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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Skyrim: AMAZING screenshots and must have mods!


Mods are the sole reason I bought TESV:Skyrim on PC.
It's a beautiful game, as seen here: http://deadendthrills.com/?cat=314
But if you don't have the latest video cards/processors like me, you might have to turn down your graphics settings, which makes the faces look horrible. No worries, though, because with a couple mods you could easily fix that.

1. Skyrim Better Performance This mod is the best. My game used to put my default settings on Medium, but now I can run the game on Ultra! There's SOME lag when I run outside, though. But I'm happy that I can now play it on high without any.

2. No More Blocky Faces. and More Detailed Faces Very helpful if you run Skyrim on medium or less.

You probably all noticed the blocky noses and chins of the human and elven characters in Skyrim.
This was caused by compressed textures with the _msn affix.
I have smoothed the noses and chins and saved them as uncompressed textures.

Updated version also removes blocky eyelids, ears and lips.
Brow ridges and wrinkels have not been removed, only the blocky ones have
been smoothed, because I did not want to alter the intended design.
This mod affects the following races, male and female including
old characters:

Imperial
Nord
Breton
Redguard
Dark Elf
High Elf
Wood Elf
Orc
 3. Map In Full 3D

This mod changes camera controls in ingame map view so it becomes possible to zoom in almost to the ground.
Watch video to see the result of this mod.

4. Enhanced Night Sky
This is a new edition of my Enhanced Night Sky mod, modified for the icy lands of Skyrim. It's a high resolution texture replacement for the night sky taken from real starfield photography. This will not affect the appearance of constellations (yes, the game has constellations finally!) which are contained in another file - this will simply enhance the backdrop for a much denser starfield.

5. Enhanced Blood Textures Tired of looking at plain jelly? Try chunky jelly!
Improved the existing default blood textures for map placed blood decals. Resolution increase from 512 to 2048.
New screen blood textures to have more of a splatter appear rather than a dot.

6.  Interface Hard Coded Key Tweaks The interface was obviously designed to be used with a controller, but now it's easier using a keyboard because of this mod.
What is changed:
1. Instead of a hard coded Tab, your Character Menu key/mouse button will now:
--- Close books!
--- Exit the map!
--- End dialog / trading
--- Exit crafting
--- Abandon lockpicking

2. Clicking the middle mouse button on an inventory item will zoom in on it and you can click and drag to rotate it (fun)
--- You can also use your Sprint key to zoom an item
--- The previous way to do this was using the C key, but this function was undocumented and hard coded
--- The C key hard code was removed to prevent conflicts

3. The map is moved using your set up/down/left/right keys instead of hard coded WASD
--- Center view is set to your Activate key instead of hard code E

4. Your left/right strafe keys control the lock rotation in the lockpick mini-game instead of hard coded A/D
--- The left/right arrow keys and Left Mouse/Right Mouse were also added as ways to rotate the lock
--- If you change your strafe keys, you may have to restart the game to get right strafe to rotate the lock

5. Pressing the favorites key again while in the favorites menu will now exit the favorites menu (what a concept)
--- The character menu key will still also close the favorites menu

6. If you have the Activate command bound to a mouse button (ex: Mouse 5) you can now take books!

7. You can drop items or mark them as favorites even if you have Sheathe/Ready or Toggle POV bound to a mouse button
--- Note that as always the interface won't update to show your changes, it will always show Drop as R and Favorite as F
--- In actuality, Drop is whatever you assigned to Sheathe/Ready and Mark as Favorite is what you assigned to Toggle POV

8. You can equip weapons to either hand with if you use your keyboard for your attack keys instead of the default mouse buttons

9. Turning book pages uses your strafe keys instead of hard coded A/D
--- Left/right arrow keys, left/right mouse, and mouse wheel still work to turn pages, too

10. The T key was hardcoded to recharge, now the Wait key/mouse button will do recharge (which is T by default)
--- Added to avoid conflicts in browsing the menus

7. Simple Borderless Window I love this mod, you can browse the net while playing the game without it having the borders in windowed mode.

A quick and simple launcher I've made to run the game with a borderless window. The program launches the game then sizes the window or just sizes it if the game is already running. The game window name must be "Skyrim" (it should be by default).

And that's it! (For now.)

Post in the comments if you have found some cool mods you'd like to share. (No nude mods, lol) 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks awesome

Outcast said...

Skyrim looks freaking amazing! I'm so damn jealous, honestly.

Sub Radar (Mike) said...

It's crazy that there are already that many mods out for Skyrim. Such an awesome game.

Sledgehammer1004 said...

Ive never tried Skyrim but ive always wanted to

Unknown said...

I'm downloading Skyrim right now, I really want to mod it till its no skyrim anymore, love your post dude keep'em coming

Otter said...

Nice mods and will have to try them. Ive been playing Skyrim for a week or so now and love it. nice write up

kelly slater said...

nice post.. :)

jorgen80 said...

Oblivion was the best game I ever played.
I dont like mods, because they usually slow down the performance of computers.
Anyways it is always a great add to the world of Skyrim

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