Jsawyer Level 35 uncapper?

[oni136]

First of all this is a really awesome mod, (the best mod I've used ever),fairly new to TTW and was really happy to learn about this mod. I've really fell in love with both FO3 and FNV and enjoyed my first play through which was heavily modded (but mostly visual overhauls with basic PN for FNV). Now I'm planning on my second play through with ttw which is perfect considering that it links both wastelands with FNV's engine and im planning on building a pretty bad ass character in the process. What I want to ask is that can I use any  mod that will be compatible to uncap the level 35 limit of the Jsawyer mod? I would like my 2nd play through to be hard and jsaywer mod plus Project Nevadas FWE preset  is really perfect for me (was planning on using vicious waste but im having problems with it). but I dont really like the level 35 cap. level 75 seems perfect for me for my ttw play through (using PN Rebalance Options) with the use of 33% xp reduction and  lower skill points per level and 3 level perks. Would really appreciate any insight on this.

 

PS. Sorry for bad englis :) 

[GrindedStone]

Fallout New Vegas with all the DLC, as TTW requires, results in a level cap of 50 I believe.  I'm not familiar with the mods you are talking about.  I would suggest just getting the vanilla FO3/FNV TTW install/build running stable first.  Then use a video card driver editor like "Nvidia Inspector"  to set a -2.00 LOD bias.  Because this will tell the video card to ignore what FO3/FNV was set at for texture size (based on console hardware limitations) and use 2 sizes larger, or whatever you wanted to use for negative LOD bias (-0.50, -1.00, -1.50, -2.00 ect).

This being because .BSA were assembled to allow FO3/FNV to work together using the studio quality texture assets in a format optimized for the game engine to read.  Then add a mod once per day an test play it at the exit of Vault 101 or after it on a clean save where no other mods were installed.  So that it can be a stable longterm play.  Otherwise I'd guess your results would be varied as you added stuff, and it wouldn't be much fun to have a crashing FNV when it can be so stable an all.

[Risewild]

I think you can use any uncapper mod as long as you load it after JSawyer mod.

You can probably also use xEdit to overwrite the level limit using the uncapper mod one or just change the 35 to 75, but I really don't know how it is set up or how to actually do it so I can't help with that, sorry.

[RoyBatty]

LOD is handled differently in NV, and uses a texture atlas with texture of a set size and the LOD bias has little to no effect on it since they are max usually 128x128 anyways.

[GrindedStone]

That's not what Negative LOD bias does.  It's a video card driver setting that refers to what size mipmap a game engine will grab based on the distance from the camera to it.  As an example let's just say the distance from the camera to the player character in 3rd person results in the engine saying "I should grab a #8 mipmap for everything on the player character"  That goes to the video card, where negative LOD bias is set in the driver via an app,  it's a bias, so the #8 mipmap gets changed to a #10 from a -2.00 LOD bias (or plus 2 texture sizes if it helps)

Another example is that many games will switch to a negative LOD bias when in a cinematic camera because the game stops usually an that means they have more performance available to load pixels an lighting, which is why those scene's look so good.  I believe modern card drivers added OGL negative LOD bias but I never found a practical use for it, instead it's much like MFAA on older games (or other non-ENB tricks), least it seems that way with texture streaming becoming more advanced an complex to allow the console hardware to shine in these simulations on more modern games.  So we are really talking about Direct X negative LOD bias, to tell the video card, "Hey we are not a Xbox or Playstation an can grab very large texture maps, it will be okay".

Now, as far as we can probably remember back.  The modding community opts in for texture maps that are 4-8 times larger, vs Negative LOD bias will only grab 3 times larger at the most, but usually that results in a source texture instead of a mipmap for most, but we shouldn't forget the advantage of having textures loaded in a .BSA or proper DXT encoding on a professional studio level of quality.  Visa Vi, the opposite of what most gamers an artists do, which is to dump an excessive an possibly unnecessary amount of asset loading.

In our context here it doesn't translate to a direct cause of crashing, but stability an performance.  But the practice is good for many games that had high performance requirements on the consoles or online for example, an had been optimized via reducing texture map sizes.  In fact I bet it's the same textures setting in most game's settings, just it's on the video card an has the ability to go negative in order to circumvent (Online requirements or console port) performance restrictions.

[RoyBatty]

I know what it does, and the LOD has mipmaps too.

This game has serious issues already with memory management especially when using texture packs, setting a negative LOD bias will exhaust memory even faster and degrade performance even more especially for those of us who do not use the default FOV (75) value and set it wider (90+).

