mothergoose729
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Posts posted by mothergoose729
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In what way could it be made easier to use? I wanted to keep the utility, AMP, separate from the package itself because I was hoping other people might someday use it to make their own mods. Was that a mistake? djjohnjarvis. all you do is download the user version of AMP, which is a folder called "user - put mods here". You put the mods in user folder in addition to the source folder from MGT, and run the utility. Its actually simpler to user than TPC in that regard, which requires you to put specific mods in specific folders and extract them before hand. If you were writing the descripting, who would you word it?
Thanks a lot for the feedback.
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I posted my first two mods a few days ago on the nexus. The description is in the mod pages I will link below, essentially the first is a utility that creates custom mod packages, using a sort of pseudo scripting. I wrote the program in C, it unpacks mod archives and unites the files in a specific way. Its a bit technical, I didn't expect it to get a lot of attention because its way over the heads of most people and its only really useful to mod authors who want to build mod packages like STEP, SR, ect.
The second mod I uploaded is essentially a replacement for the TPC. It uses the tool I created to make a super texture pack that covers pretty much everything in skyrim. The user downloads the mods from the mod authors pages, and then puts them in a folder, runs the tool, and it assembles everything into one archive. A better description is on the mod page:
When I wrote this mod I expected I would probably get a moderate response, because tools like TPC already exist and because the skyrim modding scene has slowed down some over the last six months. After about five days I have one endorsement and only couple hundred Dls though, which seems pretty low. Perhaps this is a bit arrogant but I thought I made something pretty cool that folks would really like.
I was hoping to get some feedback on my mods. Does anybody have any ideas on how I could improve the mod? Is there a problem with the description, the screenshots, ect that I could to help people find it and use it? In short, why do you think my mod is getting so little attention. Feel free to be honest, I won't get my feelings hurt. Thanks for any help.
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I have been driving myself crazy the last couple of weeks trying to solve my VRAM bursting problem. For those that are not aware, there seems to be a hard limit on just how much stuff you can shove in skyrim before it explodes. I have been running different configurations of texture mods with texture optimizing and ENB Booster and the whole bit trying to find the magic balance between awesome visuals and my game not crashing.
Today I was messing with my settings, and I ended up trying out setting all my in game view distances to the maximum. So the actor draw distance, and grass, ect I upped as high as they would go and ran about for a while. I set my speed mult to 1500 and toggled collisions and god mode and ran about the map and warp speed to try and push my machine over the edge and produce a CTD. Nothing happened after about 15 minutes so I shut down, installed more mods, and ran the game again.
Inbetween the test runs my view distances were reset to their default by skyrim. So i load up again, run about for a while, and the game quickly crashes. I uninstalled some mods, tried again, the game crashed again. I loaded up the game another time and remember to set my draw distance to the max, just to really be sure it was a VRAM problem. Rather then my game crashing even more quickly... it never crashed at all.
Not once. I ran about the whole map, my graphics quality improved, and could not make the game quit. It was like taking a tired, old, broken man, and slapping a pair of resistance bands to his ankles and weight around his neck, and then watching him run an iron man contest. It makes absolutely no sense, but my game is rock solid stable with a higher view distance then with a lower one.
I have a theory. I think the problem with skyrims engine might have something to do with loading textures form memory rather than rendering them on screen. So you move about into a new area, a bunch of new stuff loads into the game buffer and has to be drawn to the screen because you can literally see it, and then skyrim sucks big time so it crashes. With the higher view distance, my only theory, is that items are loaded into main VRAM and rendered to the screen before you player character can see them, at least as more than specs. This difference in operations seems to be much preferred by the game engine.
Going to play around with thing some more, but for me at least, I seemed to have found a really neat answer to my problems.
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I installed MGE XE as a part of the MGSO package. I have played with the default slow/meduim/fast/ect settings and found them wanting. I have found that I can enable all the shaders I want at 1080p with AA and AF reasonably high and keep my fps between 45-55. If I enable any sort of distant land settings my fps tanks to the low 20s and teens. For reference, i am using a gtx 6670 and AMD llano 3850. This is more or less equivalent to a 4850/4890 graphics with AMD phenom II processors/ intel q6700. Are there some distant land settings that I could use to keep my fps reasonable? Namely i would really like any kind of LODs. Thanks.
