thestigma

Of course it is possible - but you face all the same (potential) issues that people run into when they port oldrim mods to SSE. Just how much work it is to port something depends on the content of the mod. There aren't that many big changes in oldrim and SSE, but most mods will run into at least one of those and they need to get fixed otherwise you end up with crashes or other unintended behavior. I've seen a few cases of mods working in both with no modifiction, but I wouldn't rely on that even with the simplest of mods (even simple file-replacers like texture mods can be affected by the fact that SSE now uses some different formats for certain filetypes). The best option is always to get the mod-author to port it officially whenever possible. They will have a far easier time of it, knowing the inns and outs of what they created. -Stigma

You can't have a skyUI with Mod Configuration Menu, searching function and such - because those things rely on SKSE to work. That said, you should be able to port everything else over, and basically get most if not all the layout changes and regular functionality - so a SkyUI "lite" should be fine. I think Ive heard reports of people getting version 2.2 to work (the last version not requring SKSE to work). -Stigma

THIS. I'd be all about this shiz, this sounds like something that could help when I will inevitably have to compromise and "seal in" the cell. Lots of ways to do this - from opaque fake windows that emit light (placed high up as to just hint of a connnection to the outside without being able to really study them in detail), to actual transparent windows showing off a set-piece that imitates a part of the outside but it cleverly bounded in a way that you cant see from the inside. For example, if you have a window out to a small garden backed against a cliff (or maybe just a tall hedge or fence) then you could render the part of the garden you can see from the inside by just having a copy of it there. A window to the outside bounded by another wall of the house could work great as well. If you had an enclosed outside atrium you could even put a real "outside" area like a small garden as part of the house - one that you can actually walk into. That sort of thing tends to make you forget that the house is an isolated cell if done well. This is by far the most intricate and performance expensive way to do it - but if done well (and not too obviously) then it can create perfect mimicry. The trick is to have a way to limit the view-distance outside without it being obvious that this is what you are doing. There are some very good housemods that do all these sorts of tricks. I'd learn from the masters by browsing through the best ones and doing similar things with your own twist. -Stigma

Oh yes, they do require some planning. I don't think I have seen much bugginess with them (ie. not rendering stuff it SHOULD be rendering) but you can easily get unexpected side-effects unless you carefully place them and extensively test them. otherwise you can get stuff disappearing when it should't - because the player is viewing something at an angle that you didn't think about. As far as I understand occlusion planes aren't completely "free lunch" in terms of performance either. They do in themselves add another check - so adding too many of them, or adding them in places where they can at best do very little can end up being just as bad as not using them in the first place - or even perform worse. That's why if you plan build something from scratch it is wise to incorporate them into the design idea from the start rather than trying to optimize with them later in a layout that isn't all that well suited for it. Some smartly placed short corridors with corners for example can let you occlude "everything else" from the room you are in in a best case scenario - while if you just have a doorway connecting the two directly you will have a much harder tme getting nearly the same efficiency. -Stigma

:D

So what? Do I only benefit from 4k textures when playing in 4k resolution?!? Actually, yes... or something like that. It's not quite THAT simple (it depends on the size of the object and also some textures wrap or repeat ect.) but generally you will struggle to make use of texture resolutions that are larger than that of your screen, and even that is arguably overkill. Imagine a 4k wall texture. If you walk so close to it that that single wall texture fills the entire screen then yes - you will need a 4k monitor to fully see all the details. If you smash your face into it and end up looking only at a quarter - you are still maxing out a full HD display's worth of pixels. Obviously this is a bit of a waste... Now Imagine a 4k book texture (and yes, I've seen loads of 4k textures for itmes of such size) and imagine just how close you need to get to it in order to fill your entire screen whit the book, much less a quarter of the book. That is well and truly pointless. So in short - people tend to not think through how much texture quality they really need. Size and how much you are likely to study it up close has a lot to do with what is the correct choice. 2k is generally a great allrounder for a modern videocard. Use 4k sparingly for objects that are very large primarily, and maybe splurge a few 4k ones on your favority vanity outfit for yourself or follower. You can't run 4k for everything in the game anyway, so use your VMEM smart instead. Just don't install 4k butterfly wing textures because "ermagerd 4k is bettar!" EDIT: If you have lots of VRAM to play with - 4k/2k mixes are often a great compromise. The author then makes intelligent choices for you about what really benefits from the 4k textures and what doesn't and presents that as a ready-to-use package. Sometimes it's due tothe objects size, or sometimes the normal maps are not 4k but the textures are because the nature of the item is not super sensitive to the normal-details. If you have this option (or similarly 2k-1k mixes for systems with less VRAM) this is usually the best option. -Stigma

