I would expect someone to write a realdoll shader soon enough
My heart still lies with the artistical vision of bethesda though, a colder and harsher skin shader in lines with the contrasted frazetta style they tried for.
If they could limit the effect of the SS shader to a specific map, that would be great, the simple constant effect all over the body doesn't look nice.
I use enb series, the latest one (.99) seems the be the best version stability wise, but not visually. He did add features so you can use a custom enbpallete, but everything seems too vibrant.. the ssao helps a bit, but it's quite processor intensive...
I think it's just going to keep getting better, the creator of enb doesn't seem to impressed with the coding that went into the game, and is constantly pulling his hair out for results.
Gotta say I'm generally impressed with the fx in the game, particularly stuff like the firepits and torches. One of the things that always made me wince in Fallout was campfires and stuff like that, always looked utterly half-assed at best. There's plenty of little tweaks I would've made if I was doing the fx, but it's all minor stuff.
I'm not impressed with the the water, flame spell, or dragon's fire, everything else is pretty awesome.
The flat water does seem a little... off, almost like it's made of wax. The streams and rivers look amazing in comparison, probably some of the best flowing water I've seen in a game.
My heart still lies with the artistical vision of bethesda though, a colder and harsher skin shader in lines with the contrasted frazetta style they tried for.
The ENB shader is much more Frazetta-like though. The word is vibrant and matches his artwork better. There are some things I would fix, but I think it's an improvement over the vanilla shader.
Boethiath: "I want to you go to a bandit camp and kill everyone there, but you have to do it stealthily"
Me: No Problem. Stealth is where I'm a viking.
*I get to the camp. I'm about to pop out and nail a sentry with an arrow when a dragon flies overhead, proceeds to massacre the entire camp and fly away again.
Me: So, uh... does that still count?
Just killed my 2nd dragon (story related), went back down to the small village and occidentally booshed a chicken.... laden down with dragon bones and scales and god knows what else, I can't escape the angry villager who wants to skin me alive so I had to kill the poor bloke- all because I was scratching my nose and pressed R button :P
This game actually reminds me a lot of Ultima Online in the fact that you start off with a classless character and it's the actions in game that define the shape of the character's abilities- got a wedding to attend tomorrow so tonight is going to be spent preparing for it... yet I'm still figuring out how to sneak an hour or so on the game
Boethiath: "I want to you go to a bandit camp and kill everyone there, but you have to do it stealthily"
Me: No Problem. Stealth is where I'm a viking.
*I get to the camp. I'm about to pop out and nail a sentry with an arrow when a dragon flies overhead, proceeds to massacre the entire camp and fly away again.
Me: So, uh... does that still count?
Despite Boethiah saying you must do it stealthily, you can go in head-long and massacre them in the most crude fashion possible and still successfully complete the quest.
Despite Boethiah saying you must do it stealthily, you can go in head-long and massacre them in the most crude fashion possible and still successfully complete the quest.
If there's noone left alive to complain, that's stealthy enough.
I wonder what the maximum (non-hacked) range is for the arrows. I was attacking a few mammoths the other day and the arrows were arcing right into them, but it wasn't showing a hit until I got a certain distance closer... ended up hiding under a bridge attacking the two mammoths that had chased me down... probably used close to 200 iron arrows on the suckers as they did the most damage without letting me get hit.
Yesterday was playing and was fighting a frost dragon in Windhelm (think its the one, the one all run down and down with the mage college). Anywho some fugutive guy shows up and the camera spins to him as I let my arrow go and he dies while he gives me a sword. WTF.
Wanted to just briefly state my experience with the top visual improvement mods floating around and see if others have the same opinion.
Skyrim Enhanced Shaders - I downloaded this mod first and to be honest it's almost entirely pointless as is. The improvements are very subtle unless you include some of the other presets in the zip, but they're only kinda-sorta improvements. The sharpen effects look very good for some things like the world, but terrible on characters, and terribad on objects, especially in the inventory view. The darker nights make it hard to play in the nighttime at all, and the other settings just aren't that great. I'm not sure how the dramatic shots on SkyrimNexus were achieved, but it's a decent bet that they make the game look worse in some situations. Overall toggling the shaders on and off will show that the improvements are not that impressive.
