Skyrim Modding Guide

[KaelynZ]

According to Boris Voronstov, author of ENBSeries, ENBoost and ENB's can handle up to 1 TB of VRAM, that's how high he set it when he made that addon. However such a space-age video card probably won't get invented for a few decades at least, so upwards of 6 GB is probably the most we can pull out of it.

 

It's also important that even if you have 16 GB RAM and 4 GB VRAM, do not set your video ram to ~18 Gig as a lot of guides want you to! This causes extreme instabilities, and can lead to crashing or even the video card overheating. Find instead your system's Dedicated Video Memory and add that to your VRAM, that's as high as you should ever go. This is also the identical number to having ENBSeries auto-detect it, which is why RealVision is now set to that as default.

 

From the STEP Guide on setting up your ENB, specifically setting memory values in your enblocal.ini:

 

VideoMemorySizeMb

This sets the total memory that will be used for the ENBoost dynamic memory allocation. All available VRAM, except for the amount set with ReservedMemorySizeMb, will be used first, and if VideoMemorySizeMb is set to a value higher than total VRAM of the user's videocard, then ENBoost will use system RAM, if necessary, by running instances of enbhost.exe. Users with 32-bit systems should set this parameter's value equal to the total VRAM of their videocard; this is the most stable value. However, users with 32-bit or 64-bit systems and less than 8GB of system RAM should use the formula: (VRAM + System RAM) - 2048. Users with 64-bit systems with equal to or greater than 8Gb of system RAM should use the formula: (Total Available Video/Graphics Memory - [170 (for win7) or 350 (for win8/10)). When calculating the value, it is not necessary to subtract the value set for ReservedMemorySizeMb, because ENBoost already takes it into consideration. If AutodetectVideoMemorySize is enabled below, this parameter is ignored. All values are in megabytes.

VideoMemorySizeMb=(1024, 2048, 4096...)

To find Total Available Graphics Memory in Windows 7 and 8:

1. Open the Control Panel and make sure it's sorted by "Category".
2. Under Appearance and Personalization, click Adjust screen resolution.
3. In the middle and right-hand side of the window, click the Advanced settings link.
4. In the new window that opens, make sure the Adapter tab is the current tab.
5. Under Adapter Information, look for Total Available Graphics Memory.

 

In any case, the whole STEP Guide is must-read stuff on configuring your Skyrim.  Go check it out!

[trpd]

Did the merge, good news it works , bad news is that lights going on and off as you move camera ;/ It also happens in unmerged version so i guess the patch is just not working properly . I tried manualy resolving conflicts by copying ICoW entries to the patch but issue persists.

 

@videomemorysize - i once idd had it set to 18gb , then i stumbled upon info that max safe is 10mb so that was what i had. Wonder if it was causign the CTD on first load, I had them often enough but those several loads after correcting it - none yet. Maybe i'm just lucky now....

[Sacremas]

I trust Boris Voronstov any day above STEP, and he told me to set it to reserved video memory + VRAM.

 

I've read some on STEP and I have actually found several plain errors in those guides, and things they say that just aren't true. Their use of a TES5Merged is hideous, don't follow those guidelines. Uglykidcid used to be 100 % STEP follower until he figured out how things like TES5Edit and merge patches properly work, now he with good reason take anything but texture suggestions from STEP with a grain of salt.

[Sacremas]

Not sure if I recommended it before, but the Immersive Jewelry mod can easily be taken OFF the recommended mods list, author is plain stupid and trying to fix the entirery of Skyrim's economy with a jewlery mod, including making edits in things such a mod has no place touching, like making septims have weight. With these kinds of things touched upon while the mod is still in beta, I just don't trust this guy not to mess over half my game before he's done.

 

I pointed out a few logic flaws in his mod, suggested a console cheat code to ignore things like gold weight, and author responded with

 

 

 

lol Hey, aren't you the user who personally chased Chesko and Isoku away?

 

Do I need to say anything more at this point?

[D_ManXX2]

If you guys are struggling at 3 gig no wonder my 2 gig is struggling.

 

My current video card is 2 gig in size and my main memory is 16 gig in size. Any chance i can set it too higher to atleast stop the crashes ?? i don't mind the micro stuttoring it is just irriated crashes without warning i try too illiminate. But when stuttering starts i just hit the f4 key to free up vram.

