So you might have noticed that I kind of disappeared a few months ago. The reasons were complex, but they basically boiled down to:

 

• My wife had a big falling out with her sister, which really undercut my motivation to build now and improved builds that I could share with my sister in law; and,
• My wife and I really got into miniatures painting, something we've been spending a lot of time on and getting a great deal of satisfaction from.

 

 

Between those two drivers and some other factors, I just haven't felt very motivated to do computer gaming for quite a while. Recently, I've felt the itch a little, but I expect that I'll be moving forward at a much more relaxed pace. Looking at the current state of the hobby, I think I'll be mostly working with Skyrim for the time being. Consider:

 

• The Starfield CK hasn't been released yet, and Elminster's commentary in the xEdit patch notes has given me some concern that despite Todd Howard's promises Starfield may have some significant blockers to the kind of high-level modding we're accustomed to in Skyrim and Fallout 4. While I do want to finish the last 3 steam achievements for Starfield before the DLC drops, I'm not going to dip my toe into the Starfield modding pond just yet. 
• Fallout 4 recently had a major version roll, comparable to the big AE update that came out last year. I haven't taken stock of how the DLL-based mods' updates are going, but even if everything is updated I'll need to do a lot of work to get my current build converted over, and I do want to convert it because of the engine performance improvements in the new version. I also have to resolve some dilemmas with the worldbuilding. My concept was to continue the 'oral history' aspect of Charley's world but switch to a new POV character; this idea still feels good for me, but I had reached a point developmentally where I needed to do a bunch of modding in order to get the world up and running. The good news is that I obtained permissions to publish most of the fruits of that effort, but the bad news is that it involves a level of effort that I don't feel motivated to carry out yet.
• Skyrim, meanwhile, has overcome the last of the lingering gaps from the AE release and seems to be continuing to produce high quality content. While I do need to do some technical work at some point (see my 'lessons learned' below), I left my current build in a state where there are lots of opportunities for small easy wins where I can do some modding without sinking hours and hours of work into it at a single sitting before I can see results.

 

Going back into Skyrim, I need to keep in mind some lessons I learned when I was working on Fallout 4:

 

• There is a strong relationship between the proportion of files which are packed in archives, and the game's load time. I need to spend some time consolidating files for the 2024 AE build and packing them. This in turn is going to lead to a lot of stuff being moved off my SSD and into long-term archival on my large conventional hard drive as it gets consolidated. This is super, super important, but on the other hand it's the kind of technically heavy work that I don't want to make into the focus of my modding time. Something to work on when I'm multi-tasking other activities perhaps.
• There are aspects of Skyrim, both in terms of the depth of assets it enjoys and also certain aspects of how its game systems are implemented, that allow for a lot of high value bespoke modding that is harder to do in Fallout (at least without a ton of technical effort). Several times during the 2024 FO4 build, I ran into technical blockers that essentially amounted to "I can't do this thing I do easily in SSE because things about FO4 that are also genuine improvements get in the way." 
• Putting off deficiency correction is not worth it. I left certain problems unresolved in the Skyrim build because my interests wandered, but during the FO4 build (I'm not sure how much I documented this in the blog) I ran into a number of cases where I'd back-burnered something early on, only to find myself doing more work to fix it when it because a real problem because it forced downstream changes or patch revisions. 

 

Since I'm not making this as a "blind play experience" for my sister in law anymore, I don't obliged to closely follow the path of the main quest anymore, and I need to think about whether or not I want to realign my approach to the game. Gently expanding the game bit by bit worked really well on the earlier phases of the 2024 AE build, but I may want to course-correct a little. For example, I never finish customizing the Companions because the characters I didn't touch weren't involved with the main quest path. I had a lot of fun making the custom armor for the Giant Fight vignette and I think one thing I'd have fun with would be revisiting the rest of the characters in that faction.

