NCIS+SKYRIM MEME=LOL

Wait for it...

TESVHRTP

Along with Tuesday's hype-heralded Steam release of the SCK (which I hear Bethesda is already releasing patches for) Bethesda also released the "free bonus gift" of a Skyrim high-res texture pack weighing in at over 3 GB. Not one to pass up any free gifts, I decided I should check it out.

Below are a few before-and-after screenshots all taken at 1600x900 resolution. I had a few settings switched off (like FXAA effects, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, water reflections, et cetera) but all the images were taken at the same resolution with the same settings and at the highest texture detail setting so they should still serve as accurate comparisons as far as the textures themselves are concerned.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

If you ask me (which nobody did of course), there's really not much difference to be seen here. I've also read reports that the only real differences are reduced framerates and increased loading times. In my opinion, this is just Bethesda releasing as a DLC something that should have been in the game to begin with and trying to make themselves look generous by calling it a "free bonus gift".

What do you think?

Oh... and before anyone asks... yes, I checked to be certain that the thing installed itself correctly. I even made sure that the BSAs were both registered in both my .ini files:


[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack01.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack02.bsa

...so, if this is a case of the textures for some reason not showing up in my game, we can give Bethesda another gold star for their fine craftsmanship, excellent customer service and their wise decision to distribute all their products through Steam...

The only real good news here is that the textures are in fact all contained in two tidy BSA files, so if it turns out that they don't work well for anyone, they can easily be deleted...

Skyrim Creation Kit Released

The Skyrim Creation Kit has been released.

Yay! Hip hip hooray!

The only legal way to get it is from Steam.

Boo! Hiss hiss! Boo!

PROPAGANDA

SkyEdit (TES5mod)

While we're waiting for the official Skyrim editor to be released, those of you itching to start modding might find SkyEdit useful. Note that I haven't tried it yet myself; I just happened upon the wiki page and thought I should share.

Arrow + Knee = Meme

Given the turn taken by the comments of my previous post, I couldn't resist checking to see if Megan Lee Heart had anything to say about this new meme:

Sure, she's cute... but Tessa was vlogging first...

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...

SKYRIM

If you're a fan of the Elder Scrolls series of games you'll probably like Skyrim as well, regardless of any flaws it might have. I suppose it'd be fair to say that I fit into that category of fans, but despite that it's my intention to be as impartial as possible in presenting you with this glimpse of Skyrim gameplay.

As far as getting started is concerned, Bethesda hasn't altered the formula much from the previous games. In Skyrim you start as a prisoner and must escape an Imperial dungeon before you can get on with it. (Sound familiar?) There's a long animated sequence of you and your fellow prisoners being hauled around in a horse-drawn wagon, a scene which I have no doubt was designed solely to show off Bethesda's handiwork this time around. The sequence is nice enough to watch the first time through, but after that you'll be wishing there was some way to skip the whole thing and get straight to naming your character.

For the sake of continuity (and because there are no Ainmhi in Skyrim yet), I created a Nord character complete with the war-paint.

Much as it was with the character generation in Oblivion and Bethesda's Fallout games, it appears that you can fine-tune the facial features of your avatar just about however you want. I say "appears" because it seemed to me that all the sliders were moving along a series of presets and couldn't stop anywhere else in between. Still, there are enough variations that I think it would be difficult (but probably not impossible) to create exactly the same face twice.

Once that's out of the way, you can go put your head on the chopping block so the Imperials can execute you. But don't worry; your untimely demise will be promptly interrupted by the first of the game's many "Look! We can animate dragons now!" scenes.

One thing however is distinctly different about this game's tutorial sequence. Depending upon your actions (or in-actions), you will be led through the escape from the dragon attack by either a Nord rebel or an Imperial guard and will have some encounters with one faction or the other as you make your way out of the dungeon. The end results are basically the same, but knowing what I do about how intricate quests can be in Elder Scrolls games I can't help but suspect (and hope) that the rest of the game will contain such alternate paths as well.

