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Breakthrough in Skyrim memory usage allows larger scale battles/environments.

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Searched and found nothing, so shoot me in the knee and lock if old.


ENB forum user 'sheson' has found a way to allow Skyrim to utilize memory in larger blocks than 256MB. This could allow battles on the massive scale and impressive mods to be more stable.
As far as I know Skyrim will still be limited to 4GB of memory because it is a 32bit game, but the ability for the game to access that memory in blocks of 1GB at a time instead of 256MB will greatly improve stability.
Information
reddit thread

Quick explanation from reddit user Leknasant...
The first is the initial block of memory when you load up the game, the 2nd is the secondary block when the first one fills up. Originally it was only 256MB and 256MB totaling the 512. IF the 1st memory patch goes up 512MB of memory, you need to adjust the second to be the same. I don't know what the ratios are after 1GB, but I just raised them both to 1GB.
Each hex goes by 256MB of ram, so 0100 is 256, 0200 is 512, etc etc. I have very limited knowledge of C++ I just figured it out from the Original Poster who found out the patch.
You can just take a few minutes to figure out and read it, you can compile your own DLL from the SRC.
So when MODs+Scripts filled Skyrims memory, the game crashed or Froze as it had no more room to offload it's usage. (Hency the graphic corruption that was happening with Safety Load.)
Basically modifying the first two safewrite code levels, tells the game how much memory in blocks to take from your system memory. I have 32GB. So i could tell it to use 2GB of ram.
According to the post on ENB "the sky is the limit."

Here is a link to the edited DLL file needed to perform this mod.
reddit comment
 
Wonderful, I can't wait to see what mods come out of this. Just when I think I've played modded Skyrim for the last time, something big comes out and I'm pulled right back in.
 

Mozendo

Member
How large scale are we talking about?
If Lord of The Ring movie - tier large scale battles then I'd definitely give Skyrim another chance.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I'd be curious to see if the engine can even handle that many AI entities at once without crawling.

Just because you can force an engine to load an extra level of data doesn't always mean you should.
 

Cerity

Member
fucking thank you. It might finally be time to get back into skyrim.

Last time going into the creation menu to change my characters looks would crash the game if I wasn't indoors thanks to all the mods I had.
 
Would a modest mod user see any benefit from this? I don't even have SKSE installed yet, just some basic unofficial patches and lore-friendly mods (cloaks, marriage-eligible Serana, Paarthunax fix, Wrymstooth, Falskaar). I don't even have any other graphical enhancers besides PureWaters.
 

Mozendo

Member
300+ NPCs they say in the Reddit.
0OzZrEO.gif

holy cow, will look into this in a few months.
 

Boss Man

Member
A great war of people slapping each other with pool noodles

edit: Or is there also a mod that makes the combat not awful?
 

SJRB

Gold Member
I've just started replaying Skyrim two days ago, pretty heavily modded. It's amazing how much the community has done for this game, it's so much better with even a couple of basic mods installed.
 
Would a modest mod user see any benefit from this? I don't even have SKSE installed yet, just some basic unofficial patches and lore-friendly mods (cloaks, marriage-eligible Serana, Paarthunax fix, Wrymstooth, Falskaar). I don't even have any other graphical enhancers besides PureWaters.

Not really, unless you want to go crazy with your ugrids settings. I had 'em on 7 for a while, and that made the game unstable as shit, so I reverted back to default. Supposedly they've fixed the issues somehow, but I'm still a bit wary.

It has some great potential, I'll keep my eye on this.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Would a modest mod user see any benefit from this? I don't even have SKSE installed yet, just some basic unofficial patches and lore-friendly mods (cloaks, marriage-eligible Serana, Paarthunax fix, Wrymstooth, Falskaar). I don't even have any other graphical enhancers besides PureWaters.

Probably not. This seems to more directed at modders that have a large amount of mods that affect display quality and resolution of textures. RAM hungry mods are what this fix will help with.

Whiterun will look like a regional hub now!

That is what I am most excited about. The battles would be neat, but having cities actually populated with a proper amount of NPC's would be jaw-dropping.

So would this mean greater stability? Less crashes? Sounds promising.

Yes.
 
Probably not. This seems to more directed at modders that have a large amount of mods that affect display quality and resolution of textures. RAM hungry mods are what this fix will help with.

My game likes to crash on load. A lot. Was hoping it was due to RAM and this would fix it, but I guess not. Back to the drawing board...
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
My game likes to crash on load. A lot. Was hoping it was due to RAM and this would fix it, but I guess not. Back to the drawing board...

