SKYRIMLE Optimized Vanilla Textures (by tony971)

[tony971]

Just look at the last release of USKP and it comes with an INI edit, so you could implement it the same way they did. It is really simple and the game actually merges just the tweak you make.

I must be doing something wrong. I can't get this method to work. I tried making a Dawnguard.ini that includes these lines:[Archive]sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Dawnguard - Original.bsa, Dawnguard - Textures.bsa, HearthFires - Original.bsa, Hearthfires - Textures.bsa, Dragonborn - Original.bsa, Dragonborn - Textures.bsa[Display]bFloatPointRenderTarget=1I placed it in my real Data folder but neither the skyrim.ini nor the skyrimprefs.ini settings are taking effect. When I untick "Have MO manage archives," the BSAs are de-activated. When i start a save with ENB, it tells me that bFloatPointRenderTarget isn't set to 1. There's got to be more to the trick.Edit: Adding the lines to Unofficial Skyrim Patch.ini doesn't make them stick, either.

Edited August 26, 2014 by tony971

[alt3rn1ty]

I think the info provided earlier reference mod ini's might not be quite right, I found the Creation Kit reference :

 

https://www.creationkit.com/INI_files

 

Mod Defined

Mods can define INI files to override settings from Skyrim.ini. Mod defined INI files should have the same name as the plugin file and are only applied if the plugin is loaded by the game.

 

So Mod ini's can change settings you would ordinarily find in Skyrim.ini

 

I guess that means if you try to include anything in skyrimprefs.ini it will not work. bFloatpointrendertarget would be out, but the archive stuff should be working according to that logic

 

Although in skyrim.ini it starts with sResourceArchiveList= not sResourceArchiveList2=

 

[Archive]

sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa

sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa

 

Never touched these lists for skyrim personally, not since Bethesda gave us the new Load Ordering mechanisms anyway which are a lot more mod author friendly than the old system, so I am floundering around here and not being much help :) 

 

Edit : Will give Arthmoor a heads up with this

Edited August 26, 2014 by alt3rn1ty

[tony971]

Alright, using a SkyrimCustom.ini didn't work but the plugin-loaded ini did. It's a shame that it won't work for skyrimprefs, though.

[z929669]

@alt3rn1ty

I appended my PM with the additional request, so we'll see. It may be quite awhile before he/she/they stumble(s) upon my PM though.

I have received an initial respons from Gstaff. It looks promising, but he/she/they are soliciting others for the appropriate response just to be safe.

[Kelmych]

@ Tony - And S.T.E.P community ( For Attention of whoever does the DDSOpt guide here )

 

I have not had a look at your DDSOpt everything routine which Tony has applied to these, so you may have something similar already ..

 

Edit : @ EssArrBee - I like your comment response on Nexus reference textures going out of date :), didn't you know they get moldy and dusty, and if the computer screen is left in the sun too long the colours of the textures fade to blue and white like old packets of cornflakes in a corner shop window 

You'll find the batch files for the DDSopt guide at the top of the page here. The strategy is a little different in these files. For vanilla textures they are primarily aimed at users who want to reduce the color map texture sizes to 1kx1k or larger, and normal maps to 512x512 or higher. One batch file removes all the duplicates and some errors in the vanilla High Res DLC.  With vanilla textures the batch file sorts files into categories (Ordinary Textures which are the diffuse/color maps, the associated Normal maps, Exterior textures and normal maps, and finally Body-related textures) so they can be each use different parameters in DDSopt. Body related textures have some special handling so they don't get corrupted. Larger exterior normal maps (there are very few of these in vanilla) can be reduced in size but not the small ones. The terrain textures that your batch files cover are handled in two groups. One group with roughly half the textures, for which DDSopt would always collapse all the textures in the set to 1x1, are not optimized. The other group, for which DDSopt does a reasonable job of optimization, are in the set that DDSopt can optimize. The optimization itself is done by the user since there is no automatic way to run DDSopt.

 

With mods ( a different batch file) they sort the textures into five types (Ordinary Textures which are the diffuse/color maps,  Normal maps, Exterior color map/diffuse textures, the Exterior Normal maps, and finally Body-related textures). The user can then use different DDSopt parameters, including degree of texture size reduction, to optimize each of these 5 groups.

[alt3rn1ty]

One group with roughly half the textures, for which DDSopt would always collapse all the textures in the set to 1x1, are not optimized.