 

I'm also interested in learning more about voice synthesis technology. As I understand it, this has continued to evolve quickly in my absence and I think it would be fun to add more dialogue to the game, as well as filling in silent content that I previously either didn't use or that I left as-is for lack of supporting assets. I feel like this might be another one of those things that I could do in the background while multitasking other things - for example, if I'm painting some models, when I put them down to dry for a few minutes I could knock out a few lines of dialogue or box up some assets before I go back to the main activity.

 

Finally, I have a couple of projects that I never quite finished, the big one being my lightweight edit of Hydragorgon. I was extremely happy with how that effort had been proceeding and I'd like to continue moving forward with it. 

 

But what about today? I know I don't have a ton of time to put into the game today, but I'd like to at least get a feel for where we're at. I think I'm going to revisit Whiterun and take a deeper dive into what opportunities I might have missed because of my earlier, narrower scope of work, as well as any issues that I need to squash during a renewed focus on the city. Let's hop into the game and see what we've got.

 

As I go into the game, another lesson learned strikes me immediately: the build/unbuild time of Root Builder, at least the version that was around back in February, isn't worth it. I'll need to set some time aside to unwind that program from SSE just like I did with Fallout 4. On the other hand, I also got a nice reminder of one of the more subtle advantages of SSE -- I can alt-tab out of the boot sequence without the game hanging up, whereas in Fallout 4 I had to wait until I got past the initial logo and lead-in video, and if I forgot I ended up having to kill the process... quite a pain in the neck when I want to do something (like type in a blog) while it's loading!

 

The current build is running 1.6.640, which shouldn't post a problem since even recent releases like NGIO support it. At some point I'll consider going to 1170 since it seems to be stable now, but that's note a high priority project. I was able to load into the starting room pretty quickly, which was good. If I recall correctly, the first long loading screen doesn't hit on this build (as its set up right now) until I enter the exterior Tamriel cell for the first time.

 

 

The transition into the inn also took a while, which underscores the need to optimize the loading-up process. This will translate into long load times after my first save, which was what drove me to be so aggressive with BSA files in FO4. I need to think about how I want to structure the archives in Skyrim. There will be a lot of file replacements and I want to minimize asset duplication since keeping file size under control will be useful in its own right.

 

Once I got out of the starting room, I saved my game and then restarted SSE to ensure that second-load features implemented properly, such as body randomization. This reminded me again why I wanted to dump Root Builder, since I had to wait quite a while while it deconstructed the dynamic root folder. Almost more annoying is that this behavior also applies to xEdit and Bodyslide, which really slows down the process of making edits and tweaks. 

 

After I got back into the game, I turned on god mode and walked down to Whiterun. I did observe some of the early-game terrain pop-in once I left the initial grass loading area. I suspect that this particular challenge will be overcome by progenerating the grass cache, and its very possible that asset optimization will also help with this. Speaking in optimization, I need to really think about ensuring that all my textures are appropriately compressed down. I'm running on a 1080p display and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future, so I don't think there's a lot of need for me to have any super high resolution uncompressed textures beyond a few specific, and narrow, cases. One thing I learned on the Fallout 4 build was that I did not, in fact, need to run super high resolution skin textures for the game to still look good during sex scenes. 

 

 

As expected, the initial loading-in time was a bit long, though not as bad as on some previous builds. Framerate was high coming out of Helgen - higher than I remembered before, and I suspect that's at least in part from having far fewer browser windows open in the background. Those things, it turns out, use huge amounts of memory.

 

I couldn't test it because I didn't start the main quest, but as I reached the crossroads north of Helgen I remembered the odd pathing problems I'd encountered earlier. That's one of those things that I should try and sort out sooner rather than later, since broken pathfinding on the road to Helgen will surely cause more problems than the fairly benign glitch it introduced to the main quest.

 

I encountered a few frame hiccups on the road as well, and if I recall my previous work I'd largely isolated that to early-game NPC polling/cloaking for things like Fertility Mode and SOS. Testing with the previous build showed that those generally only caused a noticeable performance degradation during the first visit to a particular cell, but I should revisit the state of "decloaking" mods and see if (for example with SOS) they've addressed the issues that caused me to eschew some of them previously.

