Favourite computer games of all time.

Couple more immersive mods I recommend- mainly weather related in this instance.

Realistic Nights- doesnt just make things blacker but does it properly- so moons, snow ect all add to providing more light, clouds ect reduce it and NPC are affected too- making doing certain things at night when you dont want to be easily caught an advantage.
Also seriously makes you think twice about travelling at night.

And to accompany this Expanded Snow Systems, which has a lot more variety in the sort of snowy weather you can get and Supreme Storms which adds some truly horrible weather with white outs, blizzard conditions, torrential rain ect!

Supreme and Volumetric fog is another excellent additions. And Splash of Rain and Lightning During Thunderstorms and Immersive Skyrim Thunder V6 to add those extra touches.

All are available in Climates of Tamriel friendly version (and CoT is hugely recommended as there is no other single weather and lighting mod that comes close) and by the time you are finished you should have a pretty realistic and comprehensive weather set up with loads of variation in days and nights.

(Thats if you can get them to download- I seem to be having some problems connecting to the servers using the mod manager on Nexus    )

Supreme Storms-

I play on a 1080p monitor with the 2k and some 4k mods. I'd like to eventually get a higher resolution to play on but I fear doing so when coupled with all the mods I play with will send the vram usage beyond 4gb into unplayable. Especially since most vanilla games run closer to 3gb or 4gb vram usage anyway on higher resolutions. I bet with all the mods I use it'd probably use like 5gb or something on a higher resolution.

I saw that mod - vivid landscapes - on the nexus for a little while and was wondering, is it different from Skyrim HD 2k textures with Project Parallax remastered?
Those weather mods sound really cool though. I use COT, Volumetric Fog, splash of rain, Realistic needs, Wet and Cold and Frostfall (fast travel disabled) to get that survivalist feel that New Vegas' hardcore mode had. Though a little tougher here now obviously   .

I don't have Realistic Nights or Expanded Snow Systems though. I should fix that; they sound cool.

Supreme Storms looks nice also. Really makes storms that much more hard to be in. Thanks Petty.

I don't even use the download with manager option anymore. I just tell it manual download and then add the file to the mod manager myself after it's done.

Though the nexus is pretty bad with how often it goes down for maintenance.

"is it different from Skyrim HD 2k textures with Project Parallax remastered"- RA

Yes its a different set of textures- they seem to be popular but Ive never used them so I cant say for certain (I use the Amidian series of retextures as I've always liked them).

Right now I have the following mods running that change immersion- weather- wildlife ect

Environment, Wildlife and Weather-

1. Climates of Tamriel (plus fog/rain patch)

2. Ambient seagulls.

3. Audio Overhaul for Skyrim

4. Better Dynamic Snow

5. Birds and Flocks

6. Birds of Skyrim

7. Deadly Dragons

8. Dogs of Skyrim

9. Dynamic Things

10. Enchanced Distant Terrain

11. Enchanced lights and fx

12. Expanded Snow Systems

13. Footprints

14. Frostfall

15. Harvest Overhaul

16. Hunterborn

17. Ingredients of Tamriel

18. Lanterns of Skyrim- All in One

19. Light up the Night- People have torches

20. Lightning during thunderstorms

21. Monster Mod

22. Immersive Creatures

23. Quality snowflakes

24. Rainbows

25. Realistic Mushrooms

26. Realistic Needs and diseases

27. Realistic Nights

28. Realistic Sun for CoT

29. Shooting stars

30. Skybirds- airborne, perching birds

31. Skyrim Flora Overhaul

32. Skyrim Monster Mod additions

33. Splash of rain

34. Skytest- realistic animals and predators

35. Supreme and volumetric fog

36. Supreme Storms

37. Unique grasses and groundcover

38. Visible windows

39. W.A.T.E.R.

40. Wet and Cold

41. Immersive Thunder

42. Static mesh improvement

43. Pets of Skyrim


I've recently been trying to emphasis stuff that improves the game world and immersion and dumping a lot of the texture packs as they're the real biggie for the memory issue.

Hey Petty do you know what dirty edits are, in the BOSS log?

I recently had tons of them on the update and DLC's and had to clean them. It's all good now and my game runs fine, but BOSS is showing a few other dirty edits from some other mods I have installed. In order to clean an edit I have to load the mod that has the dirty edit and anything that the mod may rely on, then just clean the mod with the dirty edit. So for Skyrim update, I had to load Skyrim and the update. For Dawnguard, I had to load Skyrim, the update and Dawnguard, then clean just Dawnguard.

Basically there are a few dirty edits with the wearable lanterns, cloak, unique bows and climates of Tamriel mods. Do you know if those mods rely on anything else? Or you think I could just load those mods to be cleaned by themselves?

There are only a couple of dirty edits with them and its not effecting performance but it's something I'd to take care of regardless.

Id be careful cleaning dirty edits just because BOSS says so- sometimes they are deliberate and necessary and are not really 'dirty' at all- and it doesn't always say when this is the case and when not.
The official dlc in BOSS shows up more dirty edits than any other mods I know of.

