Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[greypanther]

I know its a stupid question, but i can only see the creaion kit in tools, where is the textures DLC? Is it part of the kit? Wheres the Steam workshop?



*edit* Doh! Found it, ( DLC ) only now the servers are too busy!

[Tycow]

Skyrim is cheap on Steam today... £24

[Observe]

Skyrim is cheap on Steam today... £24

Yes, much to the chagrin of those who bought it yesterday no doubt.

[muppetts]

WOW steam workshop is amazing, I just chose 15 mods for Skyrim, 1 click, booted up game, the dl'd in 6 minutes and all worked on launch.

Best improvement I have ever experinced in a provider, and bloody free!

[bobxii]

Yeah valve doesn't screw around; they produce pretty much exclusive awesome, well polished software.

[Observe]

I'm getting ready to upload my custom house to the Workshop probably tomorrow, so I'll get a chance to see how that works out.

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View from the balcony overlooking Riverwood:

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Right now, I'm finishing-up the interior. It has two stories. I haven't decided if I need to add a basement yet.

[Tsar_of_Cows]

Some footage has gone up with mods made by the Devs in the week after Skyrim was released.

I want pretty much all of them:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02 ... -mudcrabs/


Also, if I had the time, I'd love to crack open the construction kkit and start reworking the dungeons to be less linear and much darker.

[pjknibbs]

Also, if I had the time, I'd love to crack open the construction kkit and start reworking the dungeons to be less linear and much darker.

ISTR there's been a mod around to make the dungeons less well-lit for ages...can't help you with the linearity issue, though.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

Some footage has gone up with mods made by the Devs in the week after Skyrim was released.

I want pretty much all of them:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02 ... -mudcrabs/


Also, if I had the time, I'd love to crack open the construction kkit and start reworking the dungeons to be less linear and much darker.

That is amazing! I'm with you - I want it all! Please Bethesda make it as free mods...

Giant Mudcrab - how can you fight it? It was immense.
Water - Something that should've existed from the start, in my opinion.
Same for snow footsteps.
Kinect voice I couldn't care less about, unless they did something similar for PC.
Looks nice though.
I wonder what else was made but not shown in that video.

[Sir Crashalot]

Some guy posted this link a little while ago but his thread got deleted, I dunno if a mod thought it was a spambot or not.. but it is a pretty good Skyrim vid.

Heavy modding + editing and a pretty powerful computer needed to run it for sure.

Anyway as that guys thread went poof I'll post the link here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2DshotexMU

[Observe]

I have a question: What items do you consider essential in a "player house"?

Now I've figured out how to place Armor racks (Mannequin), Weapon and shield racks and display cases, I wonder how many of each you guys consider important.

Thanks

[ClearSky]

Two things:

1. Linearity in dungeons. I don't see a problem with how they are now. Do people complain about the linearity that exists in their house or workplace (be reasonable, not expecting people to climb out of windows and over rooftops here)

2. @Observe, I was fddling with one of the pllayer add-on hideouts which has all sorts of problems (maybe solved with CK I guess) but what struck me was that what I really wanted was an armoury style room that I could display armor/weapons/shields and staffs in. I would prefer a mannequin for each armour material type, enough racks/display cases for all the unique weapons + perhaps 5-6 slots for favourite self made weapons, etc. Whether people think that is excessive or should be spread over several abodes I don't know.

Currently, the Dova Hideout has 10 or 11 full sized mannequins, which is quite a few but not enough for me. It is also an unrealistically large hideout IMO!

The other thing I find quite awkward is placing things on non-book shelves. If there was some way of targetting them with the 'hidden container' trick used by real bookshelves that would be quite handy.

Icky

[Tsar_of_Cows]

1. Linearity in dungeons. I don't see a problem with how they are now. Do people complain about the linearity that exists in their house or workplace (be reasonable, not expecting people to climb out of windows and over rooftops here)

That's funny, my flat is completely non linear. It has a central hallway with various rooms branching off of it. In fact, it's structured something like this:
X X
]== X
X
Where X is a room and = is a corridor and ] is the front door.

