May or may not be something new for all of you, but I am personally still trying to get a good estimate of the limits of the skyrim engine. Very hard to find useful information about this anywhere on the internet. Â I therefore thought it would be a good idea to open a thread about script mods and to share our experiences with them, in particular how well a combination of mods plays out for you.Â
What are your thoughts about Skyrim's scripting limitations? At which point do you believe that scripts start to cause unacceptable levels of ctds/freezes (as per your own definitions)? Which combination of script mods could you identify as a likely cause for stability/instability, and why? In what ways do you quantify your maximum allowed number of script mods?
Instead of starting by sharing my own experiences, which only go back to about 2 months of Skyrim modding, I suppose one of the best sources to quote for opening this thread is a renowned script mod author himself. About a week ago, Isoku posted some interesting insights with regards to total script load of the skyrim engine.
Although I'm a big fan and once a long-term user of this mod (I quit most script-heavy mods for my latest playthrough,
was spending all my time modding and not even playing, all because of scripting issues), I can absolutely guarantee that it's going to give you stability issues, through no real fault of its own, pretty much as soon as you mix it with any other moderate-to-major script based mod, essentially regardless of your PC's capabilities. This applies to anything that's scripted, not just W&C.
It's not really a matter of load count, you could have 254 weapon/armour mods with W&C and probably have flawless stability, but as soon as you introduce anything that is also reliant on either frequent/constant updating, or perhaps batch processing large amounts of data in single cycles, you're gonna have a bad time, purely because Papyrus and its attendant engine were just not *designed* to process all this crap we keep throwing at it. It's like trying to push a salami down a too-small drainpipe (snigger), or a traffic jam on one of those crazy spaghetti junction things.
Generally, you want to avoid using multiple "cloak" scripts (a cloak script is essentially a script that's attached to an actor, runs constantly, and has some kind of effect, be it graphical, magical or whatever, like the flame cloak spell, ebony mail enchantment, oakflesh, Footprints, or W&C's wet/snowy effects), as they're specifically troublesome when combined, although in general using scripts that aren't *completely* unrelated in every way is inherently risky.
Running one or two constant cloak scripts is probably okay, but you're still definitely going to CTD occasionally, even with just one.
Stuff like Hunterborn and Frostfall's camping equipment placement mechanic is (in my experience) much more stable because it's "contextual" and therefore only runs anything significant when the player performs an action. In my experience, you can quite cheerfully run large amounts of "contextual" scripts as long as they're well written and non-conflicting.
However, W&C is pretty modular, so you can disable a lot of stuff to lighten the load and increase the update cycle to further help things, but the best parts (breath, wetness, snowy) are the ones that are the most performance-intensive, so bear that in mind. And disabling stuff isn't an automatic performance improver. But if W&C's going to be your only major script mod, then you're almost definitely good to go.
If you're intending to use Frostfall, particularly Frostfall with a needs/desires mod, then I'd seriously consider simply not using W&C, as Frostfall has basic versions of some W&C features, courtesy of Isoku, and combining all three is going to result in a particularly high script load before you've even installed the rest of your setup.
Something else to bear in mind: Way, way more mods than you'd think are scripted. And tons of stuff in Vanilla Skyrim is too, so when installing mods, keep an eye on your scripts folder, every time something you install adds a file to that folder, go and stress test until you're confident it's not interfering with anything in a negative way (spawn a bunch of NPCs, trigger a range of weathers, kill some stuff, spam fireballs, fast travel, etc). With W&C specifically, be particularly watchful for a stuck rain effect.
Also, don't touch the memory and timing allocations for Papyrus in skyrim.ini unless you're absolutely certain you know what you're doing, allocating too much in the way of resources to the Papyrus engine can potentially cause bucketloads of stack overflows (out of memory) and CTDs even more frequently than if you'd left it alone.
response by Isoku
Thanks for the input domw. Here's my opinion as promised, JohnRandolph:
The only feature Get Snowy and Wet and Cold have in common is the snowy effect that covers actors when it's snowing. So yes, Get Snowy is a good alternative if you don't care for the other features of Wet and Cold. Is it more stable? I'm going to say yes to this as well. Because Get Snowy does not utilize scripts and is not as ambitious as Wet and Cold, it will obviously consume less resources and have less potential to impact your experience in a negative way. However, Get Snowy also utilizes a cloaking feature (this is a method to apply modded effects to NPCs in a radius around the player). The presence of a cloaking feature does not indicate that a mod will be troublesome. It's the effects that are applied with it that make the difference.
