Skyrim Mods and Tweaks

All that other gaming stuff we do when not racing
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MadManCK
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Bethesda could have released a lot more DLC for Skyrim. Even the conversions of Morrowind and Oblivion.
Skyrim feels like it is half finished. I always thought Dovahkin would continue to become either High King or Emperor.
The devs went on to the next project TES Online. But with the Creation Kit out there, mods will continue to be released.

It is kinda cool some community teams take the effort to do the huge task of converting those maps to the Skyrim Engine. I look forward to the finished project.

Modding Skyrim can be very rewarding, but also takes a lot of time to get it right.

Some screenies will follow soon®, including some from the combined pack in Dawnstar and Solitude.

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I always thought that there was going to be some DLC based on war, when you finish the civil war with the Stormcloaks, Ulfric will say that "we haven't defeated the true enemy yet! The Aldmeri Dominion still lies in Skyrim", or something like that.

However I would side with the Dominion, Altmer FTW! :)

Someone could make a mod about that :think:
Nogai211 wrote:The only reason PC is better than Console is because it has Civilization V!
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MadManCK
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Yes, the whole civil war is like a big cliff hanger, lol.

There are some mods that do a complete civil war overhaul, but the base line-up stays the same.
And there is a mod that can make you High King of Skyrim. Basically by marrying Queen Elisef the Fair :mrgreen:
But not with a real strategic component.

Civil War Overhaul

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37216/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

Become High King of Skyrim

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41087/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

Switching sides during the War or completely whipe out the Aldmeiri Dominion (sry m8 :lol: ) from Skyrim would be a cool option too.
Like an extension of the war. Or a next phase. I think that can be done. Also to choose sides in that phase. Or maybe bury the war axe between the Nords and Emperials, only to pick up the fight again, once the Aldmeiri have gone. Plenty of options to extend that part of the game and make it more interesting.

Or become a Bandit leader and turn it into a new faction and challenge them all :eeek:

Even the battle for Falskaar makes more sense.
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MadManCK wrote:
Or become a Bandit leader and turn it into a new faction and challenge them all :eeek:
I like that idea, now that would be cool 8-) :2thumbsup:
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Added Texture Optimizer to the OP.
Looks like a useful tool to reduce file size and make the game more stable without losing too much detail.

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Combined Textures Part 2.

I decided to give this another go, as last time did not bring the anticipated results.

1. I carefully disabled the mods in the Steam workshop, this time not only by unmarking, but also unsubscribing and deleting from the list. Steam has a nasty habit of activating mods you have just disabled.

2. I made some other choices in the optional mods list. Sometimes less is better.

3. I disabled most other mods in the Manager that change textures or meshes

4. Made a save in a different location, Temple of Thalos in Windhelm this time.

First start was the same to last time. Within the temple everything looked awesome, but as soon as i tried to enter the city, the screen went black again. And again the game was hitting the 3.1 gig mark.
So i disabled the default HD pack from Bethesda. This time i could enter the city, but the game started to run bad after a few minutes of running around town. I do run a few mods in Windhelm, but nothing that made the game stuttering like that before.

So now i have opted for another option, to use the texture optimizer. The author has strongly advised against that, but i see no other option as the default combined pack keeps running in the 3.1 gig memory cap. In addition to that i have used the texture optimizer before and the results were pretty cool. Most of the time you wont even notice the difference.

One thing that has to be said about the texture combiner. The author did an excellent job in combining textures from different mods to greatly improve the overall visuals and appearance of the game. This project must have taken a huge amount of time and effort.

But as soon® as you run a few extra mods to pimp your towns, it will get stuck in a black screen. If you want to improve the vanilla game and plan not to use any other mods it is probably a very good way to get the max out of the visuals.

To be continued ...
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Having all files downloaded, i decided to make some different choices and modifications to the combined files pack.

I finally got Combined V3 working, after removing the Realistic Overhaul and some other unneeded mods. As i made a priority to textures and improved meshes only, it will try to avoid including mods that add tree trunks or other objects to avoid conflicts with other mods.
It ran great until i entered the cold area and encountered a snow storm. There the fps dropped massively. This was caused by the snow flake mod. Again great for screenies but ridiculous for gameplay.

Realistic overhaul consists of many upscaled and sharpened default textures (probably around 50% of them), is a very big file and probably has some errors in it as well, as it was only available through a torrent file. Even if this mod is mentioned as required, the results without it are very good indeed. I think you don't really need it to get a great result.

So now i'm packing the same files, but without the snow flakes. File has shrunk to around 5.5 gig uncompressed now and that is also more manageable with installing, packing and unpacking, etc.

Just finished the compressed file that is now only 3.5 gig. This will make installing and uninstalling go a lot quicker and will also greatly improve the game loading times.

I will try Combined V4 without texture optimizer first, but with so many 4K textures in the pack it probably will hit the memory cap again quickly, lol.
Texture optimizer will make some textures look a bit less sharp, but you will only notice that when you stand very close to the objects.

As soon® as i get a more or less stable game again i will take some screenies and post the results here.

The combined saga continues.

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part of a survival mod.

my first video using Nvidia Shadowplay

Last edited by Karu62 on Fri Jan 10, 2014 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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MadManCK
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Those survival mods can be cool. I tried one with hypothermia, disease and food and drinks once. Gives you a totally different game.

I have just played for 2 hours straight with the new Combined V4 and encountered very little issues. Everything looks a lot better than the vanilla game and FPS are consistent too.

Some pics from V4 and a few from V3 with optimizer used. :mrgreen:

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Some nice examples, you can see the difference in detail from vanilla game :o
Next time I'm playing Skyrim I will take a few photos with the mods I run to compare to these. ;)
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