A Temporary Halt

For those of you wondering why I haven't been contributing anything to the blog this past month or so, I went ahead and made a video explaining a little of what's been happening with my computer and what I hope to do about it. Be sure to give me your thoughts on what you'd like to see in the future, and I'll probably be able to start back up again around May. Until next time.

UNP & Better Males

First of all, my apologies for the semi-extended absence. I recently took on new employment, so it's been eating away a lot of my free time. Shouldn't be a huge problem after this week, though.

Today I'm actually going to talking about a mod that I'm not completely fond of, which is kind of a first for me on here. I generally only like to give recommendations, but I felt compelled to cover this one in detail anyway since I sadly will be forced to use it until I find something better. Both mods I'll be discussing are body and face enhancers. I didn't have any major complaints with the default bodies (a first for The Elder Scrolls), but the improvements that mod authors have made to them are just too astounding to ignore.

The first of the two that I'm going to talk about is the one I'm not entirely happy with. The mod is called UNP, which is a body replacer for females. The author did a lot of previous work with the Fallout modding community, and I liked the images I've seen of people using the mod, so I figured that I would enjoy it. And it's true that the body is very nice and much more beautiful than the vanilla one. However, installing a body replacer comes with the sad consequence of finding a good face replacer to match. If the two don't work well together, you find yourself with a dreadful neck seam that always feels impossible to ignore. Because of this, I found myself with no better option than to use the author's face textures. Sadly, I was very disappointed. I wanted the faces to have less worry lines and bags under the eyes, but these textures make the characters look more like plastic dolls than actual people. I have no problem with semi-artificial beauty when it comes to in-game characters, but when all the lines on the face are completely invisible, the image takes a turn for the worse from pretty to shocking. Needless to say, I intend on making another blog post in the future that will feature female faces with realistic detail.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I was amazed at how much I loved the improvements made by Better Males. The author compiled the perfect combination of face and body mods for men and arranged them beautifully. Each of the races are improved in such a way that their original feel is maintained. I couldn't be happier with the result. Take a look at the video to see what I mean about both of these mods.

I know I just focused on the faces, but that's generally what I look at to determine whether the mod makes enough change to make the mod worth installing. The body improvements for men that I chose to install only affected the skin texture and the detail of the hands and feet. There are things that I definitely pay attention to in-game but generally don't when looking at screenshots and the like. If you disagree with what I said about UNP or are wondering what the body looks like, you check that out and download it from here. And if Better Males looks like just what you were looking for, you can get that from here. Neither are available on Steam Workshop due to the nude options for both body replacers.

I would love to say that next time I'll be covering a better female face replacer that works well with the UNP body, but I'm not sure how likely it is that I'll find one or whether it'd be a good idea to waste a whole blog post on it. I'll probably include my findings in a compilation post at the end of the month. I'm almost done covering atmospheric enhancements, so watch out for posts about new content for the game in the very near future. Until next time.

The Sound of It

To do something a little different for the last day of month, I thought I'd do a compilation post and video. There are only a few mods here this time, so I won't be presenting them in exactly the same way that I did with my compilation posts in the past. That being said, I'll still try to keep the descriptions just as brief as possible so the post doesn't go on forever.

Realistic Lighting

As I've said many times in this blog, I have very few complaints with the original version Skyrim. I think Bethesda finally got the majority of the visual aspects of the game right the first time around, which is great for a lot of different reasons, the main one being that the majority of mods that people want to make after the release of the Creation Kit focus more on adding new or different content than replacing it. Because of this change from how things were in the modding community in Oblivion, it's better to call the majority of replacement mods as "enhancements" rather than "fixes". However, there is one thing that Bethesda really should have put in the original game.

Why does everything have to be so bright? The original nights and dungeons are so light that the various fires and lamps that have been scattered around feel more like overkill than actually useful or necessary. The first thing I noticed with my first play-through was how I never even considered picking up a torch. What's the point if the whole country is already bright as day? It kills immersion in a lot of different ways, so a mod to correct this misjudgment was very high on my list.

The best and most customizable mod I've seen published to-date that deals with this problem has to be Plutoman's Realistic Lighting. The nights are darker, the changes in weather types seem more dynamic, and the dungeons are at least twice as terrifying. Non-dungeon interiors are now much dimmer to match the light sources inside of them, and exterior daylight is now less tinted and unnatural. To get an idea of what the change feels like, see it for yourself in my video.

Another great thing about this mod is that its effects are added to the game without any kind of post-processing, meaning that there should be little to no decrease in performance. The Steam version of the mod is incredibly easy to install, and the customizable version is very simple to edit once you understand the various sections of the configuration file. Clearly the best way to see the difference this mod makes is to try it out yourself, so if you like what I had to say or want to know more, you can download Realistic Lighting here from Steam Workshop or here from Skyrim Nexus.