ENBSeries Shader - What the Skyrim Enhanced Shaders started from, and both impressive and meh. The shaders entirely change the feel of the world, transforming it into a more saturated and washed out Frazetta-scape. It's almost too strong, but on the other hand it's almost perfect. However there's a loss of contrast which I feel hurts the final presentation, the nights are FAR too bright and cartoony, and there's this weird bloom effect in menus for some reason. The SSAO shader is very nice, and the AO in general is quite noticeable in the landscape when you toggle the mod on and off, with the harsh grass patches blending into the ground much better.
But basically this mod isn't ready yet because the game's code sucks according to the author and he can't do what he wants until the dev kit comes out. I'll keep an eye on this though as it's already impressive, and will only get better.
FXAA Post Process Injector - A post-process injector with a real menu and the works. This is the only enhancer mod which has impressed me so far. Installing this parallel to the Enhanced Shaders, I managed to get slightly higher contrast, sharpness, and bump detail, increase saturation, and get a slight sepia tone during the day and a bluer tone at night. This sounds like nothing, but for me it's an immediate difference toggling between vanilla and the shaders. It's just the right subtle visual boost that makes me go, "yes, this is a richer world"
And none of these mods really impact performance for me, so that's a plus.
That aside I've played around with lots of the top mods around, and there are a few I would recommend for sure:
No More Blocky Faces - Removes compression artifacts from faces. If you ever play in first person, this is a must. QD inventory - Changes the inventory screen in all interactions. SkyUI will replace this eventually I think, but for now it adds a very useful weight/value line, and improves the useability. Better Sorting - Improves inventory sorting. Improved Thunder - Really improves the feel of those rainy days I think SkyUI - Wow, someone's trying to improve the shitburger console UI? Unthinkable! Vals Crafting Meltdown - I'm a smith, and I hate that I can forge a dwarven steel plate from a dead race, but I can't take some bracers apart for leather. I don't care if it's balanced or not. Immersive HUD - Hud when you need it, hide when you don't. Lush Grass and Lush Trees - Makes grass and trees thicker. In certain areas this is the difference between scraggly looking terrain, and a real forest. Enhanced Night - Gives you options for a much more colorful sky. Considering that the whole sky is magically connected to the Gods of Tamriel and all that I like to look up and see something somewhat more mystical than vanilla stars.
At least for me, these mods improve the game that extra bit. There's more on my wishlist, but I'll wait for people who can actually code to do it. (I'm not going to get full immersion unless I can replace Fus Ro Dah with a wicked face-melter solo on a Gibson Flying V. Get on it modders.)
Also I'm having as much fun dicking around with settings as I am playing the game. I think I'm losing my goddamn mind. @_@
awesome! more people should post on their exp with some of the mods out there. Even tho it's still early i have not installed any of them until i see more documentation and comments on peoples exp with the game. So far i think the game is pretty without any upgrades. I did see the new pines that looked nice, and i think i might install the sorting since that is something that drives me nuts. I wish you could sort things by name, stats and what not.
well, my experience is that you should be carefull with texture improvements.
only use them with the 4gb.exe
my skyrim worked fine over steam until i came to whiterun, for which i installed an extra texture pack. on sight it crashed.
Is there some way to taunt the enemies? I'd love to do the classic sword and shield double tap against some dudes, even if it doesn't do a damn thing gameplay wise.
Just finished the main story, was pretty sweet. The sky in the last level was AWESOME!
Somethings I don't like about the game, combat still feels kinda floaty, feels better then oblivion, especially on single dudes, but on Dragons, it was just like, swing sword, swing sword, cast magic, and the Dragon was just standing there. Was cool the first time, but after a while Dragons wernt nearly as cool.
