volnaiskra

How are your texture mods looking? Do you play in 3Dvision? Do you crash mainly in cities and outdoors? Have you tried flying around with player.setav.speedmult 3000 and tcl and seeing if that reveals any problem areas? btw I don't think safety load is meant to be used if you're already using SKSE.

Does Skyrim support translucency? I've tried saving my file in a few different ways, but the texture only ever comes out with a binary (ie. monochrome) alpha. In other words, a pixel is either totally opaque or totally transparent - there is no translucency. See below: http://snag.gy/4TmjM.jpg I've tried saving the DDS as DXT5 and 8.8.8.8 but it produces the same results. Is there something I'm missing?

Are you overclocking by any chance? In my experience, Skyrim absolutely hates even mild overclocking

Try installing Wrye Bash and using it to display your load order. If you have mods that are shown in red or orange, that may well be your problem. If so, I wrote a bit about what to do here

LOOT on its own isn't good enough, as I found out the hard way. Using Wrye Bash saved my load order problems. The CoT weather patches were a big culprit in the end, actually. Try this, and the odds are good you'll clear up your problems: Install and load up Wrye Bash, and look for any mods that are shown in red or orange. Red means a missing master file - basically a guaranteed CTD on startup. Orange means that some ESP has requested its master files in an order that is different to the the order that you currently have them in. Orange mods are arguably more dangerous, because you won't necessarily get an immediate CTD every time, so you may be lulled into a false sense of security, whereas in reality you have an unstable load order. Clicking on the orange/red mods will show you what masters they have, and what order they want them in. From here on in, it becomes like a puzzle: you need to manually drag and drop the various masters in your load order until their order is harmonious (ie. you've managed to provide the desired order of master files for every single ESP in your list simultaneously) and all of your oranges have disappeared*. This shouldn't take you more than 5 or 10 minutes. If it's not possible to eliminate all orange mods, you may need to ditch one or two mods/patches. Once you're done, save your load order, and be aware that whenever you run LOOT, it will f*#@ the order up again. I still recommend using LOOT from time to time, but you'll need to manually clean up after it with Wrye Bash each time. *the only oranges I wouldn't worry about are if, for example, one mod wants dawnguard.esm to come before dragonborn.esm, while another mod wants dragonborn.esm to come before dawnguard.esm. There's nothing you can do about this catch 22, but it can probably be safely ignored anyway, since those ESMs are right next to each other and shouldn't have any inherent conflicts between them.

We need a talented 3d artist to make a new fence. I'm talking about the fences made of many thin, zig-zagging sticks, that you find around Riverwood and Whiterun and other places: http://guides.gamepressure.com/theelderscrollsvskyrim/gfx/word/1033217390.jpg As objects, they look quite nice and rustic actually, but as soon as you start moving, they are an antialiasing nightmare! Because they're basically a jumble of sharp opposing diagonal lines, they cause pretty much constant and jarring pixel-creep whenever they're on screen, no matter which angle you're looking at them from. I can't be the only one who is annoyed by it. Whenever I walk into an area with one of those fences, it feels like someone's turned on a strobe light. Neither FXAA, SMAA, nor ENB's Edge detection AA do much about it. Even MSAA x8 doesn't manage to combat the pixel creep particularly well. ENB's Temporal AA does a decent job, but that has other issues and few people use it. It'd be great if someone just redesigned that fence entirely so that it was no longer comprised of diagonal slats. I'm sure there are plenty of other good fence designs (vertical pickets, thick horizontal planks, etc.) that would work well.

Bumping for this LOOT question.

I can't thank you guys enough. You've helped me immensely, and saved my sanity. Skyrim is much more stable now that I'm getting all green checkboxes in wryebash. I've had a couple of CTDOS still, but I was able to isolate those to a specific mod that was broken and causing CTDOS for many people (all that mod did was add more salt piles!) I've heavily modded all Bethesda games since Oblivion, and I never thought Wrye Bash sounded like something I needed. But I now see that it's indispensable. I have a quesiton about LOOT. I'm trying to edit the metadata, so that it doesn't keep making the same mistakes every time I sort load order. I've managed to add a plugin into another plugin's "load after" field. But the modified plugin now has an X next to it, which seems to signify that my new user-set rule is being ignored. The official LOOT readme says that it should have a blue tick. It also mentions an "Enable User Changes" field somewhere, which is probably what I need, but I can't for the life of me find "Enable User Changes" anywhere. What am I doing wrong?

