Memory Taxing Mods for Skyrim

[eternalautumn]

*Ignore* Edited August 4, 2012 by eternalautumn

[blitzen]

There seem to be mixed reports on the overall effect of 1.7 on performance and stability. Some are reporting that it had very obvious adverse effects, and have rolled back to 1.6. I have also rolled back to patch 1.6. I didn't see anything catastrophic, but it seemed to me that I was getting more crashing with 1.7 than 1.6. Also at least one person was insisting that DG made his game much more smooth and stable. I don't have DG. I'm not claiming to know which claims are more correct for either the patches or DG. But there do seem to be mixed results, just like there are for so many mods.

 

I do have some input to add for the main topic. The mods that definitely seem to hit some memory limitations are hair mods and new races with their own textures. I had been running with Temptress race, Dryad race, and several hair mods. When I added the Lunari race, my game started to crash and lockup a lot. The lockups usually occurred just after saving (I also tended to pcb at that time too). The crashes were more random, but more common when there was a lot of combat action on the screen. I was also unable to load exterior saves. These problems all disappeared after I removed a couple of hair mods and the Temptress race. Then I put the Temptress race back and removed the Dryad race instead. System still stable. So it seems like the game has segmented memory for different purposes, and that loading up on new hair, eyeballs, skin textures, new races, etc. somehow places significant load on the game during normal gameplay, even if those races aren't present in the cells or even active in the game at all. There does appear to be different ways in which memory can be consumed, because of some type of apparent memory usage partitioning within the game engine itself. At least, that's my current theory. Can anyone confirm or refute this?

[mike2977]

These problems all disappeared after I removed a couple of hair mods and the Temptress race. Then I put the Temptress race back and removed the Dryad race instead. System still stable. So it seems like the game has segmented memory for different purposes, and that loading up on new hair, eyeballs, skin textures, new races, etc. somehow places significant load on the game during normal gameplay, even if those races aren't present in the cells or even active in the game at all. There does appear to be different ways in which memory can be consumed, because of some type of apparent memory usage partitioning within the game engine itself. At least, that's my current theory. Can anyone confirm or refute this?

 

One would think that Bethesda would have improved on the characters' looks, including hair, skin textures, etc., if they had wanted to, but perhaps they didn't knowing the limits of their game (engine? memory map, dynamics, display, etc.?)

 

I do know that I significantly reduced a number of my crashes when I let some of my followers go under UFO, and then after removing all mods, reloading an early save game, and then adding mods back one by one starting with UFO and Apachie Sky Hair, I've had significantly less CTD's and freezes.)

[blitzen]

Apparently, even a heavily laden single new Race can cause issues. I'm getting CTD's and unable to load exterior saves again, even though I removed one of the new races. It does seem to be more of an issue when actually playing the new races that have a lot of new meshes and textures. What seems to be happening is that if you have a number of hair mods, etc that add to the vanilla race, such as Apachii and the hairs ported from Oblivion and FO3, then bring in a race that has it's own full set of hair, eye, skin resources, which also all seem to get loaded, then you have a game that has become destabilized. I'm guessing that when the game encounters a race it has to load during startup (may be determined by what's in the current cell, or what's been recorded in the savegame) , it loads everything associated with that race up front. And there does seem to be a software limitation for how much of this can be handled. I have 8 GB of system RAM and 3 GB of video card RAM, so I'm assuming that hardware is not a factor. This same problem did not seem to exist with Oblivion. I was adding new races whenever I felt like it, and do not recall any problems.

[freemonkey92]

Too much speculation in this thread. Bethesda (or whoever actually programmed this) really dropped the ball. First a program should never crash, but the programmer should expect it to, so when it does the program should report detailed information so the cause can be determined. That this was not done is just awful. If just this was done, the speculation would end and the fixes would start rolling in. Texturs, shadows, scripts, memory, an more have all been accused, but there is no proof, just circumstantial evidence pointing here and there. There are so many things Bethesda could be doing that would improve the situation, it is maddening that they seem to not care much. I guess they keep pumping out DLCs and raking in the cash, why should they care, the $$$$ prove that they are right.

[ripple]

Too much speculation in this thread. Bethesda (or whoever actually programmed this) really dropped the ball. First a program should never crash, but the programmer should expect it to, so when it does the program should report detailed information so the cause can be determined. That this was not done is just awful. If just this was done, the speculation would end and the fixes would start rolling in. Texturs, shadows, scripts, memory, an more have all been accused, but there is no proof, just circumstantial evidence pointing here and there. There are so many things Bethesda could be doing that would improve the situation, it is maddening that they seem to not care much. I guess they keep pumping out DLCs and raking in the cash, why should they care, the $$$$ prove that they are right.

