a fomod install.
BUM: run from MO
BOSS: run from MO
SKSE: run from MO
TES5Edit: run from MO
Wrye Bash (303. Had issues with 304) run from MO
Not using
DDSOPT: I dont want to dig into this until I understand the other stuff. Please dont confuse me by talking about it yet. I will get to this in the next week or so. Please give me time.
Stuff I have read/watched
STEP wiki for MO, Wrye Bash, STEP, Skyrim Revisited (to learn it), a few other guides
TES5Edit guides. cleaning guide and general guide.
Creation Kit Guide (briefly skimmed to get an idea what people were talking about. ).
Youtube videos
Several MO videos (Ill add linls in my Q&A)
Several Gopher Videos
Wrye Bash Patch videos. several
Tes5Edit (2 videos)
STEP forums (scoured and searched)
Nexus Forums about mods. Read quite a bit of stuff. Went through large parts of the monster MO thread, etc... alot to learn. took notes.
Stuff still confusing to me. These are my questions
1. What is a Wrye Bash patch and a lingo question? (I post my understanding below.)
Is a 'merge' a Wrye Bash Patch or is that from TES5Edit? In some posts I see people drop the word 'merge'. What tool do they refer to?
How do you tell when you need a Wrye Bash Patch? There are conflicts I can resolve in TES5Edit and conflicts I can resolve in Wrye Bash. I see references to 'lists of items' that you 'bash' together with Wrye Bash. I know I asked this before, but its confusing.
2. TES5Edit Patches
As part of STEP, we do 1 TES5Edit patch. I see we did this for a mod when I opened them up had 'red' in the header and the same header name. What does this mean?
I saw a video on the web about a script you can use to 'merge' mods with TES5Edit. This is what a merge is right? When you use Wrye Bash, that is a 'bash'. Want to make sure I get the lingo right.
Did we do a merge in STEP? When we created the ASG-AWE patch? Or is that different?
3. How to find when you need to do a Wrye Bash Patch
Do I I have to go through each mod and look at conflicts? Or can I have Wrye Bash run me a report on the mods so i can get one text file with conflicting mods? How do I know if I need to Bash mods together or not? There are alot of conflicts in STEP and no Bash Patches.
4. How do we know when to do a TES5Edit patch?
The one we did for STEP, showed entries that had the same letter number combination (What is the lingo for this?). Then we dragged together. How do we find them short of opening up and eyeballing? Can we generate a report?
5. Getting Wrye Bash working from MO
I have Wrye Bash configured to work from MO. I saw some references in several different places about options settings/we need to change to make sure that Wrye Bash doesn't do something to interfere with MO. Can someone post them here? They were in separate locations and I can't find them.
There was also something I need to do to get it to work with BOSS too.
6. Uses of TES5Edit
So far I see these
1. tell me where my game will CTD on start up. Very easy and useful
2. Combining Patches that have certain types of conflicts (see questions above about how this is different than Wrye Bash)
3. cleaning files.
anything else I am missing? I see alot of scripts in TES5Edit for advanced users. I have not used them. Just to give me an idea on how this works.
7. MO issue when I need to set a 'data directory'
Watched the MO videos. read the guide. Here is an issue I have run into. A manual install pops up and MO asks me to 'set a data directory' .
What do I do when I several files I need at the same level. If I set 1 data directory, I think the other stuff does not get installed. This is where I ran into issues
Book of Spells (weapons mod). Special instructions say do a manual install and pick certain pieces. Done. I was then asked to 'set a data directory'. If I dont pick the 'skyforge' weapons patch, then this .esp does not get installed and TES5Edit and BOSS show errors.
Should I 'repack' which to me means. This may seem odd to you guys, but the term 'repack' was confusing to me in Wrye Bash. unzip move files around and re-zip made more sense.
1. unzip the mod.
2. create a directory called 'data'.
3. stick everything I want to install in there.
4. re-zip and install.
I did an automatic install and got everything (which just means it includes glass which STEP did not recommend, but does not appear to cause conflicts. So I have a work around.
8. Best Way to backup STEP install so I can easily rollback.
I want to start SR, so I can figure out how to do it, but I DONT want to ruin my STEP install. SR, uses TES5Edit to clean up core files. I am using MO, but I wan to name mods in SR to follow the SR number format. The SR profiles are nice, but there are a couple of short comings.
My backup strategy:
backup my skyrim install before starting (plenty of space)
Backup my MO directory so I can keep my profiles. I think I can just backup my profiles, but why risk it
Backup up boss, so I keep my old masterlist. Probably can just backup masterlist ,but easy enough to get the whole directory.
If I wanto restore a skyrim install using Steam, can I delete it and copy back my skyrim install or do I need to reinstall?
If I do either, can I just copy my Mods back and MO profile back and I am good to start?
Reasoning for this:
1. SR, uses TES5Edit on many mods and core files. I will probably screw this up. so want an easy rollback.
2. MO profiles still keep the existing mods in your profile list, but not active. This turns into a jumbled mess. I want an empty profile list. I dont see a way to make these invisible
3. When I rename Mods in MO, it does not appear to use an alias that is just for my Profile. So for my STEP profile I would want to keep my naming conventions of
D_1_
But for SR, I want to follow his ordering and naming. So Id like to use a clean list of mods.
Let me know if this is valuable/correct/or if Im going to screw stuff up. I dont want to loes my STEP install and want an easy rollback.
I have plenty of disk space. I have two 1 tb Hard Disks I can use for backup. I have skyrim on an SSD that has about 45 gb of space left after STEP install.
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