Yes, 1.7.1. Ironically, compatibility patches seem to be the main culprit of the CTDOS. Namely, the various patches for RS Children, which together require an impossible load order combination of their masters (see post #4). @SkyrimCliff: A few questions about bashed patches. 1. Should I include everything in the bashed patch? I thought it was only for mods that change levelled lists 2. Do I disable any mods after making a bashed patch, or do I still run all the ESPs alongside the bashed ESP? 3. What's the best procedure for making a bashed patch - do I just click "rebuild patch" and I'm done? Or should I change some settings? 4. Will the batch patch fix my orange-checkbox problem that I outlined in post #4 above? Also, should I continue using LOOT? If so, is there a way to stop it from making the same mistakes each time?

Are you saying I should use Wrye Bash to make a bashed patch, or only to check my load order? Anyway, I ran Wrye Bash, and there were a handful of orange checkboxes. I gather this means that their masters aren't in their preffered order. I manually reordered them as best I could (btw is there an automatic way to reorder them to get rid of the orange checkboxes?). But there are a few that are impossible to resolve, (eg. because one wants USKP.esp to be after the DLCs, but another wants the DLCs to be after USKP.esp, etc.). So I still have a few orange boxes, and I still get a CTDOS. I also tried making a bashed patch (I right-clicked on Bashed Patch, 0.esp and selected rebuild....is there any more to it than that?), but I still got a CTDOS. UPDATE: It turns out that I could eliminate all orange boxes by uninstalling just one mod and a few patches. Now I have green checkboxes all the way, and the game has loaded successfully 4 times in a row. Fingers crossed! But if I ever want to reinstall those mods (they are RSChildren and its many patches, and the SMPC patch for Hearthfires), is there anything I can do to get them working?