Yeah...most of these issues are experienced by PC gamers. Console gamers cannot (legitimately) run mods so don't experienced the sort of problems that occur when the engine is being pushed beyond it's 'safe parameters.'

[Killerbuddy]

Apparently, even a heavily laden single new Race can cause issues. I'm getting CTD's and unable to load exterior saves again, even though I removed one of the new races. It does seem to be more of an issue when actually playing the new races that have a lot of new meshes and textures. What seems to be happening is that if you have a number of hair mods, etc that add to the vanilla race, such as Apachii and the hairs ported from Oblivion and FO3, then bring in a race that has it's own full set of hair, eye, skin resources, which also all seem to get loaded, then you have a game that has become destabilized. I'm guessing that when the game encounters a race it has to load during startup (may be determined by what's in the current cell, or what's been recorded in the savegame) , it loads everything associated with that race up front. And there does seem to be a software limitation for how much of this can be handled. I have 8 GB of system RAM and 3 GB of video card RAM, so I'm assuming that hardware is not a factor. This same problem did not seem to exist with Oblivion. I was adding new races whenever I felt like it, and do not recall any problems.

Actually, there is no speculation whatsoever in this thread. This has all been proven before. Second, programmers, however hard they try, will most likely have crashes eventually. This is the reason for updates, like how Windows releases updates for your operating system, and how other programs on your computer get periodical updates for those issues that are reported. Even drivers get updates to fix crashes and to keep up with the ever so growing field of information technologies. Also, like every single other company that exists in this world, there are thigns called timelines that companies need to stick to. So Bethesda releases a buggy game, woop-dee-doo. Fortunately we have a community of modders that quicken the pace for such issues to be fixed. To say that Beth is all about the money is redundant. ALL companies are. If not they would fail due to not having enough funds to continue what they do. And if you didn't notice, Bethesda does release updates that improve performance and stability, along with bugfixes. Although they are not quick to do so, they do eventually fix issues. I for one am quite sick of people bashing Bethesda. They are a company, all companies do these these. THIS company does it a little more than others, but they amount of meat these games have that are releases pale in comparison to any other games out there. Our modding community for said games pale in comparison to any other games out there. We have it good. Wake up and smell the reality, or just stay away from these amazing works of art. They aren't for everyone =)

[ripple]

<p>I am not sure what you mean by 'we have it good.' If you mean that they at least released a stripped down version of the SDK (that is liable to crash as often as a heavily modded Skyrim set up), compared to PC games where the developers provide no modding support what-so-ever--ok.

 

But releasing the Creation Kit isn't so much a 'we care for the customer' thing as much as a marketing strategy for generating sales of the PC version of this game. Sales for the PC version of Skyrim would be a fraction of what it is, if not for the mods made by an unpaid labour force known as 'Skyrim modders.'

 

The last thing I'd want is for this thread to degenerate into a 'what's wrong with Skyrim...' type conversation, but clearly the engine is inadequate for its ambitions. For example, I am still looking for the 'Civil War' in Skyrim because usually, a 'war' refers to mass scale battles and all I've found so far are 'civil skirmishes' and 'civil duels.' I am not sure where all the people in Skyrim are hiding because I've seen more people on a residential street at 3 AM on a Monday morning then in all of Skyrim combined. This is a recurrent problem since Oblivion, where the engine will simply render so many NPC AIs and packages at once before giving up. It wasn't so obvious in FO3 and FNV because those games actually took place in post-apocalyptic settings, but now the de-popluation problem is back. It's not as bad as Oblivion, but it's still pretty obvious. And every time a modder decides to add some real life to the worldspace, it has the nasty side-effect of making it more unstable because we're back on that engine limitation thing. So maybe for the next TES single player game, Bethesda can devote a bit more time improving the engine to accommodate cities or towns that are not actually deserted, like the ones you might find in 'Assassin's Creed', and less time to making fireballs look pretty. Otherwise, Bethesda might as well use small island prison colonies as the setting for all future TES single player games based on this damn engine, because then no player would wonder 'where the heck is everybody??' ....great, look at what I've done now...and I was just saying something about not wanting this thread to degenerate into a 'what's wrong with Skyrim' conversation....

