file size?

[Disposable Hero]

How in the world does the special edition have a smaller file size than the original?

[Tyrant]

because you havent modded thisone yet :P

[dunadan]

Originally posted by The Spook:

How in the world does the special edition have a smaller file size than the original?

Different more efficient compression methods.

[Pherim]

Originally posted by The Spook:

How in the world does the special edition have a smaller file size than the original?

You mean the original with the HD DLC installed? Simple - the SE only has one version of every texture, the HD one. With the original version you would still have the SD textures installed.

[JustOnePepsi]

They updated their .bsa texture formatting/compression, which results in slightly smaller file sizes.

It's less than 1GBs difference. Not really all that surprising.

Beyond that, the changes they made to most of the textures seem to consist of nothing more than opening them in Photoshop, applying a sharpen filter, and then saving. Which actually causes them to look worse in some instances, but that's really beyond the point. The point is they're essentially the same size textures (size here meaning pixel data, not file size).

Everything else they did involves code changes and the addition of various lighting changes. The same way ENB is less than 10mbs, so too are the changes made to Skyrim with SSE.

[Disposable Hero]

Originally posted by HomicidalGrouse:

They updated their .bsa texture formatting/compression, which results in slightly smaller file sizes.

It's less than 1GBs difference. Not really all that surprising.

Beyond that, the changes they made to most of the textures seem to consist of nothing more than opening them in Photoshop, applying a sharpen filter, and then saving. Which actually causes them to look worse in some instances, but that's really beyond the point. The point is they're essentially the same size textures (size here meaning pixel data, not file size).

Everything else they did involves code changes and the addition of various lighting changes. The same way ENB is less than 10mbs, so too are the changes made to Skyrim with SSE.

Don't know how I didn't just automatically assume it was from better file compression, thanks.

Originally posted by Pherim:

Originally posted by The Spook:

How in the world does the special edition have a smaller file size than the original?

You mean the original with the HD DLC installed? Simple - the SE only has one version of every texture, the HD one. With the original version you would still have the SD textures installed.

that's what I was thinking but I'm not sure, the prompt to install the original version said it was 13.3 gb, and I thought I remembered having to start downloading the dlcs and hd pack after the main game installed the last time i downloaded skyrim.