 

Yeah I was pretty sure I had seen mention of STEP making their own batch files somewhere, but did not know for sure

 

Well someone may find my ones useful for just operating on those files, if not it doesnt matter.

 

 

I think though that if your method is supposed to end up with no collapsed textures at all, then Tony has missed a detail in your procedure somewhere. There are a fair few of them 1kb file size 1x1 resolution in the mod.

 

 

 

I have received an initial respons from Gstaff. It looks promising, but he/she/they are soliciting others for the appropriate response just to be safe.

 

Thank you z, and yep, I thought the result would be favorable, apart from what I personally know to have been said before now, there are far too many mods out there which could be cobbled by Bethesda which for so many years have not been. The guys at BGS use a lot of them personally.

 

They avoid making any public statements in this regard though because its a scary subject, one word wrong could be financially really bad ( especially when it comes to outsourced artists who originally made the graphics for the game and have a legally binding contract between them and Bethesda for that particular game and no others, little details like that could get the company sued if a loophole in what has been said publicly can be used by everyone to take advantage in some way )

 

GStaff is a he, its on his profile when you PM him.

[z929669]

Thank you z, and yep, I thought the result would be favorable, apart from what I personally know to have been said before now, there are far too many mods out there which could be cobbled by Bethesda which for so many years have not been. The guys at BGS use a lot of them personally.

 

They avoid making any public statements in this regard though because its a scary subject, one word wrong could be financially really bad ( especially when it comes to outsourced artists who originally made the graphics for the game and have a legally binding contract between them and Bethesda for that particular game and no others, little details like that could get the company sued if a loophole in what has been said publicly can be used by everyone to take advantage in some way )

 

GStaff is a he, its on his profile when you PM him.

Gstaff replied in a good way on the forum thread you linked ... please share broadly for the record. Arthmoor may be interested. I think we are good to go with distributing a DDSopt-ed bundle of the vanilla textures, but I am awaiting an explicit 'yes' pertaining to STEP's use (he basically responded 'yes' by proxy of the thread post though).

[tony971]

Thanks, z929669! I'll add that to the description page. Also, I've uploaded version 2.0. It vastly simplifies the install process. The install and uninstall executables are just compiled vbs scripts that rename the original BSAs to stop them from being loaded with the DLC plugins. It then hardcodes all BSAs to custom ini files that append the skyrim.ini. It also adjusts the SkyrimEditor.ini for CK users and doesn't assume that all users have Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa (for our German friends).

Edited August 27, 2014 by tony971

[alt3rn1ty]

;) Alt3rn1ty = Not full of BS ( But wont be worth living with because his head just grew three sizes bigger ) :D

 

Thanks Z, I already link this on my mod description

 

The UPP team have known this stuff for years too, so dont need a heads up.

Edited August 27, 2014 by alt3rn1ty

[viper37]

Thanks, z929669! I'll add that to the description page. Also, I've uploaded version 2.0. It vastly simplifies the install process. The install and uninstall executables are just compiled vbs scripts that rename the original BSAs to stop them from being loaded with the DLC plugins. It then hardcodes all BSAs to custom ini files that append the skyrim.ini. It also adjusts the SkyrimEditor.ini for CK users and doesn't assume that all users have Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa (for our German friends).

 

If they changed, shouldn't the file names end with 2-0, say Dawnguard Textures for MO users-5733-2-0.7z instead of keeping -1-0 so that MO recognizes them as new mod?

Edited August 28, 2014 by viper37

[Kelmych]

Yeah I was pretty sure I had seen mention of STEP making their own batch files somewhere, but did not know for sure

 

Well someone may find my ones useful for just operating on those files, if not it doesnt matter.

 

 

I think though that if your method is supposed to end up with no collapsed textures at all, then Tony has missed a detail in your procedure somewhere. There are a fair few of them 1kb file size 1x1 resolution in the mod.

 

I let DDSopt do some collapsing on the uncompressed terrain textures since I saw it was doing it selectively, and using multiple different output formats. Noone has complained yet since I made the changes I described; I remember complaints when an older optimization procedure collapsed all of them.

 

The files you have are certainly useful for users with extremely limited VRAM; I wanted textures for users with a little more VRAM.

[tony971]

If they changed, shouldn't the file names end with 2-0, say Dawnguard Textures for MO users-5733-2-0.7z instead of keeping -1-0 so that MO recognizes them as new mod?