Also on some of the side quests, I would encounter enemies that would just kill me in 2 shots, when everything leading up to them was fairly easy, there would randomly be a guy in the dungeon who would destroy me in a second. Even cranked it down to the easiest difficulty and still they would be a struggle. That was always odd and annoying.
Yea... i agree with you.... the dragon battles feel pretty epic when you get startled with the movement of the dragon, like when they land or do things. But when you are hitting the dragon or some of the enemies it doesn't feel like you are hitting anything. The bow and arrow have a really good feel to this when you kill them. But still, it would be nice to see some reaction to where you hit.
The whole enemy stats i don't really follow either. There are areas that i feel pretty safe, and some caves where i have to encounter really powerful enemies that kill me in like 2 seconds. It would be nice if there were areas that you knew you could not fight since the common enemies in there are fairly tougher and you know you have to level up or whatever. Feels kinda off. I guess that happened in Oblivion a lot more and they had to do that monster level overhaul.
Agreed on the enemies (and the dragons), though I couldn't help laughing at plowing through a crowd of weak bandits, only to have their leader (quite literally) chop my head off... a couple of times over. XD
Replies
http://enbdev.com/ss_skyrim01_en.htm
I would expect someone to write a realdoll shader soon enough
My heart still lies with the artistical vision of bethesda though, a colder and harsher skin shader in lines with the contrasted frazetta style they tried for.
I think it's just going to keep getting better, the creator of enb doesn't seem to impressed with the coding that went into the game, and is constantly pulling his hair out for results.
The flat water does seem a little... off, almost like it's made of wax. The streams and rivers look amazing in comparison, probably some of the best flowing water I've seen in a game.
This. Seriously. First time I saw the running water I was like "wow... damn.. they nailed that spot on" :poly101:
With rivers it's harder since you need a clean flat mesh, so there is that.
FX generally could have been better, especially in the texture department.
The ENB shader is much more Frazetta-like though. The word is vibrant and matches his artwork better. There are some things I would fix, but I think it's an improvement over the vanilla shader.
I mean, the guy is technically capable, but he's no artist.
This should explain what kind of environments he is a fan of, and what he is not a fan of:
vs
He got tired of constantly changing as people asked for more, he made it so that everyone could mess around with it and change it to thier liking.
Here's some i found on the forum.
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/15/skyrim-ships-10-million-copies-already-outsells-other-pc-titles/
Defend the chickens! :poly127:
yeah, fist them to death!
Pickpocket until you get the +100 carry perk, also save your potions that give you more carrying capacity, and just fast travel to a town.
Me: No Problem. Stealth is where I'm a viking.
*I get to the camp. I'm about to pop out and nail a sentry with an arrow when a dragon flies overhead, proceeds to massacre the entire camp and fly away again.
Me: So, uh... does that still count?
This game actually reminds me a lot of Ultima Online in the fact that you start off with a classless character and it's the actions in game that define the shape of the character's abilities- got a wedding to attend tomorrow so tonight is going to be spent preparing for it... yet I'm still figuring out how to sneak an hour or so on the game
I think I might be hooked lol
Despite Boethiah saying you must do it stealthily, you can go in head-long and massacre them in the most crude fashion possible and still successfully complete the quest.
If there's noone left alive to complain, that's stealthy enough.
hmmm
Also found these:
Voice activated spells
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3516
Online Skyrim
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3592
Build manage and rule your land
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3110
A contender for mod of the year, your patience shall be rewarded.
hahahahahaha
Filling food and Restful Sleep - Hardcore Mod
simple system of making food and sleep important
Skyrim Enhanced Shaders - I downloaded this mod first and to be honest it's almost entirely pointless as is. The improvements are very subtle unless you include some of the other presets in the zip, but they're only kinda-sorta improvements. The sharpen effects look very good for some things like the world, but terrible on characters, and terribad on objects, especially in the inventory view. The darker nights make it hard to play in the nighttime at all, and the other settings just aren't that great. I'm not sure how the dramatic shots on SkyrimNexus were achieved, but it's a decent bet that they make the game look worse in some situations. Overall toggling the shaders on and off will show that the improvements are not that impressive.
