The Elder Scrolls: The XVII Princes of Oblivion

[Vinyadan]

I think that Elder Scrolls games in general have such incredible gameworlds, that a lot of things that concern combat, among which balance, take a step back. However, I still consider good combat and balance (especially among mechanics, from power to usability) added value, although I admit that player-environment balance is difficult to implement in an RPG with an open world (these games also come with a difficulty slider, so the choice is really always on the player).

About balance in single player, just think of shooters. If one gun is too good, the rest might have the most interesting mechanics, but you are likely not going to use them. If a boss is too hard, it can be a chore (or even impossible) to beat, and, if the levels are too easy, they can become pointless.

[veti]

You can mod it to have Thomas the Tank Engine flying through the sky ridden by Master Chief as well, but it's hardly the standard or intended experience.

Well, yes, although that would be quite a big mod. Also infringing on at least two other intellectual properties...

But I suggest that the most successful mods give a useful indication of what the more dedicated players actually want in the game. And (discounting sex because there are good reasons why the publisher steers clear of that), the most popular mods are those that (a) fix minor bugs without making much change to play, (b) add more content without significantly changing play at all, (c) tinker with the interface, or (d) change the gameplay by overhauling the skill/perk trees.

Of these categories, (a) is something the publisher will strive for anyway, but some errors will always get through, and (c) and (d) fall under the heading of "different, but not self-evidently better for everyone". Sending the very clear message to the publisher that the important thing is as much "content" as possible, and everything else is secondary.

Balance? Not even on the radar.

[Keltest]

Well, yes, although that would be quite a big mod. Also infringing on at least two other intellectual properties...

"Can" in this case means "There is already a mod that does this." shockingly enough.

[Rynjin]

Well, yes, although that would be quite a big mod.

The Thomas the Tank Engine mod was one of the first mods ever released for Skyrim, before the Creation Kit was even made available for people to use. It was not by any means a "big mod".

The first OFFICIAL mod (made by Bethesda to celebrate the Steam Workshop opening up) was something that added Wheatley from Portal 2 into the game.

[Keltest]

The Thomas the Tank Engine mod was one of the first mods ever released for Skyrim, before the Creation Kit was even made available for people to use. It was not by any means a "big mod".

The first OFFICIAL mod (made by Bethesda to celebrate the Steam Workshop opening up) was something that added Wheatley from Portal 2 into the game.

Im still sad that didnt get a port for the Special Edition. I miss my space core friend.

[Vinyadan]

Per se, I think Thomas the Tank Engine is simply a model, texture, and sound swap, without editing animations, or even just removing them. Put the tank files instead of the dragon files, and you're good to go. How big the mod is depends on the amount of work put on the new assets, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had been already available somewhere.

What cracks me up about it is the shadow of the engine. Ominous and "wait, what--?"

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Im still sad that didnt get a port for the Special Edition. I miss my space core friend.

I’m glad someone does; I put the Space Core in Breezehome and could hear the thing chattering constantly in the Bannered Mare. Finally ended up uninstalling the mod.

[Vinyadan]

Today Skyrim Anniversary Edition came out. Two things that I don't like: one is that it's a paid upgrade for the Legendary Edition, which I don't have. The second thing has to do with Skyrim in general: while the video, especially in the first part, tries very hard to show a colourful world full of variety, Skyrim has this thing of including a lot of deep shadows in its textures, so that everything is very grimy, rather than dark. It's very visible in the bucket of fish, where the fish seem to be emerging from some black substance. Oblivion also had something similar, for example in the exteriors of the buildings of the Imperial city. I much prefer Morrowind's approach to colour.

In other news, someone is making Oblivion work in the very new Unreal Engine 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJrw5nddxS4 I really like how it looks inside the cathedral. I am not very clear on what the purpose is, however: work towards a full release, or just testing out the new engine.

[veti]

Today Skyrim Anniversary Edition came out. Two things that I don't like: one is that it's a paid upgrade for the Legendary Edition, which I don't have.

