LE Skyrim Benchmarking Tool (hopefully with support from Boris)

[PeggleFrank]

Just a thought, but it takes awhile to install certain mods, and some have dependencies that you don't always want to install to your Skyrim directory before trying. Sometimes you don't even know if you want an ENB or not, or you don't know what the effects of an ENB might be. I know we have Mod Organizer, but not everyone uses it, and installing random mods to your Skyrim directory can take awhile and can be dangerous in some situations, like trying to install Climates of Tamriel alongside a CoT ENB in an install with CoT-incompatible mods.

 

I propose a sandbox that uses random, Skyrim-unrelated assets. Lots of them. With textures ranging from 32x32 to 4096x4096, and perhaps higher; there don't have to be actual textures, they can just be checkered. Add ENB on top of that sandbox and let people install different ENB configurations to it without affecting their main Skyrim install. A simple FPS counter in the top left shows the amount of frames you're getting, and you can, of course, edit your ENB in-game to see what the effects are. Additional effects include artificial scripts that do nothing but check for conditions at a set time interval, and customizable memory allocation.

 

This sandbox would include an auto-updating version of ENB (might as well dream, right?), as well as a configuration file that determines the resolution of the sample checkered textures, as well as how many objects there are. It would run on the creation engine for optimal accuracy in determining your FPS with certain mod configurations. In the (very likely) case that it can't be redistributed with an ENB, we could hope that Boris creates an ENB for it that doesn't relate to

 

You could just install new mods and try them out in Skyrim, but having an external place to test them might be nice. This sandbox would only support its internal features and ENB; nothing less, nothing more. It wouldn't have Skyrim.esm or anything else so it would be incompatible with every Skyrim mod. It would just be there for testing purposes, and determining approximate FPS with certain texture resolutions, object densities, and numbers of scripts. Due to this, it could also be distributed for free, perhaps on more than just the Nexus.

[Blahblehblah]

I know this is old but ive just had the same thought and ive been brainstorming ideas and ways something like that could be implemented. I have never made a mod but i have in my head if that makes sense. but i think if you set up a seperate directory for skyrim with nothing but the base game installed then set up a way to wipe all files other than the original unmodded state after eace use or at a button press. maybe using the enb and reshade manager as a base framework. then have the game start from ther. the sandbox could just be the alternate start mod. its the perfect mod to use as it is quick and can likely have all sorts of ways to set up tests. im not a modder but i think it could be done, what about you?