So who finished a game using raised ugrids?

[Mookeylama]

i've been messing w/ ugrids for months and know quite a bit so please don't go into the naysaying. i've heard it all...well, except if anyone actually finished a playthru lol. ugrids 7 is actually surprisingly stable and can handle a lot of mods, except spawn mods. but anyway, i just wanted to talk w/ folks who actually finished w/raised ugrids. see how it went. thanks

[rhowington]

Not me. Raising ugrids can and will cause problems that really aren't necessary for a good experience.

[greentea101]

If by "finish a playtrhu" you mean "play a character till you get sick of it", then yes, I've done that. I've been playing with ugridstoload at 7 (the value that I determined to be optimal) since 2011. I'm not sure what you mean by "finished".

[Mookeylama]

i'm sorry, but i've not played all the game yet. i just assumed there was some ending point lol. by finished i mean done all quests, been to every location. like that. wanted to know if ugrids may've interfered w/ a quest or corrupted save games, mainly i suppose. i've rarely heard people claim ugrids^ as the culprit for breaking a quest, or corrupting a save. i always figured that those people probably had other problems. really can't see how ugrids could corrupt a game, even if u reverted back to 5 (as long as ya did it correctly).

 

i DO see how grids could maybe screw up quests as i've seen many instances of actors not spawning where they normally would (tested by reverting to ugrids 5 and going there). crabs out in the middle of an area w/ no water around. chicken in the forest. just critters acting weird. they would usually start walking like they had a purpose. even aggressive crabs would ignore me til; getting to their destination. after getting to a river, they'd attack lol. i've followed many to their destination. theives that spawn far from where they should and won't attack. that sorta thing.

 

just wanting to talk w/ other whp use rasied ugrids is all

[greentea101]

I guess it's theoretically possible to finish all quests and do everything there is to do, but it would take a long, long time to do that. I've always gotten bored of playing the character before even coming close to doing everything (the highest level I've gotten to is 68 btw).

 

I've never had a corrupted save in Skyrim (I only use about 15 to 20 mods though, so that may have something to do with it). I doubt ugridstoload has anything to do with save corruption. And as far as stability goes, I imagine it has more to do with your particular system configuration (how well the engine gets along with it, and how well it can handle the extra "live grids", taking into account the mods you're using). That being said, there's probably a hard limit to how much you can increase ugridstoload, before the engine just craps out regardless of the hardware or mods being used. Just my 2 cents.

 

Edit:

 

i DO see how grids could maybe screw up quests as i've seen many instances of actors not spawning where they normally would (tested by reverting to ugrids 5 and going there). crabs out in the middle of an area w/ no water around. chicken in the forest. just critters acting weird. they would usually start walking like they had a purpose. even aggressive crabs would ignore me til; getting to their destination. after getting to a river, they'd attack lol. i've followed many to their destination. theives that spawn far from where they should and won't attack. that sorta thing.

 

I don't remember seeing anything like that myself, playing with ugridstoload=7. I've seen other glitches, like floating mammoths and actors falling out of the sky, but I doubt those had anything to do with ugridstoload.

Edited August 22, 2013 by greentea101

[Georgiegril]

I have used 7 ugrids for well over a year. I generally play til I get my character into the 80s levels; when I run out of stuff to do that interests me or I get bored with my character I start over.

I have an old graphics card (9800 GT, 512 MB), so I push PhysX onto my CPU, which is much better (i7).

 

However I have made a number of concessions in order to use increased ugrids--I don't use any ENBs or other lighting mods, I don't use mods that spawn a bunch of new stuff (like SkyTest or SkyMo--though I do have interesting NPCs and inconsequential NPCs mods). I don't use the hi-res mods, I use a lot of graphics mods like SMIM, Skyrim Flora, WATER, but I chose the medium or lower res options. I also use SMCO to optimize my textures. Also, I run AA and AO through my card rather than the game, disable AO and FXAA, and altered my ini files to have less grass and fewer particles.

 

I think it just depends on what is important to you--the problems occur when people want more ugrids (and not just 7 but 9 or 11) , plus a bunch of mods that increase resolution, add textures, spawn more stuff and add custom lighting and effects--the game engine will only handle so much, regardless of how nice your computer set-up is.

[Rennn]

I have used 7 ugrids for well over a year. I generally play til I get my character into the 80s levels; when I run out of stuff to do that interests me or I get bored with my character I start over.

I have an old graphics card (9800 GT, 512 MB), so I push PhysX onto my CPU, which is much better (i7).

 

 

Skyrim doesn't use PhysX. It uses Havok.

[Georgiegril]

Odd that it makes a difference then, but it does.

Personally I would probably not go through the trouble of making 7 ugrids work if I were just starting out now--there are mods available now that approximate the effects of raising ugrids without the memory hit.

[GlassDeviant]

ugrids at 7 is fine for me, I have finished (as in levelled to 60+ and either stopped playing or had to start over due to issues not related to ugrids) several times with this setting. Anything over 7 and I barely make it to 20-ish. I expect that once I upgrade (if and when I do) my disk subsystem I may be able to go as high as 11 before it becomes a problem, if what I have read about ugrids is correct.

 

What I really want to see is 64-bit native executables with better multithreading that will eliminate the need for cheats like ugrids and so on, hopefully that will be possible now that consoles have gone 64-bit.

[Mookeylama]

Odd that it makes a difference then, but it does.

Personally I would probably not go through the trouble of making 7 ugrids work if I were just starting out now--there are mods available now that approximate the effects of raising ugrids without the memory hit.

i've used all those Distant detail type mods, and while they do make stuff REALLY far away (like 1/2 mile+. so far away that i don't really care lol) look great, they don't help that mid distance pop-in much. which is why i think most people use raised ugrids in the 1st place. default ugrids seems to end about 200-300 yards out in front of you in your view (horse camera angle is different). and it's at that range that larger things start to annoyingly and abruptly appear right in your line of sight.

 

this mod seems to offer some promise...

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/41592/?tab=1&navtag=%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D41592%26preview%3D&pUp=1

it has not stopped my crashes in certain consistent areas, but i think that's more of a Skytest ugrids7 thing.

 

oh, and how do you "so I push PhysX onto my CPU, which is much better". i might try that