TES V: Skyrim

[Grall]

Since all indoors locations are in essence instanced like a dungeon in a MMO, perhaps it would simply be easiest if each quest had its own pre-generated location complete with all of the monsters, characters and items the player needs to complete that quest.

That way you simply COULDN'T muck anything up by going into that dungeon while just exploring or doing another mission...except if you have two quests in your log at the same time that both point to that same location of course... Darn!

 

[Sxotty]

Since all indoors locations are in essence instanced like a dungeon in a MMO, perhaps it would simply be easiest if each quest had its own pre-generated location complete with all of the monsters, characters and items the player needs to complete that quest.

That way you simply COULDN'T muck anything up by going into that dungeon while just exploring or doing another mission...except if you have two quests in your log at the same time that both point to that same location of course... Darn!

That would kind of ruin the game though. Almost all of skyrim is just a walk here fetch/kill return. (So are all games mind you).
The fun part to me of these games has always been the exploring, going all sorts of random places and turning up random quests I knew nothing about. It adds serendipity to stumble across things IMO.

 

[KimB]

Since all indoors locations are in essence instanced like a dungeon in a MMO, perhaps it would simply be easiest if each quest had its own pre-generated location complete with all of the monsters, characters and items the player needs to complete that quest.

That way you simply COULDN'T muck anything up by going into that dungeon while just exploring or doing another mission...except if you have two quests in your log at the same time that both point to that same location of course... Darn!

That's basically the method that Skyrim and most games use: remove the problem by removing the interactions. But real systems have to deal with very similar interactions all the time. We could get much, much better games if game developers would simply take the time and effort to learn how to deal with multiple interacting threads (narrative threads in this case).

Of course, some developers do put forward multiple, interacting threads. But in practice they tend to be extremely limited in number, so that the programmers can explicitly examine each individual possibility. This just isn't practical if you want to actually have the possibility of interesting interactions.

 

[Daozang]

CK and high resolution patch up on Steam!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Can anyone say if the HR pack is better than the top 2K resolution mods we find in Skyrim Nexus?

 

[Dresden]

Can someone post screenshots comparing vanilla/HR textures? I'd check it out for myself, but I'm at my office.

 

[Grall]

Not sure how to get the hi-res pack... Steam hasn't downloaded it automatically for me (yet; maybe not released for Euroland yet; if these things are handled differently for separate regions?), and it's not been stealth-downloaded either from what I can tell, Steam still states game is 5.7GB in size.

...Unless the hi-res textures are handled as a mod and not counted in the Steam properties window, that is.
*Edit: ...No, that doesn't seem to be the case. There's no hires texture pack listed in the addons window. Oh well. Maybe I should just chill a bit instead.

 

[pcchen]

It's a free DLC. Right click on the game in the library, select "Properties" then in "Updates" there is a link for "View the ... update history." Click into the link you should see an entry for the creation kit and texture pack. Click into the link of the texture pack, you'll be able to "purchase" this free DLC and then download it. Mind you that this DLC is more than 3GB

[EDIT] It should now be available directly through the "DLC" link, under the "LINKS" list.

 

[Grall]

Yeah, I just noticed they hid it as a DLC pack. Wouldn't work when I tried to add it through the Steam popup about the Elder Scrolls mid-week sales thingy they're running now, but doing it from within the game library does work - except now their download servers are swamped, lol! (*Edit: Oh... Now it's actually downloading! Whee! 1 more hour until done it says.)

 

[pcchen]

Regarding to Steam downloading, there is a trick I have been using: in the "Settings" dialog box, you can select your "Download region" in the "DOWNLOAD+CLOUD" tab. Normally you should select your region or the closest region, but in many case this actually reduce your download speed if you happen to be in a very crowded region. In my case, if I select "Taiwan" I'd get 300KB/s ~ 400KB/s at best, sometimes even 100KB/s, but if I select a less crowded server like "US - Phoenix" I can easily get more than 1MB/s speed.

Of course, this is a problem Steam should handle by itself, but right now this works for me

 

[Grall]

Aye, I sometimes switch region to Norway or Denmark if I'm getting terrible performance and just can't stand waiting. Usually I do get fairly good speed from Steam though, often capping my not terribly impressive ADSL connection (~15Mbit/s or so downstream.)

 

[pcchen]

Normal texture:

High resolution texture:

 

[PowerK]

Is it me or differences are very subtle ?

 

[Bludd]

It's much less blurry.

 

[PowerK]

Ok. can't wait till I get to fiddle around with it this weekend. Hopefully, differences are more apparent at 2560x1600 resolution I play at.

 

[AlNom]

Still needs to be higher on the middle beam.

 

[pcchen]

Here's another example:

Normal texture:

High resolution texture:

 

[Deleted member 13524]

pcchen are you sure you toggled it correctly?
Looks like the exact same of assets between the screenshots, at least to me...

 

[pcchen]

Yeah, they are different. Look at the clothes, bed sheet, and the wooden leg of the bed.

Some textures already have very good resolution. For example, the shop sign on my previous post already has very good resolution in normal mode, so you don't see any improvement with high resolution pack (it's likely that there is no higher resolution version of that sign in the pack). The dragon scale armor set is also already very good in normal mode.

 

[Grall]

Maybe try to go closer to the surfaces in question; at this distance the texture rez increase doesn't make much of appreciable difference. Especially with such dim lighting conditions.