Not super tech savvy, having difficulty going through the guide.

[Shake]

Hey guys. I'm trying to go through the STEP Guide for the first time and as someone who isn't overly tech savvy I feel somewhat overwhelmed and have run into some issues so far.

 

Firstly, when should I be running BOSS? The guide says to benchmark after installing most sets of mods so should I be running boss before benchmarking? Secondly, whenever I launch the game through mod manager it gets to the opening screen with the skyrim logo on the black background then immediately closes but when I open the game using the SKSE exe directly it seems to have no issues?

 

Right now I've only installed up to the fixes listed in 2.D of the guide and when I tried to benchmark the game ran fine in terms of FPS but the horse cart in the intro has been behaving weirdly and kind of warping around and even flipped over at one point and when I got out to go through the character creation part the NPCs stopped talking and the character creation window never appeared.

 

Not really sure what I've done wrong but I'm basically at the point where I'm going to reinstall and not use STEP because going through DDSOPT was difficult for me and the result of that process didn't even end up matching the screenshots and now having these issues it just seems like I don't have the know how to get through this process.

[Quinnbeast]

Are you trying to launch SKSE via MOD Manager? MO should be pointed at your skse.exe file via the "edit > Modify Executable" tab in MO.

 

The use of BOSS isn't perhaps 100% vital at the start because there aren't many esp files running in the really stages, mostly just fixes and textures, but there's no reason not to use just to make sure the load order isn't breaking something. It's a good habit to get into. STEP is much easier to run through if you're as methodical as possible, so run BOSS at each benchmark step (again making sure it runs via MO and not by itself).

 

Are you starting with Step Core only (i.e. everything with a green mark on the left)? Ignore all the files that aren't strictly marked as part of the Core install. For example, the DDsopt guide is not part of Step Core (not green marked), so you can and should ignore this until the Core install is working as slick as a greased ferret.

 

It's worth taking some time to go through the guides for Mod Organizer too, as this should remove any need to reinstall the game.  Make absolutely sure that you followed each step of, erm, STEP to the letter. Read and re-read additional instructions even if they seem fairly arbitrary. The basic fixes shouldn't have any major negative impact on the game if installed correctly (same goes for the whole guide), so you've definitely gone awry somewhere... and apologies if I've gone over stuff you already know! It's safest to start at the beginning :)

 

edit - As for the CTD, make sure your STEP patch isn't active in MO while you run through the guide...  

Edited May 23, 2014 by Quinnbeast

[Halde]

You should always ALWAYS launch Skyrim through your Mod Managers(hopefully Mod Organizer) SKSE option. You should run BOSS when you have completed installing your mods. BOSS organize your plugin load list(the right list in Mod Organizer), so that all the .esp gets loaded in the correct order. 

About the benchmarking I don't know. I have never done it, I think it's something you do to help the people who made STEP? It's not required for playing the game though.

The cart thing seems to have something to do with wonky FPS. You should try and cap the FPS, although I'm not quite sure how exactly you do cap it.

[Shake]

So I disabled the STEP Patch and that did fix the crash to desktop, thanks!. I restarted the process without using DDSopt. Its going better so far, no major issues but I am still experiencing the issue with hte carts rolling around and having weird physics in the intro.

[Halde]

Ah ok. You are not supposed to enable the STEP patches before you are done installing the mods that comes with each patch. This is also stated in the description of the patches. Again, with the carts, as far as I know, it's caused by unstable FPS. I had the same problem, and I kinda remembering it fixed itself.

[Shake]

Ah ok. You are not supposed to enable the STEP patches before you are done installing the mods that comes with each patch. This is also stated in the description of the patches. Again, with the carts, as far as I know, it's caused by unstable FPS. I had the same problem, and I kinda remembering it fixed itself.

Well my FPS has been fine, i'm not monitoring it but it should be above 60 at all times because I'm not seeing any lag at all and im playing on a GTX 780

[Halde]

It's not a problem with low FPS. But with it being to high or spiking(I think). If you use ENB you can cap it at 60 in the enblocal.ini I think it is.

 

I also recall that the thing that made my shaky screen go away(it might have been that at least), was "installing" to 3rd memory patch. Have you tried that?

Edited May 23, 2014 by Halde