That's all for now. I still would love to hear any recommendations or suggestions you have for me about the mods I discuss or the design of the blog, so please don't hesitate to contact me in any way. From here I'll probably continue with a couple more environment mods, then hopefully move on to more exciting topics like creatures or combat. Until next time.

Enhanced Blood Textures

One thing that Skyrim is great for is its combat. Oblivion's combat system was a massive improvement from Morrowind, and Skyrim took what Oblivion got right and went even further. I doubt I'll be spending much time on mods that change the combat, simply because I love it the way it is. However, there are certain qualities that are tied to combat by association that could use a little help. The biggest offender out of these is blood.

The best way to notice the poorly done original blood is to look at static blood stains. They're all over places like forts and tombs, so it's hard to ignore. But if you pay close enough attention while fighting, you can see that the blood that comes from people and animals is using the same texture. Enhanced Blood Textures does what the name implies; it replaces the blood with higher quality textures. This is great not only for combat, but also for the scenery of dungeons and the like. Check out the video to get a better idea.

Just like any other texture replacer, the install is as simple as extracting the file. The download page on Nexus has a few different optional features as well. I recommend the blurry screen blood, as it keeps closer to same style of screen splatters in the original game. For those using Steam Workshop to install their mods, I'm happy to say that I was finally able to find this on there. You can download Enhanced Blood Textures from Steam Workshop right here, or if you're like me and prefer using Nexus, you can find the main download and optional feature downloads right here.

There has been a few problems with the Creation Kit that have been limiting new content to be leaning more towards replacement rather than addition, so it will probably be a while longer before I begin to discuss mods that actually add more to the game. Next time I'll probably be discussing adjustments to the light of the game, so keep your eyes open for that. Until then.

Pure Waters

As I'm sure some of you are aware, I'm a really big fan of mods that improve the quality of water. It's a huge part of the game because you see it almost everywhere you go. Why not make it as beautiful as possible? In Oblivion, I wrote a rather detailed post on Liquid Water, which became known as one of the best water mods ever released for the game. However, the implementation of that system required a Graphics Extender and a great amount of detailed scripting. The mod I'm going to discuss today took significantly less time and effort to create, which just goes to show how much the quality of the vanilla game as a whole has improved since 2006.

Pure Waters makes takes the original water and essentially smooths it out. It blends all the choppy light reflections into the surface of the water and adds a bit more transparency so you can see the wildlife swimming underneath. The rivers flow better and larger bodies of water look less like rapids and more like lakes and ponds. To see the difference yourself, take a look at the video below.

Also unlike Liquid Water from Oblivion, Pure Waters is extremely easy to install. It works just like any other simple mod; just extract the file and you're good to go. I haven't noticed any kind of performance hit, either, which is a bit surprising. For some reason I haven't been able to find any of the mods that I've discussed on here on the Steam Workshop, but I still intend to post links to them whenever I do. If Pure Waters looks good enough to be in your game, you can download it here from Skyrim Nexus.

That's all for the moment. As I said in the previous post, I plan on continuing with atmospheric mods before moving onto a different subject, so now is the time to speak up if you'd like me to cover something in particular in the future. Until next time.

Glorious Grasses

The mod I'm going to discuss today is another beautification mod that is different than something simple like a texture replacer. Due to my overall satisfaction with the official High-Resolution Texture Pack, I doubt I'll be making too many posts that solely focus on replacing textures. But I've been wrong before, so I'll leave the possibility open in case the community comes up with something that pales it in comparison. Until then, though, mods like this one will be much more interesting to me.

There is very little actually wrong with the look of Skyrim. Bethesda really did a terrific job at creating lush and living environments. But there's always more that can be added, which is why this mod is terrific for those that are interesting in taking that extra push forward. Glorious Grasses adds more grass to essentially every area of the game that had grass already. It's hard to say how the author accomplished this task, but it sounds like something that would take a lot of work and a great amount of patience. But the result is very nice and worth the very minor performance hit. Just how much it affects the speed of the game can probably be observed by watching my video.

The mod doesn't add anything that wasn't already in the game, which means its completely compatible with anything the replaces the texture or mesh of the original grass. Because of the lack of new content, it's also very easy to install, since all it is is a single plugin file. I haven't been able to locate the mod on Steam, but if Glorious Grasses caught your eye here, you can download it at your leisure from Skyrim Nexus.

I'll probably continue talking about mods that focus on affecting the atmosphere of the game for the next few posts, but after that I'm still indecisive. I haven't received any kind of feedback on the blog yet, so please don't hesitate to contact me with suggestions! Until next time.