How is STEP made easy for anyone?

[DatsiK96]

I have to be honest. The entire STEP wiki is a complete mess.

 

I'm not a 'modder' per say, as in I don't make mods. But I am knowledgeable when it comes to managing and installing mods, and how most of it works.

 

With that being said. I just simply don't understand the steps within the STEP process. None of it. It's a complete mess. You can spend an entire MONTH trying to get this right, and most of that month will be spent redoing it because the instructions weren't clear, outdated, inaccurate, or just plainly doesn't work.

 

I've done step before, but ended up (obviously) doing it wrong because I would get random CTDs every 10 or so minutes. Not fun.

 

I'm going to talk about the very first part right now, because that's what I've been trying to understand so far.

 

The optimizing of the textures using DDSopt.

 

Firstly, the DDSopt page is confusing. You've got important information scattered from the quick guide, to the actual guide, and the quick guide isn't specific enough to contain all the information needed, yet the actual guide isn't easy enough to get any information out of it. So you end up going back and forward to piece together something that 'works' only to find out it's not how it works at all.

 

One of the biggest problems is the bat files. You have multiple downloads leading to different versions of the bats. This is not good. I wasted an entire go at it using the wrong bat files because the wrong version presented itself to me first.

 

To spare you all from a huge and long rant on everything wrong with it. I'm going to just say this. It needs to be streamlined.

 

Get rid of tabs. Instead of having one part in one tab, and the maybe the next part in the other, it needs to be on one page, in a step by step fashion starting from the top to the bottom. And when it needs to jump to another guide, like say, repacking BSAs, link it to them in a noticeable manner. If it's in a correct step by step scheme, it shouldn't be to hard to notice that is where you need to be.

 

Get rid of large unnecessary text. A lot on this STEP guide is a mix between important instructions and non-important background information, all the while it doesn't really explain much. This needs to be redone, important information needs to stand out more. You can't have unimportant information hidden in a large block of text.

 

More simplified step by step instructions. You have some parts step by step, which is nice. But you've merged multiple steps all into one large step. Whats worse is, you've got explanations within steps. Steps do not require explanations. Steps should be a guide of what you do WITH the understanding. If STEP recommends it, it should be a part of the main step, and if it's important to have the choice, then it should be listed as a side option step.

 

It needs to be easier to find where to begin. Even though it linked me to one page on the installation of skyrim, it wasn't apparent enough that this entire section of optimizing the textures was important, because it wasn't listed in the steps. It should be like a checklist, if it's needed, make it KNOWN! Have a prerequisite list, SOMETHING.

 

With all that being said. Maybe STEP just isn't for me. I don't mind spending time on doing a large modding guide like this... But if the instructions aren't clear, it's just not worth it.

 

If you want more specific tips and changes, I can offer.

 

If someone wants to maybe point out where I'm getting this all wrong, let me know!

[DoubleYou]

Try Skyrim Revisited. Once you got that down, you should understand STEP better. It can be rather difficult to understand as a newcomer otherwise.

[Kelmych]

The DDSopt guide serves users with a wide range of experience in gaming and using mods and software tools as well as capability of the systems used to run the game, and across this range of users the desired level of detail varies substantially. We have not found a single approach that all users find useful for presenting the information, so several approaches are included in the guide. It was created and evolved by users of the guide based on discussions in the STEP forums and on guide user comments, and there isn't always a clear single formula for using DDSopt that works for everyone. The guide is also trying to provide information for users who want to optimize mods that are not in the STEP guide, so sufficient explanations need to be included to allow users to extrapolate the processing to optimizing mods that are not explicitly discussed.

 

If you have a clear idea of a particular way of presenting the information that you feel would be very useful to other users of the guide, I'd suggest creating a new page with the information organized in the way you feel would be useful for all or some subset of the users. This is a wiki, and user participation is strongly encouraged. The Quickstart guide was added because many users wanted at least a short overview to help understand what was being done. The page you suggest can be another alternate presentation of the guide material, and if users find it a lot more useful it can become the main way the guide is used. It can start as a tab in the existing guide (since this is very easy to add) or as a new page.

 

If you have some specific comments on the steps such as which steps you feel should actually be multiple steps we can try to edit the steps to provide this.

[DatsiK96]

Thank you for the replies!

 

Sorry if I seemed angry before.

 

I'll be honest, I've tried STEP 3 times now.

 

The first time I got everything installed after a week of working on it, but the game was incredibly unstable... And I could never find out why... I feel like it might have been because I just didn't follow everything to the letter during the install, so things got weird. But I had come so far, so it's not like I could have fixed it... only options were to start all over. And that's where I ran into the DDsopt thing... to me it makes sense that it would be the reason for me getting CTDs... but I dunno.

 

I just don't know where I'm going wrong with the installs, and now it's happening all over again with the very first step >.< so it's kind of aggravating.

 

Maybe someone could offer some 1 on 1 help with this, like IM on skype or something? And I'll see about maybe making a pass at a different guide...

 

I ran into the skyrim revisited thing, but I wasn't sure if it was up-to-date still. I'll give it a try as well...

 

Thanks again~

[Aiyen]

Install one section, test that your game can start, install the next test.... etc.

 

The mods in the STEP guide do not contain any inherit incompatibilities that should make your game more unstable.

So most likely you have run into memory issues, which most likely are because you are using way too large texture sizes relative to what your rig can handle.