Most of the dungeons don't have that. They're structured like this:

Entrance = X = X = X = X = Loading Screen = X = X = Dragon Door = Boss Room = Exit

If my flat was structured like a Skyrim dungeon it'd look like this:

Front Door = Living Room = Kitchen = Bedroom = Bedroom = Dragon Door = Toilet = Back Door

I hope you can see how absurd that is.

The linearity is hidden by making the rooms generally fairly interesting, but apart from a few exceptions it's virtually never the case that you can just wonder off into a side room or set of rooms. You are at all times on a one way path with no options. Most of the dungeons might as well be on rails.

How predictable the dungeons are is one of my very few criticisms of Skyrim, and I'd love to see them made in a more sensible manner, where they're laid out with their purpose in mind (i.e. a burial mound should be laid out like a burial mound. A Dwemner Ruin should be laid out like an underground habitat, rather than a linear sequence of rooms which seem to have no well thought out purpose)

[ClearSky]

Then we must be playing a different game! Most of the dungeons I have explored had side rooms not dissimilar to your apartment layout. Think about it, please. If you were going to construct a dungeon space would you make it deliberately non-linear? In this case I think the dungeons reflect a potential reality. Your non-linear stuff is outside!

Looking at, say, Blackreach, would you call that linear? What about Labyrinthine, or indeed most of the Dwemer ruins? I've gotten lost quite a few times in these places.

With barrows and other tombs then yes, I would expect a consistent design reflecting their use.

The only internal space I could imagine being naturally 'non-linear' would be cave systems.

Back to the original thought though, rooms off a corridor is the norm for most of us. And that's mostly what we get in the dungeons.

Icky

[Tsar_of_Cows]

Then we must be playing a different game! Most of the dungeons I have explored had side rooms not dissimilar to your apartment layout. Think about it, please. If you were going to construct a dungeon space would you make it deliberately non-linear? In this case I think the dungeons reflect a potential reality. Your non-linear stuff is outside!

Looking at, say, Blackreach, would you call that linear? What about Labyrinthine, or indeed most of the Dwemer ruins? I've gotten lost quite a few times in these places.

With barrows and other tombs then yes, I would expect a consistent design reflecting their use.

The only internal space I could imagine being naturally 'non-linear' would be cave systems.

Back to the original thought though, rooms off a corridor is the norm for most of us. And that's mostly what we get in the dungeons.

Icky

Blackreach is pretty much the only one I can think of off the top of my head that is actually non linear.

Inside Blackreach itself look at the dungeons there, and forgive me if these aren't 100% accurate I'm reconstructing them from memory:

The Barracks: There's a barracks near the waterfall, it has 4 rooms in it. You enter into room A, you can only go into room B which is immediately to your right, from there you can only go to room C which is on your left, then you can only go up some stairs into room D which then deposits you via a 1 way balcony into room A.

The Market: A corridor that leads you to the the back entrance to a ruin. Beyond that entrance there's a single room with spiders in it, followed by a Centurion encounter at the bridge, then it's just a sequence of falmer rooms until the exit.

The Dwemner city, Sewers: You enter into a long corridor, this takes you into a central room underneath some bridges, you follow the only way you can go round several narrow rooms (one of which has a pool you can dive into, which is the only deviation from the route), these take you up and back into the open room with the bridges, and you do a sort of figure 8 which deposits you into the bottom of the large building.

The Dwemner City, large building: Again a series of corridors going upwards that lead you to a throne. One deviation which is a dead end balcony.

The Dwemner City, Courthouse: Large room with a couple of side rooms, I'll admit it's non linear but then there's only about 3 rooms in it.


Some more dungeons I remember:

1st Barrow to get the Dragon stone. You have the entrance room where you can hear some bandits talking, then it's a series of drauger rooms one after another until the spider encounter, from there it's another series of drauger rooms, each with 1 entrance and 1 exit, the dragon door and the large cavern with the baddies in the coffin and the word wall. Then there's the exit behind the word wall that leads 1 way to a shrine and the exit.

