Jump to content

A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim


Recommended Posts

Posted
  On 5/28/2014 at 9:01 PM, CJ2311 said:

I actually already added that information about the beta version of MO to the guide a bit earlier. :P

 

Hah! You call that slow? Try this:

Posted Image

Ok ok, you win at everything :)
Posted (edited)

Actually there is still a problem with the change in 1.2.1 beta regarding BSA/loose file overwriting:  
 
BSAs never overwrite loose files.  So if one is applying an update, and therefore choosing Merge, not Replace, and one always unpacks, this will mean that any mod that both uses BSAs and provides patches that include replacement BSAs, will not properly update existing files! :(
 
So Interesting NPCs is an example again - not because it contains duplicates in BSA vs loose, but because it provides update files and those update files contain BSAs.
 
So in effect, MO beta 1.2.1 has replaced one loose/BSA conflict problem, with a different one - and the new one is going to be more common and is therefore more serious.
 
I'm going to raise a bug report for Tannin. EDIT: Report raised at https://issue.tannin.eu/tbg/modorganizer/issues/644
 
For now, the problem can be avoided by any of:

  • [*]Never unpacking any BSAs [*]Not upgrading to the latest 1.2.1 beta - meaning one does still have the loose/BSA duplicate issue, but this would be fairly rare (doesn't affect 3DNPC; does affect ETaC, but only one when wants vanilla not custom meshes) [*]Never using patch updates that contain BSAs (or, more precisely, never using the Merge installation option when the new archive contains BSAs that one is going to unpack)
    • [*]in the case of Interesting NPCs, and similar mods, one could either re-download the entire new full archive  (2GB), or, better, one could manually make one's own new version by merging the update .7z file into the full download .7z file. [*]That's what I'm going to do now - merge the v3.06 update archive into the v3.05 full download archive - so that I can re-install a properly updated Interesting NPCs.

Edited by TheBloke
Posted
  On 5/28/2014 at 8:58 PM, TheBloke said:

Yes, it is!  I just came here to post the same thing.

 

 

More importantly - you are neither confused nor hopeless, cstarkey :D

 

 

I'm so glad to hear that, I was beginning to have some serious doubts!   :woot:

Posted

RE: unpacking every BSA as a default:

 

With Interesting NPCs as an example - why bother? There are no duplicates between the BSA & loose files, and in my line up, I'm only seeing one script conflict, and that's an overwrite of a vanilla script. If I unpack it, I've just added unnecessary additional processing time (according to Tannin), and for no good reason.

 

Be smart about what you unpack. Install the mod with the BSA intact. Use MO to show you what conflicts there are - it will display conflicts of files inside BSAs too, folks. If you find there are things that you need to change or you want to hide files contained in a BSA - then extract it. You could use BSAOpt, but even easier is just to go to MO's Assets tab in the right-hand pane, find the BSA, right click and choose Extract...

 

However, just remember what TheBloke has explained about some further bug in 1.1.2 that need to be worked out with regards to BSA assets overwriting loose assets in the same mod. An easy way to handle it for now is to temporarily move them into their own folder in the mod's sub-directory, unpack the BSA, and then move the loose files back, overwriting as you see fit. Done!

 

-----

 

CJ - on that sewer cover thing - could that be helped in my case by changing any distance detail settings in the .ini? I'm assuming the cover texture doesn't have an LOD (if that's even used), and there's something about it not showing up past a certain distance that I could change to stop it from switching when I'm close enough to see it.

  • +1 1
Posted
  On 5/28/2014 at 4:47 AM, cstarkey42 said:

 

@Teabag  I wasn't sure how well his solitude would work with REGS so I decided to leave it out.  I was using complete solitude until I found this so I wasn't sure about adding tpos solitude. 

I checked it out last night and could find no mod conflict with REGS and tpos Solitude. Both work together nicely.

Posted (edited)

Firstly, I started modding Skyrim with Skyrim Revisted, then moved on to SR:LE and then found out about REGS and it has really improved my gaming experience.  I'm having some problems, though, that I haven't been able to find or figure out any solutions for.  I discovered the problem trying to fast travel to Dawnstar....CTD.  So I started going through the REGS mods, disabling and reenabling until I came close to pinpointing the problem esps.  Prometheus_NSUTR BDS Patch.esp; Prometheus_NSUTR Falskaar Dock.esp; REGS Patch - NSutR + RRR.esp; ETaC - Complete NSutR Patch.esp.  These four mods together or individually intitially caused a CTD trying to both walk in and fast travel to Dawnstar.  Now if any of the four is enabled, when I try to load a save I made just prior to entering the area, I get a load screen CTD.  If someone could help me figure out how to patch this, or direct me to where I need to ask this question, I'd greatly appreciate it.  Included is my BOSS log.  Thanks for any help I can get.

 

  Reveal hidden contents
Edited by laighean13
Posted (edited)

First, a question for CJ:

 

Why does the guide use Aethernautics ver. 1.1 (on TES Alliance) instead of ver. 1.2 (found on the Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41754/?) ?  Is there something wrong with the 1.2 version?

 

 

Second, 

  On 5/29/2014 at 5:51 AM, laighean13 said:

 

(...) Prometheus_NSUTR BDS Patch.esp; Prometheus_NSUTR Falskaar Dock.esp; REGS Patch - NSutR + RRR.esp; ETaC - Complete NSutR Patch.esp.  These four mods together or individually intitially caused a CTD trying to both walk in and fast travel to Dawnstar.  Now if any of the four is enabled, when I try to load a save I made just prior to entering the area, I get a load screen CTD.  (...)

