The 18th Annual Popularity Awards

Those of you familiar with my gaming habits might be a bit surprised that I'm not more excited about the 18th birthday of my favorite video game and in turn the 18th Annual Cacowards (no, really... that's what they're called). (Or is it the 8th Annual Cacowards? They've called it both on different pages.) I guess it's just hard for me to get excited about a popularity contest in a clique that has done its best to make me not want to be a part of it. I'm not disparaging the quality of the projects that have received awards, mind you, I just don't feel like baking a cake is all I'm sayin'.

And just for the record, "Bloodshedder", the cake picture is on the right side, not the left.

Again With The "Final Version"?

While taking a break from recently-released games that require insta-patches before they can even be played, I discovered a few little things that I needed to fix in my infamous Doom Upgrade randomizer mod (you remember, the one that turns everything into an "unplayable mess"). The first thing that was nagging at me was that many of my PSX sound effects were not working properly, most noticeably the sound that I intended to have play when the player attempts to open a locked door without the proper key. While fixing that issue I finally noticed after countless hours of playing with the mod that one of the custom imps wasn't behaving properly, to the point that he was somehow committing suicide with his own attacks. So while I had the hood up I remedied that issue as well. Since I was editing the DECORATE scripts I also decided that I needed to finally change the spawn frequency of the Cheshire Cacodemon because he was appearing far too often considering how much more difficult he is in comparison to the other Cacodemon replacements. Then, while pondering other possible changes while I was at work this evening, I decided to add just one or two new monsters, including a rocket-launching Arachnotron of my own original creation (despite the assertions of my critics that I'm incapable of coming up with anything original on my own). Finally, just for fun, I added the nice warping effect (a la Quake) to all the liquid floor textures. Now I think the mod is ready for it's umpteenth "final release" (perhaps I should follow the examples of Bethesda Softworks and call this file update version 1.95673482195300347285). I'm updating the link on the blog downloads page, but whether or not I share the update on the Archives will likely depend upon my mood in the days to come.

Oh, and one special note to those of you (or perhaps just the one of you) who actually downloaded and played previous versions of the mod: I've removed, added and renamed a thing or two, so saved games made with previous versions might not work with this one. If you're in the middle of a set of maps that you were playing with a previous version and you don't feel like starting over, you might want to wait before overwriting your old file with this one. If you find any bugs, please let me know and I'll be sure to fix them in version 1.96673482195300347285.

That's pretty much all I have from the land of Doom delusions for today. Until next time, happy Dooming!

Speculations (?) From The Community

I know some of my readership might not care too much about gaming forums, but in light of recent developments regarding the revelation of Bethesda's plans for Skyrim modding I thought that you all might be interested in browsing this Nexus Forum thread, particularly the first post by the famous Robin "Dark0ne" Scott.

In my honest opinion, I think this might be the beginning of the end of game modding being any fun at all.

EDIT:

(Sorry. Yes, the thread is in the modder's forum, meaning that you have to have a Nexus upload that has been downloaded like 1000 times. It was only a month ago that I realized that I meet that criteria.)

STEAM Mods?

As my friend Nos has opined on his blog, everything is pretty much going to hell in a hand-basket this time around.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. If anyone needs me, I'll be here playing and modding games from 1995 that weren't built entirely around DRM in an attempt to control every aspect of my leisure activities and to suck the money directly from my coin-purse...

Skyrim Patch 1.2: BEWARE!

I didn't make this video but I feel that it needs to be seen:

I highly recommend that everyone turn off Steam auto-updating for Skyrim until the Bethesda guys can get their heads out of wherever they're stuck. More info on this from the author of this video can be found here.

More Patch(y) Info

According to this the patch will be out this Wednesday.

Skyrim Review

You've read here before that I by far prefer to hear the opinions and experiences of fellow gamers rather than the hype from publishers, developers and even certain forums that I swear must be getting a payoff. This especially holds true for one of the most hyped games of the year, Skyrim. I gave you my own two-cent's-worth on Skyrim, and now my fellow modder and blogger Nos has voiced his opinion of Skyrim as well. I think his post is an accurate review of the game, and if you haven't made up your mind yet about Skyrim I recommend you take a look at what he had to say.

Skyrim Patch Info

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this article but I thought you all might find it interesting. It also mentions this article which our friend Nos mentioned in his blog. Over at the Nexus Forums speculation continues regarding the truthfulness of these statements.

Another Skyrim Patch Expected

Okay, so I'm a day or two late bringing you this newsflash, but Nick Breckon (Bethesda "Community Manager") has posted on the Official Bethesda Forum that we can expect a second update patch before the game is a month old. What this patch will revise and how long PC players will have to wait for their patch after the console patches are released were not specified. But at least they made that all-important 11-11-11 release date.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming...

Skyrim tweaks

I mentioned one of these in the previous post but, after discovering another tweak mod which I think most Skyrim players will consider a necessity, I want to briefly mention them both again in a new post to make them more visible to the ever-growing masses that are the blog's readership.

As mentioned previously, Skyrim by default is not friendly with some GPUs and drivers. I haven't had any CTDs or freezes, but I couldn't help but notice that my ATI Radeon card will not render things like fire, magic lighting effects and spider webs in the game. In my browsing of gaming forums I've discovered that many players have experienced exactly the same issue. The ENB Series 091 mod is basically a d3d9.dll file that for many of us has fixed all these graphics rendering issues. And one of the greatest things about the thing is that it's risk-free; if it doesn't work for you it can simply be deleted.

Another major issue experienced by us all has been the game's buggy interface, particularly the fact that custom key-bindings don't work the way they should. This hard-coded key tweak has solved most of my issues in that regard. Now my re-mapped function keys work as they should, and I can even use my directional keys to move the world map around the way it's supposed to work. Games are so much more fun to play when the controls actually work. Like the graphics tweak this is also a single file, a text document that can be easily deleted if you feel it's not working for you.

So far these two easy-to-install tweaks have made the world of difference in my Skyrim gaming experience. Hopefully you all will find them useful as well. Until next time, game on...