EDIT: Problem was solved, thanks to Wrye Bash and helpful nexusers. But I'd still like help for my loot question. Cheers: (repasted from bottom) I have a question about LOOT. I'm trying to edit the metadata, so that it doesn't keep making the same mistakes every time I sort load order. I've managed to add a plugin into another plugin's "load after" field. But the modified plugin now has an X next to it, which seems to signify that my new user-set rule is being ignored. The official LOOT readme says that it should have a blue tick. It also mentions an "Enable User Changes" field somewhere, which is probably what I need, but I can't for the life of me find "Enable User Changes" anywhere. What am I doing wrong? Please help me, I'm going crazy. I'm carefully adding mods to my game one by one, but Skyrim keeps doing a CTD On Startup (CTDOS). But this doesn't appear to be your run of the mill "missing master" issue. The CTDOSs are only occassional. For example, it can CTDOS twice in a row, but the third and fourth time, it will load properly (and the fifth time it will CTDOS again). Or, the game will work fine, then I will install one mod, then it will CTDOS....but when I uninstall that same mod, it continues to CTDOS. I can even use NMM to save a load order file for a load order that worked, and then reload that file 5 minutes later and the game CTDOS. In all cases, if Skyrim gets past the startup screen, the rest of the game works fine. Things I've tried: -I run LOOT frequently -I've run TES5EDIT with all mods selected to see if it can find any errors or conflicts. It doesn't. -I've manually looked through the mod list to look for missing masters or obvious load order errors but can't find any -I've tried running through SKSE, Steam, and the skyrim EXE - none seem to affect the problem -I've tried disabling ENB and 3dvision dlls and inis -I've tried deleting skyrim ini and skyrimprefs ini and letting Steam revalidate and install new ones. -I've tried closing all background programs, including fraps, aida64 etc. -I use ENB and SKSE, so the memory fixes should be active in theory (and I have 16gb RAM and 6gb VRAM) -I've checked appdata\roaming\skyrim\plugins.txt and loadorder.txt for mistakes, and also deleted them so that they're recreated. None of the above fixes the problem. The only thing that seems to so far always work is using NMM to disable ALL plugins. When I do this, it seems to always startup properly no matter how many times I try. But then when I re-enable the plugins, it ALSO works (but only sometimes). So I guess there is some sort of mod incompatibility or load order issue at play, but how the hell do I find it? LOOT, TES5EDIT can't seem to diagnose the problem, and neither can I. :sad: This is my current loadorder: GameMode=Skyrim Skyrim.esm=1 Update.esm=1 Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp=1 SMPC.esp=1 Dawnguard.esm=1 Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp=1 SMPC_DG.esp=1 HearthFires.esm=1 Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp=1 Falskaar.esm=1 Wyrmstooth.esp=1 SMPC_HF.esp=1 Dragonborn.esm=1 Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp=1 ApachiiHairMales.esm=1 ApachiiHair.esm=1 ApachiiHairFemales.esm=1 ClimatesOfTamriel.esm=1 Lanterns Of Skyrim - All In One - Main.esm=1 moonpath.esm=1 RSkyrimChildren.esm=1 SMPC_DB.esp=1 HighResTexturePack01.esp=1 HighResTexturePack02.esp=1 HighResTexturePack03.esp=1 Unofficial High Resolution Patch.esp=1 ClimatesOfTamriel-Dawnguard-Patch.esp=1 No More Glowing Edges.esp=1 Ket_3DLoadscreens.esp=1 CoT-WeatherPatch.esp=1 Rainbows.esp=1 Chesko_WearableLantern.esp=1 ClimatesOfTamriel-Dragonborn-Patch.esp=1 CombatDramaOverhaul.esp=1 AMatterOfTime.esp=1 RSChildren - Complete.esp=1 CoT-WeatherPatch_DB.esp=1 SkyUI.esp=1 CoT-WeatherPatch_NL2.esp=1 83Willows_101BUGS_V4_LowRes.esp=1 CoT-WeatherPatch_Snow-10.esp=1 DD_Dawnguard Additions.esp=1 dD-No Spinning Death Animation.esp=1 ImportantInformationOverhaul.esp=1 TimingIsEverything.esp=1 Dragon Stalking Fix.esp=1 GreenWaterFix_v2withDawnguard.esp=1 FloraRespawnFix.esp=1 AchieveThat.esp=1 EnhancedLightsandFX.esp=1 ELFX - Exteriors.esp=1 ELFX - Dawnguard.esp=1 ELFX - Dragonborn.esp=1 FireAndIceOverhaul.esp=1 Grass On Steroids.esp=1 Patch - Falskaar - RS kids.esp=1 Immersive NPC in the dark.esp=1 iHUD.esp=1 Chesko_LoreBasedLoadingScreens.esp=1 WetandCold.esp=1 WetandCold - Ashes.esp=1 Patch - Wyrm - RS kids.esp=1 NonEssentialChildren.esp=1 RaceMenuPlugin.esp=1 DD_Dragonborn Additions.esp=1 RaceMenu.esp=1 RSChildren_PatchNEC.esp=1 RSChildren_PatchUSKP.esp=1 Thieves Guild Requirements.esp=1 SkyRe_Main.esp=1 Guard Dialogue Overhaul.esp=1 3DNPC.esp=1 Prometheus_No_snow_Under_the_roof.esp=1 Complete Crafting Overhaul_Remade.esp=1 1nivWICCloaks.esp=1 SkyRe_EnemyScaling.esp=1 FCO - Follower Commentary Overhaul.esp=1 NPC_Overhaul_V_1_.esp=1 AmazingFollowerTweaks.esp=1 Patch - Interesting NPCs - RS kids.esp=1 SkyFalls + SkyMills + DG + DB + FS + WT.esp=1 SkyFalls DB + FS Small Waterfalls.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo - Waves - Falskaar.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo.esp=1 ELFXEnhancer.esp=1 RealisticNeedsandDiseases.esp=1 BloodmoonRising.esp=1 Destructible_bottles.esp=1 RND_USKP-Patch.esp=1 Disease Descriptions_RND Compatibile.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo - Falskaar.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo - Wyrmstooth.esp=1 Birdsofskyrim.esp=1 DawnofWindhelm.esp=1 SkyRe_EncounterZones.esp=1 BirdsHFclean.esp=1 Further Dark Dungeons for ENB.esp=1 Inconsequential NPCs.esp=1 DawnofRiften.esp=1 Patch - Inconsequential NPCs - RS kids.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo - Legendary.esp=1 RND_Dragonborn-Patch.esp=1 RND_Dawnguard-Patch.esp=1 Run For Your Lives.esp=1 SkyRe_Survivalism.esp=1 SMIM-Merged-All.esp=1 moonpath_questdata.esp=1 Immersive Patrols II.esp=1 WaterFromWellsDragonbornRND.esp=1 elvenwood.esp=1 VendorSaleDelay-Gone.esp=1 ELFX - Moonpath.esp=1 When Vampires Attack.esp=1 WhiterunAlivePiano.esp=1 Jaggarsfeld.esp=1 SkyRe_StandingStones.esp=1 Chesko_Frostfall.esp=1 CCO_Frostfall_Patch.esp=1 RND_HearthFires-Patch.esp=1 SkyRe_Races.esp=1 RealisticWaterTwo - Waves - Wyrmstooth.esp=1 Drinking Fountains of Skyrim.esp=1 SkyRe_EnemyAI.esp=1 CompanionArissa.esp=1 Prometheus_BeastSkeletons.esp=1 RND_DrinkingFountains-Patch.esp=1 Shortcuts.esp=1 _clumod.esp=1 SC_NobleDresses.esp=1 Brevi_MoonlightTales.esp=1 Equipping Overhaul.esp=1 SkyRe_Combat.esp=1 Prometheus_NSUTR Falskaar Dock.esp=1 ESFCompanions.esp=1 WolfFollower.esp=1 Chesko_Step418_SN.esp=1 Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp=1