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Unfortunately, I would say that a good percentage of the retex mods out there are simply somebody having taken the textures and applied a Sharpen filter. There are a lot of true texture artists out there, but there are MORE people who think that sharpening the image makes it HD quality. That's where a lot of the super-grainy textures come from. They're artifacts from having taken a normal image and then sharpened and zoomed in, and they look sharp and detailed but they also look very much like a photograph that's been enlarged too far.
I don't see that often in the most popular texture mods, although I don't know much about it. I would agree though that this doesn't create high quality textures. The truly good texture artists out there really stand out when you look at their work subjectively.
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First off I just want to give a massive thank you to all the great modders out there who work so hard to make this game better. Seriously you guys are awesome and what you give back to the community makes skyrim by far the best gaming experience out there. However, as a long time member of the ES gaming scene and a user of texture mods for years now, I got a bit of an axe to grind with texture artists out there. With all due respect and appreciation for all your hardwork, I want to make the distinction now between detail and quality when it comes to textures.
So many textures, by the best texture artists out there, just simply use to much black and grey in their art. "More detailed" often means busy, grainy, super stenciled textures that create myriads of dark patterns and lines. It makes the game visually confusing, and personally, sometimes it can even give me a headache. This was true of texture packages by in the morrowind days and it is true of some of the best texture packages in skyrim. So much so that I often choose not to play with textures at all, or I choose which textures I install very selectively.
Bethesda textures by contrast tend to be washed out, lacking in detailed, with poorly edges and bland homogeneous colors. Some sharper edging, some more micro details, ect can be a great way to add visual depth to the world. For example, Anarin's "HQ Towns and Villages Mod", in my opinion, are some of most well done textures on skyrim nexus.
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3467
Notice his approach to hay thatched roofs in from villages like riverwood. In this case the straw texture pattern is too sharp, to defined, and he softens it wonderfully by making the straw thinner and finer. Instead of making the individual hay pieces stand out even more, he choose to go for a visual effect where they numerous hay pieces seem almost to blend together. The result is that the roofs look thicker, denser, and more straw like. Visually the image is softer and easier to look at.. From a distance and up close the texture is both more detailed and easy on the eyes, it not visually distracting. He also replaces the wooden steps in some of the scaffolding. He adds a lot of grate detail in the form of knots and woodgrain, but he doesn't use only black and grey to create the effect, he uses more subtle darkining and of existing colors so that the wood grains are less visually jarring, and fit more naturally in the existing textures. He has a texture for the sides of homes with wood grain too; most of the detail is in white and lighter gray rather than darker colors, which is both more realistic and much easier on the eyes to look at.
One of my favorite textures on all the nexus is some of chris2012's work in "Chris2012s Whiterun HQ Texture Pack"
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/114
The way he added detail to many of the interior walls through the image of peeling paint. He didn't need to use sharp lines to create the effect, because the colors of the paint naturally contrasted with the colors of the wall underneath creating well defined lines and great consistency, adding a lot of detail without making the texture noisy or busy.
A big mistake (I feel) that many textures artists make is to add too many cracks, or dents, or unevenness to surfaces. This is almost always down with black or charcoal colors, and while it might look great in photoshop, it doesn't always look great in game. Adding more detail to the world should make the game feel more natural and immersive, but instead it is often the case that a particularly grainy texture can make the world visually painful and distracting.
My message to the modding community is this; when you are adding detail to a texture consider its visual impact from afar. Try and use softer, lighter colors and try and make edge details that are closer to the overall color pallet of the texture. With textures I feel less is often times more. Nailing a specific visual effect is often better than adding a lot of small micro details in an attempt to try and give a texture "texture". Flat washed bethesda textures are no good, but sometimes super grainy and busy ones are not much better.
Again a massive thank you to the skyrim modding community for everything you do. My hope here is that by discussing this I can inspire texture artists to make better textures and give people some ideas about what makes good textures good.
