Skyrim Mods Issue 2

well still no SDK meaning there's still no serious mods, but there are lots and lots of new HD higher res textures for, well everything.  Basically modders take the textures, put them into photoshop, and use image upscaling algorithims to increase the detail of the texture.  That's not the case for all the textures though, some are being remade from scratch, by finding photorealistc scenes then applying them cleverly to the texture .dds file.  This all means there is a noticeably much better texture. 

On my side of things I've started messing with textures too, downloaded a photoshop trial from their website, got the nvidia plugin for .dds files, and used the fallout mod manager to extract the .dds files from the skyrim textures.bsa

unfortunately I had already used my trial and they only let me open photoshop once, so I didn't do much.  Been looking at a good way to buy photshop but even with the full education discount its really expensive (around 230$).

Once the SDK (software development kit, or in bethesda's case the  "TES 5 creation kit") is released that will allow modders to create new weapons instead of just replacing the textures of the current ones.  That's just the tip of the iceberg though because there is a lot you can do with that kit, from making new spells, to making new continents, and more.  Personally I want to create a mod that speeds up all of the weapon swinging animations, and lets you attack while jumping/falling.  Also I want to make a few items from the anime Naruto, and play as a ninja :D

Mods I'm Using:
amazing smooth females complete, ultra smooth females V3
     The name gives it away, but this mod makes the skin textures for female characters smother

Enhanced Distant terrain
      Uses higher res textures for distant terrain, making it look a lot better

Enhanced night Skyrim
      Higher resolution night sky, adds more stars, makes the night look even better.

Eyes Skyrim
      Higher resolution eye textures

Jump250
       Lets you jump about 4 times higher, lots of fun.

Identity

My Identity and What I Own

Viper5221 Xbox Live and Playstation Network

Viper5221 youtube

Viper5221 on any Whiskey Media Site (giantbomb, tested, screened, comicvine)

viper95221 steam

My phone

iPhone 4s

My PC

AsusK50IJ

Consoles

Xbox 360 original white 20 gig

PS3 slim 120 gig

Display

Panasonic Viera 32" LCD

Extra's

3 DS

James' First Post

My name is James. I'm currently a third year biology student studying molecular genetics and cell biology in Canada. I've known Mac for almost my entire life. We share many common interests when it comes to video games, technology, and science. While I don't watch a lot of television and movies I do listen to a lot of podcast's and music. I'll just be writing about things that interest me and my opinions on what ever is happening in the gaming/ technology world.

Skyrim Mods: Issue 1

Skyrim mods will definitely be a repeating subject here so I'm going to post each new mod post with a different issue number.  So for the first post Ill explain a little bit about the basics of how to mod Skyrim (and all other Bethesda games by extension), and show some of the mods that have come out thus far.

As of yet the creating kit, formally known as "The Elder Scrolls Construction Set" has not yet been released for Skyrim, but official blog posts have confirmed the obvious, that it will exist.  Because the Kit hasn't been released there haven't been a lot of big, game changing mods.   Mostly its new textures, FXAA injectors, and some minor game changes.

How to Mod Skyrim:  There are varying levels of difficulty for mods.  adding new items, texture changes, and adding new racing are very simple.  Usually all you have to do is download the mod(s), and cut and paste into the Skyrim/Data directory (that's Steam/steamapps/common/skyrim/data for Steam users) Then on the launcher open "Plugins" and select the .esm and your done.  If you are going to use a lot of mods at the same time, or have more intense mods, like ones that add cities, you will need to use a mod manager.  The website "Skyrimnexus" has made a new mod manager for Skyrim
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/content/modmanager/

The mods managers allow you to activate and deactivate mods with you having to go into the data folder and remove all the files manually, it also allows you to change the load order of mods.  There are a lot of other features that I have yet to need to use, but as I learn how to mod myself I will probably be learning about.  Mod managers are highly recommended even for simple mods, because they make the experience a whole lot easier, and it a little safer if something messes up.

What Mods I'm Using:  Right now the only mod I'm using is the Enhanced Night Skyrim mod.  Basically it uses a higher resolution night sky, and makes it noticeably more pretty.  There's also been a few new versions that give you options for the colour of the galaxy, and adds varying degrees of star density.  Neat stuff.

Here's a youtube link to a demo of what the mod looks like

Some Cool Mods:
make the moon look like halo: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1459

glowing, high visibility ore veins: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=193

FXAA injector, changes colour saturation, other colour effects:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=131

SNSD release single "The Boys" in North America awhile ago, I finally notice.

So I have been a fan of Japanese and Korean pop music for a while now, about 4 years.  In my early experience with this music I was, and still am, a huge fan of the group Girl's Generation (SoNyeoShiDae or 소녀시대 in Korean).  Ever since I saw their music video for "Gee". 

