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a STEP in the right dirrection


Bealdwine2

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As you may guess from the title I am an ardent follower of TheCompilers' STEP guide to modding Skyrim. I want to beautify my game and make it more realistic but not, at this early stage, change the game mechanics too much and STEP is ideal for suggesting mods/textures/tweaks and fixes just for that.

 

Now, due to general poverty issues ;) I run a rather old rig - intel core2 6600 CPU @ 2.4Ghz; 4Gb RAM; nVidia 8800GT 1Gb vRAM; 1680x1050 res - but I was happily surprised to find that it ran vanilla Skyrim well and and was still playable with 'several' mods added (basically STEP 1.93.1 without major textures like Skyrim_HD but with things like Vurt's Flora [Hi-res], Lush Grass, Realistic Water Textures, and others).

 

...That is, right up until the Bethesda HD Texture pack DLC came out :P with that and the fix installed with my previous setup I suddenly had stutter/freeze/lag issues that could not be ignored :(

 

As with many people I'm sure, I wanted to use the Beth textures as a base line and then mod over the top of these (using the .bsa registered in .ini method) and as this coincided with release of the STEP v2 guide I went ahead and tried - now including (lower res versions where possible) things like Skyrim_HD, Realistic Smoke and Embers, Skyrim_Realistic_Overhaul, as well as the stuff I had before using the overwrites and selection of texture mod parts suggested by TheCompiler and... stutter/freeze :wallbash:

 

So ever since then I have been tweaking and testing to see if there really was a way that a low end rig like mine could run the totally awesome look and feel from mods that the high end i7/590 folks eat for breakfast :)

 

Below is an indication of what I achieved - playability, 'just'. :biggrin:

 

WARNING - after my install of the STEP v2 mods I could not load my old save games (that included STEP v1.93 modifications) and had to start NEW (no big problem for me but if there is a safe way to make a save that will reload after modding feel free to post or link below)' NOTE: Others have mentioned that they had no issues loading old save games, possibly depends what mods were running before the re-install but issues with changing ini entries might also be the cause.

 

First I cannot recommend the STEP guide enough - it offers very sound advice and does not kill the Skyrim Lore.

Secondly, I'm sorry but I don't have actual FPS figures - there is no in game FPS display that I know of and running FRAPS or similar would just add another burdon to my poor struggling CPU. But from experience I would guess I now have a mid-teens to 20s FPS on average.

 

The main recommendation I make (and I admit this is on early stages of testing as yet) is to forget the Bethesda HD textures DLC download (2x.bsa files) and the necessary 'fix' .bsa - instead go for Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized. There are a couple of version and for my rig I chose to go for the standalone 1024 as I could avoid the original DLC altogether saving space.

That one mod then becomes your baseline textures for the game which will slowly be (partially) overwritten by texture files from the STEPv2 mods.

 

I should point out that:

 

a). I optimized my original modded Texture file with DDSopt bafore installing the above mod and then replaced the texture folder with overwrite allowed. However using DDSopt only reduced my texture folder size from (approx) 1.6Gb tp 1.3Gb so not a great saving anyway.

 

b). I do not use every mod recommended in the STEP guide (it is a 'guide' after all and I still have my own preferences or things I can do without for general play) - I usually include all mods he has marked as [CORE] or [CORE!], the lower res version of those marked [CORE-FPS!] but avoid things like Static Mesh Improvement Mod and such that improve small general items I will hardly notice during gameplay - some sacrifices must be made :teehee:

 

I hope this helps with others who love Skyrim 'realistic' but have limited capabilities in their PC rig. I continue testing but I also really want to get back to simply playing the game! And now, at last, I think my setup is playable (and load times are greatly reduced/almost vanilla) :dance:

 

Good luck to everyone else struggling to get to that playable sweet zone, I feel your pain o_O Every system is different but if you would like a more detailed run-down of the mods and settings I use, post here and I'll try to get around to it (probably next week earliest).

Edited by Bealdwine2
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