For the first time ever I have a rock-solid stable game, and it's entirely thanks to Cathedral.
It's embarrassing that I never even tried this tool until now. I glanced at this and other "optimizers" in the past, but didn't see the point. If I'm going to all the effort of downloading gigabytes of HD textures to improve the aesthetics of my game, I'm not then going to undo all of that by downsizing the textures. It seemed counterproductive.
But that isn't the real point of Cathedral, at least it's not its most useful function. Where it really shines is that it actually repairs malformed assets, which it seems are the real cause of most CTDs and general instability.
I hadn't even considered that possibility.
Yesterday I made a test copy of my Skyrim folder, then ran CAO on the data directory (yes I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's just a copy). I selected every option except BSAs, and just for the hell of it I reduced the textures down to 512x512.
The results are breathtaking.
The original folder was 75.4 GB. The optimized copy is 44.9 GB, basically half the size.
I launched the game, expecting to find missing meshes and textures, but everything was there and looked perfect. Better yet, I barely noticed any difference in texture quality, which confirmed to me that 8K, 4K and even 2K are mostly a placebo. It's only when I went eyeball to ground zero that I could actually see the difference, and really, how often do you actually do that in game?
Yes, 512 is a bit too low, it looks slightly grainy and washed out, so next time around I'll be choosing 1K, but anything more than that is pointless, IMHO.
But that's not the best part.
I push things pretty hard in my load order, installing a large number of known stability-breaking mods, such as Immersive Citizens, the "Good Guy" series, and a tonne of "overhauls" that cause all sorts of conflicts. I also use a number of Oldrim mods that may or may not have been correctly ported, and mods that have either been abandoned or even deleted from the Nexus, and with each passing day become more and more incompatible.
I manage the patches as best I can, and go out of my way to correct problems with Creation Kit, SSEedit, zEdit, Wrye Bash and so on, but ultimately I have to accept that what I'm doing will inevitably cause instability, so I live with it.
I never seriously expected CAO to fix that, but incredibly, it has.
Yesterday I played Skyrim for 8 hours straight without even a single glitch. All the stutters have gone. No CTDs, no freezes, no lock-ups. Rock solid. My FPS hasn't improved at all, but that's because the GPU is bottlenecked by slower components, such as the CPU and RAM (I have a mostly potato-ish PC with a good GPU).
I'm not saying it fixed everything, I'm sure there's still plenty of broken quests due to conflicts, but in terms of simply running the game without crashing, CAO has achieved the impossible.
This is for this kind of comments that I am still modding (and also because I like it, of course :p) I really appreciate this write-up. I have a feeling CAO cannot be that good, but I'm glad if it is for you Thanks for your feedback.
Remember, always make a backup of your mods! While CAO is mostly stable, any piece of software can have its quirks.
RECOMMENDATION
The issue described below cannot be reliably confirmed at this time, but due to the one aspect of the test I wasn't able to repeat, the following steps may help you avoid a similar experience.
If you intend on optimizing your meshes/textures, do so in small batches (such as in single mod mode in their own mod folders), so that if something goes wrong it's easier to correct the issue.
If you need to do a large asset merge, commonly seen with heavily modded games (especially in FO4 due to the much lower count threshold for archives), keep an eye on what does and doesn't get packed.
If you see any .caobad files after processing or packing assets, please report this to us ASAP. Whatever detail you can provide about what you did prior to noticing these files is extremely helpful.
Of course, if you want to help us test, we'd greatly appreciate it!
POTENTIAL ISSUE
Spoiler:
Show
Recently, using v5.3.13, I experienced some textures, cubemaps specifically, becoming corrupted during processing. The details of my experience were the following:
When process completed, all cubemaps scattered through various folders were converted to .caobad files. When changed back to DDS, these are 128x128 sized rainbow pixel images.
Following a large battery of tests, however, trying every combination of CAO settings I could think of, I couldn't repeat the issue, which confounds me. The only detail I couldn't replicate was the sheer size of the work that CAO had to perform. Recompiling original copies of all of those mods is going to take some time, and I wanted to get this notice out quickly. Because I can't replicate the issue, I also can't say for certain what triggered it, or even if it's limited to FO4 mode.
Does mesh optimization in 7 function or filter any differently? In the current non 7 release I recall having issues after optimizing certain meshes. The one I recall was Shadow of Mersis where some meshes became invisible or rainbows.
