As much as I hate loading screens in general, this game does them so well. Firstly, It does the number one thing you must do with your load screens: keep the music playing, which keeps the sense of place and atmosphere, so you don't feel like being interrupted or removed. Loading screens that stop the games music always make me feel like the game has frozen.
Also rather than static concept art, it shows you a fully rendered object or piece of the world, which you can manipulate, which is also reflected in the gameplay and menus. It gives you a sense of reflection, almost like you're going over objects in your backpack.
It's this little touch that I've always appreciated
And then you get the sheogorath loading screen mod, and it's even better, because then instead of boring and useless trivia from the game, you get Sheogorath telling you useful tips and tricks for the world of skyrim.
M A G I K A Z A M
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Also rather than static concept art, it shows you a fully rendered object or piece of the world, which you can manipulate
what
I don't understand? What about this do you need explained? Instead of what a lot of games do, which is show artwork and concept art, Skyrim shows a 3d object and let's you rotate it (manipulate)?
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Also rather than static concept art, it shows you a fully rendered object or piece of the world, which you can manipulate
what
I don't understand? What about this do you need explained? Instead of what a lot of games do, which is show artwork and concept art, Skyrim shows a 3d object and let's you rotate it (manipulate)?
As in, I've played hundreds of hours and had no idea this was something you could do.
Haha yes I had no idea for the longest time that I could turn the object showing on the loading screen, until I watched a Let's Play where the guy had these huge loading times (that he didn't edit out) and would sit there and move the object around.
Most of the time, my loading screen doesn't last long enough for me to do much with the object anyhow, but sometimes when transferring from an interior to an exterior cell (especially the first time after loading up a save), I have some time to look at them.
I can't believe you guys are just now seeing this.
I can maybe see a M/KB exclusive user never stumbling on it, because I'm thinking about it and I guess I don't click or type idly while loading. But stick a game pad in my hands and I'm gonna practice hadoukens all day, in which case you'd see this feature immediately.
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
A Dungeon Keeper-style management game where you click on a block to remove it but it doesn't actually go away until the next loading screen unless you pay a bunch of gold.
I can't believe you guys are just now seeing this.
I can maybe see a M/KB exclusive user never stumbling on it, because I'm thinking about it and I guess I don't click or type idly while loading. But stick a game pad in my hands and I'm gonna practice hadoukens all day, in which case you'd see this feature immediately.
Yeah, when I get a loading screen, I typically take my hand off the controls. My loading screens don't last very long to begin with, so I don't really have time to get bored and fiddle. I will now, though.
Modding out a fresh install, I can't figure out what I should be doing with textures. There are all these high resolution texture packs out there, and then there are also a bunch of mods that compress that stuff back down or let you optimize them yourself or something else complicated. Apparently my install comes with "HighResTexturePack01-03" but I don't remember telling it to do that so I'm not sure what I have there. For what its worth, I'm using a GTX 560Ti with only 1 GB of VRAM like a little baby would have.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I'm glad Skyrim works well with a gamepad... The amount of time I sink into this game my hands need the relaxation.
This is why I fucking hate my keyboard and mouse now.
I used to love my controllers but now I can't handle not having eight hotkeys and precise first person movement control. I tried plugging in my 360 pad a few weeks ago and it was heartbreaking, I just couldn't play it like that. I felt like a snail. More comfortable but a snail to be sure.
I just downloaded MO and as part of the tutorial it has you download a mod from Nexus. I've associated MO with the Nexus files, but when I go to do a NMM download it just hangs and won't complete the download. What gives?
So, I probably should have mentioned that I'm currently running into an issue with MO where sometimes - and I can't figure out which stars have to align for this to happen - I will be downloading a mod, but the progress bar won't actually show up. It basically looks like the download process failed, but then if I wait for the period of time necessary for the file to download, the UI will update itself to let me know that hey! The download succeeded. I think this was introduced in the last patch, or something, because I've never had this happen before.
Let me ask you this: What does the download UI look like when you click the "Download with Manager" link? Could you post a screenshot, if possible? If you're trying to download mod ID 19 - the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, which is fairly large (~85 Mb)- it's possible that the problem I described above is happening: the UI looks like the download hung, but under the hood it's actually chugging along. You just can't tell that it finishes because it takes a long time to grab that large file, and in the meantime you close MO, or move on to do something else. What happens if you download some light-weight mod, like let's say Better Dialogue Controls (24kb in size)?
I realize that this is a bad first impression, and probably pretty frustrating for you - I'm very sorry about that! Hopefully, we'll be able to get you set up proper, if you're willing to hang in there. I've got it working on my machine, and I actually re-installed it just last weekend, so it should be possible to get it working correctly.
Oh, and the question mark at the end of the URL is actually totes OK, Nexus will actually do that by itself when you visit a mod page.