In certain cases there may be neck gap issues if you pick an armor that was designed for a certain body mod. So if an armour leaves bits of skins exposed, where does that skin come from? The bodymod (eg. UNP)? Or does the armour include its own custom-meshed skin areas?

So is there any need to install a body mod at all, if you just have good quality armour and clothing mods? I guess the skin from the body mod still shows through (eg. hands, neckline, etc.)?

I should probably have mentioned that I want to use Immersive Armours. Are any compatible with that? Even though I've been modding for years, I find the body modding thing confusing for some reason. It seems to be a many-step process: First, get mod with mysterious acronym (UNP, CBBE, ADEC, SoS, SME), then get other mod for men, then get clothing replacer, then get texture package, then get armour that's suited to that body type. To make things more confusing, none of the bodymod pages I've seen show any old people or children, so I don't know whether these will appropriately replace those too. Will the vanilla old people remain untouched? Or will they suddently become young barbie dolls with old person's voices? Could someone be kind enough to explain the process to me as if you were talking to a total dummy, which you probably are? Thanks

I'm finding it surprisingly hard to find a mod to improve the NPC bodies in a lore-friendly way. All the mods I've seen make everyone look like bodybuilders or supermodels, which I would find very immersion-breaking. IMO, Skyrim shouldn't look like everyone's just come out of a 3-hour beauty salon appointment. I'm just after some HD meshes/textures that improve upon the vanilla NPCs, but keep the people looking believable (including some attractive people, some plainer people, old wrinkly people, a bit of dirt here and there, etc.). I don't particularly care if the bodies are nude or not - though I guess underwear would probably be preferable. Any suggestions?

I doubt Sui Generis will be any good. I get the sense that the staff have greatly underestimated what it takes to make a good story and an engaging, atmospheric world. Just having a great engine and some strong opinions on what they DON'T like in typical RPG stories is nowhere near enough. Yet that's all they've demonstrated last I checked. Still, the engine itself NEEDS to see the light of day, at the very least so that some other devs can get their hands on it. Which is why I pledged to Sui Generis weeks ago, despite having little faith in the game itself. @rusty559: You really should consider going back to using a gamepad for Skyrim. I've never owned a console in my life - I'm about as PC as a gamer can get - but I much prefer playing PC Skyrim with my gamepad. It's designed for it, and on the whole I find it to be a superior experience. I think it's a mistake to lock yourself to one control scheme because you think that's the 'proper' PC control scheme. That kind of limitation is not what PCs should be about, and it's actually more of a console mentality. I myself own 5(!) different control peripherals - mouse+keyboard, razer nostromo, gamepad, wheel, wacom - that I use for different games, so that I always get the best possible experience. Only the PC can give give me that kind of power, flexibility and choice. Not by coincidence, that's exactly what's so great about PC modding: it gives PC gamers power, flexibility, and choice. That's what PC gaming is about, IMO. /end of rant

Warm and fuzzies out :yes:

Are there any other special needs that a player home should fulfill? I want to make my player home mod fully spouse-friendly. I'll simply rely on the Spouses Can Live Everywhere mod to actually get them there. But I'm wondering if there is anything else that needs to be done (eg. special ownership tags on the beds)? Despite my 200+ hours in Skyrim, I've never been given the opportunity to get married, and I didn't even know how marriage worked until I looked it up in the wiki, lol.