Regarding the stability mod page, I appreciate the author's attempt to share his experience to help improve the game for others. Although I agree with some of his selections in blacklisted mods (those that are outdated and no longer supported) and I agree that users should exercise caution when using multiple script intensive mods, I am a bit disappointed in the broad brush stroke used to paint every fully featured, scripted mod as ticking time bombs. Scripted/cloaking mods are not inherently prone to failure purely based on the size of your load order. One must take into account the complexity of the mod in question, how efficiently it was coded, how well it's supported, the presence of other scripted mods and the relative performance of your computer. For example, I am hesitant to recommend Player Headtracking because it appears to be buggy and is no longer supported by the author. I would recommend Footprints because of the relative simplicity of its scripts and scope. I would not recommend running Player Headtracking, Enhanced Blood Textures, Frostfall, Footprints, Wet and Cold, SkyRE and other highly scripted mods at the same time.
That said I want to state a few things about Wet and Cold since I know it inside and out:
1. The only script that is continuously running regardless of your exterior location is the one that simply checks which worldspace you are in and the current time. This script is disabled in interiors--the entire mod gets disabled in interiors. 90% of the checks introduced through this mod is done through magic effect conditions, which is not as demanding as checks done through scripting. I use magic effect conditions to monitor weather, NPC type, specific locations, etc.
2. The majority of the other scripts in this mod are pretty simple. They simply turn on, execute what they were meant to do, then turn off. One exception to this is the breath effect, which updates every few seconds to play the visual effect in a loop. However the scripts related to the breath effect get disabled when the actor is more than 1024 units from you and when you are no longer in a cold region.
3. I consider the equipment features the most resource intensive since I'm rolling several dice in order to randomize the equipment on an NPC. The visual effects are fairly light weight.
3. Imagine Wet and Cold as a collection of mods rather than one. Let's say it is the equivalent of ten lightly scripted mods. Do you think your system can run these along with your other scripted mods taking into account what I stated in the second paragraph? If not, disabling one or two features from Wet and Cold is essentially the equivalent of disabling one of these ten mods.
For what it's worth, I have a high-end system, am running several (only several! ) highly scripted mods including Wet and Cold (with most of the features enabled) and have had no problems. However, I am very careful with the mods I install.
Edited by isoku, 29 September 2013 - 10:45 AM.Â
comments by ploeperpengel
This conversation deserves a sticky(feel free to remove my petty comment for that). Taking Wet and Cold from my current Modlist was one of the hardest decisions I made during the last couple of weeks were I experienced constant ILS and ctds(due to overmodding and not particularly this mod, but I had to reduce the amount of scripts). This new changelog however looks very promising and I'm totally interested to test this again.
Just some additional -questionable- observations(I'm fairly new to Skyrim Modding same as the OP - cheers Randolph btw! - and I don't know nothing about proper interpunction as this isn't my native language so please bear with me).
In my earlier testbuild I had Inconsequental NPCs, Interesting NPCs, Headtracking, When Vampires Attack, Run for your lifes, Frostfall, RND, Wet and Cold and Skyrim Immersive creatures all running at the same time. Meaning I had multiple cloak spell scripts constantly checking player condition, scripts checking for NPCs in the area, altering NPC behavior dependend on conditions(Weather, Attacks etc) and on top of that put a shitload of additional actors into the game. I guess it's no big surprise my game bugged out completly at some point starting with scenes not playing or having actors missing during scenes and more and more freezes, ctds and ILS with the game progressing.
After two months of testing mods I'm also quite eager by now to hopefully be able to play the game soon and not just test it(have yet to play Dragonborn, Dawnguard and finish the mainquest actually even though I've spend literally several months in Skyrim already right there when it was first published, not without ctds of course even without mods).
I will probably no longer use headtracking even though I liked it and I'm thinking about making important actors essential with Deadly Dragons instead of using Run for your lifes and When Vampires attack, Dragons and Vampires can kill whatever inconsequental NPCs they want to for all I care. However the remaining mods still seem like a lot for the engine so I'd really be interested what experiences other poeple had with running those or similar mods together. My goal is obviously to loose as few as possible of the remaining mods I have mentioned above and any offered experiences with this are really appreciated(as long they're not simply based on nerdrage).