Putting textures in BSA is a good idea, but BSA's have a 2GB filesize limit before compression, and getting 5 BSA's to load for one texture pack is a bit of a pain and a waste of a plugin slot, if you can get them to override default textures 100% of the time. BSA are fine for custom assets, but they become a serious pain on the F3/NV engine when trying to replace vanilla assets.

"proper DXT encoding on a professional studio level of quality" what a crock this statement is, studios rarely properly encode their textures, ESPECIALLY Bethesda. They leave alpha channels in diffuse maps where they are not needed and compress to DXT5 when they should be DXT1 etc, broken models, etc etc.

You seem to be new to the modding community and assume things which are not true at all. Not to mention a lot of mod authors work in studios professionally or are interns/students too and do this as a hobby.

Finally, you've also completely derailed this topic, please refrain from doing so in the future.

[GrindedStone]

I'm not sure, but I believe it results in increased heat on the GPU/CPU only, as the method is calling upon the same texture assets in the raw data, DXT an mipmap would probably just put/grab what it needed depending on how much streaming technology is built into it.  This is ignoring that the other method being texture packs, would be 4-8 times as many pixels or more in many cases ignoring DXT encoding for video cards, or as noted, the greater evil here.

It's okay if you don't like me, I'm American.  It wouldn't be the first time.  The OP was having a crashing to desktop issue, what I was writing was addressing that as the main issue, because what's the point if the game won't run for long periods of time?  If it derailed or not, it wouldn't be my fault.  I started learning to mod a month after I got FO3 in 2009/2010 just after it got ported to PC.  We should try to listen better I know, an not make blatant assumptions.

The underlying issue was traditional end user problems of grand expectations/desires which are a bad idea as it is more easy to break the game.  It's not off topic to deal with missing standard operating procedures or even the idea of being conservative.  To that end, in my experience for any large mod, it's better to just run that alone an slowly add to it accurately for stability, instead of what we actually want as end users.  Because it was tested.

Studio level quality assets were mentioned because running a negative LOD bias on them results in the same effect as running decent post processing or the HD DLC for Skyrim, MSAA on old games, an other non-ENB settings or tweeks to gain a better looking game to play.  It's just with these Bethesda games, the original .BSA assets being "good" or not in the original form, it's a more stable game that way.

Studios don't have access to the tools we use, so it's not as good, but it's much better than what we can make as a community, because we all use different methods an settings, have different opinions, and studio is pretty much less mixed an standardized functionality for assets.  Whatever opinion we might have of it, it's professionally made assets for a commercial product, tested an patched.

Not forgetting the fact it's much less work on our part as end users to utilize it or in this case even expoit it, simlar to setting Fallout 4 texture streaming distances that are greater than consoles, same idea kind of.  More pixels works on PC, it's just that people assume they need community textures to do that.  It would be silly IMO to ignore generic gamer settings, tweeks, knowledge, and wisdom just because we can make/use our own assets instead.

[oni136]

Thanks for the insight Risewild :), I've decided to now only use the Project Nevada FWE esque preset (to avoid any possible complication between Jsaywer Mod and PN ) with Roybatty's BLEED mod (great mod to improve combat and difficulty), I've also ditched vicious waste cause i'm having this strange bug that when every time I load a save game the hp of my character decreases with no apparent reason, there is also a bug with the carry weight limit I think, please note that I've started a new game upon installing the vicious waste mod us instructed by the mod author but im still having this errors.

The game did actually became much harder now with PN and Bleed in my load order, using the FWE preset and PN options to change variables in the game including the level cap. and I'm planning to lower the experience gain from 50% to 33 % once i've reach level 20 also lowering the skill points earned by 8 to balance out my game maybe even use the hard hardcore preset of PN to make my game even harder at higher levels and to balance out my character before going to the Mojave. at level 50 I would probably lower the 33 % experience gain to 25% (lowest in PN Option) and the skill points earned will be -10 with perks earned probably every five levels so that I can reach my targeted level 75 cap in a much much longer duration enabling me continue role playing and to enjoy the game more. Will probably install AWOP after the battle of hoover dam (with CAGE installed if possible)  so that I will have a reason to return to DC with a much tougher challenge.

That's my planned play through of TTW for now but any suggestions will still be appreciated :).

Really exited with fighting Lanius for the first time. (first play through I did pass the speech checks having no battle occur but not this time around)

 

 

[oni136]

Thanks Roy batty for all your mod conversions, I'm starting to really enjoy playing FNV with TTW now with them installed specially BLEED. Hope there will be more converted mods in the future (wishfully the Reinforced Chinese Stealth Armor mod:)

[RoyBatty]

oni: You're welcome. As for that mod, it should be easy to convert following my tutorial. Balancing it for DT instead of DR can be done pretty easy too. I have a formula for that, and then tweak it to taste.