It works very similarly. Meshes optimization is a complex topic. It's unfortunately expected that some files break. I advise using Necessary optimization, which only optimizes files that would not work anyway
I want to report a problem, that is, if the path contains Chinese characters, it will crash. Similarly, when starting to run with MO2, it is garbled (garbled Chinese characters), but it is easy to solve by changing the file name to English.（CAO7）(o゜▽゜)o☆
Oh, I'm back. CAO7 will report some errors when compressing. The compression rate is higher than the previous one, but I think it may avoid lod to prevent the 3D from becoming 2D later (I think)
Oh, I solved it. If it reports an error, just keep running it until it has no errors. The compressed size is the same as the old version. The main problem is that it does not support Chinese. It is a bit annoying to input repeatedly. Another thing is, if my file contains lod, do I need to separate it out and put it back in after compression? I am afraid that the distant view generated later will appear 2D. (Google Translated)
Friends, I am back again. I want to report a problem again. When I use CAO7, the screen flashes (many times, after the operation is completed, the screen flashes from time to time)
I didn't run it with MO2. The reason why it flashed was that I ran it multiple times in a row. Sometimes it showed an error, so I ran it multiple times, and then it flashed from time to time after the end. I can't provide specific information because I don't know much about these things. As for the error log, I can't give a link. I don't know which platform to use to upload this thing. (But this is obviously not a big problem, after all, it can be solved by restarting the computer)
Odd issue, when packing LODs for FNV into a BSA, my flora trees seem to be getting corrupted, causing them to look like scrap walls until loaded in. Anyone else experience this?
No, for SE, but it would be useful for LE too I guess. It would be ideal to have the tool be able to automatically ESM flag dummy plugins for packed BSAs that edit huge amounts of files.
Oh, you want this to make them loaded at the beginning? It's hard to find a one-size-fits-all here. CAO cannot take this decision on its own, so I think it's better to keep the existing behavior and users will be able to replace some dummy plugins if needed
Please forgive me for asking a stupid question. Some texture mods have other authors making high-definition problems for them, and then I pack them into a folder, and then I use CAO to unpack and overwrite, and then pack them into BSA, but some BSAs will have serial numbers. Do I need to create a dummy plugin for this? If I create a dummy plugin with CAO, will it be marked as esp or esl? I don't understand these, I'm really sorry. Also, is CAO7 really that unsafe? I plan to use it.(；′⌒`)
Oh, by the way, I have another question that I hope you can help me with. When I optimize the animation, it will pop up pop-ups like crazy. Is there any way to turn it off?╥﹏╥...
The application that pops up when optimizing animations is usvfs_proxy_x86.exe, which is in MO2. I tried turning off the index before and it worked a bit, but it didn't work when optimizing those pure animation modules.o(TヘTo)
This is tool is a godsend, endorsed (self endorsed) my good sir!
I have a question. I mod on Steam Deck and Windows. Can I possibly run this tool through MO2 on the steam deck? Like I could add CAO exe in MO2 and run it? Does anyone have any experience with this on SD?
Do not run CAO through MO2. I don't own a steam deck, but I suppose you have some kind of launcher for Windows apps. Run CAO from here, it should work fine
I have a small question. You see CAO does not pack files named '.NIF' into BSA. While it does '.nif' perfectly. many mods unfortunately have the capitalized .NIF.(Mostly in facegen). any way I could handle this?
So Sorry for the late reply. Yes will try. Also just to elaborate. it doesn't just have to be all caps like '.NIF' for the file to not get packed Just one letter is sufficient '.dDs', '.Dds', '.ddS' etc
Okay. So the version 7.o.h is able to pack '.NIF' into BSA without issues.
Spoiler:
Show
I have 2 questions though
1) I am not able to simultaneously select 'Extract BSA' and 'Create BSA' like in earlier version. So now if I want to optimize a mod which has a BSA. I have to run CAO with extract BSA selected first and then again with Create BSA selected instead of just one go like before?
2) Can't find option to disable separating BSA into texture BSA.
Probably just a preference of mine 😅. Unless it is a mod big enough that it does not fit into a single BSA. I always repack all mods into single BSA, since it's less number of files and keeps it clean. So I really liked that little checkbox in CAO to select it if you preferred it that way.
I mean, there's no reason to add it, and it can confuse beginners. For games like FO4, the textures BSA is even mandatory I'll see if I get a chance, but probably not soon
Thanks for considering it. appreciate it. you could just make that option available on advanced mode or something. But even if you don't get the time to do it, no worries.
3119 comments
To report a bug or ask for a feature, please use GitLab. Always enable debug log and post the log.
Do not process the Skyrim data folder.
Always make a backup of your mods.