Enderall is a standalone convertion - not an addon to Skyrim - so you can't play Skyrim normally to level 20 and then go travel to Enderall. You need to start a new character in Enderall and basically Enderall is it's own game - a socalled total conversion mod. I don't know all the details about it's installation, but it says there right on the page that during installation it will backup your normal Skyrim setup so that when you want you can return it back to normal after you are done. There is also a video there right on the page detailing everything...so just go watch the video? -Stigma

Never used OSEX, so I don't know the specifics, but this is almost certainly a case of a missing prerequisite. The error literally means that the program is trying to run a function that hasn't been created yet (so it expected something to do that by the time tried running it) Your best shot is to double-check installation instructions. Most likely you either forgot to install a prerequisite - or installed the prerequisite wrong. -Stigma

Some are compatible with no change, but many/most will require some minor changes to work. There are a couple of new formats being used and such. Finally, many of hte advanced mods with scripting will not be compatible until SKSE comes out for special edition, as they need it to work - and that will take some months probably. -Stigma

Ok so if I understand correctly it is the filepackage "NLA V.2.0" we are talking about? This package does not have an automatic installer, so I don't think NMM can handle it. This is a bit of an exception in any case - this is an ENB preset and not technically a mod. It's file are supposed to go in your primary Skyrim folder - not in Skyrim/data/ where all normal mods go. ENB is a effect-wrapper for the game rather than a mod in the traditional sense - it is one of the few types of "mods" (not really a mod) that you have to handle differently from everything else. ENB presets should be installed manually, and that's probably why it hasn't been packaged as an automatic installer. If NMM is trying to install this then I can only assume that it is getting confused and trying to install the only automatic installer it can find on that page - which is just an extra optional collection of bark textures (marked with version 1.0 rather than 2.0, which could be why it later complains about version being wrong). Is this making sense based on what you expeience? If you need some advice on how to install an ENB properly just let me know. It's not complicated - but read the instructions for it first. (you should do this for anything you install really) Be aware that both these you are linked are ENB presets. Unlike mods you can't run 2 ENBs at the same time, so be aware of that. From skimming this I see that NLA has a plugin-file (a mod) that is used alongside the ENB, and that plugin can apparently be used with other ENB presets. So essentially you will have to combine the ENB preset of natural realism with only the plugin for NLA. Some manual installation and moving of files will be inevitable here given how this is packaged - it is probably explained in detail on the natural realism page. I don't know how much experience you have in this and if I am confusing you terribly now with these terms. It's not complicated once you understand the basics of how this fits together. If you can't make heads or tails of it I will read the descriptions a bit more thoroughly and give you a step-by-step of what files to move where. -Stigma

Don't you just identify them by their reference ID like with just about every "thing" in Skyrim? open console and click on virtually anything - including NPCs. This should give you their ID -which is a unique identifier you can look up if you want to edit something, or find their proper names or whatever. -Stigma

I don't have the skills to help you, but you need to make some new meshes and textures essentially. If I were you - I would probably just approach one of the authors of one of the existing popular hair mods and request them to add your style. If it's good then it seems like a win-win, assuming you aren't super-protective over having sole control over your assets distribution. They have the know-how and you have the assets - which should smooth out the process considerably. Otherwise they might just be able to tell you how to do it yourself if you are lucky. Any chance we can get a sneak peek at what you are working on? :D -Stigma

"Take notes" seems like the best readymade mod. it let's you keep an in-game diary. if you just roleplay your character finding his own diary (which you have already put a few entries in of course) then that seems like a simple and neat option - not to mention that having the journal as a roleplaying tool seems like it would be right up your alley anyway if you are that deep into the immersion. As for an actual letter that gets delivered to you - I haven't seen a mod that does exactly that, but tons of mods do use the generic "courier comes to deliver a letter" function, so making such a mod is absolutely possible with light editing of existing assets and scripts. -Stigma