 

As for DDSopt, there is SO much info about that around this place by now that I just do not feel like going into it all over. But once you have setup DDsopt then it is really just a few clicks.

Since I have never used the batch files for it then I will leave that for someone more competent!

[Kelmych]

DDSopt optimizes textures, and textures are generally a cause of instability only if there are enough large textures in use that VRAM use is getting close to the max value the graphics card can handle, or the texture storage in RAM causes RAM use to exceed the max value that the game can handle (see threads on the 3.1 Gb limit for more about this). RAM use depends a lot on game scripts and other factors as well as texture use, so there are no specific recommendations other than doing some monitoring of RAM and VRAM use to see if they are potential causes of instability.

 

We don't have a good writeup that suggests how to do texture optimization in stages and in particular how big the stages should be. There aren't any good intermediate approaches in the current DDSopt guide, for example. If you (or others) have suggestions on this let us know or add them to the wiki pages.

[DatsiK96]

Well I just built a new rig, with 16gbs of really fast ram, a new haswell i7 unlocked, and my GPU has 3gbs of vram.

 

I followed the install pretty much as close as I could, and before I didn't do any of the DDsopt stuff, I didn't understand it back then, I obviously still don't xD

 

The only thing I didn't follow was the unpacking of mod's BSAs... but it just crashed, most of the problems were related to that guard overhaul mod... I dunno if I did something else wrong but I uninstalled that mod and it was less unstable... However, I modded my ini files pretty extensively, using the nvidia guide.

 

Thanks for the replies though guys.. :)

 

Going to try out the revisited one wish me luck :P

[Phyrre56]

Try Skyrim Revisited. Once you got that down' date=' you should understand STEP better. It can be rather difficult to understand as a newcomer otherwise.[/quote']

This was my experience as well. I tried STEP the first time and got overwhelmed. I tried again from scratch (now having some experience with Mod Organizer, etc.) and got a stable game but I still didn't "get it." Like I couldn't have explained to anyone else what I did, other than I followed instructions and hoped for the best. I also skipped several important activities like optimizing textures and BSAs because they weren't shown as part of Core STEP so I assumed they were optional and low impact. 

 

Then I tried Skyrim Revisited and I feel like I learned the "why" behind the instructions and everything fell into place. Now I not only have a very stable and beautiful STEP installation (my rig could not handle SR as it was at the time) but I can also add other mods to my liking and figure out where they need to go in the load order, how to watch out for compatibility, and so forth. 

 

One issue right now though is that SR is still in a development phase so it might be frustrating to try to follow it at this time. 

[Necrokat]

what's the benefit of using DDSOPT over say Optimize Textures mod or SMCO?

[torminater]

SMCO and Optimizer textures are simple one-click tools, which neither offer the amount of customization nor the good end-result of compression vs. quality loss ergo optimization that DDSopt offers.

With our custom created bat files the optimization of the vanilla textures isn't more complicated than using OT or SMCO anymore, so there's no reason to not use DDSopt on those ones.

As for textures from mod ressources we have certain recommendations for DDSopting them, but we don't provide any info for OT or SMCO, since what they're actually doing when running the optimization isn't really documented anywhere.

 

 

However SMCO has the option to optimize meshes, which comes at a risk of corrupting meshes with the issues that arise from that.

[julsnice]

Hmm I share the OPs opinions as well

I'm on my 2nd go round with STEP and....I just don't get it. The main thing I don't get is why certain mods are placed where they are for installation. I always get a Potential Load Order warning in MO, and it's always centered around these mods:

-Acquisitive Soul Gems

-Follower Trap Safety

-Non-Essential Children

-Alternate Start/Skyrim Unbound

 

Also, I REALLY didn't understand the part with the "overlapping textures", mainly because I was following the guide to a tee and installing everything considered STEP Core and then some.

IMHO that whole section could benefit from a change in the the way the mods are listed, I.E. conflicting texture packs/mods should be listed side-by-side. If anything this simple change in visuals will show the reader that those packs conflict with each other and modders are encouraged to choose only 1

[Kelmych]

Mods have many textures, and each mod in the STEP list is included for a portion of the textures in the mod. It isn't an either or question for mods; we DON"T ask modders to choose one mod in the STEP list vs. another. STEP uses some textures from all the mods in the STEP list that include textures. The installation order is chosen so the textures that STEP wants to include from a particular mod overwrite any similar (but not as good) textures from the mods installed previously, and so that these textures are not overwritten by mods installed later.

 

There has been a lot of discussion and planning in the semi-automated STEP threads on how STEP could pull only the desired textures from each mod in the list; current approaches like manually created batch files are very difficult to maintain.

[Genius384]

I've been modding Bethesda games since Morrowind. To really get the most out of it, you'll have to roll up your sleeves and get ready for some geekery. Also read the forums (STEP, Bethesda's own, or watch modding videos on youtube.

 

My advice: use STEP as a list of suggestions and tips at first. Just try installing the Unofficial patches, see how they work, how a mod manager works, etc. Crawl before you walk, etc.

 

I'm not a member of the team for STEP, but it seems aimed more at modders with a background in modding, if that makes sense. To me, the STEP wiki is pretty sweet and has become a very good "go to" for up to date Skyrim modding information.

 

STEP is also just Vanilla+ with texture and visual enhancement mods... past Bethesda games had some similar monstrosities for modding (FCOM for Oblivion comes to mind.)