 

i want too use spm but somehow it does not play nice with MO. How do i set it up ??

[Sacremas]

For crash prevention go to the first page of this thread and make sure you're using my SKSE.ini values, specifically the memory bits. With your large amounts of RAM this will help.

 

Next with 16 GB memory you're going to have a fairly decent dedicated video memory, use this guide to find out what you have; http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001307.htm

 

In ReservedVideoMemory set your number to what you find out above + 2048.

 

Beyond this point ENBHost will handle the rest, try stressing your computer by maybe starting a rainstorm and summoning a dragon as well in the middle of Whiterun, for this you don't need SPM and in fact it can't help you with this, but as you're stuttering try alt-tabbing, doing CTRL-Alt-DEL then go in the second tab under system manager and see how much ram each process is using. You'll probably see that ENBHost.exe will be spending more of your ram than Skyrim will in total, even possibly significantly more. This program isn't limited the way Skyrim is, and it's the main powerhouse behind modern ENBs.

[D_ManXX2]

Thanks currently my dedicated memory size is a total of 4096 so i need to put reserved memory to 4096 + 2048 ??

 

1 question ?? my video memory in enblocal is 2000 will the above reserved memory still be utilized correctly even if this value exceed the total memory size ??

[Sacremas]

Yes it will, that's the formula Boris Voronstov suggested would work best with least amount of instabilities.

 

1 GB = 1024 MB of course, so 2048 is the actual amount of VRAM you have, not 2000. If you wanted to get rid of stutters you cold shave maybe 150 MB off the total and probably end up stutter free, but as you didn't care about that it's not needed.

[D_ManXX2]

thanks, yes i was just using the standaard values for enb boost. i have not changed the value yet so it was still on 2000 for video memory and 64 for reserved memory.

 

I will try to play around with the values a bit and see what is acceptable for my current system.

[Sacremas]

You're using ENBoost, not a real ENB? In that case you won't have the ENBHost program that'll take from your RAM. Try running a full ENB using a very recent ENBSeries, as I've said often my favorite is RealVision, try running that with option 3 then turn off everything you can trun off while installing it. That will auto-detect the correct number to put in. Then go in game and see if there's any difference. If it works you'll both see a boost in stability, and you'll see a better color palette.

 

Also here's Boris himself on the matter;

 

 

" When set to 0, vram size is internally selected, but this not work

good with some hardware, so recommended to modify in case of stuttering, very low performance,
freezing while loading saved games. At first, set it to same value as real size of your video memory.
If some issue occur, reduce it (f.e. 2048 -> 1800) and try again. Depending from software, drivers
and mods installed you may or may not have issues if value is equal or greater than vram size. But if
you are good pc user, then try to increase this value, it may give you less stuttering for 64-bit
systems if too much mods installed. If you really smart person in pc, don't set this to bigger
than = RAM+VRAM-2048, it will work, but it's a huge risk of freezing (in case if you have so much
mods installed to fill all that memory)."

[D_ManXX2]

I will try real vision and see if it makes a different. btw it seem SKSE ini tweak some part is not working right with enb so it might be some of my errors i experiance lately.

[D_ManXX2]

Maybe something is just not working as it should. when i read realvision they state:

 

You have CTDs, are using SKSE and nothing listed in FAQ is working?
open enblocal.ini ..\SteamApps\common\Skyrim and try to set ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false

 

What good does this do when they are actually disabling memory itself ?? because of this i am not sure but enbhost.exe is not loaded when i hit ctrl alt delete so that maybe why i am getting crashes to begin with looks like an error on enb is not working right with my pc ??

[trpd]

 

 

 

Re: merging lighting.   A merge can only do what loading the merged esps separately would do, and it doesn't really matter what's being merged - lighting is just another set of objects in cells.   So, if your CWI-RS patch needs a master (the unmerged Relighting Skyrim) that you don't have, you obviously can't merge those two things together.   And you certainly can't add the base RS mod to the merged RS mod - you would get double light sources. However, if you have the original esps that went into the merged RS, and your new CWI-RS patch is mastered from one of those components, then you could re-merge the RS esps with the CWI-RS patch.  Otherwise, merging those files as they stand is a total no-no.