It was doing it for small and large mods alike, no suck luck. I wonder if it's actually something on my end with UAC controls and Windows 8 and installation directories. I wound up just going with NMM, sorry mate :-/
That said, question for NMMers: I know load orders for .esp's is a thing, but what about install/activation order on NMM? Do I need to concern myself with that too (and should it mirror the .esp load order) ?
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Install/activation order shouldn't matter for the most part because NMM keeps track of overwriting. Load order is just the order Skyrim loads the .esps and has nothing to do with install/activation order.
I'm glad Skyrim works well with a gamepad... The amount of time I sink into this game my hands need the relaxation.
This is why I fucking hate my keyboard and mouse now.
I used to love my controllers but now I can't handle not having eight hotkeys and precise first person movement control. I tried plugging in my 360 pad a few weeks ago and it was heartbreaking, I just couldn't play it like that. I felt like a snail. More comfortable but a snail to be sure.
Yeah, I mean I don't use gamepad for shooters and stuff, but I've found with a bit of practice I can do Skyrim archery/magic fine with the gamepad. Only two hotkeys does mean more messing about in the favorites quick-menu though.
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
I play with a 360 controller because I find Skyrim is not a game where precision aiming is needed, and comfort is always nice. This mod is great for playing with a controller. 8 Hotkeys, quickload and quicksave all via controller input. Highly recommended.
Hey, you've got nothing to apologize for! I'm sorry you had a crummy experience.
The Windows 8 thing is interesting, it didn't even occur to me. I guess MO does some interesting things with folder virtualization, and maybe Win 8 doesn't like that? No idea, I'm using Win 7.
Modding out a fresh install, I can't figure out what I should be doing with textures. There are all these high resolution texture packs out there, and then there are also a bunch of mods that compress that stuff back down or let you optimize them yourself or something else complicated. Apparently my install comes with "HighResTexturePack01-03" but I don't remember telling it to do that so I'm not sure what I have there. For what its worth, I'm using a GTX 560Ti with only 1 GB of VRAM like a little baby would have.
The packs your install came with are Bethesda's high res texture packs, which at some point between last summer and now became a standard part of the Steam install. For which additional packs to add, I wouldn't go with something you have to install and *then* compress, but one like HD 2K Textures that straight-up has a "light" version available.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Install/activation order shouldn't matter for the most part because NMM keeps track of overwriting. Load order is just the order Skyrim loads the .esps and has nothing to do with install/activation order.
It will matter if you're using 2 things that mod the same thing, and you got one specifically to use for that thing. Like if a mod changed weather and water and you wanted it for the weather but a custom water mod, you'd have to install the water mod second and let it overwrite the first mod. Otherwise, it's going to use what was installed last. It's pretty rare that it happens, and NMM will warn you if it found something to overwrite (and you can choose to have it not overwrite a particular mod), but I prefer to install it so it overwrites correctly just to avoid any weirdness.
I can't believe you guys are just now seeing this.
I can maybe see a M/KB exclusive user never stumbling on it, because I'm thinking about it and I guess I don't click or type idly while loading. But stick a game pad in my hands and I'm gonna practice hadoukens all day, in which case you'd see this feature immediately.
Yeah with longer load times on the 360, wher I first played this, I noticed this immediately! So crazy I had no idea people could miss it but on PC with quicker load times and a mouse it makes sense
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
Modding out a fresh install, I can't figure out what I should be doing with textures. There are all these high resolution texture packs out there, and then there are also a bunch of mods that compress that stuff back down or let you optimize them yourself or something else complicated. Apparently my install comes with "HighResTexturePack01-03" but I don't remember telling it to do that so I'm not sure what I have there. For what its worth, I'm using a GTX 560Ti with only 1 GB of VRAM like a little baby would have.
Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized is probably the one that you want. It's exactly the same, but compressed enough that it fits more comfortably in 1GB of VRAM. The normal HD DLC would probably be fine, but wouldn't leave you much overhead for other texture mods.
Not sure what happened tonight... Was playing Skyrim and just left the Thieves guild as I went to leave the town to do a side mission for the guild the game crashed. I started game back up, decided that didn't want to play anymore so closed game before it opened up fully. Closed laptop cover. 90 minutes later open up laptop and shows the HP loading screen, followed by black screen. Turned off power and back on and told me needed to repair my C:, about 8 minutes later told me it failed repair and asked to reboot, so I did. Loaded again and went to black screen, 10 minutes later my desktop appeared and has been working as normal....
Also first time playing the game I had massive lag and was surprised I didn't crash out of the game. I was heading south towards Whiterun, around Whitewatch Tower. Once I got off my horse I had no more lag issues.