Does anyone remember how long the CK updates usually take?

Now THAT'S fast travel 8) I too have had mammoths falling out of the sky frequently. It seems that heavy creatures (that have a harder time finding sufficient space to walk in) do that more. It seems odd that chickens would do it. And certainly extremely odd that they would all be dead. I'm sure this is not just a havok bug. My bet is on a conflict between one of those bird mods and the 1.8 patch

What?!!! You mean I have to actually play the game now? I haven't done that since I got into modding it a month or so ago :D

Sounds like that Wikia page is misleading then, is it doesn't stipulate that most of those rules only apply to Valenwood. True, though that doesn't help the purposes of Skyrim alchemists much, as most plant-derived ingredients in Skyrim need to be plucked off a live plant (and surely buying dead samples from a vendor doesn't count, just like a vegetarian wouldn't consider buying meat from the butcher just because s/he didn't kill the animal her/himself) As for the Lumber, I imagine that the the Valenwood rule would still apply. I doubt they're allowed to use Valenwood native fallen trees for lumber, even if they're dead. It seems like something like that would still be sacriligious - kinda like making a soup bowl from your sister's skull.

I've been waiting for years for Steam to pull its finger out of its arse and make the games library half decent. The sorts of things you mentioned should be utilised in the library too: sort games by date installed, genre, % of achievements completed, etc. etc. That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. As it stands now, the Steam Library lags far behind just about any other asset management system in common use (explorer for files, itunes/mediamonkey/winamp/WMP for audio, Adobe Bridge/Picasa for pics, etc. etc.). If they can't be stuffed making much needed improvements into the games library (which affects all Steam users), then I wouldn't hold my breath about them doing it for the workshop (which affects only a small fraction of Steam users).

It's simple: If s/he's only been programming for a year, s/he won't have a very impressive folio. It'll either have very few projects in it, or else it'll have many projects that were very simple and easy to do. Anyway, what on Earth are you talking about when you say programming is still quite new and small?! My father was programming computers in the 1970s. When I was deciding what to do at uni in the 1990s, every second guy I knew was getting an IT degree because that's where the money was - it was the dotcom bubble. If anything, the pool of programmers is *waning*, due to the global financial crisis (which means more unemployed programmers who have experience and are looking for work.....which means it's even harder for newbies to get jobs) I work in a large ICT department with a lot of programmers. They've all been doing it for at least a few years, and almost all are in their 30s or 40s. C# and .NET have both been around for a long time. It's how it is in most industries. I'm a designer, and I went through the same thing. In a field that requires a large foundation of knowledge like programming, it's unrealistic for you to be expect to be hired by something like NMM if you've only been doing it a year. The OP says that there's currently only one programmer, and that one of his/her main roles is bug-fixing, which is a frustrating and nebulous enterprise that requires previous experience to do well. If it were a large team, perhaps you could slot in at the bottom. Or if it was a tiny startup where everyone's new and starting out. But for you to jump in and share 50% of the load on the flagship product of such a large site is unrealistic. Just hang in there and keep programming in your own time, and freelance a little for friends and acquaintances if you can. Once you have a solid folio with 3 years' worth of stuff in it, there's your experience. In terms of its value as a folio piece, it doesn't matter whether someone paid you to do it or not. One of my best pieces of [web design] work is something I did as a school project in 2006, and later as a personal hobby project. I still show it in job interviews today. Another suggestion I STRONGLY recommend: do volunteer work. An internship will pay you nothing while putting you right on the bottom of a big team (you will have to kiss their arses and thank them for the opportunity). A volunteer project will pay you nothing but give you much more responsibility (they will kiss your arse and thank you for your generosity). I did web design for a Human Rights film festival for a couple of years. I had free creative and technical reign, and was able to design some damn good websites that seriously bolstered my folio and demonstrated I could work effectively in a team. It'll also make you feel good about making the world a better place, since it'll be for a good cause.

I don't know if you could do it properly. If you were a Jarl's bodyguard, wouldn't you basically spend the entire game following him from the throne to the bedroom to the dining room to the throne...? Perhaps a mod that adds more imperial/stormcloak conflict (eg. Warzones, Immersive Patrols) would help, as you could join in the fights.