So, this three-hour download has overwritten my existing SE installation. Now I have to wait for a new version of SKSE.

I guess this is the "free next-gen upgrade" that Bethesda have been threatening with the AE. After my previous experience with Creation Club content I can't see myself paying actual money to get the AE; I just hope I don't have to rebuild my modlist from the ground up (again).

Interestingly, my original (pre-Legendary) edition has not been updated.

[Triaxx]

Oldrim players unite.

Meeting Cancelled due to unresolved error.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I guess this is the "free next-gen upgrade" that Bethesda have been threatening with the AE. After my previous experience with Creation Club content I can't see myself paying actual money to get the AE; I just hope I don't have to rebuild my modlist from the ground up (again).

I’ve not tried the Creation Club stuff but second not buying the AE. I already paid for this game once, Bethesda!

[Keltest]

I’ve not tried the Creation Club stuff but second not buying the AE. I already paid for this game once, Bethesda!

Ditto. And several people have paid for it several times.

[veti]

Welp, I tried loading up my previous save, but no luck there.

So I tried starting a new game. That worked fine until - well, not very far in when it crashed for no obvious reason. When I try to load the early autosaves, the whole computer hangs - there are loading screens for a short time, then the whole screen goes black. And stays there.

Always before I've been able to alt-tab out of Skyrim, or to invoke Task Manager to shut it down cleanly. It was one of its best under-appreciated features, the way it played nicely with Windows. No longer. Neither alt-tab nor ctrl-alt-del will allow you to focus on the Task Manager window for long enough to issue a command through it.

This crap has overwritten my SE installation, which has been working perfectly for the past five years up until last night. Now I get to rebuild my mod list with the added complication that every test involves starting a game, saving, and reloading; and every failure requires a hard reboot of the whole system.

Nice going, Bethesda. That's just how I wanted to spend the next month.

[Rynjin]

Well, of course the game is going to crash if you're trying to launch it with an outdated SKSE after installing the update. Why install it if you still wanted to play with mods?

Also, you need to set Task Manager settings to "always on top" for it to override other program priority when it comes to true FUllscreen (as opposed to Windowed Fullscreen)..

[veti]

Well, of course the game is going to crash if you're trying to launch it with an outdated SKSE after installing the update. Why install it if you still wanted to play with mods?

Also, you need to set Task Manager settings to "always on top" for it to override other program priority when it comes to true FUllscreen (as opposed to Windowed Fullscreen)..

One, I didn't get any choice about the update. It wasn't offered, just installed.

Two, I have updated SKSE. That's not the issue. If it was, the game wouldn't launch at all, which is a much friendlier way of failing.

Three, as I said, the configuration of Task Manager has been working just fine ever since the game was first published.

[Rynjin]

One, I didn't get any choice about the update. It wasn't offered, just installed.

You can turn off auto-updates; most people did years ago so CC updates didn't break their game. Mine is still sitting there at "update required", which it very much isn't unless I try to launch the game via Steam instead of the SKSE launcher.

Trying to launch via SKSE before opening Steam, however, will launch the game via Steam first and it will download any required files then.

Two, I have updated SKSE. That's not the issue. If it was, the game wouldn't launch at all, which is a much friendlier way of failing.

SKSE doesn't always crash on startup if it's out of date. But even with the new SKSE it literally says

The primary feature that is missing is the plugin manager, which is currently disabled until I can rewrite the system that handles plugin compatibility checks. Plugin developers can build local versions with it enabled, but keep in mind that the version check code is going to change.
If you have an existing mod setup on pre-AE that you would like to keep working, this is not a sign that you should upgrade and start using this version of SKSE. However, if you have already upgraded to AE and are feeling adventurous, then try this out.

TL;DR: SKSE updated, many plugins still borked.

Three, as I said, the configuration of Task Manager has been working just fine ever since the game was first published.

Big game updates often reset to some kind of default. It probably reset the default to Fullscreen instead of Windowed Fullscreen.