 

 

Nushassa seemed to spawn without any problems, though it looks like her face texture may be mismatched with her body texture. There might be some characteristic about her that caused the facegen patcher to skip her, so we'll need to revisit her at some point. She could also benefit from a custom outfit, I think. I'll have to refresh on her lore and see what her background is. Might be a good opportunity for some Summerset Isle fashion to appear. I seem to recall I had some High Elf but non-Thalmor options in the past and maybe I can reuse those assets.

 

 

Speaking to her it seems she's a bit of a vagabond, but also a Dibella worshipper. Not a foreigner though, so we'd be looking more for Skyrim attire than Summerset. I can definitely work with that... but let's not get side-tracked just yet.

 

 

At least through the hill down out of Riverwood, the talk with Nushassa has given the game enough time to catch up on the early-game processes. Grass, SOS assignments, and quest scripting all seem to be working so far. The grass spawn-in continued to function in a timely manner coming into the Whiterun exterior area and I saw that my earlier customizations seemed to be functioning properly.

 

 

The giant fight was in progress when I reached it, another sign that all it took was a fairly brief pause to ensure the early game lag evened out. Aela was still having some bust scaling issues and I think I might take as second crack at her outfit. I'm also still not 100% happy with Ria's outfit. Her top is still too shiny and the hair on her default texture doesn't quite work for me. I think I need to fiddle around with her outfit as well, though I doubt it'll be a full revamp like I suspect Aela is going to pull me into. I've heard that some newer outfits have a slider option for "squish" to simulate the appearance of tight clothing on soft body parts, and I suspect that something like that might help give me better top options for Aela and Ria both. 

 

Of course the real issue with Aela's top is just that the source geometry isn't scaling right, and I probably just need to write off that particular top in general until I elevate my Outfit Studio skills further. I've already taken several cracks at it and I just can't get it to behave the way I want it to. Ria's case is a little easier, I think the main thing I need to do is give her a custom skin and then rig her up with 3D pubic hair rather than relying on the flat texture on the basic body. Honestly, I probably need to do this for a lot characters who will be exposed most of the time, and then just lean on the texture as a fallback and as a resource for characters with tight-fitting but inadequately-covering underthings.

 

 

I probably also need to revisit my deviation from the original concept of "secure the balls for men, secure the boobs for women" on the berserker style armor for Aela. The original concept was that she was going to be intersex, but I need to either fully embrace that and give her a tighter-fitting undergarment like the male berzerkers or I need to table that option and go Kofman style with her outfit. I'll probably address both Aela and Ria at the same time I do the rest of the Companions. 

 

The game crashed out loading into Whiterun, looks like a Racemenu related crash.

 

PROBABLE CALL STACK:
    [ 0] 0x026F7902EAB4   skee64.dll+001EAB4
    [ 1] 0x026F7902DA81   skee64.dll+001DA81
    [ 2] 0x026F7901C3FE   skee64.dll+000C3FE
    [ 3] 0x026F7901BF38   skee64.dll+000BF38
    [ 4] 0x026F7908EC67   skee64.dll+007EC67
    [ 5] 0x026F790183E2   skee64.dll+00083E2
    [ 6] 0x7FFF07281D32    OBody.dll+0001D32
    [ 7] 0x7FFF0728741E    OBody.dll+000741E
    [ 8] 0x7FFFA9599333 ucrtbase.dll+0029333
    [ 9] 0x7FFFAAF4257D KERNEL32.DLL+001257D
    [10] 0x7FFFABF0AA48    ntdll.dll+005AA48

 

One user on The Nexus suggested some ini tweaks, which may also offer a clue to some of the morph related issues. One of the recommended changes is to turn off BodyGen - which should be off since I'm using OBody - and it turns out that feature was still enabled. Its very possible those two functions were fighting with each other or, at the least, messing with actor weight assignments because of the well documented deficiency with BodyGen where it sets everyone's weight to 100.

 

Some of the recommended setting changes weren't in my ini file, so its also possible that the fix for this issue is in a newer version of Racemenu. If so, that might push me to updating my runtime if this problem persists.

