Just to be clear - this is a work in progress - I have done a first pass on some of the major roads. I have lots of roads and fine tuning left to do, but the mod will improve your roads on the done routes already, so I figured I'd release it early and keep updating from here
Version 1.1 is now available – please check the changelog for details. I was inspired by the overwhelming positive feedback from people who have endured these problematic road meshes for a decade. In version 1.1, I decided to connect the two segments with roads between Whiterun and Windhelm. Let's just say it crushed all that inspiration, as that stretch of road is absolutely atrocious. The only way to make it flawless would be to edit the landscape or create new road meshes. It's frustrating and not perfect, but it should be significantly better than the vanilla version now.
Here's a fun fact: the file already contains over 1600 records. We may need to eventually turn this into a full .ESM file, given the sheer number of road meshes in Skyrim. Midgame upgrades should be fine, this only moves vanilla assets, nothing new is added and no scripts involved etc.
Since this doesn't touch the landscape at all it shouldn't need anywhere near as many patches - if any patches at all. I can only imagine patches being needed if other mods dramatically change the landscape without changing vanilla roads, but why would anyone do that? By loading this first, other mods can freely change road meshes or landscape, overwriting this without causing any issues.
I put it in my early loaders group in LOOT, then I went through every record to see the overwrites in my 1100+ plugin list. I found it overwrote these records:
--about 40 USSEP --a couple SLAWF
And it was overwritten by these:
--about 5 records from Skyrim Bridges --one record from Unique Flowers and Plants --one record from Arthmoor's Oakwood --one record from JKs Skyrim
Looks good, keeping it where it is. +1 for making it a true esl. :)
Glanzer - thanks for letting me know! This should ideally be overwritten by everything, including SLAWF (USSEP shouldn't matter, afaik), but SLAWF is an esm so I'll have to esm-flag the next version for that to be possible. Generally it shouldn't cause any real problems, but ideally SLAWF overwrites too.
I tried flagging it as ESM but LOOT still wants to load it after SLAWF. So I just placed it in the "Main Plugins" group in LOOT and it sorted it just before USSEP (i.e. it's now the first plugin).
carpenihil to avoid any kinf of issue you should keep both USSEP and SLaWF loaded during your edit sessions in CK. And btw, load order doesn't matter with this kind of issues and for obvious reasons. The screenshot below was taken with USSEP, SLaWF + your mod installed, as you can see your mod doesn't touch that chunk, or better, USSEP win in this specific case, so it doesn't matter which plugin is loaded before or after, if your mod doesn't touch a chunk but SLaWF or USSEP do you don't know what could happen. My suggestion is to review all your edits with both of the aforementioned mods installed. I created a patch for SLaWF but it is absolutely not sufficient because many of the problems aren't caused by conflicts visible in SSEEdit, the way you made your mod you would need to recheck all the roads in CK and you can realize perfectly well that it is not a feasible work.
wizkid34 - Thanks for your input! I haven't been able to put in any work lately but when I get around to it I'll redo the passed segments with both USEEP and SLAWF as base, as to your suggestions.
This is a great mod, thank you so much for your hard work! Just wondering, since the file changed to an .esl with esm flag, is it safe to update midgame?
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Here's a fun fact: the file already contains over 1600 records. We may need to eventually turn this into a full .ESM file, given the sheer number of road meshes in Skyrim.
Midgame upgrades should be fine, this only moves vanilla assets, nothing new is added and no scripts involved etc.
Could this theoretically cut down on useless polygons? Since a good part of these meshes will now be hidden, they could be trimmed down yes?
--about 40 USSEP
--a couple SLAWF
And it was overwritten by these:
--about 5 records from Skyrim Bridges
--one record from Unique Flowers and Plants
--one record from Arthmoor's Oakwood
--one record from JKs Skyrim
Looks good, keeping it where it is. +1 for making it a true esl. :)
Everything.