Yeah, that's probably not from lack of RAM. Try disabling your mods one by one and see which one is causing the crashing.
 
I'll keep that in mind if I go back to this game at some point.

BTW would this allow higher uGrids too? Last I know you couldn't set your uGrids higher than 5 after the Dragonborn DLC released.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
I'll keep that in mind if I go back to this game at some point.

BTW would this allow higher uGrids too? Last I know you couldn't set your uGrids higher than 5 after the Dragonborn DLC released.

Yes. uGrids can be set higher with this mod as far as I know.
But Skyrim is still a CPU limited game, so your FPS will still suffer even if you have a sufficient amount of RAM and GPU power.
 

kick51

Banned
How large scale are we talking about?
If Lord of The Ring movie - tier large scale battles then I'd definitely give Skyrim another chance.



like that except nobody knows how to swing a sword and sometimes the swords clip through or glitch out or who even knows
 

akira28

Member
Maybe they can divert some of this to help with the Skyrim Morrowind mod. 300+ cliff racers blotting out the sun...
 
Not really, unless you want to go crazy with your ugrids settings. I had 'em on 7 for a while, and that made the game unstable as shit, so I reverted back to default. Supposedly they've fixed the issues somehow, but I'm still a bit wary.

It has some great potential, I'll keep my eye on this.

Probably not. This seems to more directed at modders that have a large amount of mods that affect display quality and resolution of textures. RAM hungry mods are what this fix will help with.

That is what I am most excited about. The battles would be neat, but having cities actually populated with a proper amount of NPC's would be jaw-dropping.

Yes.

I'll keep that in mind if I go back to this game at some point.

BTW would this allow higher uGrids too? Last I know you couldn't set your uGrids higher than 5 after the Dragonborn DLC released.
What are the benefits of increasing the amount of loaded uGrids?

Also, could this mod theoretically allow for cities to be loaded in-world without needing a load-screen? I remember that someone created a mod a while back that did this, but it was incredibly unstable.
 
Å

Åesop

Unconfirmed Member
Holy sh** thats awesome. gotta love the pc modding community :eek:
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Hell yes.



Now if only someone could merge indoor and outdoor cells.


There was a mod that took me forever to get workin for oblivion that faked transparent windows. Which was nice.
 
What are the benefits of increasing the amount of loaded uGrids?

Also, could this mod theoretically allow for cities to be loaded in-world without needing a load-screen? I remember that someone created a mod a while back that did this, but it was incredibly unstable.

Distant detail, mostly. Higher ugrids means more stuff around you gets rendered.

There was a mod that took me forever to get workin for oblivion that faked transparent windows. Which was nice.

There's one for Skyrim, too, it's called "Immersive Interiors". I think it only does Whiterun for now, though.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
What are the benefits of increasing the amount of loaded uGrids?

Also, could this mod theoretically allow for cities to be loaded in-world without needing a load-screen? I remember that someone created a mod a while back that did this, but it was incredibly unstable.

Here is a nice post describing the differences when you start to increase the amount of uGrids loaded.

And as far as the seamless city mod that is out already. I don't see why this would not improve the stability of that mod. Having more RAM easily available should help the cities from crashing.
 

Yuuichi

Member
What are the benefits of increasing the amount of loaded uGrids?

Been a long time since I did this, but if I recall correctly, the rendering worked on a sort of large scale grid, and this increased LoD at a distance by loading in more squares at higher detail. It was exponential as well, meaning that this would render a 5x5 grid, with the default being 3, iirc.
 

JoeBoy101

Member
I keep with the Skyrim mods as I go back to it every 3 months or so for a handful of hours, but over the past 3 months, there have been some real breakthroughs on memory usage improving mod stability.

For example, here is the Safety Load mod mentioned in the post.

Nexus said:
This mod blocks "Infinite Loading Screen" bug and game freezing during play. Rather than an error of load, "Infinite Loading Screen" is caused by an error in memory allocation. This mod modify the function of memory allocation and block all freezing due to memory allocation failure.

This further breakthrough is more than just getting around the freezing but dramatically improving performance as well.
 
Here is a nice post describing the differences when you start to increase the amount of uGrids loaded.

And as far as the seamless city mod that is out already. I don't see why this would not improve the stability of that mod. Having more RAM easily available should help the cities from crashing.

A reply on the Reddit thread says that it has totally fixed the crashes for Open Cities.

Now that we have that, it would be amazing if it were possible to open up shops and player homes in the same manner.
 
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