Isn't this as simple as replacing all blood textures with empty textures? I mean - your dude might still stab someone through the head on occasion but there won't be any blood (and THAT'S what really matters riiiight? =P ) -Stigma

it's a great idea - but I think a "proof of concept" is required. Can you manually stitch together you own name (and maybe a few more for good measure) and make it sound good? if so then it might be worth looking into - but yea, it does sound like a lot of work. I think there are some inherent reasons why this hasn't generally been done in games before, in that the results don't sound convincing. Otherwise it would be a goldmine as you could potentially sythezise NPC dialogue on demand from text-guides. If it wasn't too hard to do you'd think that you would have seen this used in AAA games before. Even the top-end voice synthesizers made by large companies that specialize in this field can struggle to produce natural pronunciations even with guides - so to do the same using stitched together parts with dozens of variations on the voiceset to boot - and make them all sound good... it sounds like a tall ask. But as I said - a proof of concept would go a long way to convincing people that it is possible, and worth doing. -Stigma

It's a texture pack - so inherently this is not too hard to do. If it wasn't for the fact that SSE uses a couple of new formats in some places it might even have worked out of the box. You need to look up the specifics of the new formats. Some of the formats will need to be converted though. This is simple work with the appropriate texture editor - you don't need any creationkit here at all I would guess. You could probably do it directly in photoshop or GIMP with the appropriate plugin (that's how I have edited simple textures so far at least), other more specialized tools are available and there should be a decent free tools for it. That's all you need to "get it working" in essence - someone to go through every file and save it to the new appropriate format. Simple work once you do basic research into seeing what formats you need - but a lot of it. In practice - in order for the job to be done WELL there also needs to be a lot of testing involved, because while most things will work ok just from having the right format there's probably going to be some errant bugs where specific textures need some tweaking because they show up weird in SSE for whatever reason. SSE is very similar to Oldrim, but it's not identical. I only know this from hearing it be a common problem from the authors that work with texturepacks like this. Again - usually not that hard to fix problems, but when there are hundreds if not thousands of files then it is a lot of work to not only convert buy quality-check everything. I hope that puts you on the right track at least :smile: -Stigma PS: always remember that you need permission from the author if you intend to release anything modified like this for public use. Otherwise all you work goes down the drain real fast.

It does sound like a fairly simple TESVedit hackjob to just remove that specific effect from the weapon. I'm still just a noob though, so no garantuees I can help. I am not that familiar with the Dawnbreaker - what is the spesific issue with using it as vampire? Do you actually take damage just from holding it - or is the issue that it's area-of-effect attacks now affect you too because you are a vampire and thus makes it impractical? I only see it having 2 effects - a basic fire-on-hit effect - and a unique "burning targets can explode on death but only applies to undead" style effect. Is what we are looking for one of those? The simplest possible mod is to just remove the offending enchantment as an edit. -Stigma

You have to be more specific. I don't see a file package under that specific name on the natural realism ENB page and there are too many links to optional addon mods for me to guess. Preferably link directly to the relevant modpage and use the exact name if you want me to look at it for you - but alll I really intend to check is the version numbers as I described above. -Stigma

There is nothing inherently different about making a house (or even a dungeon or something) that has no loading screen to enter it. Just don't make a separate cell for it - and other wise do everything normally. The primary reasons seperate cells are used as much as they are is: - They greatly help performance. When in a cell your computer only needs to render and calculate what's going on in there, and nothing else. That lets you add a lot of detail and still have good performance - even if that new area is already in a poorly performing area (like a busy city) - It helps greatly with compatibility issues. With a seperate cell the only change you need to make in the main world is a simple entryway of some sort (maybe including a new exterior of a building or something to make it believable), but in any case the impact is minimal. If there was no loading screen you would be "polluting" the vanilla worldspace a lot by making a lot of changes there - and thus making it far less likely to work well with other mods that edit something in the same area But - if you decided to make an open house in an area that already runs fast and is in a less busy area that is unlikely to be used by other mods anyway then both those disadvantages are at least lessened. You will still never get quite as good performance though. You may notice that large home mods even use several cells in the same house in order to make add extreme detail with minimal performance impact because each cell separately is well within what the game can handle. I would like to add that there does exist a smarter way to do this if you plan well - using occlusion planes. Occlusion planes are basically invisible "walls" that you place down to tell the game that "when you look at these things you can forget about rendering anything behind it for the time being". Using such techniques you could remove most of the performance penalties of the outside world while you were inside the house. Still ... this needs good planning and adds some restrictions. You can't expect to utilize a very open design with with long lines of visibility and windows everywhere - otherwise there will be few logical places to put occlusion planes that actually help out with performance anyway. This mod is one that adds occlusion planes to the vanilla game - and if you want to learn more you might pick up more info there: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32505/? All in all it just depends on a lot of factors and if you make an open area with no loadscreens you just need to keep the performance limitation in mind. If you aren't going overboard on object density or try to add to an already busy area then you might not even need fancy optimization tricks. Just expect there to be limits. Even huge projects like "open cities" do end up working - so it is possible - it just has it's costs. -Stigma

