chaospearl

Just wanted to second this. I know people are probably laughing because there are just so damn many insects in Starfield, but it's just a large scale mesh and texture replacement. I personally do not care about the animations looking weird, I can't speak for the OP. I'd be happy to help fund this, if someone wanted to take us up on it. I'd put in a significant amount to be able to enjoy this game again, enough to make it worth someone's while. I was absolutely loving this game until I realized how many creatures are huge insects of a type that trigger me pretty badly. I have no problem with the flying bats, the floating jellyfish, the small beetles, or the dinosaurs. I just can't handle the giant beetles, the cricket-types, and the spider-types. I've started toggling on god mode and using a power boostpack to just fly over the land while scanning, and it's not all that fun.

I think he means "theoretical" as in a list of mods that would work well together, as opposed to an actual literal package of mods that could be downloaded, 'cause uploading mod compilations is a no-no.

Make sure you check out the permissions on the mods whose components you borrowed. Some modders don't require permission, only credit. I get requests at least once a week to use my apple trees in some new mod or other, but in fact the meshes are from a free modding resource so permission isn't mine to give. It's clearly stated in my mod's description and permissions section, but for some reason nobody seems to read that before automatically asking me. I guess it's a positive thing that we're all so automatically accustomed to asking for permission! If the mod author does require permission (and honestly, most do, but it's still worth checking to be sure) then you'll have to either wait for an answer, or find another way. Either remove their meshes entirely or find a substitute mesh. Take a look through the modder's resources and see if there's something similar available. I'm constantly amazed at what I find in the free-to-use files that nobody is taking advantage of. If all else fails, you might try begging in the Mod Requests forum for somebody to create a mesh for you. If it's something small and simple you might just find a kind modeler willing to help. A while back I needed a very small, very simple mesh and texture for an upcoming mod, and I spent many hours trying on my own and searching and creating crap after crap after crap before it finally occured to me to just ask for help. I only needed a model of a single ingredient to go along with the harvestable fiddleheads I'd created, and to my amazement, someone took the request and had it done for me in a few hours. I'd rather not post the name here because I don't want my personal hero to be inundated by requests for meshes, but it really made my day.

There is a mod out there that makes reading and smithing take time, but unfortunately it's a random amount of time that bears utterly no relation to how long you actually spent on the activity. You open the book or the smithing\cooking menu, close it, and a roll-the-dice random amount of time between 2 and 4 hours passes. Even if you only opened the book for .2 seconds real-time to check something. That was much more unrealistic and immersion-breaking than having no time pass at all, so I uninstalled it pretty quickly. I'd love a similar mod that actually made sense.

Just so you know, the defaultDisableHavokOnLoad script only works when the cell is first loaded. So if you start a new game, it works. If you've never been to the area in question, or haven't been there recently, it works. If you save inside the cell you're using the scripted objects in, and load your game from there? It won't work. The cell has to load itself for the script to fire, and it won't load if it's already loaded, i.e. if you saved in that cell or were just in there recently and haven't traveled very far. I mention this because it makes testing a bit of an aggravation. Many of us tend to test using a save that's inside or nearby the cell we want to test out, for obvious reasons, but if you're testing objects with a script that involves OnLoad, you have to be sure the cell unloads and loads again before you'll see the script take effect. It doesn't matter if it's a clean save that's never seen your mod before, it only matters if the cell has reloaded. Otherwise you waste a lot of time thinking your script isn't working when in fact there's nothing wrong with it. The best way to make sure is to go inside somewhere that isn't your test home, open the console and type PCB. It's the command to "purge cell buffer" and it will unload your test cell so that the next time you go in there, the cell is forced to reload and the script will fire. You should also keep this in mind if you're making updates to an already-released mod. If someone downloads your house mod, then you update it and add more objects that use the OnLoad script, and the same person downloads the latest version, make sure they're aware that they'll need to force that cell to unload and reload otherwise the new stuff will be all over the floor again.