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I think it helped some but the problem is definitely still there. There is a spot just west of white run, where there is like 5 trees and a bush on a hill, where the problem is most noticeable. No matter what I get stutterness there. If I circle the trees for a few minutes the effect lessens but it is still there :/. I think my performance overall increase a bit but definitely not by much.
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Trying it now. Fingers crossed!
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It helped a tiny bit but the problem is definitely still there. It is the most frustrating thing in the world... my third camera pan is just fine but my first person cam isn't. Doesn't make any sense.
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I am experiencing a very frustrating problem with skyrim. When I move the camera in first person view, on both the mouse and my gamepad (although it is worse on my gamepad) it isn't smooth. I have monitored my graphics card and CPU and memory usage while playing and they just aren't an issue. I am using about 462mb of my 1gb of VRAM, about 3.5 gb of my 8gb of memory, and none of my CPU cores are being taxed above about 70% at any one time. My FPS hovers between 35-50 in the area I have been testing.
When I switched to third person view, I don't notice any problems. Everything is very smooth. However in first person view I do notice the problem, and I don't know if it is just more noticeable in some area or actually gets worse, but when I am walking in the tundra west of whiterun is when I notice it the most.
I have tried enabling and disabling mouse acceleration and I haven't noticed a difference. I have several ini tweaks for first person and third person cameras but I don't think that should make a difference, as well as mod that effects the first person view (the height anyway). Could one of those be the problem?
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Yes, tes5edit will tell you, at least for the cells and objects and worldspace. Scripts, I'd have to check a completely vanilla install but I think that folder starts out pretty much empty except for the source directory.
Depending on how many mods you're examining, this may take AGES, even with TES5edit's filtering ability. And it will only be valid for that particular version of a mod you're examining, if an author updates their mod and adds/changes stuff...
Thank you very much. I have to agree about the time invested but I am excited about taking on the challenge. Skyrim, for the first time in bethesda modding history, has enough good user content available so that it is possible to almost completely reinvent the game. I think some of the best contributions people can make right now is consolidating great mods into packages and working with the authors to fix bugs, improve stability, and provide guarantees of compatibility and stability to the user which is something I intend to try doing!
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The question is the title. I am working on a mod compilation project, and I want to go through all my mods and find out exactly what they change. Things I want to know is cells modified, object modified, scripts added, ect. basically anything that changes the vanilla. Is TESV the right tool for the job? Should I use something else? Does such a tool exist? Thank you for any help.
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Hello, I made a post in the mod thread, but I want to make a post here. I would like to make this mod more compatible with ashirnaniirs' "First-Person Messages" mod for a mod compilation project. It would require a very small edit to the player messages your mod gives to bring them in line with a first person message as apposed to a third person message as they are now. Would you be willing to make these changes and release a compatibility patch as an update? If not would it be possible for me to get a copy of your source files to make the changes myself?
Thank you,
Michael
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Ok. I I think I might need to ask around the STEP forums to get a better answer there. Do you know what the file path is for the faulty texture? Thanks again.
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Trying to use the CK to edit leveled lists does not seem like a good idea. TES5 edit isn't so much for resolving conflicts as it is for cleaning up 'dirty' edits that can occasionally be the reason for crashes. Wrye Bash is the best way if you are trying to merge leveled lists, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'smithing lists'. Are you running multiple smithing or perk overhaul mods or something? Mods that just add to the list of recipes don't generally conflict with anything.
I don't use the Nexus Mod Manager personally, because it would always crash unless I ran it as an administrator. The Mod Organizer does basically the same thing as the NMM, but without dumping things in your data folder. It isn't the easiest program to use at first though.
My installation process is this more or less:
- Stick mod in MO download folder.
- Run MO
- Install Mod.
- Launch Boss through MO.
- Examine messages from Boss.
- Remove Boss folder from Skyrim folder.
- Launch Wrye Bash from MO.
- Re-arrange unrecognized mods.
- Make a bashed patch, exit Wrye Bash.
