Cool, i can follow that. It does sound like a lot more work to add the technically more complex mods, but the base CS is a lot more complex and detailed itself, so it may be possible to do those more complex mods ‘easier’ in Skyrims CS ultimately?
That is extremely hopeful news to me, and by the time i get around to Skyrim (waiting on GOTY) there may be some of those type of mods i really loved in Morrowind (NOM/extra quest and content mods etc), but found less ‘involved’(?) in Oblivion, that work well in Skyrim. I’d really love to see all the stats and skills back that we have been losing in TES since Morrowind as well, so it might be possible to do this also. It will be a happy time for me if so.
EDIT: i should add (just in case it is not known), i currently run a +250 mod GOTY Morowind (about a dozen mods painfully merged to fit into the mod limit), which adds about 30% extra landmass ontop of GOTY. It’s called massively modded morrowind.
I should also say that i could only stomache Oblivion for about 2 months (about a month after release), in which i spent most of that time trying to mod it back to being a TES rpg and less a whack-a-mole fps game with annoying constant repetitive non-logical dialogues (which did just make you want to rush around killing everything anyway, so that might have been the point?).
I failed and sold it and moved back to Morrowind (where i still reside, my game is stupid huge, so much to see and do i’m still going years later!). So i didn’t get to try the later mods, and in the back of my mind i always have thought about getting Oblivion GOTY and seeing where it is at, in terms of fixing it via mods. But my god there were so many things that made me feel like a retard in that game (sorry for the word usage, i just can’t think of an adequate replacement) i’m not sure i can even look at the cover without breaking it into pieces. So yeah, there is that. ;)
Anyone know of a mod that “bug fixes” followers, without adding all of the extra stuff that UFO does? I am using UFO currently, but not using any of the features, as I don’t want to unbalance things by having multiple followers, and I find all the added dialogue options make talking to the follower a pain, when 99% of the time I am talking to them so I can give them items.
I’m not sure if this will do what you want, but have you looked into Amazing Follower Tweaks ?
I use UFO, but only to make it easier to equip, and, um, un-equip them. ;)
Try Extensible Follower Framework it does everything UFO does better. It doesn’t have much in the way of incompatibilities since it uses SKSE. I personally use it with with Specialized Followers and Hoth (2 great follower mods if you haven’t see them). Highlights include teaching followers spells and as your followers level up they get new spells based on their skills. It has a spell that allows you to command your follower from anywhere instead of having to speak to them.
Awesome, thank you very much. Extensible Follower Framework is much cleaner…I still doubt I will use more than one follower, but impressed with it so far, and Hoth sounds really cool, so going to give him a try.
I’m really happy to see triggercut’s excellent Skyrim game journals on the front page so I thought I’d roll up my sleeves and jump back in with a fresh install and mod it up propa.
I got as far as the recommended Steam installation tips in the STEP guide and realized I may have to move my entire Steam directory of games if I want Skyrim mods to run smoothly. My new PC came with Steam installed in the Program Files directory.
So, I deleted and re-downloaded Skyrim, then downloaded Steam Mover and did this:
Do you think this is a sufficient way to get around any possible issues with mod install directories and the UAC issue of having it in Program Files?
HUMBY50
1587
Triggercuts journal worked its magic on me as well! I started instaling STEP yesterday.
I can’t answer you question re: the steam directory (I’ve always kept mine on a separate hard drive anyway). I would say don’t get too excited about following the STEP guide as it appears to be in something of a quandary at the moment. The creator of one of the more important texture mod (Skyrim Realistic Overhaul) threw a shit fit and removed it from the nexus website and now it’s hard to come by outside iffy torrent sites (unless anyone knows different and could hook a brother up?)
Just wanted to save you the annoyance it’s just cost me working that out.
I don’t yet have a separate hard drive (I’d like a big, fast SSD please, Santa!) so I’m stuck installing it on C:.
Thanks for the heads up about SRO. Should I use gopher’s 5 part video series instead of STEP?
I need a POOP!
I think you should at least watch Gopher’s five part anniversary thing. If nothing else, the guy is so much fun to listen to that it’s just good for the soul anyway.
What I would recommend as a starting spot:
Watch Gopher.
When that arouses your hunger without properly bedding it back down, grab the Texture Pack Combiner off the Nexus.
Install the latest SKSE.