I don't think he wants just a list of some cool mods that may or may not be what he's looking for. There are many such lists out there and none are particularly helpful as far as telling you which works with what and how to wrestle them all together, assuming you'd want them all, which you wouldn't because none of the lists are specific to one goal. What he wants (apologies if you're a she) is for someone to put together an exact list of specific mods, in the correct installation and load order, all of which guaranteed work perfectly together, and are suited to his particular playstyle. Thus bypassing the weeks and perhaps months it takes most people to accumulate our motley collections and dropkick them into submission.

1. Why do you mod? Simple enough. I mod in order to make the game more fun to play, more suited to my personal style of gaming, to change things I don't like and add things I do. 2. Why are mods important to gaming? Because it's impossible for any one gaming company to produce a product that everybody will love. You can't please all of the people all of the time, etc. No matter which choices you make as a game developer, somebody will always think you should have done it a different way. Modding allows people to adapt the game to themselves. Most of the people who hang around the modding community will tell you that you couldn't pay them to play on console, without mods. We simply don't enjoy the game unless we can make it over in our own image. 3. What is the best kind of mod and why? Eh, that's far too subjective a question to have a real answer. The best kind of mod is the one that you can't play without, the one that adds something essential or fixes something intolerable. And that's going to be different for every gamer. 4. How would you describe your relationship with the original game, or the software company? (i.e. are you in cooperation with the design, fixing problems, varying choices, etc.) Where do you see yourself in the process of game-making? I like the general design of Bethesda games. I've always liked open-world RPGs. If I didn't enjoy the game to begin with I wouldn't put so much time into perfecting it and enhacing the experience. There's only so much you can do to change a game... unless you're an entire team of skilled developers with a few years to produce a massive overhaul, that is, in which case why aren't you using those resources to create your personal perfect game from the ground up? You can make a good game great, but you can't make a bad game good -- or rather, even if you can, why are you wasting time on a bad game to begin with? 5. What are the rules of what is appropriate modification? How far is too far? How important is it to be authentic the world of the game? There aren't any rules. If you want to turn your game into Sexrim, why shouldn't you? Authentic? There's a Super Mario Bros mod for Oblivion that I happen to enjoy, and I've heard one is in the works for Skyrim. The beauty of modding is that you can do whatever you choose to, without restriction. Here's some costumes, some actors, a sound stage, and unlimited access to sets and props. You're the director. What kind of movie will you make? Modders sometimes have the reputation that we're all directing pornos, and apparently that rep is well-deserved, but it doesn't apply to everyone. In this forum alone there are people working on action films, adventures, epic fellowship quests. Histories. You've got a few people making anime cartoons. I myself tend to work on landscaping mods which I suppose could be described as nature documentaries. And, of course, the pornos.

How about a shield that makes you harder to see when you're behind it?

Here you go. You can't download the file directly from that link but if you read the description (which you should) it has the Google link to the actual program, which is where you should get it from. The latest BOSS will work for various different games, the GUI lets you specify which one you're working with.

Unfortunately, I would say that a good percentage of the retex mods out there are simply somebody having taken the textures and applied a Sharpen filter. There are a lot of true texture artists out there, but there are MORE people who think that sharpening the image makes it HD quality. That's where a lot of the super-grainy textures come from. They're artifacts from having taken a normal image and then sharpened and zoomed in, and they look sharp and detailed but they also look very much like a photograph that's been enlarged too far.

Yeah, there are times when I'd really, really love to have RefSkope back. :(

Wow, I think that's the first time I've seen someone try to hide their pirating. Most of them just sing right out about having downloaded it because they couldn't be bothered to read the forum rules and have no clue.

I hadn't bought Hearthfire yet until just last night, but now I need to make my mod compatible with its planting mechanics, and it would probably help if I knew how planting works. I've never even seen screens, I have NO idea what the process is other than it involves fertile soil. Is there a quick cheat or console command to get myself a plot of land so I can just plant a few herbs and see how it works, look at the menus and such? I really don't want to go through the process of waiting for a courier, figuring out which quests I need to do so the Jarl will sell to me, etc. I'll need a clean save for testing so I'd have to start a new guy and do everything from scratch and that's time I could be spending actually working on the mod.