- Launch Skyrim (through MO again, using SKSE.)
If you don't use MO, you can ignore everything regarding it. Since all your files are in the data folder, you don't need techno-voodoo to make certain things work. Removing Boss is the only way I have been able to make Boss and Wrye play nice together lately because Wrye crashes and throws up errors.
There is a way to log errors, but it doesn't always help. Occasionally it won't register, and if the error is caused by a bad texture or mesh, it never seems to register. There's a texture in the Optimized Bethesda Texture pack (using the vanilla normal maps..) that always seems to make me crash in the Whiterun Tundra. I have no idea what this mysterious texture is, I only know if I don't chose that option, I never have those crashes in that area. Better Males also has a faulty shoe mesh that has never been completely fixed that will cause your game to die. It's the Forsworn shoe. It's edited to have toes instead of the block-foot, and looks fine in Nifscope, but it still causes crashes. The fix for it even causes crashes.
Anyway, to enable logging enter this into your skyrim.ini (in the folder near your saves.)
[Papyrus]
bEnableLogging=1
bEnableTrace=1
bLoadDebugInformation = 1
If you have multiple things editing leveled lists and don't want to use Wrye Bash to merge them, just stick the one that you care about most lowest in the load order. It will override all the other edits.
Hopefully this helps?
It does yes. I looked over my mod list and realized I was using two different compatibility mods for the same thing. Oop! I was unaware of the foresworn foot texture problem for better males... are you certain this is still an issue? Seems like a simple thing to fix really... once I get used to references list on the new ck this is something I am definitely capable of providing some kind of fix for.
Is there a method for finding faulty/game crashing textures other than stumbling upon them? Do you know of any others associated with popular mods?
Also, what exactly is a dirty edit? STEP mentions "conflicts" in their description of mods, specifically better quest objectives and AIMPZ. What is problems is this referring too? Thanks again for you help. I am getting a better idea of how to go about this.
- Stick mod in MO download folder.
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Hello nexus. I am thinknig about starting a project like S.T.E.P., but one that has a broader and more inclusive mod package. I have a huge list of mods I have experimented with and tried and I have more or less settled on all the ones I think are worthwhile. I want to go about making sure all of them are 110% compatible and stable. I am aware of several utility programs that could help me do it, but I am not aware of all the problems to look for or what are the best tools to use to solve these problems.
Specifically I have occasional problems with CTDs. I expect this is due to VRAM bursting which is bound to happen from time to time, but I can't be sure. How could I go about determining what causes these occasional crashes in my game? Is there a logging utility I could use?
I need to merge some leveled lists and some smithing lists. I understand wyre base is good for this. Might it be better to use the CK editor for this instead though? In general, I am curious to know which problems wyre bash is best used for solving, and which problems it would be better to go in by hand and fix.
At some point I need to edit scipted messages to the player, at the very least.
I have heard about TES5 edit. It is good at finding mod conflicts and bad references, from what I understand. I have a fairly weak CS understanding though so I would appreciate a link to a guide or an explanation so I can better understand what that means.
In addition, just any tips, simple instruction, or otherwise good information on what problems a mod project brings up and possible suggestions on how to go about fixing them would be really awesome and much appreciated. At this point I know a lot about what mods are on the nexus and what they do, but I don't know much about the technical side yet and want to learn as much as I can.
Thank you for any help with any and all questions :) :)
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I am looking for an ENB that will have little if any performance impact on my system, that just makes the bright things a little brighter and the dark things contrast a little better. I don't much care for DOF, lense flare, film grain, or other effects, and SSAO is not well suited for my system. Running the game without an ENB I get acceptable levels of performance but in some places the framerates are a little close, so I can't afford to take any real performance hit.
I am using realistic lighting with customization, and I have bloom effect enabled. The only thing I really want from an ENB is something that can make my nights a little brighter (especially in clear weather, don't know if that is possible) and make my days a litttle brighter to, also darker and more contrasting shadows would be quite nice.
I have tried a number of ENBs on the nexus but haven't found the right one yet. I have had trouble with some of them causing game crashes too, which is a little unnerving. Any help with this would be great.