 

 

Despite an uncomfortably long load time to get in, Whiterun custom assets seem to be working properly. Let's start with a walk around town, and then check out the interiors. 

 

No big surprise that the customized areas still looked pretty good. I was very happy with how those tweaks came out and nothing's changed there. I did discover a technical error on some custom costumes that I'll need to address - it seems the two hostages are supposed to be gagged.

 

 

Meanwhile, I think I figured out why some characters like Aela were exploding out of their clothes. It looks like the legacy UUNP presets might have accidently been left turned on last time I was building stuff in Bodyslide, leading to morphing issues. So Aela's top might be safe... need to think on that. More to the point, I probably need to start thinking about setting up a more nuanced distribution of body types instead of just having it be full random. I have a small enough selection right now that if I get ahead of the game now before I add more stuff it shouldn't be too much of a lift to accomplish.

 

The residential sections all look pretty solid. Custom NPCs are working well, house edits look nice. The main thing that's jumping out at me as an opportunity is to look for more alternate roof tile textures so we can keep expanding on the work that I did earlier with the colored tile mod. Also, the Hall of the Dead and Jorrvaskr haven't been touched at all, and I should check to see if either of them have enhancements that are available.

 

 

OK, so we have a few opportunities in the exterior but for the most part it's looking good. What about the interior zones? Let's turn off detection and check out each location. 

 

I already did a couple of these, such as the clan houses and the Drunken Huntsman, but we've got plenty of other opportunities. Right away the shops all have multiple overhauls, and I'm sure I can find some good fits for them. A few of the NPCs already have tweaked outfits, like Jenassa, but I'll also need to be on the lookout for other opportunities in that vein.

 

 

One thing I don't really anticipate the need to customize are the guard barracks, but I still gave them a walkaround to check for existing conflicts, such as with treasure mods. The one by the gates came out clean, as did the slightly larger one on the east side of town. The Dragonsreach dungeon had some leftover special effects from a Diabloesque Decorations static that I removed, and I need to think about how I want to deal with it. I actually kind of like the puddle, so I might remove the rug and the book rather than removing the pool of water.

 

 

Visiting the shops, there weren't a ton of great opportunities for character customization but I do wonder if I want to put Ulfberth into some skimpy berzerker armor similar to the Companions. Maybe something with nice high quality steel stuff instead of the Wolf Armor based Companions outfits.

 

 

Arcadia is a native of Cyrodiil, so she might be a candidate for a custom outfit, perhaps incorporating some southern styles; something cribbed from Beyond Skyrim perhaps.

 

 

A fun little fact about Forgotten Art; all the drawings are pre-rendered so they don't reflect custom NPC replacers. I chaulk it down to the Dragonborn not being a really great portrait artist and just getting the details all wrong.

 

 

Lots of opportunities in the Mare, of course. I noticed a few existing object collision issues, but since I'm likely to customize the interior we can hold off on those and just tackle them as part of mod integration. It seems I already did Saadia, but the rest of the regulars could use some attention. Given her backstory, Uthgert certainly seems like a candidate for berzerkerizing her armor.

 

 

Mikael might benefit from some Bard garb, just need to double check his lore to confirm he's actually a member of the College.

 

 

Got another crash going into Jorrvaskr, citing morphs. I suspect this is the legacy UUNP morphs striking again. However, as I finish looking through that crash log I note that I've been typing up this blog for 2 hours and kind of used up my hobby time for the night. So I guess we'll wrap it up there. The main takeaways:

 

• There are further opportunities to improve the polish level on the Whiterun buildings
• There are a couple of consistency issues, one with the hostage outfits and one with the Dragonsreach dungeon, but overall the state of the world is pretty good with no major deficiencies
• In addition to the Companions, there are a few other opportunities for creating similar custom outfits

 

Right now its the outfits that I'm finding most interesting, so I think that's what I'll focus on for the time being. It might be a little while before I feel motivated to hop into Skyrim, but when I do I'll look forward to sharing my latest creations on this blog!