Edited March 3, 2013 by ripple

[freemonkey92]

 

Actually, there is no speculation whatsoever in this thread. This has all been proven before. Second, programmers, however hard they try, will most likely have crashes eventually. This is the reason for updates, like how Windows releases updates for your operating system, and how other programs on your computer get periodical updates for those issues that are reported. Even drivers get updates to fix crashes and to keep up with the ever so growing field of information technologies. Also, like every single other company that exists in this world, there are thigns called timelines that companies need to stick to. So Bethesda releases a buggy game, woop-dee-doo. Fortunately we have a community of modders that quicken the pace for such issues to be fixed. To say that Beth is all about the money is redundant. ALL companies are. If not they would fail due to not having enough funds to continue what they do. And if you didn't notice, Bethesda does release updates that improve performance and stability, along with bugfixes. Although they are not quick to do so, they do eventually fix issues. I for one am quite sick of people bashing Bethesda. They are a company, all companies do these these. THIS company does it a little more than others, but they amount of meat these games have that are releases pale in comparison to any other games out there. Our modding community for said games pale in comparison to any other games out there. We have it good. Wake up and smell the reality, or just stay away from these amazing works of art. They aren't for everyone =)

 

You and I have a different idea of what constitutes proof. Can you say with any certainty how much memory you need to run Skyrim, how much VRAM given your settings and mod selection? Can you say with any certainty that it is a lack of VRAM, a lack of RAM, a script error, or some mod error that caused the last crash you had? No you can't. You can speculate, not prove what caused that crash. This thread is full of guessing, hell if you list every possible reason a game could crash, you must be 'right', right?

 

You bring up Windows as an example, well, every time Windows crashes you get a BSOD, which tells you exactly what took down the system and allows you to begin troubleshooting and not simply guessing at what the problem is.

 

Skyrim has no feedback mechanism, when a crash happens, you have not a shred of evidence to tell you why it happened.

 

Listen, I am not being unfair here. This has been going on since Morrowind, a lack of stability, a lack of feedback, which is never fixed. It's pissing me off. Bethesda didn't just release a buggy game, they always release buggy games. If you think Bethesda would go bankrupt by fixing the bugs in their games, you have terribly low expectations of the game industry. Bethesda does deserve a bit of bashing, narrowly tailored to where they fail. They get plenty of praise for what they do right. That being said, if Skyrim didn't have a lot going for it, I wouldn't care.

[Killerbuddy]

@ripple
If it doesn't work for you on your console, then I am sorry you are so unlucky. The console version is completey playable( as far as the Xbox 360 goes, I do not own a PS3, but I have heard it has serious issues so I wouldn't even bother with Skyrim on that system until they finished all their DLC, and have attempted to improve stability on that console ). Also, why should there be mod support for the game? That would be a waste of resources for any company, frankly.

Also, to bring up the Creation Kit has no point to this conversation at all. Like I said, they are a company. Companies exist for money. If them releasing content and the tools to create whatever you want within the engine's scope to generate sales, that is fine by me. Really stating that is really redundant. This whole conversation is kind of redundant actually as I said in my previous post that it is all about the money.

And about Skyrim, YES. Anyone who has played the game has gotten the same feeling. All well, such is the way of the world when a company desides to focus on the visuals a bit more, while adhearing to a deadline of releasing the game. honestly if you want to blame someone, give the blame where it is due, the parent company( Zenimax ). Anyways I have a point to make to this other guy now.

@freemonkey92
Well then what you believe that constitutes as proof is not adhearant to what the legal system itself constitutes as proof. I can recreate the issue discussed over and over again with certain types of mods that add large amounts of static pieces( NOT TEXTURE MODS ). Also, whenever you see an update from Bethesda and in the changelog you see "memory optomizations and stability", this memory limit is improved. If you read the post again, you can see I am emphasizing on the memory issue that is related to putting in too many mods that add npcs, and static pieces above anything else.

As for the feeback issue, you are wrong there also. It is called papyrus logging. It might not tell you everything that happened during the crash, but it can help you discover what scripts were running when the crash happened( although be aware, that the scripts in the log might not be the cause of the issue, it merely tells you what script was running when the crash occured ). You can also just run it and exit the game to get a log of what scripts are present in your game-save.

I started playing Bethesda gamse since Morrowind, so I know what you mean, but that is how it is and this thread isn't your soapbox. This thread is to inform of an issue that I have learned a lot of from some great modders, and in some joint cases, have found out a bit about the issue. I am merely putting what I have found out here so people can see. If you would please keep any further disscusion about the company on a new thread created by you, I would be happy to share my thoughts further on the issue, but honestly it isn't going to help anything. Informative threads like this and the people contributing to it, along the great work of the modding community are what helps us further bring this issue to and end.