For reference, I am running the game at the "high" preset, with 2xAA, 4xAF, radial blur/shadws/decails all set to medium. FPS range is between 27-35 at the low end, 30-45 otherwise. Thank you for any help.
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Tl;dr? Help modders out by providing some pictures to show the sort of hairstyle you would like!
Great idea. Updating the OP now.
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I play male characters. Every hair pack for male characters out their gives them ultra fine, super feathered metro sexual hairstyles that look like they came out of either an anime cartoon or a male model catalogue. I don't want my male characters too look like a ken doll, but I do want to have more than the handful of styles to choose from included with the game. I think if someone created hair styles, for both men and women, that didn't have ultra fine and sylized hair and fit into the lore of the world that this mod would be a hit. I would endorse it anyway.
Beard styles would be cool to. There is exactly zero mods that give male characters more beards on TESNexus. Not sure why that is really.
If there are some texture artists and modelers out there, I would really appreciate some of your effort in this area. Thank you!
Dedicating the rest of this post to pictures of what rugged hair models might look like. Please anybody feel free to post pictures of hairs and beards you would like to see for men and I will add it to the OP.
http://www.usefulcharts.com/images/greek-gods/roman-god-pluto.jpg
http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/802120.jpg?zm=200,200,1,0,0
http://uashome.alaska.edu/~dfgriffin/website/buliwyf.gif
http://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Beowulf.jpg
http://collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Beowulf/beowulf_movie_image__3_.jpg
http://www.stellanonline.com/beowulf13x.jpg
http://www.spring4sims.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/amHairMedRightPart_2-500x288.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cApVD7R0lMM/TaOC45cfKLI/AAAAAAAAAR4/eEjXGni5sDo/s640/amHairRyan_1.jpg
Male hair can be pretty. It can have braids and feathers in it and whatever. It can be long and flowing and nice. It just doesn't neccessarily have to be ultra fine and feathered. Thicker hair, coarser look and somewhat darker cooolers. Legolas style, pirate style, king arthur and the round table kind of stuff. Variety is the spice of life really. Please and thank you :) !
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It was wonderful how no matter which side you picked, you are being an a**hole. This is quentessential bethesda writing. In morrowind, no matter what you did you were essentially advancing someone else's interest (usually someone best described as a dick). Vivek the "good guy" was a self righteous power hungry a**hole who tricked your in a previous life and now rules benevolently, although ineffectually and in complete isolation, over the people. As the neravarine, you were less than saintly in your part in the ware against the dwemer and what not. Its all a mixed bag, which makes for more interesting characters and deeper plots.
If you are a "good" character, you probably don't participate in the war at all. But that isn't very satisfying is it? Kind of have to pick your poison then.
I roleplay my character as someone who is attempting to make up for thier past atrocities (as a vampire/werewolf/thief/assassin he has a few wrongs to right), and he just happens to choose the side of the empire without actually having though much about the larger consequences.
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Play.Minecraft.
That is all
What could I do to improve my mod?
in Skyrim LE
Posted
The differences between TPC and MGT are technical ones. Essentially they serve they same purposes. Functionally, my pack just includes more mods and in my opinion is more complete and a better selection of content. That is subjective though, and of course I would think that I selected them after all.
Also, MGT doesn't include the content of any mod author in its download. It directs the user to download the content from the author themselves. Its the same way with TPC, STEP, and other similar compilation projects.
As for the purpose of the tool, you cannot get the same file state that MGT offers using a mod manager (at least not without manually deleting and moving files). The idea was to save people time and provide a better quality of game then what is available with any one texture mod, or any one linear combination of texture mods.
It seems I have done a poor job explaining what the program does and why anybody should care. I am running up against a bit of paradox here. It would take some time to explain the program and the project in technical terms, but it seems that if I post a wall of text I can expect people to lose interest and not read it. I am thinking it might be a good idea to put together a video, because people will spend a few minutes watching a video but seem to be allergic to reading even a small quantity of text :/. Any one have any other thoughts? Thanks a lot for the feedback.