After what seems like a lifetime, I'm happy to say that I finally have Skyrim up and running again on my new computer. I'll make a separate post with the exact specifications for those who are interested, but now that I can finally play again, all I really want to do is talk about all the mods I can finally get.
I've been keeping a list of all the mods I plan on adding to my game, and there are several that have already been installed but haven't been discussed simply due to the size of the mod in question. I try to avoid making large posts about tiny mods because I feel like it's too much of an effort for something that could be covered together with others. Because of this mentality, I like to make slightly larger posts every once in a while to talk about all the mods I haven't been able to feature. Those of you that regularly read this blog or my Oblivion blog know that I do this due to my previous explanations and posts regarding these kinds of mods. So for those of you that have no interest in reading about the little things, feel free to move along or skip to the video toward the end of this post.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
A Fresh Start
Well, May is here, and as promised, I have returned to Skyrim with a new and much more capable computer. I've already installed my previous setup and can play on Ultra with a steady 30fps. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy.
But ever new beginning comes with new challenges, and I definitely have a couple. I've been spending quite a bit of time fooling around with the Creation Kit because I now have my new microphone and can create custom characters with voiced dialogue. Sadly the Creation Kit's dialogue system is much more complex than I anticipated. It look my several hours to figure out how to make my voice show up in game and paired with lip movement, but now I know how to make basic dialogue options complete with topics and varied responses. However, I haven't had any luck with custom greetings yet, so that's the next big item on my to-learn list. I've posted a very short video below of an NPC I created using my voice. Be sure to let me know what you think.
The second major issue is deciding on what mods to cover next. I really want to go into quest and gameplay mods, but sadly my new character needs a bit more development before I can start running through exciting dungeons and the like. I do still want to make a new post for character beautification with whatever I find that's better than UNP's faces, but obviously that's on hold until I can find a good replacement. Because of this dilemma, I'm ever more open to suggestions than usual, so please don't hesitate to send your recommendations my way. If you're a mod author looking to promote your work, I'd be more than happy to take a look at what you've done. Anything to get me back in the swing of things again.
I'm not sure when I'll be starting up with blog posts with new mods, but I can promise that I'll do my best to start up again this month. Until next time.
But ever new beginning comes with new challenges, and I definitely have a couple. I've been spending quite a bit of time fooling around with the Creation Kit because I now have my new microphone and can create custom characters with voiced dialogue. Sadly the Creation Kit's dialogue system is much more complex than I anticipated. It look my several hours to figure out how to make my voice show up in game and paired with lip movement, but now I know how to make basic dialogue options complete with topics and varied responses. However, I haven't had any luck with custom greetings yet, so that's the next big item on my to-learn list. I've posted a very short video below of an NPC I created using my voice. Be sure to let me know what you think.
The second major issue is deciding on what mods to cover next. I really want to go into quest and gameplay mods, but sadly my new character needs a bit more development before I can start running through exciting dungeons and the like. I do still want to make a new post for character beautification with whatever I find that's better than UNP's faces, but obviously that's on hold until I can find a good replacement. Because of this dilemma, I'm ever more open to suggestions than usual, so please don't hesitate to send your recommendations my way. If you're a mod author looking to promote your work, I'd be more than happy to take a look at what you've done. Anything to get me back in the swing of things again.
I'm not sure when I'll be starting up with blog posts with new mods, but I can promise that I'll do my best to start up again this month. Until next time.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
A Sample of My Voice
While waiting for my new computer to be built, I decided to purchase a new microphone. I'd love to try doing some voice acting for mods, but if nobody is interested in using me for their work, I may have to finally open up the Creation Kit and try to make some for myself. Let me know if you like what you hear and if you think I'd be good for any particular character types. I should be be getting my new computer within the next couple weeks, so look out for an update with more information about that. Until next time.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
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.
Friday, March 16, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
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.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
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.
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.
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