Neshi

what difficulty are you playing at? this might make a difference...

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Judas

Highest difficulty.. + i've used a few mods to further increase the difficulty for numerous npcs... including dragons where applicable..

i rape stuff....

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Tipstaff

<Tipstaff backs off.... waaaaay off... like... another country off>

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comp_ali

They gonna release toolkit and workshop (to control your mods) via steam, if anyone is interested.

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Judas

yeah i recently been toying around with my dragon texture mod and prepped it so i should be able to release it right away through steams system.

Since launched in right before christmas.. i've only had about 4000 download now i think.

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BlueMak

Thanks to Bethesda still not having the PS3 version patched fully and releasing the official high res texture pack on Steam AND having a sale, I was basically forced to buy the PC version of Skyrim. I set the res at my max of 1080p with everything on max apart from blur something and I get with the hi res pack a min of 40-45 frame rate. Visually the game is very good. Much better than Oblivion. What impressed me more though was the sound and the animation\sense of movement of the player character.
The only thing I don't like so far is how, to the best of my knowledge, I can't bind number keys to weapons as I could in Oblivion. Which blows.

Otherwise, the game feels like the most realistic open world environment yet. I like the dialogue, I like how in the pub/inn there is a guy playing music, I like how the food looks in the pot, I like the blinding sun, the shadows, the look of the weapons and I am something like an hour in the game. (playing as redguard 100% melee fighter + perhaps a bit of bow action where necessary)

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Dyre Straits

I'm very glad to know you're enjoying it so much.

I'm actually just about ready to start all over again with a new character. This game is so much better than the previous ones and it does create the impression of realism missing in other games.

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LeanWolf

Welcome!

Just open your favourites menu and then mouse over the weapon/spell/potion/helmet/etc and hit the number key you want to assign it to. It's not perfect though, you can't hotkey a two weapon combo.

Also, over on Skyrim Nexus someone's made a mod that better organizes your favourites menu (though I'm not using it).

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OmegaRED

I think I speak for every Skyrim player with hundreds of hours logged we envy those that people who get to experience the wonder of the game for the first time
Have fun!

Yeap, I'm lvl 52 and got a ton of mods going which only makes things better and I've still got tons of tons of quests left Bethesda really went all out on the experience. I think I will wait a few more months before making a new character as there's going to be some amazing mods out by then that will surely up the difficulty akin to Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul.

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BlueMak

I will quote another player, it's almost like a whole virtual world in one. Not just a game. It makes me wonder what level they will reach with the next game in the series, or at least the one for the next generation of consoles.


Oh, thank you, I am glad they didn't just remove the feature.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Dyre Straits

FWIW, I've been playing this game from the outset with my 360 controller on my PC. Other than those sessions where I was using a 3x1 Eyefinity, I've been playing the game extended to my 32 inch LCD TV. Being able to just swivel my chair around, sit back, and play using the controller has been a very nice, and comfortable, arrangement.

I did, just over the past couple of hours, crank up the game after installing the HD Texture pack that was available on Steam. So far, it does look really good and plays smooth as a baby's bottom on my system.

EDIT: Did anyone else notice that Steam has Skyrim up for $39.99 (USD) on a Mid-Week sale?

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blibbax

I saw it for £19.99 (less than $39.99) in a store in the town my parents live in a week after release.

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Dyre Straits

Just a little note:

I'm continuing my current character at least until I can tie up some loose ends.

And, if you have the Call Dragon Shout, that can create some epic dragon battles.

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LeanWolf

Anyone else rocking the new high-res textures? So preeety!

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Judas

the HD textures are a bit of a joke.....

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Tipstaff

Some people that have taken the packs apart report that some of the textures are misspelled, so the game skips using them, which is why there's no consistency in the resolutions. Also, the thing to remember too is that these are not "high quality" textures, just higher resolution.

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Judas

yeah I'm one of the ones reporting the issues on the official forums about the issues...

some textures mislabled... some textures using the normal map texture instead of the real texture resulting in purple/blue/pinkish objects.....

a lot of the textures look like well.. lets just say the ones in game being 512x512.... the original looks like it should be 1024x1024 which is an obvious improvement.. but some odd reason they are saved at 2048x2048 which is 4x the file size with NO advantages.... a lot of things are being found out about how poorly implemented the hd pack was assembled...

it's quite irritating.

worse yet is by default, the HD pack overrides user made mods unless you take the time to disable them in the data files section, followed by modifying your skyrim.ini file so that it loads them in the proper order.

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LeanWolf

I don't know I think they look great.. but I also disabled fxaa when I installed them so maybe that helped as well (can't believe I was using it for so long).

yeah i'd read about some missing/mis-labeled textures. I've noticed oddly glowing logs (in a fire anyway) so far but that's all. Apparently there's some mis-labeled armors and a couple of other things but they seem relatively minor and there's already a fix out on nexusmods.