As usual, among your tasks in the tutorial are to learn how to sneak and pick locks. Here it's worthy of note that the lock-picking interface/mini-game in Skyrim is basically the same sort of thing as it was in the Bethesda Fallout games.

But enough about the tutorial; let's get out and take a look at the world...

As you would expect from an Elder Scrolls game, the world of Skyrim is huge with plenty of room for exploration (and later, modding). I haven't traveled far enough yet to know whether or not the world is surrounded by a "You can't go that way! Turn back now!" border. Fast-travel is available to locations you've already visited, and other places of interest such as quest locations get markers added to the 3D world map as you go. And speaking of quests and maps, fans of Oblivion's compass and map quest markers will be pleased to know that in Skyrim you can follow a floating marker to your goal without wasting any time with RPG stuff like trying to figure out where you're supposed to go.

(I haven't figured out yet if that marker can be disabled by default, but if it can't you can bet that someone will eventually make a mod to get rid of it.)

Wandering around towns and talking to NPCs is just as you'd expect it to be in an Elder Scrolls game. You can gather information, get side-quests, barter and so on just as you're accustomed to doing.

As I've been playing thus far I've felt that the developers actually took some cues from Oblivion modders this time around. Many things that weren't available in Oblivion without an overhaul or some other major mod have been included in Skyrim. Notable among these are the dual-wielding of weapons or spells (or both), minstrels actually playing instruments in taverns, sprinting, containers with lids that open when I activate them and flora that changes visibly when I harvest ingredients from it. I've also been told by a blacksmith that I can craft my own weapons and armor, though I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

And yes, there are followers and companions! So far they remind me of followers using some of my favorite companion mods; interaction such as giving orders or accessing the companion's inventory is accomplished through the same sort of dialog interface used with other NPCs and so far they follow and fight just as I'd want them to do.

And speaking of NPCs, fans of mods like Children Of Morrowind and the fact that there were children in the Bethesda Fallout games will be pleased to know that for the first time ever in an Elder Scrolls game (that I'm aware of) the developers have finally aknowledged the fact that folks are not spawned fully-grown into the world. There are indeed children on Tamriel (or whatever the heck the world is called).

Dungeons so far are pretty much what we're accustomed to from Oblivion. There are zombies, skeletons, Necromancers, bandits and such... and some traps that look very familiar...

So that, in a quick nutshell, is the good stuff. As is usually the case with Bethesda, the bad stuff is mainly in the technical aspects of the game. For starters, the interface takes a bit of getting used to and re-assigning certain functions to certain keys will make those functions not work at all half of the time. Visually, the graphics don't seem to be quite as breathtaking as I think many fans expected them to be. I should note that I took all these screenshots with FRAPs while playing at 1280x720 resolution with the textures set at medium, so there is some room for improvement and possibly pushing the specs of my system. Still, even with the display settings maxed the game doesn't feel like it's being as hard on my system as I had expected it to be. Better performance is always a positive thing in my opinion, but still I think visually this game has not lived up to the expectations of many players. I should also note that many players have reported having issues with the game depending upon their GPUs. Until I had downloaded and installed this mod (a d3d9.dll tweak), things like spider webs and the lighting effects surrounding the Standing Stones were totally invisible to me.

So, in closing, I'd say the game is pretty great overall so far, but as usual the developers have left us plenty of room to mod, improve and fix their product. On a personal note, I hope one of the things that can be edited is the loading screens. While the 3D renderings of the dragons and various characters are pretty cool, things like this floating mace are just plain boring...

Skyrim Peek

Not everyone has been able to get Skyrim the moment it hit the light of day, so for those of you who are like me and might have to wait a while, here is a video example of what we have to look forward to. (Narrated by Todd Howard.)

(It's actually three segments, so don't get impatient with your clicker...)