Likewise, Windows 10 updates often reset Task manager settings.

Regardless, this should help.

[Calemyr]

Apparently they know about the problem but haven't got an ETA on the fix. These idiots can't get the same friggin' game right after ten years!

One place I read said that the new compiler made the mod-processing "too efficient", causing scripts to start before the game itself did, resulting in null pointer errors crashing the game.

So you've got the beautiful choice of deciding between playing the game vanilla (even with the CC mods, this is not a pretty option) or sitting around waiting for it to fix.

And yeah, if you weren't paying attention, you're kinda screwed. Bethesda "upgraded" all SE installs to the AE base code and included four creation club items for free (Saints And Seducers and Rare Curios are pretty good, really, but Survival Mode is frickin' terrible. Fishing is... well fishing. Haven't gotten to try it, yet. Gonna have to play that Noctis run, now). And since Steam defaults to Auto-Update, the only way to preserve your old, functional game is to have either saved a copy in another folder or set the update mode to manual. Neither of which help in hindsight so, yay!

The AE stuff itself... well, it's nice that all the CC stuff is now set to trigger based on reading notes you find rather than the blasted wall of quests you get Fus Ro Dah'd with after leaving the starter dungeon. A bit of it looks pretty promising, a lot of it looks like modders did it better already, but I'll give credit that I'm actually looking forward to trying some of them once they get this <redacted> mess sorted out.

And to make matters more fun, AE was compiled with a more modern compiler than SE used. Which, I'll be honest, I never expected to them to update any of their technology at all, so credit where credit is due. Since this is a new compiler, all the old addresses in the code that SKSE used are not accurate anymore and anything reliant on it is funked up beyond all repair. They did do us a minor solid, though, and gave the SKSE crew an early copy of the new code so that they could get a head start on finding the hooks they need. A functional version of SKSE is out now out for AE, but really all that it effectively supports is SkyUI. That's enough to start with, though, since the vanilla menu system is god awful on a keyboard. It's extremely experimental, though, so there's no telling what other mods may or may not work.

One fix that MAY work (no promises) is to disable all your mods and start a new game raw, then create a manual save. Then reactivate your mods. This black screen crap isn't as common during in-game loads, so you start the game on the manual save, and then load your current game from there. Ugly, inefficient, stupidly complicated, and prone to fail, but it might keep you limping along until Bugthesda gets their asses in gear. In theory, anyway. Haven't tested it yet, as I just thought of it.

That's what I've got so far. Outside of the HOLY CRAP THIS IS ANNOYING AND I AM ROYALLY PISSED I WASTED MY DAY OFF TRYING TO GET THIS TO WORK thing, anyway.

[veti]

You can turn off auto-updates; most people did years ago so CC updates didn't break their game.

I preferred to keep the game up to date because that's what mod authors work with. Looks like I may have to rethink that.

SKSE doesn't always crash on startup if it's out of date.

It doesn't crash, it gives a nice polite message saying "SKSE version (...) does not match runtime version (...)", it tells you why it's an error and how to fix it, and aborts the launch. The whole operation takes a fraction of a second and leaves me with a fully responsive PC. That's what I call a good failure.

TL;DR: SKSE updated, many plugins still borked.

I've painstakingly removed all the plugins. Doesn't help.

Big game updates often reset to some kind of default. It probably reset the default to Fullscreen instead of Windowed Fullscreen.

I wasn't aware Skyrim used a "windowed fullscreen" mode? My understanding was that that should leave some window elements, like a frame border, possibly a close button and the taskbar, still visible. Skyrim has always been "fullscreen" as far as I could see.

Regardless, this should help.

Thank you for that, it does look helpful as a last resort.

[Rynjin]

Borderless Windowed is actually what a lot of games use by default these days. It stops the game from freaking out when you tab out. I'm relatively certain SE implemented a Borderless Windowed setting into the game as the default.