For flora and grass the Skyrim Flora Overhaul (SFO) has been the default go-to for a long time, but personally I would strongly recommend you use ENHANCED VANILLA TREES combined with VERDANT GRASS instead. Enhanced vanilla trees (primarily talking about the large lush custom variants) are considerably more detailed and much more dense, not to mention much larger (and no need for simply bigger trees). It totally changes the experience of forests and wooded areas in a way that even SFO doesn't quite manage. Next time you go to Riverwood you will suddenly realize how it was supposed to look all along, and it's role as a small logging village is suddenly a hundred times more beliavable. If playing with real darkness settings, forests at night get downright scary... Finally - enhanced vanilla trees (even the large lush custom ones) compares favorably to SFO in performance, so it's a no-brainer in my mind. Verdant grass compared to SFO grass is also comes out ahead in my opinion, although there is a lot of preference in this (and there are other good grass mods too). But for the same density and performance impact while remaining lore-friendly I think Verdant is hard to beat. There just really is too much to mention it all individually. Use a compendium guide like I said, or else this thread would need to be dozens of pages long to cover everything. -Stigma

It could also easily be "immersive armors" - they basically add lots of (extra, in additon to vanilla) high quality but very appropriate styles that feel like they could have been part of the vanilla game from the start. There exists a similar "immersive weapons" companion mod too. This is a well known series of mods so it is quit a likely suspect. Book of silence is GREAT - but I think it only replaces vanilla armors and weapons with higher quality versions/recreations It can however (with the addon) generate several visual varieties of the same weapons/armors for increased variety, but these variations are just almost purely visual aside from a couple spesific exceoptions I think (Skyforged stuff). The "black elven armor" does sound a lot like book of silence though, because elven gear does have a "thalmor" variant which is primarily black rather than the usual gold. You need the optional addon thing to enable variants though so keep that in mind, you will find it among the download packages. Rustic clothing is also great - and super recommended - but that only covers clothing spesiifically, and it also does not ADD but rather replace vanilla clothes with incredible looking (and lore friendly) versions. if it is neither of these then just go to nexus and search "armor" and sort by "most endorsed" and you will likely find whatever you used in the first dozen hits or so. -Stigma

Oh... you just asked a HUGE question... There are literally hundreds of visual mods that are top-tier quality. But for the most basic of basics, you will be wanting to install some large high-def texture-pack compilations for a start - and then pick a good ENB (again there are dozens of great ones - and hundreds of mediocre ones). Yes - I know you have the official highdef packs, but frankly those are junk compared to what the community has created... Go on the nexus and search for "ultimate modding guide". You will find an up to date guide in 2 parts - the first covers most of the top-tier visual mods including recommendations and instructions (the second covers gameplay-stuff). It is in-depth (incredibly so), but even if you only pick the bare essentials from that list it will go a long way. I use that guide as a base-reference myself.- -Stigma

I can't say for 100% certain that that is the case. I am just saying that that's the most likely case - because as I said, basically everyone who does modding will at some point look at their MO or NMM and go "hey, why are 20% of my mods out of date when I installed most of them yesterday?" Go visit the modpage manually and actually check the version-number of that update that it attempts to install. I've seen instances where files carrying the "latest version" number don't even exist on the page - and I'm sure that in such cases NMM will just freak the f*#@ out. Whatever version number NMM reports on the installed file-package should be accurate BUT that's probably not always the same as the "latest version" number. I can't tell you more about the details of how automatic updates are handled because I always handle upgrades and changes manually. I would never trust an installation to automatics except for the simplest possible one-click installs with no options and no patches. If you tell me a specific mod that acts like this (and tell me what version you are on now, as well as what version it is trying to update to) then I can probably say for sure if this is the problem or not. -Stigma