PSN id - kickyoass1
PaD id - 346,240,298
Marvel FF - Lil bill12
Half the day later and I've now re-installed, updated, and moved my mods to Mod Organizer. MO is pretty great so far, though I'm confused about how it handles load order. With NMM, the lower you place something the higher the priority. That seems different with MO?
Anyway, I'm going to update the mod list in the OP now with some new recommendations. This mod in particular is amazing: Enhanced Camera
It's a small but potent change. You can see your body when you look down! And unlike other similar mods it doesn't break everything!
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
Half the day later and I've now re-installed, updated, and moved my mods to Mod Organizer. MO is pretty great so far, though it doesn't appear to work with LOOT? It does have a feature similar to LOOT, at least. I'm going to update the mod list in the OP now with some new recommendations.
You need to run LOOT (as well as any reproccers and any other external programs that need to access your mods' files) from inside MO. Over in the dropdown menu next to the run button, click <Edit...>, put in LOOT as a title, point it towards the LOOT executable, and click add. Then, any time you want to run LOOT, select it from the dropdown and click run. That way, MO will know to go ahead and set up its file structure before LOOT loads, and it'll sort everything as needed. I haven't done this with the final release of LOOT, but I did it with the beta (when it was BOSS v3) and it worked fine.
I intended on writing up a big post of mod recommendations and then never did it. I'll try to get around to it now that we have a new thread.
I put a bunch of new mods in the OP and removed some old recommendations. I'll happily take more, though! This one might be another good highlight: Immersive Patrols
Everything seems to be running well so far in my game, too. Phew. I was expecting something to break but Mod Organizer makes everything a lot easier.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Install/activation order shouldn't matter for the most part because NMM keeps track of overwriting. Load order is just the order Skyrim loads the .esps and has nothing to do with install/activation order.
It will matter if you're using 2 things that mod the same thing, and you got one specifically to use for that thing. Like if a mod changed weather and water and you wanted it for the weather but a custom water mod, you'd have to install the water mod second and let it overwrite the first mod. Otherwise, it's going to use what was installed last. It's pretty rare that it happens, and NMM will warn you if it found something to overwrite (and you can choose to have it not overwrite a particular mod), but I prefer to install it so it overwrites correctly just to avoid any weirdness.
In your example you could install the water-only mod first and then when you install the weather+water mod tell it not to overwrite. You might like to do it the other way around which is fine (and I agree it is more intuitive), but my point was it doesn't matter which order you activate in, because you can choose to overwrite/not-overwrite as necessary.
Half the day later and I've now re-installed, updated, and moved my mods to Mod Organizer. MO is pretty great so far, though I'm confused about how it handles load order. With NMM, the lower you place something the higher the priority. That seems different with MO?
Anyway, I'm going to update the mod list in the OP now with some new recommendations. This mod in particular is amazing: Enhanced Camera
It's a small but potent change. You can see your body when you look down! And unlike other similar mods it doesn't break everything!
In Mod Organizer, the priority just tells you what mod files will overwrite others if there is a conflict, with the higher number mod winning. It does not in any way indicate the actual load order (which as mentioned is sorted by LOOT). Basically, if a mod description says, "Make sure you install mod X after mod Y", then you want to make sure mod X has a higher priority in MO. The cool thing is that it doesn't actually matter which mod you install first with MO, since you can edit the priorities after you've gotten everything installed.
Enhanced Camera looks interesting, and I see possibilities for it being cool, but it's pretty much inferior to Immersive First Person in every way, at least for right now... including the fact that you can actually enable '1st person with body' in IFP (as opposed to the way it normally mounts the camera on your character's 3rd person body) if you want to. EC might have some better features if it continues developing, though... I'm keeping tabs on it.
Posts
Also rather than static concept art, it shows you a fully rendered object or piece of the world, which you can manipulate, which is also reflected in the gameplay and menus. It gives you a sense of reflection, almost like you're going over objects in your backpack.
It's this little touch that I've always appreciated
what
I don't understand? What about this do you need explained? Instead of what a lot of games do, which is show artwork and concept art, Skyrim shows a 3d object and let's you rotate it (manipulate)?
As in, I've played hundreds of hours and had no idea this was something you could do.
Most of the time, my loading screen doesn't last long enough for me to do much with the object anyhow, but sometimes when transferring from an interior to an exterior cell (especially the first time after loading up a save), I have some time to look at them.
Yeah.
I had no idea you could do that. Now I want to hurry home from work to try it out.
"Hey, sorry boss, I gotta go home and rotate an object in 3D space."
I like the lore ones better though.
Also, for some reason the object rotates faster if you use both control sticks on a gamepad.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Shogun Streams Vidya
Pixel-art Dynasty Warriors-style brawler where you wade through waves of Thalmor.
A Dungeon Keeper-style management game where you try to build a Nord tomb, place some puzzle walls, stock it with draugr, that sort of thing.