In any case this mod is definitly endorsed. Now lets hope I can actually play with it longer:DÂ
Question
Nearox
May or may not be something new for all of you, but I am personally still trying to get a good estimate of the limits of the skyrim engine. Very hard to find useful information about this anywhere on the internet. Â I therefore thought it would be a good idea to open a thread about script mods and to share our experiences with them, in particular how well a combination of mods plays out for you.Â
What are your thoughts about Skyrim's scripting limitations? At which point do you believe that scripts start to cause unacceptable levels of ctds/freezes (as per your own definitions)? Which combination of script mods could you identify as a likely cause for stability/instability, and why? In what ways do you quantify your maximum allowed number of script mods?
Instead of starting by sharing my own experiences, which only go back to about 2 months of Skyrim modding, I suppose one of the best sources to quote for opening this thread is a renowned script mod author himself. About a week ago, Isoku posted some interesting insights with regards to total script load of the skyrim engine.
Copy/pasting some of the conversation here for easy reference. Check here for more: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/844188-wet-and-cold/page-192&do=findComment&comment=9319199
observations by domw
Although I'm a big fan and once a long-term user of this mod (I quit most script-heavy mods for my latest playthrough,
was spending all my time modding and not even playing, all because of scripting issues), I can absolutely guarantee that it's going to give you stability issues, through no real fault of its own, pretty much as soon as you mix it with any other moderate-to-major script based mod, essentially regardless of your PC's capabilities. This applies to anything that's scripted, not just W&C.
It's not really a matter of load count, you could have 254 weapon/armour mods with W&C and probably have flawless stability, but as soon as you introduce anything that is also reliant on either frequent/constant updating, or perhaps batch processing large amounts of data in single cycles, you're gonna have a bad time, purely because Papyrus and its attendant engine were just not *designed* to process all this crap we keep throwing at it. It's like trying to push a salami down a too-small drainpipe (snigger), or a traffic jam on one of those crazy spaghetti junction things.
Generally, you want to avoid using multiple "cloak" scripts (a cloak script is essentially a script that's attached to an actor, runs constantly, and has some kind of effect, be it graphical, magical or whatever, like the flame cloak spell, ebony mail enchantment, oakflesh, Footprints, or W&C's wet/snowy effects), as they're specifically troublesome when combined, although in general using scripts that aren't *completely* unrelated in every way is inherently risky.
Running one or two constant cloak scripts is probably okay, but you're still definitely going to CTD occasionally, even with just one.
Stuff like Hunterborn and Frostfall's camping equipment placement mechanic is (in my experience) much more stable because it's "contextual" and therefore only runs anything significant when the player performs an action. In my experience, you can quite cheerfully run large amounts of "contextual" scripts as long as they're well written and non-conflicting.
However, W&C is pretty modular, so you can disable a lot of stuff to lighten the load and increase the update cycle to further help things, but the best parts (breath, wetness, snowy) are the ones that are the most performance-intensive, so bear that in mind. And disabling stuff isn't an automatic performance improver. But if W&C's going to be your only major script mod, then you're almost definitely good to go.
If you're intending to use Frostfall, particularly Frostfall with a needs/desires mod, then I'd seriously consider simply not using W&C, as Frostfall has basic versions of some W&C features, courtesy of Isoku, and combining all three is going to result in a particularly high script load before you've even installed the rest of your setup.
Something else to bear in mind: Way, way more mods than you'd think are scripted. And tons of stuff in Vanilla Skyrim is too, so when installing mods, keep an eye on your scripts folder, every time something you install adds a file to that folder, go and stress test until you're confident it's not interfering with anything in a negative way (spawn a bunch of NPCs, trigger a range of weathers, kill some stuff, spam fireballs, fast travel, etc). With W&C specifically, be particularly watchful for a stuck rain effect.
Also, don't touch the memory and timing allocations for Papyrus in skyrim.ini unless you're absolutely certain you know what you're doing, allocating too much in the way of resources to the Papyrus engine can potentially cause bucketloads of stack overflows (out of memory) and CTDs even more frequently than if you'd left it alone.
response by Isoku
Thanks for the input domw. Here's my opinion as promised, JohnRandolph:
The only feature Get Snowy and Wet and Cold have in common is the snowy effect that covers actors when it's snowing. So yes, Get Snowy is a good alternative if you don't care for the other features of Wet and Cold. Is it more stable? I'm going to say yes to this as well. Because Get Snowy does not utilize scripts and is not as ambitious as Wet and Cold, it will obviously consume less resources and have less potential to impact your experience in a negative way. However, Get Snowy also utilizes a cloaking feature (this is a method to apply modded effects to NPCs in a radius around the player). The presence of a cloaking feature does not indicate that a mod will be troublesome. It's the effects that are applied with it that make the difference.