Hey all, I got a simple idea for a mod I think could make loading screens a lot more interresting. Simply - making the models rotate... There is already a nice mod that does this for the main menu: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/7801/?tab=2&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D7801&pUp=1 and IMO the effect is really nice. I would just like to see this applied to all loading screens. They have really nice models, but manually rotating them is a hassle - and you end up not seeing all the cool detail on them. Also: I think rotating them would tend to greatly reduce the artifacting that comes with ENB postprocessing-AA (shimmering edges) since those sorts of artifacts are mostly noticable on exactly such slow panning camera motions (that you rarely see elsewhere in the game). I naively assume that the mod mentioned above could be used as a template for this to make the work easy. That mod doesn't even seem to use an ESP - I guess the model rotation is just a part of the .nif? edit: yes that seems to be the case, so making such a mod seems like it would only involve loading up nif the models used, applying the rotate and saving as a mod. Unfortunately I'm a noob who has never used nifskope before and it looks scary :P I might try to learn, but I bet that this stuff is trivial to an experienced modder. (maybe if someone tell tell me how, if it is not too hard, I can do all the gruntwork of working through all the files and testing for bugs). EDIT: Extra idea for loadscreens (but probably far more work): Take the actual player model (with current equipped gear, or at least one recently cached from some point) and randomly apply some suitable poses (probably many suitable premade ones to use here) and apply to loadscreen. Everyone loves vanity :D Insert randomly into the other loadscreens, maybe 10-20% -Stigma

Usually the light level is primarily affected by: - Your game gamma (brightness) level (some mods can force this value via ini tweaks though) - Your choice of ENB - some are inherently dark while others are inherently bright. - Any enhanced lighting mods like ELFX (especially if you chose to use the enhancer, which makes dungeons darker) - Also to some degree your monitor of course... These mods aren't always tuned to work together. An ENB made to make dungeons dark + ELFX enhancer might make dungeons doubly dark (too dark). I generally DO recommend using ELFX with ENBs for the better lighting, but you may want to drop the enhancer optimal module for example if spesifically dungeons are too dark. Alternatively, you need to tweak the gamma on your ENB. game gamma: I think 1.00 is actually the minimum. If you want to tweak this just change it in-game and see. Main downside is the quality can suffer if you change it a lot (looks washed out) and you can also end up with an imbalanced outside-inside light level since it changes brightness for everything all at once. This is easy to do ... but not the best way. I'd recommend not tuning using this. Leave it at 1, or 1.24 (default), or preferably leave it at whatever your ENB is designed for (see ENB description). Tweaking ELFX: Just reinstall and don't choose enhancer (or the even harsher hardcore option whatever that is called). This will only affect dungeons. I don't recommend using ELFXs weather module, especially not if you use other weather mods like you seem to do. Tweaking the ENB gamma (and other settings): probably your best option both for flexibility and quality. This is what I recommend, and if you do this correctly you don't need to tweak anything else. I can't tell you EXACTLY what the setting is called for your ENB, but probably it is similar to mine. For my ENB (NLVA) I have to go to the right-pane and select the settings for ENBEFFECT.FX . Here, find the setting for CC: Gamma interior (dungeons and indoors buildings) . Tune it in-game using the ENB menu until you like it (don't need to reload to see changes). I think ENB treats all interiors with the same setting, so I personally prefer ELFX enhancer to make dungeons pretty dark without making all building interiors look equally dark. Also tune CC: gamma day, night ect. as you please. Of course you have to go to such a place or wait for the right time of day to actually see the effect... trying to tune interior gamma while being outside is a bad idea :D Remember to finally save when you are satisfied or the settings reset next time you start the game. Note that gamma isn't the ONLY way to tweak darkness - but unless you know what you are doing you should start with this, and you shouldn't need anything else unless you actually want to change the "balance" of the ENB. Changing gamma is more like a flat calibration. You should generally always rfer to the ENBs modpage for instructions on how to calibrate and tweak settings. Most serious ENBs will describe how you tune gamma and similar important values as this is a fairly common problem. Personal setup: ENB (NLVA including Vivid weather, I think this ENB is not too different from your own) + ELFX with enhancer for darker dungeons. My dungeons, nights and interiors needed a slightly lighter gamma for my taste with this setup as I don't think NLVA is really tuned for ELFX by default - but this is all very much a preference thing. I love darkness + enhanced torches + a smattering of nightvision ablities (can hack those into the ENB easily even though they break vanilla nightvision to actually get cooler effects). Long story short: Best way is to calibrate your gamma in the ENB. Just find the right setting and spend 10 minutes tuning it to your preferences. If you can't see results you are probably just touching the wrong values - there are a lot of them after all, and easy to get confused. If you mess around with settings that don't seem to do anything - don't save changes. Reload settings to reset. let me know if you still experience problems or want a further clarification on anything. -Stigma