ENBSeries Shader - What the Skyrim Enhanced Shaders started from, and both impressive and meh. The shaders entirely change the feel of the world, transforming it into a more saturated and washed out Frazetta-scape. It's almost too strong, but on the other hand it's almost perfect. However there's a loss of contrast which I feel hurts the final presentation, the nights are FAR too bright and cartoony, and there's this weird bloom effect in menus for some reason. The SSAO shader is very nice, and the AO in general is quite noticeable in the landscape when you toggle the mod on and off, with the harsh grass patches blending into the ground much better.
But basically this mod isn't ready yet because the game's code sucks according to the author and he can't do what he wants until the dev kit comes out. I'll keep an eye on this though as it's already impressive, and will only get better.
FXAA Post Process Injector - A post-process injector with a real menu and the works. This is the only enhancer mod which has impressed me so far. Installing this parallel to the Enhanced Shaders, I managed to get slightly higher contrast, sharpness, and bump detail, increase saturation, and get a slight sepia tone during the day and a bluer tone at night. This sounds like nothing, but for me it's an immediate difference toggling between vanilla and the shaders. It's just the right subtle visual boost that makes me go, "yes, this is a richer world"
And none of these mods really impact performance for me, so that's a plus.
That aside I've played around with lots of the top mods around, and there are a few I would recommend for sure:
No More Blocky Faces - Removes compression artifacts from faces. If you ever play in first person, this is a must.
QD inventory - Changes the inventory screen in all interactions. SkyUI will replace this eventually I think, but for now it adds a very useful weight/value line, and improves the useability.
Better Sorting - Improves inventory sorting.
Improved Thunder - Really improves the feel of those rainy days I think
SkyUI - Wow, someone's trying to improve the shitburger console UI? Unthinkable!
Vals Crafting Meltdown - I'm a smith, and I hate that I can forge a dwarven steel plate from a dead race, but I can't take some bracers apart for leather. I don't care if it's balanced or not.
Immersive HUD - Hud when you need it, hide when you don't.
Lush Grass and Lush Trees - Makes grass and trees thicker. In certain areas this is the difference between scraggly looking terrain, and a real forest.
Enhanced Night - Gives you options for a much more colorful sky. Considering that the whole sky is magically connected to the Gods of Tamriel and all that I like to look up and see something somewhat more mystical than vanilla stars.
At least for me, these mods improve the game that extra bit. There's more on my wishlist, but I'll wait for people who can actually code to do it. (I'm not going to get full immersion unless I can replace Fus Ro Dah with a wicked face-melter solo on a Gibson Flying V. Get on it modders.)
Also I'm having as much fun dicking around with settings as I am playing the game. I think I'm losing my goddamn mind. @_@
only use them with the 4gb.exe
my skyrim worked fine over steam until i came to whiterun, for which i installed an extra texture pack. on sight it crashed.
afterwards i switched to the 4gb mod.
Somethings I don't like about the game, combat still feels kinda floaty, feels better then oblivion, especially on single dudes, but on Dragons, it was just like, swing sword, swing sword, cast magic, and the Dragon was just standing there. Was cool the first time, but after a while Dragons wernt nearly as cool.
Also on some of the side quests, I would encounter enemies that would just kill me in 2 shots, when everything leading up to them was fairly easy, there would randomly be a guy in the dungeon who would destroy me in a second. Even cranked it down to the easiest difficulty and still they would be a struggle. That was always odd and annoying.
The whole enemy stats i don't really follow either. There are areas that i feel pretty safe, and some caves where i have to encounter really powerful enemies that kill me in like 2 seconds. It would be nice if there were areas that you knew you could not fight since the common enemies in there are fairly tougher and you know you have to level up or whatever. Feels kinda off. I guess that happened in Oblivion a lot more and they had to do that monster level overhaul.