Note: I do not always answer to comments. But be sure I read all of them
It's embarrassing that I never even tried this tool until now. I glanced at this and other "optimizers" in the past, but didn't see the point. If I'm going to all the effort of downloading gigabytes of HD textures to improve the aesthetics of my game, I'm not then going to undo all of that by downsizing the textures. It seemed counterproductive.
But that isn't the real point of Cathedral, at least it's not its most useful function. Where it really shines is that it actually repairs malformed assets, which it seems are the real cause of most CTDs and general instability.
I hadn't even considered that possibility.
Yesterday I made a test copy of my Skyrim folder, then ran CAO on the data directory (yes I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's just a copy). I selected every option except BSAs, and just for the hell of it I reduced the textures down to 512x512.
The results are breathtaking.
The original folder was 75.4 GB. The optimized copy is 44.9 GB, basically half the size.
I launched the game, expecting to find missing meshes and textures, but everything was there and looked perfect. Better yet, I barely noticed any difference in texture quality, which confirmed to me that 8K, 4K and even 2K are mostly a placebo. It's only when I went eyeball to ground zero that I could actually see the difference, and really, how often do you actually do that in game?
Yes, 512 is a bit too low, it looks slightly grainy and washed out, so next time around I'll be choosing 1K, but anything more than that is pointless, IMHO.
But that's not the best part.
I push things pretty hard in my load order, installing a large number of known stability-breaking mods, such as Immersive Citizens, the "Good Guy" series, and a tonne of "overhauls" that cause all sorts of conflicts. I also use a number of Oldrim mods that may or may not have been correctly ported, and mods that have either been abandoned or even deleted from the Nexus, and with each passing day become more and more incompatible.
I manage the patches as best I can, and go out of my way to correct problems with Creation Kit, SSEedit, zEdit, Wrye Bash and so on, but ultimately I have to accept that what I'm doing will inevitably cause instability, so I live with it.
I never seriously expected CAO to fix that, but incredibly, it has.
Yesterday I played Skyrim for 8 hours straight without even a single glitch. All the stutters have gone. No CTDs, no freezes, no lock-ups. Rock solid. My FPS hasn't improved at all, but that's because the GPU is bottlenecked by slower components, such as the CPU and RAM (I have a mostly potato-ish PC with a good GPU).
I'm not saying it fixed everything, I'm sure there's still plenty of broken quests due to conflicts, but in terms of simply running the game without crashing, CAO has achieved the impossible.
Thank you.
I really appreciate this write-up. I have a feeling CAO cannot be that good, but I'm glad if it is for you
Thanks for your feedback.
RECOMMENDATION
The issue described below cannot be reliably confirmed at this time, but due to the one aspect of the test I wasn't able to repeat, the following steps may help you avoid a similar experience.
Of course, if you want to help us test, we'd greatly appreciate it!
POTENTIAL ISSUE
Following a large battery of tests, however, trying every combination of CAO settings I could think of, I couldn't repeat the issue, which confounds me. The only detail I couldn't replicate was the sheer size of the work that CAO had to perform. Recompiling original copies of all of those mods is going to take some time, and I wanted to get this notice out quickly. Because I can't replicate the issue, I also can't say for certain what triggered it, or even if it's limited to FO4 mode.
Does cao work on pbr?
I'm sorry. English is not my first language.
I advise using Necessary optimization, which only optimizes files that would not work anyway
Can you send the precise error?
Screen flashes are not normal. Try to run CAO outside of MO2
It's hard to find a one-size-fits-all here. CAO cannot take this decision on its own, so I think it's better to keep the existing behavior and users will be able to replace some dummy plugins if needed
CAO7 is quite stable in my experience, I just lack enough user feedback to mark it stable
I have a question. I mod on Steam Deck and Windows. Can I possibly run this tool through MO2 on the steam deck? Like I could add CAO exe in MO2 and run it? Does anyone have any experience with this on SD?
Apologies if this has been asked before.
Do not run CAO through MO2. I don't own a steam deck, but I suppose you have some kind of launcher for Windows apps. Run CAO from here, it should work fine
Cheers!
Cheers!
many mods unfortunately have the capitalized .NIF.(Mostly in facegen). any way I could handle this?
Also just to elaborate. it doesn't just have to be all caps like '.NIF' for the file to not get packed
Just one letter is sufficient '.dDs', '.Dds', '.ddS' etc
I have 2 questions though
1) I am not able to simultaneously select 'Extract BSA' and 'Create BSA' like in earlier version. So now if I want to optimize a mod which has a BSA. I have to run CAO with extract BSA selected first and then again with Create BSA selected instead of just one go like before?
2) Can't find option to disable separating BSA into texture BSA.
2. Why do you need this option?
I'll see if I get a chance, but probably not soon