[Spore]

Borderless Windowed is actually what a lot of games use by default these days. It stops the game from freaking out when you tab out. I'm relatively certain SE implemented a Borderless Windowed setting into the game as the default.

As someone who uses borderless in all his games, I have learned the major issue is the resolution. Have the same resolution on desktop and ingame, and your computer clutches its virtual head way less, mainly because it doesn't need to change the resolution everytime you tab out.

Oldrim players unite.

Meeting Cancelled due to unresolved error.

Hah!

I wanted to stay on Oldrim, but SE is so much more stable. Bethesda tried to make the Creation Club attractive but failed. Anyway, 64 bit version of Skyrim for free was nice.

I will not get the AE however.

[Vinyadan]

Well, I've made my Morrowind installation unplayable by emptying the overwrite folder in MO2. After some copy-paste, it now more or less functions, but grass has disappeared.

[Triaxx]

With one exception i've got mine mostly stabilized. I'm even confident I know the answer. But due to the way mods interact it's not a fixable issue without breaking the game. Or rather without breaking progress in the mod.

[DigoDragon]

About a month ago I had one of the greatest Quality-of-Life game glitches ever. I started the The House of Horrors quest (against my better judgement) and after the initial house warming party, I marched off to go free Logrolf from the Forsworn camp he was held in.

But Logrolf learned levitation.

By far this was the fastest I completed the quest. XD

--


About two weeks ago I noticed my game started getting buggy. Specifically parts of the Wet and Cold mod and the Vigor combat overhaul mod aren't working quite right. CTDs went from one every blue moon to about once per session of playing. I don't think it has to do with the new version out, since this was going on a little bit before then, but heck if I really know what's up. Eh, I guess one crash a play session is still pretty decent. ^^

[veti]

Well, in the circumstances I'm not going to recommend updating your game, but it might be time to begin a new character.

[Keltest]

Well, in the circumstances I'm not going to recommend updating your game, but it might be time to begin a new character.

Yeah. From my understanding, a save file's instability grows with time, and while Skyrim is better about it than Oblivion, every save either dies fun or lives long enough to become unplayable.

[Rynjin]

One of the benefits of Special Edition is eliminating or at least drastically reducing that issue.

[Keltest]

One of the benefits of Special Edition is eliminating or at least drastically reducing that issue.

Yeah. None of my save filed have lived long enough for that, at least. This being bethesda, im sure they didnt completely solve the issue, but its sufficiently taken care of as to not come up for me personally.

[Vinyadan]

Morrowind now can be played with HDR. It's very good if you add a mod that removes non-in-game sources of light (so your character's eyes adapt to a candlelight setting), but it makes the night unrealistically bright. I have modded them to be really really dark. It looks very good as long as some light source is around and you can see the contrast between illuminated and dark items. However, without a light around, the textures do that thing they did with old games, where low luminosity caused exaggerated banding and shadows looked like wet black fabric sticking on a wall.

[Aeson]

Personally, I've never been that fond of 'realistic' lighting in games, particularly when it comes to times when and areas where it should be quite dark. I'd rather be able to see than be in a realistically-dark cave, especially with hand-held lights being largely incompatible with the use of two-handed weapons and shields. Morrowind has the additional nuisance of most or all of the generic light enchantments being on target rather than on self or constant effect, so they're basically useless outside of combat scenarios.

Also, Nirn has two reasonably large moons, so I would expect that the nights are generally fairly bright.

[veti]

In all the time I played Morrowind I can only recall one place where it was too dark to see clearly, and that was one of the caves on Solstheim. I remember the draugr eyes glowing in that darkness...

But it's trivial in Morrowind to get any light effect you want, or night vision if you want to be stealthy about it.

I do think dark nights tend to underestimate the power of moonlight. Those two moons are enormous, both of them. And the stars are pretty impressive too.

And some lighting mods also seem to forget that one's eyes adjust to the dark. All in all, I would think genuinely dark nights would be a pretty rare occurrence on Nirn.