They were the exact same textures so I didn't feel the need to prompt an update. Although, Alt3rn1ty's comment on the collapsed textures made me paranoid enough to go through the process again, just to make sure I did it correctly. There will be a silent update of all of the textures.

[alt3rn1ty]

I grabbed your v2 yesterday and had another look, the most obvious bunch is in terrain tamriel have the window you are looking at them in list view to see the files sizes, then scroll right down the bottom of that list .. You will see at least half of them are 1kb, scroll back up and you will find a fair few more throughout that list.

 

I didnt go anywhere else before I deleted them all, but from what I remember of experimenting with DDSOpt before I switched to making GIMP batch scripts to process the lot ( I just use DDSOpt's ability to remipmap everything afterwards, it is consistently excellent at doing that to everything ), it does touch quite a number of files in this way in other folders too.

 

I am primarily interested to see if using something like this aswell as my own VRT, could any more VRAM be gained .. Surprised to see if I use your textures in a BSA to replace the original Skyrim - Textures.bsa ( backed up the original in a BAIN in Wrye Bash ), and then load my VRT BSA afterwards, it does save on average throughout the game between 5-10mb more VRAM. I used Skyrim Performance Monitor 2.66 to test against what I would usually expect wandering around familiar test points.

That does not sound too much if you have 1gb VRAM to play with, but when you have minimum spec 512mb, or worse 256mb, and you have to resort to measures of turning off windows aero to preserve between 70-100mb VRAM, a small saving like that is nice to have.

 

I think I might review my ideas and include a lot more vanilla textures in my mod too, instead of just including the ones I reduce and leaving the game to load the originals out of the rest, its obvious more VRAM can be saved.

 

Although I might wait on an official step version to tell people to load before my mod - Would achieve the same goal ( nothing against your mod Tony, I just dont like this editing ini's method of implementation ).

 

How about a fake esm like the Unofficial patches so you can slot it in there and have unofficial patches textures override your textures ? .. Although you do know that the Unofficial Patch Project encourage people to carry forward their fixes into your own mods, so including those textures is not a problem, just give a credit.

 

You can make a dummy esp with the CK, with a description and version and author embedded in it, and then use Wrye Bash to set the esm flag. Easy as that ...

 

Use "Esmify Self"

 

From Wrye Bash Help file "The distinction between esp and esm plugins is not dependent on their file extensions, but by a bit in the file. This command toggles that bit so that .esp files behave as .esm files and vice versa. It is useful for creating and editing plugins with .esp files as masters, which cannot be done in the Construction Set otherwise. Esm files cannot be edited in the Construction Set as esp files, so this command is disabled for them. Warning: Make sure to toggle any plugins back before playing the game, otherwise savegames will get confused, possibly causing bugs and corruption."

 

 

 

( Right click and open the image in a new tab for a bigger image to study )

 

You may not wish to use any of the above, but there may be options there you did not know how to do before so thought I would mention them to broaden the choices available for people making these things.

 

 

PS : Those 1x1 textures are not such a bad problem ( depends on the capabilities of the video card on a persons machine ), but they are effectively becoming less optimal than before you worked on them, because now for each of these an un-necessary upscale has to be performed on them by the video card in addition to whatever processes it would normally apply to the textures.

 

There are worse things people can do with textures ( Non-power of two textures for instance ( Bright ideas club moment .. "I know, 512 is too small, 1024 is too big, lets make it 768 instead" ) - NOOO!, some old video cards would choke on them, even newer video cards may have hiccups with these causing stutter )

 

 

 

Right thats enough babbling from me, dont want to take away some of the adventure modding - Good luck with the mod Tony, I thought I may remember more tips which would be helpful, there have been many things found with textures over the last couple of years working on VRT, unfortunately I cant remember them all off the top of my head.

 

And having looked at the DDSOpt routines here on STEP, and the custom DDSOpt settings file which has been made acting as a more sophisticated filter than the default .. I think its a pretty comprehensive set of instructions for the goal of your mod.

 

No doubt you will have some of those "Aaagh I need to upload a few gig AGAIN!" moments :)

Edited August 28, 2014 by alt3rn1ty

[tony971]

I'm definitely interested in working with you to make further optimizations. And I can add dummy ESM files for those who don't mind having extra plugins.

Edited August 28, 2014 by tony971

[z929669]

Thanks for all the good info alt3rn1ty