 

But...if you're willing to do some work, you can do some cutting and pasting, and hand-create something that *is* mergeable.  Let's assume you have 3 files, which I'll call RSCore, RSMerged, and CWI-RSCoreCP.  Now, CWI-RSCoreCP is only going to modify a limited number of cells.  What you need to do is use TES5EDIT to totally remove the records of those cells from RSMerged, and then gut RSCore to remove all records that *aren't* those cells.  You can then merge all three files together, because your new RSCORE and CWI-RSCoreCP will only affect a few cells, and RSMerged will *not* affect those same cells.

 

This same technique can be used to merge *any* mods that edit the same cells, whether with lighting of contents or whatever.   For example, Skyrim Radioactive edits a number of shops and gives them totally new lighting - which is totally incompatible with (say) ELFX lighting in those same cells.  But you can edit ELFX to totally *remove* its mods to those cells, and voila!  The two mods are now compatible!  Elianora has created a tutorial video going though that exact case; you should be able to generalize it to your CWI-RS issue.

 

 

 

 

This came in handy, i removed cells from Relighting that conflicted with ICoW and merged without using the patch. The blinking lights are gone. Thanks. (Strange enough copying conflicting cell contents from ICoW to merged didn't work heh)

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe something is just not working as it should. when i read realvision they state:

 

You have CTDs, are using SKSE and nothing listed in FAQ is working?
open enblocal.ini ..\SteamApps\common\Skyrim and try to set ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false

 

What good does this do when they are actually disabling memory itself ?? because of this i am not sure but enbhost.exe is not loaded when i hit ctrl alt delete so that maybe why i am getting crashes to begin with looks like an error on enb is not working right with my pc ??

 

 

Do you have the shift+enter menu (or simply the ENB greeting in top left corner) ? If you do then i can't image enbhost not running. This setting will not disable enb memory but limit how much RAM enbhost can use to 4GB/.

Also how does your crashes happen ?

 

 

 

Not sure if I recommended it before, but the Immersive Jewelry mod can easily be taken OFF the recommended mods list, author is plain stupid and trying to fix the entirery of Skyrim's economy with a jewlery mod, including making edits in things such a mod has no place touching, like making septims have weight. With these kinds of things touched upon while the mod is still in beta, I just don't trust this guy not to mess over half my game before he's done.

 

I pointed out a few logic flaws in his mod, suggested a console cheat code to ignore things like gold weight, and author responded with

 

 

 

lol Hey, aren't you the user who personally chased Chesko and Isoku away?

 

Do I need to say anything more at this point?

 

 

Had the mod on list to install but was wondering why would i need 900mb of jewelry. Did read your conversation on nexus - LoL. Like hell i will install CK just to edit one thing in his mod. Skyrim economy is not something weight can fix and i personally don't swim in septims as i avoid effects that add expensive loot or increase vendor gold.

[LidiaSun]

 

 

 

Re: merging lighting.   A merge can only do what loading the merged esps separately would do, and it doesn't really matter what's being merged - lighting is just another set of objects in cells.   So, if your CWI-RS patch needs a master (the unmerged Relighting Skyrim) that you don't have, you obviously can't merge those two things together.   And you certainly can't add the base RS mod to the merged RS mod - you would get double light sources. However, if you have the original esps that went into the merged RS, and your new CWI-RS patch is mastered from one of those components, then you could re-merge the RS esps with the CWI-RS patch.  Otherwise, merging those files as they stand is a total no-no.

 

But...if you're willing to do some work, you can do some cutting and pasting, and hand-create something that *is* mergeable.  Let's assume you have 3 files, which I'll call RSCore, RSMerged, and CWI-RSCoreCP.  Now, CWI-RSCoreCP is only going to modify a limited number of cells.  What you need to do is use TES5EDIT to totally remove the records of those cells from RSMerged, and then gut RSCore to remove all records that *aren't* those cells.  You can then merge all three files together, because your new RSCORE and CWI-RSCoreCP will only affect a few cells, and RSMerged will *not* affect those same cells.

