need professional STEP guidance

[rothbardian]

I've been poking around here for quite a while and am truly amazed at the depth of knowledge and support of the STEP community.

 

I've held off jumping into STEP because for people like me who don't have prior modding experience, the learning curve for getting up to speed on the tools and then implementing the entire STEP guide from scratch can be a 25-35 hour proposition. I have a very heavy work schedule and can't afford that kind of time commitment. But, I'm determined to play STEP in all its glory!

 

Though a stunning amount of knowledge is shared here freely and generously, I'd like to compensate somebody to help me dramatically reduce my STEP install time. In other words, I'd like to pay somebody to be my "STEP sherpa" -- meaning, somebody who could bundle up and send me the STEP assets with a short list of install steps to follow.

 

A benefit of working a lot is I can save money. I just took delivery of an extremely capable gaming rig (see sig) that takes the need for performance tuning off the table. That should save time and simplify a lot of performance vs quality decision making.

 

If you're interested in helping me out, please send me a message. Thanks.

[TechAngel85]

MSI Afterburner is the main cause of this issue. I just didn't mention it because most people do not use it as it is now fairly well known to cause issues like this. Drop it and cap your framerate using Nvidia Inspector instead.

[viper37]

I've been poking around here for quite a while and am truly amazed at the depth of knowledge and support of the STEP community.

 

I've held off jumping into STEP because for people like me who don't have prior modding experience, the learning curve for getting up to speed on the tools and then implementing the entire STEP guide from scratch can be a 25-35 hour proposition. I have a very heavy work schedule and can't afford that kind of time commitment. But, I'm determined to play STEP in all its glory!

 

Though a stunning amount of knowledge is shared here freely and generously, I'd like to compensate somebody to help me dramatically reduce my STEP install time. In other words, I'd like to pay somebody to be my "STEP sherpa" -- meaning, somebody who could bundle up and send me the STEP assets with a short list of install steps to follow.

 

A benefit of working a lot is I can save money. I just took delivery of an extremely capable gaming rig (see sig) that takes the need for performance tuning off the table. That should save time and simplify a lot of performance vs quality decision making.

 

If you're interested in helping me out, please send me a message. Thanks.

 

I don't think you can reduce the needed time to do the STEP guide.  It takes a lot of time to download stuff, and some mods take some time to install, even on higher rigs.

I'll just give you a tip, totally free.

Do it one step at a time.  Use Mod Organnizer and download the mods from one section at a time.  Do the basic steps, up to 2.C, then take a break, come back to it another day.

Then do this section (2.C), then go to the next and just download (with MO) all the files, one after the other.  Then as they download, install the first one following the instructions, and so on.  Go to to 2.E, download them all, install them one at a time.  When you're bored of doing it, go play some other game.

Oh, forget about DDSOPT, as the guide suggests, just install the optimized textures and you're fine.  It'll save you some time.

 

Short of taking control of your computer at a distance to do it for you, there's not much any one can do.

Most of the instructions are clearer, now, I think.  Just remember that on some mods, when there are more than one file to install, use the "Merge" function in MO, even if it's not told explicitely (say for the aMidian book of silence mods). EDIT: Generally speaking, unless otherwise noted, 1 entry in the guide = 1 mod, so you merge them.

And Dyndolod is a little complicated, but see this post and the advice I was given.

Edited July 26, 2015 by viper37

[phazer11]

Yeah. Not doing STEP for yourself is just shooting yourself in the foot, not to mention the shady business of trusting someone else to do it right and paying them for it. We're working on some mod compilations but are still waiting on responses from mod authors for permission. So far I think we have permission to include 20-30 mods in the compilation.

[rothbardian]

Thank you, Viper, for the very helpful advice! Dyndolod does look intimidating. I think with my new machine that I could probably skip it and be okay.

 

Phazer, your points are well taken, thanks. I wasn't expecting that I could eliminate the startup time, but maybe with an expert's help get it down to the 3-5 hour range. That would be worth a lot to me. Even with Viper's advice it seems like I'd still be looking at 20-25 hours, which I'm unfortunately not in a position to do.

 

It sounds like the mod compilations could be a massive time saver. Are you aiming to have "mod bundles" on a topic basis, like one for environment textures and one for game bug fixes?

[TechAngel85]

The compilations will be all or nothing. STEP really shouldn't take more than 6-8 hours for even a noob to complete (downloading the mods is probably the most time consuming) if you just follow the Guide from start to finish. If you do all the extra stuff on the side, then you're looking at more time. Modding is a skill and has to be learned like any other skill. If you don't do it yourself, then you won't learn anything and will be stranded when you run into problems...and you will run into issues. Everyone does at some point.

[rothbardian]

You may be 100% right about it only taking me 6-8 hours. I was just going by what other people have posted and figuring I'm in the same boat since I don't have modding experience.

 

Given a high end spec machine, are there any other tricky-ish mods besides ddsopt and dyndolod which can be set aside?

[oqhansoloqo]

I think that the guide will get you far - and that it just takes time (which you could pull off in small sessions at a time).  If you want to customize beyond the guide, that's when it gets tricky because you don't have the guide to tell you what to do.

[TechAngel85]

You can skip DDSopt entirely as long as you use the STEP Optimized Textures.

 

DynDOLOD looks intimidating but it's really not.

[oqhansoloqo]

You can skip DDSopt entirely as long as you use the STEP Optimized Textures.

 

Yeah, if you have a very powerful rig then skip that part.  Good call, Tech.

[rothbardian]

My 980Ti cards have 6GB of vram. Is this enough to default to the hi-res versions of all the STEP texture mods? (I run on a single 1440p panel.)

 

For a high-end machine is there any consensus about what the best 2 or 3 ENBs are? I know there's a lot of subjectivity here, but if you want to stay reasonably close to the vanilla look and feel of Skyrim, and performance isn't a bottleneck, is there a go-to choice that is gorgeous but also well-tested (i.e. doesn't have areas that are unfinished/buggy)?

Edited July 26, 2015 by rothbardian

[oqhansoloqo]

My 980Ti cards have 6GB of vram. Is this enough to default to the hi-res versions of all the STEP texture mods? (I run on a single 1440p panel.)

 

For a high-end machine is there any consensus about what the best 2 or 3 ENBs are? I know there's a lot of subjectivity here, but if you want to stay reasonably close to the vanilla look and feel of Skyrim, and performance isn't a bottleneck, is there a go-to choice that is gorgeous but also well-tested (i.e. doesn't have areas that are unfinished/buggy)?

That's a crazy good card.  I know that the author of Vividian ENB provides a nice solution, is constantly improving it, and provides outstanding support.

[TechAngel85]

Yeah, Vividian would be your go-to for that.

[rothbardian]

Good to know there's a general consensus about Vividian, thanks. Does bothering with CoT seem worthwhile, or is Vividian's weather system comparably good? I also see Purity, ELE, RCRN. Which of those would you recommend (if any) to combine with Vividian?

 

Yeah, the 980Ti is a monster, and in SLI it is insane. I'm playing Lords of the Fallen maxed out at 1440p and its buttery smooth. I often just stop to appreciate just how amazing games look these days. If you had given me a glimpse of games today back when I was a kid, I never would have believed it. :)

[TechAngel85]

I use Vividian weather's because it's less of a hassle. CoT typically needs some custom patching so I don't recommend it for newbies. I also prefer ELE combined with RS for the lighting but I like to stay close to vanilla so those are just my preferences.

[rothbardian]

Sorry Talos, what is RS? To do your combo of Vividian/ELE/RS, is that covered in the guide?