Ok. Now then. Get Bethesda’s hi-res textures. Grab the Skyrim HD 2K texture pack. Grab the Serious HD Retexture pack. Grab Skyrim Realistic Ovehaul texture pack. Check out the instructions at the Nexus for using the Texture Pack Combiner, and figure out what other stuff that it can combine you want. Then have the TPC do its thing, and make the data file it creates into a mod you install using NMM following the instructions the TPC author gives.
Start a game. Enable the console with the ~ key. Type TGM for “The God Mode”. Now you can’t be killed. Take your guy to Whiterun. Make a save. Fast travel to Riften. Make a save there. Go outside Riften and run around for about 10-15 minutes. Do you CTD? If so, you’ll have to go back to the Texture Pack Combiner and start taking out some stuff. If you’re fine, take the carriage to Windhelm. Repeat. Take a carriage to Solitude. Repeat. Make saves at each city–or at least I did, because just outside each city in the game is where I would experience 90% of my crashes.
If you can do that stuff and are satisfied that you have a fairly stable game with the different graphics textures from the TPC installed–including the Big Three texture overhauls (and the default hi-res pack from Bethesda, so make that Big Four), you’ve got it licked. Now you can add mods, jump into the game at your saves, test for stability around the outskirst of each major city in the game, see what happens.
Gah, I just started downloading texture mods yesterday and hadn’t gotten to SRO…this sucks.
HUMBY50
1591
Where did you end up getting SRO from triggercut? like i said it’s made a disappearing act from NEXUS and anywhere else i’ve been able to find it seems less than legit.
Heh. I think I got it before Starac threw his bitchy little temper tantrum.
What a mess.
So what the Texture Pack Combiner does is to take textures from all three big retexture mods and put them together. Where the three all modify the same texture, the TPC author, Cestral, had to essentially pick one to use. Sometimes he used SRO. Sometimes he used one of the others.
The guy who did SRO objected to this, and vehemently. Eventually, he pulled SRO off the Nexus.
Then he put up a message on the Nexus saying he’d happily provide copies and further updates to folks who had donated to him…which essentially was saying “Pay me for my mod if you want it”, which is a total violation of Nexus rules. Guy not only pulled his mod, but got himself banned.
I have SRO and the 1.6 update patch. Let me figure out how to upload them somewhere.
I found it here and am downloading now. It’s coming in rather slowly, but it seems to be 100% seeded.
From the comments, I guess the mod creator decided he wanted to get paid for his work and the Nexus folks were all like ixnay on the ashmoneycay.
Okay, I’m heading off to the youtube Gopher Village.
Speaking of which… we did a newsletter-style photo Christmas card this year and I managed to sneak in a little O Brother tribute in the captions…
“Quit our jobs, sold the house, and bought back the family farm.”
Pogo
1595
IMO, textures aren’t what keeps this game from looking beautiful, it’s the hazy white ambient lighting and boring lighting saturation.
Forget gigs of textures, make sure you have anisotropic filtering at 16x and Bethesda’s hi-res texture pack, Improved Static Meshes mod, and then slab on someone’s ENBSeries.
It’s pretty surprising that mod creators end up being really high-strung, borderline crazy people. That wasn’t our experience when we created POOP at all. ;)
Well, yeah.
But if you can run the other stuff, why wouldn’t you?
I’m struggling to get into the Gopher anniversary vids… he’s obviously awesome but I don’t really want or need to hear a recap of what was happening a year ago. :/
The STEP concept is excellent… much like POOP, I just want to track through a well-researched and well-written guide on wtf to do.
Add me to the list of people jumping back into Skyrim because of Triggercut’s journals. My only experience with Bethesda games has been vanilla, but I went through the Gopher videos and downloaded quite a few of the ones he recommended, along with the hunger/temperature/snow ones mentioned in the last journal, so this should be quite a different experience—assuming I don’t run into any massive compatibility issues. Not having played around with mods much, I’m a little ignorant when it comes to things such as load order, etc.
Anyway, looking forward to the next entry!
One thing I will say–your first move in Skyrim may be changing and tweaking your .ini files to set ugridstoload=7.
That’s bigger than any texture mod or anything else for immersion’s sake.
Once you do that, all your tradeoffs are texture mods vs. ugrids setting at 7 vs framerate/stability.
Texture mods are the low man on that totem pole and should always be sacrificed for framerate/stability and keeping ugrids set to 7.