Although I didn't like their move toward the more sexy image as much(Run Devil Run was good, but I don't like Hoot) so I moved toward more Japanese music, mostly from the Hello-Project groups like Morning Musume.

Anyway the newest single they released "The Boys" brought back interest for me in Girl's Generation.  So I've been reading more about the news at Soshified (A fan website for the group)  and just realized that Girl's Generation released "The Boys" internationally meaning that there is an English version!

I knew about how SNSD moved into the Japanese market, which turned out to be a big success for the group.  I like the Japanese versions of their music too, it translates pretty well.

so the SNSD "The Boys" single in Korean and English version:

Korean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pA_Tou-DPI
English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhXopp1YgbA

Personally I like the Korean version better.  Just because they can sing better in their native language.  Tiffany and Jessica, having lived in the U.S. don't have the same problem, buy Yoona seems to have a tough time singing in English.

How I learned Basic Video Editing In 1 Hour

So in my engineering 123 class we have a group project.  We are assigned groups of 6 people and are asked to build a Rube Goldberg Machine on a given theme.  In our case the theme was spider-Man.  The construction went pretty well but that's not what I'm going to talk about.  so get graded on the project we had to hand in a video of the machine working.  Then for the presentation we show the same video but we can add music, credits, etc.  Being the more tech savvy person of my group I decide I will edit the video.

At that point I had zero experience with video editing, so I started with the most basic of all learning experiences, I googled "Video editing".  Within a few minutes I had picked out the free program I would use to do this, I used VideoPad by NCH software.

http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html

At first glance it looked fairly complicated with all the options of what to do:

But after getting a chance to read everything it became more clear.

1. add media

2. drag media to "sequence" area under the windows

3. start cutting

It was also easy to add music to the video by dragging the music file to the bar under the sequence bar, right were it says "add your sound clips here"  and you can just click and drag the bar to have the music start where you want.

One nice thing about this program is that you can save the video into a lot of formats, I just used .mp4 but its nice to have options.

New Tech: multi-color, remote controled lightbulb

So finally after about 2 weeks of waiting I got this nifty little piece of tech.  Its a multi-color ( 15 colors) LED bulb.  Its remote controlled and from the remote you can change the colour, have it fade between colors, chose between 4 levels of brightness and turn it on and off.  It uses a infra-red sensor just like your tv remote so you have the point the remote more or less directly at the light bulb.  Theres a "setup" button but im not sure what it does.  I assume its to link a light bulb to a remote if you have more than 1 of these light bulbs, but there was no setup for just one.  I just twisted it into a normal light bulb socket and it worked.

I am slightly disappointed with the maximum brightness of it though.  even on the highest setting it's not very bright.  Its not even enough to light up my tiny little room, but its perfect for a reading lamp, or just something to do homework on.

Its very reasonably priced at 32$ which also included shipping.

the url for their website:
http://barlighting.com/ledrgbbulb.html


Also on their website are long strips of the same multi-color LEDs, they are much more expensive and require some installation, but I wonder if a meter long strip would provide more light than the one light bulb.

Skyrim Review

Overall Skyrim is an excellent game. But as a hardcore player of Morrowind and Oblivion there are a lot of changes that I just hate. My first charactor was a breton mage. I avoided the main quest at the start because I didn't want dragons all over the place as i went along doing other things. The first place I went was the Mages Guild (or College as it is now). One of the things I missed from the earlier TES games was progressing through factions. Gaining ranks, getting paid for gruntwork, and then much later on doing some large quest that makes me the head of that guild. In skyrim that is totally gone, the first thing you do in the mages guild **VAGUE SPOILERS** is find this orb, then you find out its a problem, then you solve it. Only 1 real quest line that immediately makes you the arch mage. I was not even journeyman at any mage skill and now I'm the archmage? There were many other mages there all masters in their field that realistically should have taken over. But whatever.  Then I played as a warrior for a long time to get a feel for the combat.

The new magic mechanics defiantly have their good points, they look better for starters. But so much was removed from the last game. There are significantly less spells, and less ways to use them. Also they removed the mysticism skill. SPELLMAKING IS GONE! which really ruins the experience for me. Spellmaking made magic much more personal and fun. Plus there were a lot of ways to use spellmaking to grind out skills (like damage armour on self for armourer skill). This happened between oblivion and morrowind too. Morrowind had many more spells like levitate, mark&recall, blind, etc which were all removed. Enchanting in skyrim is good. I think the Idea of finding enchantments by destroying enchanted stuff is a good change. Enchanting still uses soul gems and is pretty simple. Enchanting in Morrowind was much better though, it was much more open. For example in Morrowind you could take a ring and enchant it to have fire damage on target spell, so now this ring worked like a scroll with multiple uses. They removed that in oblivion so that you could only have constant effect on objects, or effect on strike on weapons.