 

This same technique can be used to merge *any* mods that edit the same cells, whether with lighting of contents or whatever.   For example, Skyrim Radioactive edits a number of shops and gives them totally new lighting - which is totally incompatible with (say) ELFX lighting in those same cells.  But you can edit ELFX to totally *remove* its mods to those cells, and voila!  The two mods are now compatible!  Elianora has created a tutorial video going though that exact case; you should be able to generalize it to your CWI-RS issue.

 

 

 

 

This came in handy, i removed cells from Relighting that conflicted with ICoW and merged without using the patch. The blinking lights are gone. Thanks. (Strange enough copying conflicting cell contents from ICoW to merged didn't work heh)

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe something is just not working as it should. when i read realvision they state:

 

You have CTDs, are using SKSE and nothing listed in FAQ is working?

open enblocal.ini ..\SteamApps\common\Skyrim and try to set ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false

 

What good does this do when they are actually disabling memory itself ?? because of this i am not sure but enbhost.exe is not loaded when i hit ctrl alt delete so that maybe why i am getting crashes to begin with looks like an error on enb is not working right with my pc ??

 

 

Do you have the shift+enter menu (or simply the ENB greeting in top left corner) ? If you do then i can't image enbhost not running. This setting will not disable enb memory but limit how much RAM enbhost can use to 4GB/.

Also how does your crashes happen ?

 

 

 

Not sure if I recommended it before, but the Immersive Jewelry mod can easily be taken OFF the recommended mods list, author is plain stupid and trying to fix the entirery of Skyrim's economy with a jewlery mod, including making edits in things such a mod has no place touching, like making septims have weight. With these kinds of things touched upon while the mod is still in beta, I just don't trust this guy not to mess over half my game before he's done.

 

I pointed out a few logic flaws in his mod, suggested a console cheat code to ignore things like gold weight, and author responded with

 

 

 

lol Hey, aren't you the user who personally chased Chesko and Isoku away?

 

Do I need to say anything more at this point?

 

 

Had the mod on list to install but was wondering why would i need 900mb of jewelry. Did read your conversation on nexus - LoL. Like hell i will install CK just to edit one thing in his mod. Skyrim economy is not something weight can fix and i personally don't swim in septims as i avoid effects that add expensive loot or increase vendor gold.

 

Why sometimes I feel reading sci-fi conversations about how to merge and boost Skyrim? I am just a humble poor thief (female char.) and can't  even manage to make Skyrim work stable after the transfer from NMM to MO   LoL

 

As by the mod Immersive Jewelry i looked it but when I saw that it changes the weight of septims I forgot it .... it's not healthy for my poor thief not to be able to run when stealing 500k septims :)

 

p.s. It's so nice to be with genius even if you understand the half :)

 

[Sacremas]

GalenZ; thanks for pointing out the Merge Scripts v 1.95, it worked perfectly! I made Inconsequential NPCs merged patches, this merges Inconsequential Babes, Enhancements and the RS Children patch, I forgot to merge the Cutting Room Floor changes but it's a single room so I don't think it's needed. You dont' need the three above patches for this, and there won't be grayface and missing voices with this;

 

https://mega.co.nz/#!YFRSgIIK!mvK8BxOg3prjcZGdKgKfp93I303qeG8rUohMZG1BDZA

 

Also I know this isn't meant to be a Sexlab related thread (though we do bring it up, but if anyone's interested here's a fixed version of Radiant Prostitution, this has a lot of script fixes and updated for latest JContainers, this is a safe version of the mod that won't break your save, unlike the default one. This is unvoiced, but you want it actually mainly not for the ability to work as a whore, but to turn the Immersive Wenches all into prostiutes with routines, including NPCs frequently approaching them for sex dynamically, and you can hire them for sex as well.

 

https://mega.co.nz/#!1RxAwArI!bj1rN3DutBHFr8Bau07cYAMJPIFFBy0ZxNiTLxwBp7Q

 

You also need latest JContainers.dll, get it here; http://www.loverslab.com/files/file/563-jcontainers/

[Sacremas]

I don't know why exactly but this is one of my favorite retexture mods ever, I love it! http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50327/?

 

Also on the same note, check out all the mods by this guy, they are awesome and add tons to your game!