So is there something wrong with them besides these imo minor errors?

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blibbax

I've got the texture pack downloaded, but don't want to load up the game - I don't have time to accidentally spend 10 hours on it :P

If it's of interest LeanWolf, I also found FXAA rather detractory - I use transparency MSAA instead. Though that might be less viable for those running crazy resolutions.

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BlueMak

I don't use any kind of AA. I don't spend much time on the game right now, and I haven't played the game with this official pack, but the little I did, the game looks good. I have yet to encounter any graphic or other bug. I also do not use any type of mod.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

blibbax

I'm also bugless so far apart from that one quest - which I accidentally completed part of before starting it, so that's not really a mod-related or graphical issue.

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BlueMak

I meant to say I haven't played the game withOUT this highres official pack.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

LeanWolf

i'm running the high-res pack fix mod from nexus and everything's fine. I honestly can't recall the last ctd *surreptitiously knocks on wood*
the only mod i'm using is one that adds a bunch of new very nicely modeled swords

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OmegaRED

Is it possible to install the Official HD pack then the Mod HD Texture pack overtop to get all the improved textures that the mod misses? I don't want to install the Bethesda pack if it's just going to override with worse textures.

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Tipstaff

There is a way where you have to override the way Skyrim loads files (the old way of using the [Archive] section of the ini files to load user mods). What you do is have Skyrim load the user mods FIRST, then the high res packs. How exactly is the part that's sketchy as I'm reading too much conflicting posts, or posts that seem to be missing steps. Specifically, what to do with the High Res packs (repack them to fix the improperly spelled folders/files, or repack them into new user bsa files).

Couple threads of interest: HERE and HERE.

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OmegaRED

Sounds like someone needs to just release a mod containing a mix of both official and modded HD textures

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[hobo]eclipse

here is what I have gathered on the load order of BSA files, BSA files with esp activators, and loose files. Original info here from Wyre Bash guru/maintainer LoJack [!IMPORTANT] BSAs and You - Bethesda Softworks Forums

1. BSA files without ESP activators load first ( Like the original install ones) Their load order is determined by the archive section in the skyrim ini.
there are 2 lines because there is a character limit to each line, i believe it was 255. Only the 2 lines are usable, you cannot add a sResourceArchiveList3 or anything beyond the 2 lists.

2. Loose files in the DATA directory are loaded second, loading over anything the same from the BSA files in the skyrim.ini. ( the regular behavior we are all used to)

3. BSA files with an ESP ( such as the HD texture DLC) load after the previous 2 steps. This is the problem with these, letting the DLC load over top the loose files.
there are a few solutions to this. The 1st and easiest is to simply uncheck any ESP files that are associated with the BSA (the DLC), then add the BSA name to the sResourceArchiveList in the order you want them to load.
ex.
alternatively you can just unpack the the 2 BSA files and use them as loose files with BSAopt. Then backup your current loose textures folder, move the new loose DLC files into the texture folder, and overwrite with you original loose mod files.

Seems steam is all trashed up at the moment for me as well, all online function seem not available.

here is the thread I am following on the optimization of the total package and fixing of file structure/dds errors. [WIP] Bethesda's Hi-Res DLC Optimization - Bethesda Softworks Forums

BlueMak

I finished Oblivion and went back to Skyrim.

2 questions, not sure if it is just me or not.

a)Is there a mouse smoothing or something? It feels a bit strange.

b)When I look at something bright and then at something a bit (or more) dark, it takes a second to be able to actually look at it. Is this how it is supposed to be, or my monitor can't keep up? lol

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

[hobo]eclipse

A) you may give DXtory a try and limit your fps to 59. there is some kind of bug that i am not aware of the ins and out about, but basically even with vsync on and ATI hardware, the FPS still shoot up past 60to the 64 range. setting the fps limiter in dxtory to 59 keeps it in check.

also the setting flip que size lower than 3 (available in radeon pro), may help some of the input lag.

B) thats a dynamic contrast type thing in game. you are probably seeing it as intended by the developers. there has been a lot of complaints about it, and mods to try to get rid of it.

Dyre Straits

Personally, I thought the dynamic contrast feature was a cool one to have. It's very close to how it is when going from a bright sunny day into a room that's not lit up at all. And, the opposite is also true...going from a dark area into the brightly lit area causes some time to adjust.

As for the mouse issue: I can't even begin to address that as I'm using my 360 controller to play. BUT, even with the controller, I've noticed that some actions don't respond immediately. Example: Starting a conversation with someone, quite often I have to press the action button again to get the conversation option to come up. Otherwise, though, things seem to work quite well in areas like combat. (I just wish the combat was more like it is in The Witcher/The Witcher 2. Melee combat in this game is very, very annoying to me...especially when in first person view.)

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