Another incremental change that I have always disliked is that armour and clothing have less and less pieces. In Morrowind you had 8 pieces of armour (helm, currias, left and right pauldrens, left and right gauntlets, grieves, and boots) This allowed for much greater customization. It also made it much harder to find full sets of armour. Also you could add clothing on top, and under the armour. you could wear pants under the armour, and a cloak on top. This meant you could enchant everything all to have more effects, making you more powerful. In oblivion they removed a lot of that. Only 5 pieces of armour, and no clothing under or over anything. Now in skyrim its even less, only 4 pieces of armour (greaves are removes and just added to currias). So now theres even less customizations than in either of the previous games. Also, in Skyrim, you can only have 1 ring on, WTH? 10 fingers and only 1 ring?

Leveling in skyrim is..different. In one sentence; skyrim is now an action/RPG, instead of an RPG. The perks system brought in from fallout is great. Its much more fun, and allows for more things to do with each skill than what oblivion had where you would get a new action every 25 levels. Also the fact that you can save perk points for use later is excellent, being forces to use them at leveling up would have really ruined the leveling in skyrim. However, there are less skills now then ever. There is NO MORE ACROBATICS, OR ATHLETICS, this is a horrible loss for the overall experience. This means that there is only ever 1 speed to run at, and only ever 1 height to jump at. One of the reasons I loved the TES games is that I could max out these skills and just fly around. Especially in morrowind where speed, athletics, and acrobatics were enhanced by enchantments I could basically fly around. Jumping from mountain to mountain and fall from the highest drops. This was lessened a bit in oblivion, but by stacking spells I could get the same effect. This is now GONE in Skyrim, I can use the console and whatnot but thats not gameplay at that point so its not nearly as fun.  Another big difference is that there is no longer any attributes, like at all!  This is why I say its more of an action rpg rather than a rpg.  Some people don't like the leveling in oblivion, which is understandable because morrowind's leveling was much more open and easy.  In morrowind you werent punished for getting levels up that you didnt intend.  Also you could level up infinitely by using damage skill spells, in Oblivion the max level is 52.  In oblivion if you were trying to get strength up you had to work on nothing but strength skills, anything else would ruin the +5 attribute at level up.  I guess thats not a problem anymore...

They took away a bunch of awesome, usefully, fun skills and added pickpocketing... A whole freaking skill for pickpocketing, I never even used it in the first games why would I want it now!? 

The Combat mechanics are different too.  As expected they use much, much better animations.  Everything looks realistic.  However because you have to wait for (the sometimes lengthy) animations, the controls are not nearly as precise.  In oblivion you could block every attack fairly easily because the shield would raise instantly, and the animations were quick.  In skyrim I always seem to be swinging at something, have it miss and then get hit in the back.  Which is really frustrating.  I guess that's why they added the regenerating health.  But its so slow that it doesn't make any difference in actual combat.  The fallout style kill cam works pretty well.  It makes the combat much more fun when you get a good beheading on the enemy.  Sometimes you get a messed up camera angle and see through a wall, or see nothing but a wall.  But this isnt a big problem because the kill cam lasts only a short time.  Oblivion's combat changed in a similar way from morrowind's.  In Morrowind the animations are pretty bad (in today's standards) and it was more complex in that different moves had different damages (eg: Trusting with a spear did more damage than slashing)  and there was chance to miss based on skill.  But at least it was precise in the last two games.  You could hit what you wanted, when you wanted, and you weren't flailing around hitting air.  Its more realistic now, but the controls just are not what I'm used to from this kind of game. 

One awesome new change is the smithing skill.  You can craft weapons, and armour, and jewelry by mining ores, smelting into bars, then smithing.  Then you can improve your weapons, and armour for extra effect.  I really enjoy this new mechanic.

There are also a couple smaller changes, It seems impossible to make an attractive female face in the character customization ( A problem that will quickly be solved by wonderful modders).  You cant use any colour you want for hair use have to use presets.  The third person camera zooms slightly when you put away your weapon.  so im always adjusting the camera so I can see, this is especially annoying in caves.  A great new change is the voice acting, theres now more than one voice for each race.  Also the UI is perfect for a controller ( I play on PC but with an Xbox controller)  very simple.  the map is cool too, although sometimes is hard to find where im looking with all the snow.  Also the dragons are good, shouting seems like a good addition so far.

Skyrim has a lot of changes that as a fan of the last two games I just cant get over.  Its a very different game now. It feels like im not playing a TES game, but just an action oriented rpg with a lot of caves.  Im really happy I decide to get this game on PC because the mods will be amazing.  I might re-learn the construction set again just so I can play around with modding too.