A Surgeon Simulator 2013-style game where you treat city guards' knee injuries.
Tetris clone where you have to stack potions, wheels of cheese, pilfered cutlery, and goat horns into a rucksack.
Man, I'm a law-abiding citizen. Loading screen tells me to sit back and wait, I sit back and wait.
Not, you know, click all over the place with my mouse or whatever.
I can maybe see a M/KB exclusive user never stumbling on it, because I'm thinking about it and I guess I don't click or type idly while loading. But stick a game pad in my hands and I'm gonna practice hadoukens all day, in which case you'd see this feature immediately.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I never knew this, either.
This is like discovering Shepard had her own bathroom in ME2 all over again.
Yeah, when I get a loading screen, I typically take my hand off the controls. My loading screens don't last very long to begin with, so I don't really have time to get bored and fiddle. I will now, though.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
It's great for moving around though.
I used to love my controllers but now I can't handle not having eight hotkeys and precise first person movement control. I tried plugging in my 360 pad a few weeks ago and it was heartbreaking, I just couldn't play it like that. I felt like a snail. More comfortable but a snail to be sure.
It was doing it for small and large mods alike, no suck luck. I wonder if it's actually something on my end with UAC controls and Windows 8 and installation directories. I wound up just going with NMM, sorry mate :-/
That said, question for NMMers: I know load orders for .esp's is a thing, but what about install/activation order on NMM? Do I need to concern myself with that too (and should it mirror the .esp load order) ?
Yeah, I mean I don't use gamepad for shooters and stuff, but I've found with a bit of practice I can do Skyrim archery/magic fine with the gamepad. Only two hotkeys does mean more messing about in the favorites quick-menu though.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Hey, you've got nothing to apologize for! I'm sorry you had a crummy experience.
The Windows 8 thing is interesting, it didn't even occur to me. I guess MO does some interesting things with folder virtualization, and maybe Win 8 doesn't like that? No idea, I'm using Win 7.
The packs your install came with are Bethesda's high res texture packs, which at some point between last summer and now became a standard part of the Steam install. For which additional packs to add, I wouldn't go with something you have to install and *then* compress, but one like HD 2K Textures that straight-up has a "light" version available.
It will matter if you're using 2 things that mod the same thing, and you got one specifically to use for that thing. Like if a mod changed weather and water and you wanted it for the weather but a custom water mod, you'd have to install the water mod second and let it overwrite the first mod. Otherwise, it's going to use what was installed last. It's pretty rare that it happens, and NMM will warn you if it found something to overwrite (and you can choose to have it not overwrite a particular mod), but I prefer to install it so it overwrites correctly just to avoid any weirdness.
Yeah with longer load times on the 360, wher I first played this, I noticed this immediately! So crazy I had no idea people could miss it but on PC with quicker load times and a mouse it makes sense
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
perfect
Grand Soul Gem(Petty Soul) is painful
If you don't like that, you can just drop the Grand Soul Gem out of your inventory and it will empty it.
That works in vanilla.
Also first time playing the game I had massive lag and was surprised I didn't crash out of the game. I was heading south towards Whiterun, around Whitewatch Tower. Once I got off my horse I had no more lag issues.
PaD id - 346,240,298
Marvel FF - Lil bill12
Anyway, I'm going to update the mod list in the OP now with some new recommendations. This mod in particular is amazing: Enhanced Camera
It's a small but potent change. You can see your body when you look down! And unlike other similar mods it doesn't break everything!
I intended on writing up a big post of mod recommendations and then never did it. I'll try to get around to it now that we have a new thread.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Everything seems to be running well so far in my game, too. Phew. I was expecting something to break but Mod Organizer makes everything a lot easier.
In your example you could install the water-only mod first and then when you install the weather+water mod tell it not to overwrite. You might like to do it the other way around which is fine (and I agree it is more intuitive), but my point was it doesn't matter which order you activate in, because you can choose to overwrite/not-overwrite as necessary.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
In Mod Organizer, the priority just tells you what mod files will overwrite others if there is a conflict, with the higher number mod winning. It does not in any way indicate the actual load order (which as mentioned is sorted by LOOT). Basically, if a mod description says, "Make sure you install mod X after mod Y", then you want to make sure mod X has a higher priority in MO. The cool thing is that it doesn't actually matter which mod you install first with MO, since you can edit the priorities after you've gotten everything installed.
Enhanced Camera looks interesting, and I see possibilities for it being cool, but it's pretty much inferior to Immersive First Person in every way, at least for right now... including the fact that you can actually enable '1st person with body' in IFP (as opposed to the way it normally mounts the camera on your character's 3rd person body) if you want to. EC might have some better features if it continues developing, though... I'm keeping tabs on it.