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.
So how does this extract the ba2 files for Fo4? all i see is two .Bak compressed folders. does it make the folder file paths for it or what as i want to compress the loose mod then drag n drop it into vortex then give it the og mod info. Edit: so it seems to say its a "invalid version" and to extract them manually?
If you want to improve performance, you can use CAO on any mod to downsize textures, pack the files into BSAs or generate mipmaps. Downsizing is probably the most impactful feature
Hello, I tested it, unfortunately it gives red errors, and also cao7 does not backport the graphics as it should, like in cao5.3. I can fully backport the Assorted mesh fixes mod with 5.3, but not with 7.
The animation mods I tried to recycle are:
Nemesis Creature Behaviour Compatibility
and
Dragon Priest Fix - Behaviour Overhaul
I have a computer that can play the Special Edition version of Skyrim, I only play the legendary edition because I like to be a bigot. So dear producer, please don't tire yourself, add or fix this feature whenever you want, it doesn't matter after 20 years or 30 years. Thank you.
Actually, on second thought today, please take your valuable time and give us Legendary Edition zealots a fixed animation behavior backport option. I can't wait 20 or 30 years. My Skyrim playing instincts kicked in. Sorry thanks!.
This tool is very useful, but I have a small question: after compression, will there be any impact on the outputs of ParallaxGen, xLODGen, TexGen, or DynDOLOD? Do I need to regenerate them?
Why is, for example, merely converting from NiTriShape to BSTriShape considered a "Full" optimization for meshes, in this? NiTriShape won't necessarily crash, but BSTriShape is the correct format for SSE meshes. There's no reason not to always make that change.
TLDR if you use CAO thinking it will generally up-version otherwise-valid LE meshes to SE meshes by default, it does not, it does absolutely nothing on otherwise-valid LE meshes in the default "Necessary Optimizations" mode.
In its "necessary" mode, CAO tries to avoid conversion if possible. Sometimes converted meshes are glitchy, so it prefers using the original. It only converts files that would crash otherwise
Just chiming in here to point out that ImmersiveEquipmentMeshGen patcher for synthesis will not work on NiTriShape meshes: https://github.com/SteveTownsend/ImmersiveEquipmentMeshGen/issues/20
I understand your point here. In an ideal world, I would agree that CAO should upgrade all meshes But from my experience, only upgrading broken meshes increases the success rate. That's why "full optimization" is opt-in
Oh yeah I get it and probably agree. My other post was mostly just to help anyone who is struggling to get that patcher to work with certain mod-added weapons and is digging through old forum threads for some clue (as I did - without success it turns out, until I thought to look at the issue tracker for the patcher itself).
But not everyone is going to use IED and not everyone is going to run that specific patcher for it, so if there are other downsides to just blanket upgrading everything, then that has to be considered as well.
Ideally the log output of the patcher would give more helpful output when it encounters this issue. What it tells you as of now is... not helpful.
3144 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.
Edit: so it seems to say its a "invalid version"
and to extract them manually?
before it was 17 fps
im not sure if there's anything i should optimise, but this mod is listed in Free Fps, and id like to make use of it.
I can fully backport the Assorted mesh fixes mod with 5.3, but not with 7.
The animation mods I tried to recycle are:
Nemesis Creature Behaviour Compatibility
and
Dragon Priest Fix - Behaviour Overhaul
I have a computer that can play the Special Edition version of Skyrim, I only play the legendary edition because I like to be a bigot. So dear producer, please don't tire yourself, add or fix this feature whenever you want, it doesn't matter after 20 years or 30 years. Thank you.
TLDR if you use CAO thinking it will generally up-version otherwise-valid LE meshes to SE meshes by default, it does not, it does absolutely nothing on otherwise-valid LE meshes in the default "Necessary Optimizations" mode.
But from my experience, only upgrading broken meshes increases the success rate. That's why "full optimization" is opt-in
But not everyone is going to use IED and not everyone is going to run that specific patcher for it, so if there are other downsides to just blanket upgrading everything, then that has to be considered as well.
Ideally the log output of the patcher would give more helpful output when it encounters this issue. What it tells you as of now is... not helpful.