Regarding the stability mod page, I appreciate the author's attempt to share his experience to help improve the game for others. Although I agree with some of his selections in blacklisted mods (those that are outdated and no longer supported) and I agree that users should exercise caution when using multiple script intensive mods, I am a bit disappointed in the broad brush stroke used to paint every fully featured, scripted mod as ticking time bombs. Scripted/cloaking mods are not inherently prone to failure purely based on the size of your load order. One must take into account the complexity of the mod in question, how efficiently it was coded, how well it's supported, the presence of other scripted mods and the relative performance of your computer. For example, I am hesitant to recommend Player Headtracking because it appears to be buggy and is no longer supported by the author. I would recommend Footprints because of the relative simplicity of its scripts and scope. I would not recommend running Player Headtracking, Enhanced Blood Textures, Frostfall, Footprints, Wet and Cold, SkyRE and other highly scripted mods at the same time.
That said I want to state a few things about Wet and Cold since I know it inside and out:
1. The only script that is continuously running regardless of your exterior location is the one that simply checks which worldspace you are in and the current time. This script is disabled in interiors--the entire mod gets disabled in interiors. 90% of the checks introduced through this mod is done through magic effect conditions, which is not as demanding as checks done through scripting. I use magic effect conditions to monitor weather, NPC type, specific locations, etc.
2. The majority of the other scripts in this mod are pretty simple. They simply turn on, execute what they were meant to do, then turn off. One exception to this is the breath effect, which updates every few seconds to play the visual effect in a loop. However the scripts related to the breath effect get disabled when the actor is more than 1024 units from you and when you are no longer in a cold region.
3. I consider the equipment features the most resource intensive since I'm rolling several dice in order to randomize the equipment on an NPC. The visual effects are fairly light weight.
3. Imagine Wet and Cold as a collection of mods rather than one. Let's say it is the equivalent of ten lightly scripted mods. Do you think your system can run these along with your other scripted mods taking into account what I stated in the second paragraph? If not, disabling one or two features from Wet and Cold is essentially the equivalent of disabling one of these ten mods.
For what it's worth, I have a high-end system, am running several (only several! ) highly scripted mods including Wet and Cold (with most of the features enabled) and have had no problems. However, I am very careful with the mods I install.
Edited by isoku, 29 September 2013 - 10:45 AM.Â
comments by ploeperpengel
This conversation deserves a sticky(feel free to remove my petty comment for that). Taking Wet and Cold from my current Modlist was one of the hardest decisions I made during the last couple of weeks were I experienced constant ILS and ctds(due to overmodding and not particularly this mod, but I had to reduce the amount of scripts). This new changelog however looks very promising and I'm totally interested to test this again.
Just some additional -questionable- observations(I'm fairly new to Skyrim Modding same as the OP - cheers Randolph btw! - and I don't know nothing about proper interpunction as this isn't my native language so please bear with me).
In my earlier testbuild I had Inconsequental NPCs, Interesting NPCs, Headtracking, When Vampires Attack, Run for your lifes, Frostfall, RND, Wet and Cold and Skyrim Immersive creatures all running at the same time. Meaning I had multiple cloak spell scripts constantly checking player condition, scripts checking for NPCs in the area, altering NPC behavior dependend on conditions(Weather, Attacks etc) and on top of that put a shitload of additional actors into the game. I guess it's no big surprise my game bugged out completly at some point starting with scenes not playing or having actors missing during scenes and more and more freezes, ctds and ILS with the game progressing.
After two months of testing mods I'm also quite eager by now to hopefully be able to play the game soon and not just test it(have yet to play Dragonborn, Dawnguard and finish the mainquest actually even though I've spend literally several months in Skyrim already right there when it was first published, not without ctds of course even without mods).
I will probably no longer use headtracking even though I liked it and I'm thinking about making important actors essential with Deadly Dragons instead of using Run for your lifes and When Vampires attack, Dragons and Vampires can kill whatever inconsequental NPCs they want to for all I care. However the remaining mods still seem like a lot for the engine so I'd really be interested what experiences other poeple had with running those or similar mods together. My goal is obviously to loose as few as possible of the remaining mods I have mentioned above and any offered experiences with this are really appreciated(as long they're not simply based on nerdrage).
In any case this mod is definitly endorsed. Now lets hope I can actually play with it longer:DÂ
Edit: updated with correct Isoku post
11 answers to this question
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