suggestion for STEP guide w.r.t. ENBoost

[dps_kane]

Hi there,

 

I am new to STEP, but I am atm meticulously following the guide from the start.

This is just a minor suggestion, but:
In part 1 there are various mini-steps that say something like "if you use ENBoost, then set this to 1, otherwise 0" or similar. At the moment of reading nowhere has been explained what ENBoost is, hence, I changed all settings as if I would not use ENBoost.

Now in part 2 it says "ENBoost is required by *all* users of STEP, yes all!"

I.e., now I have to go back and change all the settings I made previously, assuming that I might not use ENBoost.

=> My simple suggestion is that everywhere when it says "if you use XY ..." to make sure that maybe something small has been said about XY, and in the particular case of ENBoost, since it is not optional, to remove such questions alltogether and only recommend the setting as if one uses ENBoost.

 

Is that a meaningful suggestion? Or am I missing something here?

[GrantSP]

Welcome to STEP @dps_kane.

 

If you are referring to statements such as:

 

 

If using an ENBSeries Preset

please note that ENBSeries and ENBoost are two different things. The former is a set of graphical configuration settings and the latter is a management system for memory. STEP does not ask you to make changes to your graphical settings needlessly.

[dps_kane]

Hi antipodean,

 

I am referring to both, actually. Let me explain:
- ENBSeries Preset: I have a rough idea, what they do and what they are, but it would be good to mention somewhere in the beginning of the guide maybe that any mentioning of ENBSeries should be assumed that the user is *not* installing an ENBSeries and maybe a very short summary of what that really is.
- ENBoost: I realized that they are not the same thing, but there are still places where the guide says "ENBoost users should do X, others do Y" - in section 1. I can't recall all locations and whether there were many or maybe just one. One is at the very end when dealing with things like nVidia inspector (in my case), where a note says:

"Users not using ENBoost should set Anisotropic filtering setting as indicated below. ENBoost users should ensure the Anisotropic filtering setting is off and set ForceAnisotropicFiltering is set to true in the enblocal.ini file."
(this is in the detailed instructions and something similar is in the non-detailed instructions; btw: i do have two "off" settings in anisotropic filtering, off [local] and off [point]; like in the picture i chose off [local])
I usually went with the detailed instructions, so a simple ctrl+f did not bring anything except that.

My feeling says there was another location, but it could indeed be that all other places in the guide where I was a bit baffled of what to do next, where talking about ENBSeries Presets.

 

I'm very glad to have a step-by-step guide at hand, but from time to time it can be confusing ;)
(also those great video guides from michael@gamerPoets are sometimes telling a slightly different story, e.g. w.r.t. cleaning: in the written guide cleaned DLCs are placed underneath unclean DLCs (I do have an SSD but the DLCs are still always removed from the folder), he basically just places the cleaned DLCs, nothing else)

 

overall the guide is clearly awesome for people like me that would like to have a nice working setup and learn while doing, not read up one part, realize things should have been done differently, reset/restart, ...)
 

[dps_kane]

"Hi antipodean"should be "Hi GrantSP"....

to bad there is no edit function in the forum. at least i don't seem to have such a button...

[TechAngel85]

I believe I've already taken care of all this in the Dev Guide when I went through the Guide making changes for clarity. As for the videos, they are only there for reference. They're not meant to actually show you what to do for STEP.

[Bandy]

There is [pardon my language] a hell of a lot of information in the STEP guide, and while it sometimes is not entirely clear at certain points how to exactly proceed (disabling "Birds of Skyrim" at a certain point springs to mind...), a bit of effort to follow up/research the step should resolve the user's impasse. 

 

As a noob to installing STEP and modding TES in general, after a successful install it's hard to understand/remember why you had a problem.  Yes, you sometimes need to go back to go forward, but that's just part of the complexity of what you are accomplishing.

 

Do not mistake the following, I'm sure the STEP guide can be improved in places for new people, but wow!  You've all done such a terrific job at organizing the guide and making the Skyrim experience so much better graphically and stability-wise for me and my family.

 

Cheers!

Edited September 29, 2016 by Bandy

[dps_kane]

I believe I've already taken care of all this in the Dev Guide when I went through the Guide making changes for clarity. As for the videos, they are only there for reference. They're not meant to actually show you what to do for STEP.

but that guide is not yet released as stable, right?

 

i see that the first mentioning of ENBoost and ENB in general is in the detailed instructions of bethINI. I do not know, to me it makes sense to clarify somewhere before what ENBoost/ENB presets are or to offer at various step "very first STEP setup" and "STEP setup with ENB preset".

 

i agree with bandy, though ;)

[TechAngel85]

Yes, the Dev Guide is still in development, but we would not make such changes to the live Guide anyway. I just wanted to point out that most of this has already been taken care of for the next release. I've updated the BethINI page to read:

 

If using an ENB Preset, users should tick the ''ENB Mode'' checkbox. This does not apply to users who ONLY use the ENBoost portion of ENBSeries. Users installing the STEP Guide should not tick this checkbox. This should be autodetected, so if you are unsure, leave this alone!

That should clear any confusion up. Users shouldn't install an ENBSeries Preset while installing the STEP Guide, so users shouldn't have to even worry about what an ENB Preset is at this point in the installation.

[dps_kane]

oot: i saw the xp32 skeleton mod of STEP:extended has been replaced, too. maybe i'll do that here, then ;)

i think that does explain it better for people with little experience in modding skyrim, thanks. due to my worries about having done something to my graphics settings or just screwn up my skyrim settings (or none of both), i could actually go reinstall everything and go through the 2.10.0 guide as is and provide you with direct feedback from a newb point of view, if you want. then maybe via PM, though, to not go offtopic all the time...
years ago i modded oblivion using wrye bash with about 150-200 mods stable, but atm i do indeed consider myself a newb ;) but very capable of learning :P

 

thanks for the help, techangel

[TechAngel85]

I'm currently running the Dev version for testing. If you do this, keep in mind there are not any STEP Dev Patches so you'll have to patch up any conflicts yourself using xEdit.

[dps_kane]

I'm currently running the Dev version for testing. If you do this, keep in mind there are not any STEP Dev Patches so you'll have to patch up any conflicts yourself using xEdit.

hm.... then maybe not. the only thing i am now familiar with w.r.t. xEdit is basic cleaning (ITMs and UDRs). might take a while before i get to know how to resolve conflicts. but i'll keep 2.10.0 in the back of my head. if i do it one day, i'll write you directly w.r.t. any things i found confusing or hard to understand in the guide.