Ambitious Skyrim

[Leto]

I replaced them with the word "deleted" because I figured it out on my own.  Someone else must have deleted the posts.

 

Detailed instructions are available in the Ambitious Skyrim guide.

[MosAnted]

Hey Leto, I'm just curious about your particular hardware settings, mostly as a point of comparison with mine to see if I need to take any tweaks into account in the settings. Also I just saw you made some changes in the Steam changelog. Do you have a changelong of previous changes somewhere? I hadn't checked your guide in a couple of days (troubleshooting some skyrim issues) and I'm curious what other changes you might have made.

Edited April 4, 2015 by MosAnted

[Leto]

I halved the TerrainManager settings to get a few more FPS outdoors. 

I reworked the shadow settings after a long conversation on the steam forum.

I set EnableZPrepass=true in EnbLocal.ini and made the corresponding changes in SkyrimPrefs.ini

I tried Combat Evolved, then abandoned it after some overpowered encounters.

I reworked the magic mods around Awakened Magicka.

I added Bound Armory.

I replaced Improved Dragon Shouts and Better Wards with Shouts and Magic Unleashed - The Legend of Colette

I added Loot and Degradation.

I replaced CoT - Hazardous Dungeons with ELFX - Enhancer.  I modded ELFX - Enhancer to darken dungeons but not interiors.

 

Instead of deleting old change log entries, I'll be moving them into the word document so more history will be available.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Leto

[MosAnted]

Hey Leto, i'm curious if you have taken a look at the new Warzones? The old one was infamous for savegame bloating and instability, but apparently the mod was rewritten from scratch and is reportedly working now.

[Leto]

I think I've pushed the engine as far as I dare.

[ssconvert]

Just had to ask you something Leto, I've been following the Seranaholic mod, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38326/? the same author as Bijins warmaidens and wives. It seems a lot of people are having problems, especially changes not taking place etc. I have read that you can't have two mods that directly edit NPC fields, only one will take precedence, including changes made by USKP. Could it be that Rxkx22 didn't carry over the changes from one of the USKP into his Serana mod. Or is it because many people are using multiple mods that edit NPC's? Could you shed any light?

[Leto]

To get to the bottom of conflicts like that, you should run TES5Edit, leave all your mods checked, and say ok.

Then find the .esp for Serenaholic, expand it, and go through the items to see what other mods are changing them and which one wins.

Then, use LOOT rules to move the Serenaholic .esp after any mod that may be overwriting it.

You can also change values in TES5Edit to carry forward changes from other mods such as the USKP.

 

Cheers,

Silvermane

Edited April 7, 2015 by Leto

[MosAnted]

Regarding the issues with interior lighting (both with CoT and ELFX), did you try the Skyrim Revisited solution of an edited version of Relighting Skyrim? 

[Leto]

No, I didn't see that.  I'm happy with the lighting I have now.  It looks like you might be able to put something together with those mods.  Let me know how it works for you.

[MosAnted]

Sooo I did some testing with lighting mods. I had previously ran CoT Dungeons-Hazardous vs RLO vs ELFX which led me to settle on ELFX at first (oddly enough and contrary to most reports i found RLO made my game waaay too dark, and CoT not dark enough). I now ran the following setups:

- Full ELFX (Exteriors + DLC + Enhancer)

- SR:LE version (ELFX sans Enhancer + ELE Lite + Relighting Skyrim Edited Version)

. Full RS (ELE Lite + RS ver 4)

 

Also I'm not running any ENB and I have SweetFX turned off for now.

 

My test battery is as follows (I'm only testing interiors as I'm leaving exteriors to WAO)

-Helgen Keep

-Whiterun, Dragonsreach

-Whiterun, Bannered Mare

-Forsaken Cave (I just cleared it so I can quickly run it from start to finish, and I think it's a good sample of general dungeons in Skyrim)

-Solitude, Winking Skeever

 

First off, RS on it's own won't do much. It does fix lighting placement but doesn't alter imagespaces or anything else, unlike every other lighting overhaul, so you'll still get bright dungeons and caves, which is what initially made me dismiss it until I saw a YT comment that advised running it alongside ELE Lite. With ELE Lite, it's quite different. Lighting is much improved and you have improved light placement. 

 

I also tried the SR:LE solution, but I wasn't quite as impressed as using the latest RS+ELE Lite. I'm thinking it needs an ENB to really shine. Personally I suspect that with RS ver 4, there is not really a reason to run it alongside ELFX since, if I understood correctly, they were used together to cover spaces which RS hadn't gotten around to yet, but with ver 4 RS should cover all (or almost all, there are only 3 areas that aren't covered yet according to the mod page) interiors now.

 

When compared with ELFX, ELE+RS has an advantge in not making interiors quite as dark and shadowy. This is also a disadvantage however since dungeons are not quite as gloomy as oppressive compared to ELFX lighting. YMMV though, as running them side by side showed me ELFX is not as dark as I thought, the difference is not drastic but it's noticeable.

 

Right now I'm evenly divided between ELFX or ELE+RS right now. Might need to see which setup runs better with SweetFX.

 

BTW I didn't bother taking any screenshots, since I think lighting mods can only be evaluated by seeing them ingame.

[Leto]

That's some good info.  When I combine that with my experiences (https://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/611702631217494258/?tscn=1428098374) I conclude:

 

1.  COT Dungeons Hazardous = dungeons too dark to use a bow effectively

 

2.  ELFX + ELFX Enhancer = better darker dungeons but building interiors too dark

 

3.  RS + ELE = better interior lighting but dungeons not dark enough

 

4.  ELFX + ELFX Enhancer + mod interior lighting changes out of ELFX Enhancer = better darker dungeons and better interior lighting

Edited April 9, 2015 by Leto

[Asturia]

Full RS (ELE Lite + RS ver 4): can you provide download links for these mods?

 

 ELFX + ELFX Enhancer + mod interior lighting changes out of ELFX Enhancer = better darker dungeons and better interior lighting: What did you change exactly?

[Leto]

I deleted all Cells, Imagespaces, and Lighting Templates from ELFXEnhancer.esp that didn't apply to dungeons.  That should give you the dungeon lighting of ELFX - Enhancer and the interior lighting without ELFX - Enhancer.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Leto

[Asturia]

Thanks for the file and the info. I'll try it this evening.

[Aiyen]

The SR-LE version is that ELFX wins everywhere and RS only affect the locations that ELFX does not. 

Enhancer is not used because it is not a good thing to use with ENB. ELE is required to normalize most of the image spaces so everywhere looks at least decent. 

 

In general mods that create darkness by adjusting only the image spaces should be avoided. It will never look consistent across many monitors. Instead you need to go for mods that alter the ambient colors to darker values since you then get a more consistent result. 

 

However only ELE really does that for just about everywhere... no other mod have ever had a dedicated team on it to cover the whole game. 

 

If one can use an ENB then that combined with ELE is the most optimal solution since you can then get the general lighting you want inside interiors, and you only have to adjust in a few locations to know that everywhere will look equally good (or bad).

 

Sadly SweetFX like post processing cannot do this since it does not have the ability to influence the specific interior color values... only pixel values which is again the same as just altering the image space values.