Dawnstar with ETaC can be pretty demanding on its own, and with the extra meshes from NSUtR (enabled by those 4 patches), it might be pushing your memory too hard.  Are you using either SSME or SKSE 1.7alpha with the memory fix ini settings?  If not, I can almost guarantee that is the issue and one of those will probably fix it.  

Edited by noobzor
Posted
  On 5/29/2014 at 5:51 AM, laighean13 said:

 

I discovered the problem trying to fast travel to Dawnstar....CTD.

Yep, prior to installing SSME (as per Noobzor's recommendation) travelling to Dawnstar was an instant CTD for me. Also make sure you are running the latest version of ETaC as it was rebuilt in 11 and might be less intensive.

Posted
  On 5/28/2014 at 10:14 PM, noobzor said:

Posted Image

 

...

I thought you'd have Comcast/Timewarner as an ISP with a bandwidth like that, but apparently they're not the only thieves in the US.

 

  On 5/28/2014 at 10:46 PM, keithinhanoi said:

CJ - on that sewer cover thing - could that be helped in my case by changing any distance detail settings in the .ini? I'm assuming the cover texture doesn't have an LOD (if that's even used), and there's something about it not showing up past a certain distance that I could change to stop it from switching when I'm close enough to see it.

Seems a bit overkill to increase the draw distance and lower your performance for a simple sewer cover.

 

  On 5/29/2014 at 5:51 AM, laighean13 said:

Firstly, I started modding Skyrim with Skyrim Revisted, then moved on to SR:LE and then found out about REGS and it has really improved my gaming experience.  I'm having some problems, though, that I haven't been able to find or figure out any solutions for.  I discovered the problem trying to fast travel to Dawnstar....CTD.  So I started going through the REGS mods, disabling and reenabling until I came close to pinpointing the problem esps.  Prometheus_NSUTR BDS Patch.esp; Prometheus_NSUTR Falskaar Dock.esp; REGS Patch - NSutR + RRR.esp; ETaC - Complete NSutR Patch.esp.  These four mods together or individually intitially caused a CTD trying to both walk in and fast travel to Dawnstar.  Now if any of the four is enabled, when I try to load a save I made just prior to entering the area, I get a load screen CTD.  If someone could help me figure out how to patch this, or direct me to where I need to ask this question, I'd greatly appreciate it.  Included is my BOSS log.  Thanks for any help I can get.

That's kind of weird, I don't see why the BDS patch would even cause a crash in this case. Or the REGS Patch - NSutR + RRR.esp for that matter. Are you sure you are using the latest version of that patch? Because it was updated and now only affects the Nightgate Inn. Please reinstall the REGS patches to make sure it's not that. Also, ETaC is getting updated soon, so you might want to test it again when that comes out.

 

  On 5/29/2014 at 6:32 AM, noobzor said:

First, a question for CJ:

 

Why does the guide use Aethernautics ver. 1.1 (on TES Alliance) instead of ver. 1.2 (found on the Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41754/?) ?  Is there something wrong with the 1.2 version?

I actually had not seen that Guardly had uploaded the mod to the Nexus. The funny part is that I actually grabbed the mod's link from a site maintained by Guardly...

Posted (edited)
  On 5/29/2014 at 7:24 AM, CJ2311 said:

 

That's kind of weird, I don't see why the BDS patch would even cause a crash in this case. Or the REGS Patch - NSutR + RRR.esp for that matter. Are you sure you are using the latest version of that patch? Because it was updated and now only affects the Nightgate Inn. Please reinstall the REGS patches to make sure it's not that. Also, ETaC is getting updated soon, so you might want to test it again when that comes out.

The part of this that stood out to me was the ETAC+NSUtR patch, which could add a noticeable number of meshes to Dawnstar and could push it over the threshold for the memory loading bug, if it was already close.  If any of the four patches by themselves cause this issue, then that doesn't jive with my theory.  

  On 5/29/2014 at 7:24 AM, CJ2311 said:

I thought you'd have Comcast/Timewarner as an ISP with a bandwidth like that, but apparently they're not the only thieves in the US.

My ISP is a small local company that has been contracted and subsidized by the city to handle all utilities in city limits since sometime in the late 1800's...it's a weird deal (mired in dirty politics and old money), but it is crazy cheap.  They just started offering higher speed services earlier this year, but I keep forgetting to look into it...

Edited by noobzor
Posted

In other news, after reading the BSA extraction thread, I decided to try out having as many things as possible inside the BSA.  I went through my whole loadout and 'undid' the BSA extraction (with no small amount of effort).  One thing I did not expect was how much of a performance boost I got out of it.  I used to have load times of over a minute, and noticeable stuttering on loading cells.  Load times are down to seconds, and no more stuttering on cell loads.  I haven't changed anything else at all with my game except for switching all the loose files back to BSA's.

Posted

Interesting. I'm contemplating doing just that when I get home tonight.

 

How did you do the repacking? Give ddsopt an optimised folder as input and type in "whatever.bsa" as the output? (If all else fails there's Archive.exe in the CK, but I'd as soon not mess with that...)

Posted (edited)
  On 5/29/2014 at 8:09 AM, noobzor said:

One thing I did not expect was how much of a performance boost I got out of it.  I used to have load times of over a minute, and noticeable stuttering on loading cells.

That's what Tannin has been saying.

 

You really really really really really should let people know this.

 

  DocClox said:

How did you do the repacking? Give ddsopt an optimised folder as input and type in "whatever.bsa" as the output? (If all else fails there's Archive.exe in the CK, but I'd as soon not mess with that...)

I'm gonna guess that since noobzor's got a slow internet connection, he probably keeps backups of all his mod install .zip/.7z/.rar archives, and just re-installed​ everything. That's likely the safest method.

Edited by keithinhanoi
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use.