GUIDE Skyrim INI Guide

[DoubleYou]

Discussion thread:

Skyrim INI Guide by STEP

Wiki Link

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This thread is for discussion and improvement of the Skyrim INI Guide on the wiki.

 

This guide should not be mistaken for the Skyrim Configuration Settings Guide. It complements the SkyrimPrefs INI Guide on the wiki.

 

References:

https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3132-skyrim-useful-ini-settings/

https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/INI_Settings_(Papyrus)

https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1435074-multithreaded-cpu-ini-tweaks-that-actually-work/page-2?do=findComment&comment=22050362

[DoubleYou]

Ok, so this is definitely a WIP. I have tried my best to get a comprehensive list of all possible ini tweaks in this guide for Skyrim.ini, both working and non-working. My methodology was simply to change every value in Tannin's Configurator plugin, and parse the resulting Skyrim.ini file to get most of the settings. Then I went through the low, medium, high, and ultra presets and added all their values in. Please edit away at this, and bless the developers of NotePad++ for their excellent find and replace functions that coded most of this guide.

[alt3rn1ty]

Holy hell, good luck with this and the skyrimprefs guides 

 

:cop: May I suggest that :

 

uGridsToLoad

This setting determines how much of the world is rendered around the player. This value may only be an odd number. Default is 5.

 

Additionally has a note to the effect that "it is recommended to be left at its default setting"

 

( I know, there has been a lot of arguments reference this, but on balance that is still the best recommendation for everyone, individuals can do as they wish, they are not forced to take the advice )

 

 

Also a few other bits n pieces in this topic https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3132-skyrim-useful-ini-settings/

If you want to link that Wrye Bash BAIN with INI Tweaks, feel free ( probably best to grab and upload it to the wiki as a download in case I get pee'd off with dropbox changes to policy / behaviour in the future and nuke my files there )

Also Wrye Bash has a bunch of INI Tweaks as standard installed which can be referenced as a set of safe to use tweaks.

[alt3rn1ty]

And also a note :

 

If you suspect that you have made too many changes to the games INI files, and have possibly unbalanced the game as a result - Delete the INI files, and the next time you launch the games Launcher ( original Launcher, not TESV.exe or SKSE ), your INIs will be regenerated with what the game engine determines to be ideal settings for your machine specifications.

[alt3rn1ty]

And most of the following settings do not need to be changed ...

https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/INI_Settings_%28Papyrus%29

 

( I think SMKViper ( Bethesda staff ) provided that information )

 

Edit : See also This topic

Edited May 24, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[DoubleYou]

iFPSClamp was a fun setting to test out on 1. You should try it some time just for the heck of it.
 
Skyrim.ini

[General]
iFPSClamp=2

What it does:

iFPSClamp

This setting aligns the FPS of gameplay to that of your actual fps. It makes all game actions happen at a speed of your FPS divided by this value. If you get 60 fps and set this to 2, the game animations and everything will be 30 times as fast as normal, with accompanying bugs. If used, it is best to set it at a little under your current FPS. It is recommended to leave this at default its default 0 so that the game speed always is the same speed as your FPS.

Default is 0.

iFPSClamp=(0,1,2,...)

[DoubleYou]

Now for the performance tweaks of the day!
 
Skyrim.ini

[Trees]
bEnableTreeAnimations=0
 
[Grass]
fGrassWindMagnitudeMax=0
fGrassWindMagnitudeMin=0

 
This will turn off tree and grass animations, which should give better performance.

[DoubleYou]

Killer bad tweak of the day:

 

Skyrim.ini

 

[General]
bMTRendering=1

 

This tweak does something to the rendering in order to--cause the game to freeze up and not do anything!

[DoubleYou]

Where has this been hiding! https://sundergaming.com/arisuskyriminireference/

[Nozzer66]

Dayum!!! Talk about a Treasure Trove.

[DoubleYou]

Arisu, the guy who originally made the Skyrim Acceleration Layer, was able somehow to retrieve these settings from the exe file at the time. Unfortunately, some of it is outdated, but it certainly is useful, especially for the full floating point values.

 

https://www.gamesas.com/arisu-skyrim-ini-reference-all-1483-settings-and-t211148.html

[TechAngel85]

Perhaps some good INI tweaks for STEP will come out of this.

[DoubleYou]

Well, so far most tweaks are coming out of the guide from this. It seems that out of 1443 settings, 315 are not even used by the game! All the INI tweaking "experts" should look at the guide as it currently stands, where many of the infamous and !amazing! performance tweaks have been shown to be, well, placebo.

 

I have removed and/or fixed the following invalid INI tweaks listed on the STEP Guide:

• f3PBoltTiltUpAngle not recognized by game
• iPresentInterval updated recommendation
• bMouseAcceleration not recognized by game
• bDecalsOnSkinnedGeometry not used by game
• iMaxDecalsPerFrame moved into [Display] section from incorrect placement in [Decals] section

[TechAngel85]

Cool. I updated my setting to reflect the changes.

[TwilightTech]

Is there any reason why iMaxDecalsPerFrame is in it's own [Display] box in the INIs guide, separate from the main one?