Yeah I haven't cleaned any of the mods I've installed. The official DLCs and update were riddled with dirty edits though - hundreds. I kept crashing to desktop after the Bethesda logo appeared until I cleaned them. Now I just have a few dirty edits on some mods; I'm still averaging like 45fps outdoors and I don't crash too often (that may be because I'm stubborn and won't uninstall my ENB or high resolution texture packs) so I'm fine with it.   

Sadly CTD's are a fact of life with Skyrim- even in vanilla it still happens- as does screen freezes or events not triggering breaking the quest lines.
G;ad it owrked fopr you in stopping your crash at the logo- as that sort of crash s more commonly either a load order issue or a mod calling on something thats not actually installed (such as using a patch for a mod you dont have running)

The Skyrim Performance Monitor can sometimes be a handy tool for diagnosing any problem.

I need to get that.

ENB Boost is good for solving ctd issues- you dont need to use the enb presets (switch them off in the ini for the ENB by setting the graphics from True to False).

I dont use an ENB as they always seem to reduce my framerate to stuttering.
Having said that you can mimic one pretty well with other mods.
Heres a few shots of my current set up (no post work just straight screen grabs via fraps), running at only 1366 x 768 resolution, but using depth of field (dynavision) better weather (climates of Tamriel) and better lightning (ELFX) alongside some ini tweaks, runs very well now-

Very nice violin cover of the Skyrim theme-

Couple of upcoming games that sound promising. Alien: Isolation and No Man's Sky.

For Smash Bros fans.

I guess he has a crush or something.  

This looks really, really interesting. I think I'm going to wait until SKSE gets it out of alpha until I use it, but the prospect of a far more stable Skyrim is great. Especially since I was planning on eventually getting a higher resolution to play along with a second card soon. It doesn't seem like memory will be an issue after this.

Very handy- I shall have to take a look at that and see how it works out.

Installed and running!

Seems to work well so far.
I tested it in Whiterun as I have it heavily moddied- lots of new stalls, plants, livestock and lots of NPC's, travellers and adventures ect plus the vanilla inhabitants- probably 30-40 folk wandering Whiterun at any given time and I have often had infinite loading leaving buildings or freezes there- this time, not a problem!   







Nothing to do with my memory patch but made me smile when I was screengrabbing- I think this chicken is a drugs mule about to be busted!-

Petty - those games that I mentioned a few posts ago (that everyone ignored me on    ).... Wondered if the second one would be something that would interest you.

Also, the A.I. engine that they are building for the Alien in Isolation sounds interesting.

Sorry Lance- I meant to have a nosey at them and forgot!   (Well the alien one anyway- I was already keeping half an eye on No Mans Land)

I really like the concept of Alien in Isolation- a single deadly alien, that sounds good to me- tension and scares- that's what an alien game should be about, not Aliens as cannon fodder like CoD    



Ive been keeping an eye on No Man Sky- got potential, but I think when it comes to procedurally generated universes I will be going for Elite: Dangerous.  

Shadows of Mordor- oh dear!    

Looks like a paste and copy of assassins creed with PJ based graphics and someone taking a massive dump on Tolkien lore   

To think we lost MERP in Skyrim for this nonsense   

The A.I. of the alien sounds most interesting. Apparently the concept was sold to Sega based on a person playing the alien initially... they then had to try and recreate that with an A.I. model. The devs said that they often have to go in to the code and work out why the Alien did what it did... makes it sound very unpredictable from a players point of view, just like playing a multiplayer game.

Also, it sounds like if you ever get the full attention of the alien, you run. If you don't escape then you die!

That No Man's Sky sounds like it could be interesting too. A whole open universe to explore (and do missions or something if you like) with other players also exploring that you could possibly meet or never come close to ever seeing.

AI is always a bugger- no matter how clever they make it I have yet to see an AI that doesnt occasionally walk into a wall or slide along an object until if finds where its supposed ot be or some other thing- heres hoping they really have found a better way to do it.

I like the idea of No Mans Sky- but I think Elite Dangerous will do it all so much better, it has the pedigree, a long serving team of dedicated programmers, no deadline so they can release it as they want it and the last one was so good and so unique (even still) that Im still playing it 20 years on.  (And Braben, the Head Programmer and company owner pretty much invented procedural computing in games (and the first ever sandbox game) for this sort of thing with the original Elite way back on the BBC Micro and innovations in the Elite series can still be seen in things like the radio and news reports in GTA games among other things)

So far Elite is in the seocnd phase of Alpha (testing multiplayer combat) but like its predecessors it will have a full procedural universe, planets to go down to, space stations to dock with, trading, mining, piracy, military work all the stuff you could wish for and it looks good to boot!

I imagine that, after the mess of a failure that was Colonial Marines, Isolation will either be canned (which you would bet against) or come out when it is ready.

Elite Dangerous sounds interesting as does the other. Not sure if they are games I would have time to properly explore though but might give one a go.

Good thing about Elite games is they last- 20 years for me on the last one so you can take your time to explore!

This is better a better vid for the multiplayer aspect- free for all mode (and this is all still Alpha stuff) in the finished game there are no modes, its all incorporated into the one seamless universe.