The first mine you're likely to encounter, near the tutorial zone: You enter into a corridor that leads down and left, cross a bridge, there's a sealed tunnel to your right, and steps to your left. Up the steps you pull a leaver that lowers the bridge to the store room, the store room leads to a faux open cavern with one entrance and exit.

The Vampire Den in the Companions Quest: You enter into a room with shrines in it. It has one corridor leading from it that leads into the Vampire's bedroom.


I think you can only get lost in any of the above if you're busy looting things and forget which door you entered the room from, because in the vast majority of these places you'll quickly realise that there's only 2 doors in each room. Try going into your average dungeon and see how far you can get without ever doubling back on yourself.

[ClearSky]

Gawd! How do remember all that detail?

I still stand by the fact that they are constructed much like they would be in real life. Underground or mined complexes aren't likely to have too many deviations anyway. It is not like building a house above ground, in fact you're not building anything at all, you are excavating spaces. Corridors and side rooms running all ove rthe place would be terribly inefficient.

That's okay though, it's fine to have different views, even if you are wrong (see memory thread!).

Personally I think everything is linear, in the sense that in moving from A to B it matters not the route you take because the result is still the same. So everything is linear at one remove or another. I would imagine that most people's gripes about linearity in games has more to do with linearity of actions rather than geography.

If you would like to stuff that in your pipe, and smoke it, go right ahead!

Icky

[Tsar_of_Cows]

Remembering these things is easy. Memory is mainly spacial anyway, so remembering exact dungeon layouts (and real life building layouts) is pretty natural. You just have to visualize where you are as you move through it. Of course, I have a pretty decent memory for these things and a knack for direction so maybe it's not that easy for everyone

Well we seem to have different ideas of what constitutes "linear". If you want to reduce everything to linearity (and thereby make linearity a moot concept) then that's fine, but then you're not disagreeing with me, you're simply talking past me.

As for layout (And to be clear, it's the linearity of the layout I'm moaning about), does the experience of having been down a few mines, an underground bunker, and a few cave networks qualify me to talk about it? If so, I've never seen a cave, mine or underground structure built like any of the caves/mines/barrows/ruins in Skyrim. Caves and mines tend to branch out, mines in particular tend to follow veins which means they have a sort of tentacle like lay out. The bunker I've been in was built like any other building just below ground. In other words it was rectangular, with lots of side rooms and corridors and rooms linking to other rooms that weren't directly linked to the main corridor, it was not a straight string of rooms.

[ClearSky]

Fair enough, each to his own and all that. Personally, the layout of the interiors of Skyrim never even registered for me until it was mentioned on the forum. I just couldn't imagine inching my way through some very dark, and possibly monster infested, dungeon and suddenly thinking, "hey these dungeons are awfully linear". Last thing on my mind really. If you use the realistic lighting (w/o Post processing) mod then the dungeons are so damned dark that even with a torch the outlines of rooms and corridors are hard/impossible to make out - thus reducing the sense of linearity.

And I did say that the caves should be more non-linear.


Of course, if I was being silly*, I could easily reduce the argument the other way and say 'I was walking down this corridor when it struck me how linear it was'. Imagine that!

As you say, it is perhaps a moot point.

Icky

*If was being especially silly I could suggest some really random non-linear events, like getting murdered in your sleep. That would aid immersion immeasurably, particularly when you reach the stage where there are already several contracts on your head.

**None of the above should be taken too seriously.

[Aye Capn]

@Cows: re: domiciles resembling Bethesda dungeons:

My house looks more like one of the dungeons from Fallout 3.

Behind a pile of dirty clothes and miscellaneous computer parts in various states of repair I could've sworn I saw a fission battery, but it turned out to be last week's leftovers I had forgotten to put in the fridge. That's at least as rewarding as finding Iguana on a Stick, isn't it?

At least my fridge is full of Nuka-Cola, and I have a friend who's convinced "Ultra Jet" is actually coffee, so there's some loot hidden in the cupboard as well ...

[RegisterMe]

Dumb question - how do I actually find Steamworks / get to the available mods?