Goatroach

Lanterns of Skyrim - All In One is, in my opinion, a must-have mod for both visuals, immersion, and playability.

Yeah, it must be his slow-a** RAM. I have 12GBs DDR3 SATA RAM @1,600MHz, Intel i7-3770 (non-K) @3.4GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.9GHz, and a 1,024MB Nvidia GeForce 620 overclocked. I have about 230 items in my load order, and I'm pulling at 720p 30fps outdoors, 60fps indoors. Try going to your Nvidia Control Panel (for me, right click on the desktop and just select it) and turn off ambient occlusion. AO looks bad and cuts your frame rate by about half. If you can, get your money back or try to offer a trade-in for your slow RAM, and get RAM with a speed of at least 1,600MHz.

So you get mad, call us incompetent, and show us a picture of your character with mesh and texture mods that are irrelevant to this topic. Great job. The only thing I even remotely like about ENB is the DOF, and even that doesn't work correctly most of the time. Oh, and transparent swords next to walls. Don't forget that. Supposedly CoT is among other things an ENB, but when combined with RLO, you get a very natural slightly desaturated picture with shadows that aren't pitch black out doors during the day. Too many people think if the sun isn't shining directly on a surface, it should be pitch black. This is not how sunlight works. Sunlight is a diffuse light, and refracts in the atmosphere as well as reflecting off of many objects until the light particles lose momentum. This means sunlight can light surfaces in a very even manner that are not facing the initial light source. This is also true with fire and light bulbs, but not to the same degree of candle power as the sun. In other words, a fire pit will illuminate a decent sized area, but the refraction and reflection of the light dissipates far more quickly due to the emitted particles having less momentum from a combustion source rather than the sun or nuke (fusion and fission sources). To me, "realistic" is what it would look like if I was actually standing there, NOT through a camera.

I took this picture today to illustrate the difference between reality and what shut-in gamers call "realistic." http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/7651/ei4.pngSo many ENBs say "Realistic" yet they look like Gears of War's fake looking contrast and fake shadows (ambient occlusion). Sure, the second picture looks neat, but not realistic in any sense of the word.

You need shadows, just not fake SSAO/HBAO/HDAO shadows. Without actual shadows, the lighting wouldn't matter because everything would be lit. Turning off AO has also sped-up my load times from about 30 seconds to less than 5-10 seconds. Plus, I run a lot of scripts (about 20 mods running that implement their own scripts plus the vanilla scripts), and it used to be when I performed an action that initiates a script, ie renting a room at an inn, I'd have to wait up to 15 seconds before the gold would be removed, and the dialogue would continue. With AO turned off, my scripts run with less than 1 second of lag vs. the 10-15 seconds of lag. I'm no programmer, so I have no idea why AO was affecting script run times. I would have thought scripts would be run by my i7 quad core processor, not my GPU. Who knew?

I recently stumbled upon purely by chance the solution to getting rid of those ugly, fake looking shadows. Go to your graphics card's control panel, and simply turn off ambient occlusion (SSAO). Done. Now your shadows look more natural, and you'll get a huge FPS boost (mine was a 15 FPS gain). Here's a reference image so you can see the difference: Waaaaaay better looking, and runs smoother. Yay! Note the weird shadow the bow causes with AO on (you've all wondered about that):

Something I'd like to point-out: They aren't ghouls/zombies, just like how when a car crash victim can be "brought back" from the dead if treated quickly enough. The facility uses the transport technology used by Big Mt. to collect and store the victim's matter in a digital buffer, compare it to previous scan data taken before training started, fill in missing matter, then reconstructs the victim in a safe holding area. I was watching Star Trek at the time, which is why I included a reference to the Prime Directive as a perk called 'Primarily Directed.'

Concept: Pre-war weapons testing and Elite Counter Communism Force training facility capable of reconstructing the dead - both Chinese and ECCF personnel - to create the most elite soldiers known to man: warriors who learn from their own deaths. Result: When the nukes were intercepted by Mr. House, they created - among other side effects - an EMF wave variation that trapped the mainframe CPU in an auto-resurrection and ammo replication mode during a training exercise. Now they have been fighting for over 200 years, both now numb to physical pain and filled only with hatred for the other side. Player Intervention: As the player enters the vicinity of the secret entrance to the ECCF facility, an anomaly is detected by the player's radio. A service hatch is found and the player finds themselves in a narrow passage that drops the player in an observation room over-looking a fierce battle. The battle is short, as both sides have become excellent in the art of war. A voice crackles over an intercom on the wall next to the observation window; the ECCF commander! He has a honed situational awareness that would put a telepath to shame. The last time he died was of old age, due to his knack for surviving combat. He hasn't been killed in over 100 years by enemy fire! He begs the player to flip the manual shutdown to the CPU. Upon shutdown, his grateful voice crackles over the intercom, and he wants to meet his savior face-to-face. He says he doesn't recognize the player, and requests a sit-rep on what year it is, the status of the war, and who is the player. After answering his questions, the player gains the perk "Tidings of Killjoy." Tidings of Killjoy description: "You just can't get away from the delivery business; you have learned how to deliver bad news without being shot for doing so." +10 to Speech, +1 to Charisma The player finds out the old soldier is Commander "Goatroach" Goatmen, the leader of the ECCF. He tells the player some war stories of how he got his nickname. The player, assuming no part of the conversation was skipped, then receives the perk "Pull Up A Chair." Pull Up A Chair description: "After listening to an old man's war stories, you have learned some tricks for avoiding death." +5 to Guns, Energy Weapons, Unarmed, Melee Weapons, and Survival. He then tells you that the facility can turn scrap metal into any kind of bullets, and scrap electronics into any power cell - including fission batteries. However, the CPU must be activated for these functions to work. Karma Paths: Good Karma: The player destroys the CPU to ensure the fallen may finally rest in peace once and for all. The player looses the ammo factory in the process after leaving the facility and hearing an underground explosion that seals both the main entrance and service tunnel, but gains a companion impervious to death - even in hardcore mode - with 200 years of marksmanship practice. He is scripted for 99% accuracy with guns, 90% accuracy with energy weapons, but at the cost of -50% fire rate. He also grants the companion perk "Team Captain." Team Captain description: "When Goatroach is watching your six, all party members gain +5 DT and enemies suffer -10% chance to score a critical." Neutral Karma: The player says the ECCF and the Chinese prisoners need to settle their differences on their own, then the player leaves the facility. Once outside, a massive underground explosion is heard, and both the main entrance and service tunnel become sealed. The player then receives the powerful perk "Primarily Directed." Primarily Directed description: "You adhere to a strict policy of non-interference whenever possible." +20 to Speech, and a 50% chance of avoiding damage as long as you maintain neutral Karma. Bad Karma: The player closes and locks the door trapping Goatroach in the training room, which re-activates the CPU. The CPU control panel explodes, locking the training room door forever and the simulation resumes along with ammo factory functionality. Goatroach curses the player's existence, and the battle continues to serve as the player's own personal colosseum and ammo factory. The player may come and go as they please, and is granted the perk "War. War Never Changes." War. War Never Changes. description: "You thrive on warfare, and you make sure wherever you go, war follows." +5% damage to all of your attacks, +5% chance to hit in VATS, +5% critical chance, and 1% chance per 100 Bad Karma enemies will flee from combat. If anyone can help me make this mod, please send me a message, or post a reply here. If you know anyone who would be interested in helping, please let me know that as well.