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3712669/?tb=mods&pUp=1

 

And this guy as well, terriffic guy, this is one of those I'd love to donate to.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/5712421/?tb=mods&pUp=1

[D_ManXX2]

 

Do you have the shift+enter menu (or simply the ENB greeting in top left corner) ? If you do then i can't image enbhost not running. This setting will not disable enb memory but limit how much RAM enbhost can use to 4GB/.

Also how does your crashes happen ?

 

yes i can hit shift + enter so enb does seem to work, but when i hit ctrl alt and delete button enbhost.exe is not loaded and TESV.exe seem to be in a rang 1 gig in size.

[Sacremas]

Did you install it correctly? You need latest version of ENBSeries with d3d9.dll and enbhost.exe copied over into your Skyrim directory to make it work.

[D_ManXX2]

yes i got the latest from the enb website. And enb works fine in-game the menu works with shit+ enter witch is strange the only thing i don't see is when i hit ctrl + alt + delete and no enbhost.exe is loaded.

[Sacremas]

Hit the numpad star button as well in game and check out your framerate, try running from the gate of whiterun to Dragonsreach gate and monitoring your framerate. You should in theory have a bit better framerate, and at least much better color palette.

[D_ManXX2]

Ok i am going to give it a shot.

[KaelynZ]

*** Major BUG in MergePlugins asset copying !!!!

 

When copying assets under MO, Merge Plugins cannot accurately determine the source folder of a merged esp - that information is hidden by the MO virtual file system.  So, when copying assets, MergePlugins has to make a 'best guess' as to the source folder of an esp.  In the current (1.95 and earlier) version, it simply searches for the first folder under mods/ that contains that esp - whether that folder is active or not in the current profile!

 

Thus, if you have multiple installed versions of a mod (which many people do), MergePlugins may well copy assets from the wrong version.  This will occur even if the older versions are de-activated, as MergePlugins is only looking at the file system when searching, not the list of active mods.  In fact, if your older versions sort before the newer ones alphabetically (which is common), then the script will *definitely* get assets from the wrong version!

 

This is obviously a major problem, and likely a source of many people's merging woes.  I have informed mator of this problem on the Nexus MergePlugins forum - in fact, he's the one who told me how the current logic works.  I have requested a fix in the form of at least only copying assets from *active* mods that contain the specified plugin, but he has not yet responded, nor do I know when (or if) he'll get around to fixing the issue.

 

In the meantime, I am creating a temporary patched version of MergePlugins that does the 'right' thing, and will never copy assets from de-activated mods.  It's a good excuse for me to get up to speed on TES5Eedit scripting, and I should have a working script later today.   I'll let people know when it's working and available.

[Sacremas]

Very interesting, keep us updated. I didn't have alternate versions of the mods I merged this time, but this certainly explains my UNO crash, it was looking for the Requiem version!

 

So, I finally got my GTX 980 4 gig and installed it, along with a 500 GB SSD for my games. 980 installed beatuifully, I just had to reinstall my ENB and fix my Skyrim.ini to the new card and it was done. The harddrive however will mean transferring all my games and mods from my other harddrives to the new SSD. So, uh. My steam directory with all of my games, total of 6 games installed was 60 GB, including all the savegames and such.

 

My Mod Organizer directory with my mods, that effectively my game was being run out of that was on a normal HDD... was over 200 GB, over half a million files.

 

No wonder my game was starting up slow...

 

Transfering my games from one SSD to another took 9 minutes. Transfering the 200 GB HDD files to a SSD will take the next hour and a half according to the progress monitor. Tells you just what a leap the SSD technology is.

[trpd]

Good to know about the merge script bug, thankfully it is easily avoidable - just copy assets yourself ;]

 

Gratz on the new parts. I took a look at SSD prices now and lol, over 3 years the price per GB droped almost three times. When it comes to burst copy SSD arn't that faster but if you stuff is fragmented then yea random access on SSD is much faster. They got downside through (besides higher price) that is limtied lifespan.

 

200GB MO folder mine is 65 yet , but i do feel slower loads and hdd working hard.

[Sacremas]

Errr... exactly how limited is that limited lifespan? 5 years, 10 years?