OFFICIAL Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim (Discussion)

[1Kurgan1]

I haven't tried the ENB Patch itself, I have tried the Enhanced Shaders which is based on ENB. But I couldn't use it, it was literally a 15 fps drop, does ENB have the same effect, or is easier on FPS? It's hard to tell exactly what ENB does (which is why I asked), that guys site is horrible and doesn't really explain if he does fixes or if he is making the game look better.

 

[entropy13]

I haven't tried the ENB Patch itself, I have tried the Enhanced Shaders which is based on ENB. But I couldn't use it, it was literally a 15 fps drop, does ENB have the same effect, or is easier on FPS? It's hard to tell exactly what ENB does (which is why I asked), that guys site is horrible and doesn't really explain if he does fixes or if he is making the game look better.

ENB only has a minimal performance drop. Try getting STEP for the full package instead.

And the real-time on/off toggle helps if you need to squeeze more performance, but at best it's only a 2-3fps hit when turned on anyway.

 

[1Kurgan1]

Reading through seems ENB itself is just some glitch fixes, yet gives a little bit of FPS drop, I'll just stick with FXAA Injector and my own color tweaks I think. I wish I could use Enhanced Shaders mod since that seems to provide much more realistic lighting, but the fps hit just isnt worth it.

 

[entropy13]

ENB is "just some glitch fixes"? lolwut?

 

[ViperXTR]

here's what ENB series do in skyrim:

ENBSeries v0.092 Patch 5 TES Skyrim - fixes some graphical bugs for both ATI
and NVidia videocards. In most cases they are some kind of black fence or dots
on the screen, flame from dragons breath and magical effects.

Warning! patch allow to run several d3d9.dll files at same time. Read documentation
on the web site about [PROXY] category.

Version #2 added fixes for shadows, now they are working for objects like mountains
and much less pixelated (noticable on characters the most).

Version #3 added experimental fix for freezing and lagging (code from Silent Hill
Homecoming patch doing this), some problems with sound also may be solved, patch
supports memory greater than 2 gb.

Version #4 optimized code to reduce negative performance impact when using this patch.
Disabled all shadow quality improvements of previous versions. Added parameter to
switch off graphic bugs patch and leave only freeze fix part of it.

Version #5 added parameters to switch render device to safer mode, like in version 3;
added device id and vendor id parameters to foolish game with custom videocard model,
this may help to fix some bugs and also may affect performance (change these values
from list of known videocard models); configuration file name changed from enbseries.ini
to enbpatch.ini to allow use patch with ENBSeries graphic mods together without
dependencies.
Wait for future updates and graphical modification for this game.

 

[Captain.Abrecan]

so i fast traveled to a place i know where a dragon respawns at. and when i fast traveled to him i engaged him and another flew in during the fight. i'm not sure if this a bug or what but i killed the first one then moved onto the second one and swiftly killed that one as well.. the problem is i only absorbed one dragon soul from the second one i killed but not the first one...

Yeah that happens sometimes. Also, if you kill a dragon, and are absorbing the soul at the same time you approach a word wall you will not get a new shout. I have to reload a previous save to do it again, you have to wait and do them one at a time.

 

[entropy13]

Here are gifs comparing without ENB and with ENB:

Spoiler

http://i40.tinypic.com/veopjd.gif[/img[
[/spoiler]

 

[1Kurgan1]

Is that with only ENB or is that with the STEP? I asked what ENB was, you didn't give an answer, only refered me to STEP. I looked through STEP and found no info at all about what ENB actually does, followed his link to the ENB download where he listed it only as fixes (it's the FXXX Injector that does the color changes), and you mock me, lol. I asked, no one answered so I looked myself, lolwut.

From STEPS Page

-ENB Merge is a version merged with ENB-Series fixes for Skyrim v0.095 by Boris Vorontsov, which fixes some graphical issues/freezes, but negatively affects performance by 2-5 FPS drop.

And here is the ENB Homepage
http://enbdev.com/index_en.html
It's a real mess instead of one spot that just shows what the patch actually does(I mentioned this before when asking if anyone else happened to know exactly what ENB does do).

 

[entropy13]

Those are the same gifs, and is that with only ENB or is that with the STEP? I asked what ENB was, you didn't give an answer, only refered me to STEP. I looked through STEP and found no info at all about what ENB actually does, followed his link to the ENB download where he listed it only as fixes (it's the FXXX Injector that does the color changes), and you mock me, lol. I asked, no one answered so I looked myself, lolwut.

And here is the ENB Homepage
http://enbdev.com/index_en.html
It's a real mess instead of one spot that just shows what the patch actually does(I mentioned this before when asking if anyone else happened to know exactly what ENB does do).

Viper already covered that. Is this actually the first time you encountered ENB?

My first encounter with ENB was with San Andreas.

Most probably the ENB you're insisting to be "just some fixes" are the early versions of it. By 0.095 it's no longer "just some fixes", much like how ENB in the GTA games first started as such, but as time passes are no longer "just some fixes".

RE: ENB homepage - if you can decipher crazyeyesreaper's posts in TPU, then you can understand the ENB homepage.

What ENB exactly does? What the game isn't supposed to be doing, really. In essence ENB is forcing the game to do more things than it usually does, and editing .ini files can't really do that. That doesn't mean you can't combine ENB with .ini tweaks. Just think of ENB like forcing settings through Nvidia Inspector, for example.


EDIT: And I fixed that, reuploaded the right second gif now. Tinypic resizes them to 1600x900 though. Imgur doesn't accept them at all, same as imageshack. Sadpanda just errors itself if I try.

 

[1Kurgan1]

Viper already covered that. Is this actually the first time you encountered ENB?

My first encounter with ENB was with San Andreas.

Most probably the ENB you're insisting to be "just some fixes" are the early versions of it. By 0.095 it's no longer "just some fixes", much like how ENB in the GTA games first started as such, but as time passes are no longer "just some fixes".

RE: ENB homepage - if you can decipher crazyeyesreaper's posts in TPU, then you can understand the ENB homepage.

What ENB exactly does? What the game isn't supposed to be doing, really. In essence ENB is forcing the game to do more things than it usually does, and editing .ini files can't really do that. That doesn't mean you can't combine ENB with .ini tweaks. Just think of ENB like forcing settings through Nvidia Inspector, for example.

He did cover it and it supported what I said, ENB is only fixes (at least until this point), which was the entire point of my last post about your "lolwut". Also reading what he posted and the quote I showed, proves that gif you posted has some other mod changing the color.

I have ran across ENB before, in other Bethseda games, and they do shape up to be more than just glitch fixes, but I don't think it is anymore than that at this point. And if it is, I don't see any information anywhere supporting that it is, that guys website is horrible. If you can find out that it is more than that, thats great, thats what I was looking for, but sorting through any of the sources I could find it just didn't seem so, so I asked incase anyone else knew.

 

[jonathan1107]

Armor in general absorbs damage. If the armor your are wearing has a value of 40, the potion will make it 50 for 60 seconds.

Yeah but I thought that potion in particular doesn not increase armor value... it says it increases "heavy armor skill"...

So I thought that meant my skill would go from say 50 to 60 in heavy armor (not armor value), which would mean that I could spend some perks into high tiered abilities within the 60 seconds of the potion being active...

So if I get it right: Higher skill lvl in armor = higher armor value
and higher skill lvl in say 1 hand weapons = more damage being dealt
right?

 

[digibucc]

right, regardless of perks. that's what they are, extras, perks. every single skill level makes a difference in that respective skill's application. which is awesome

 

[entropy13]

Also reading what he posted and the quote I showed, proves that gif you posted has some other mod changing the color.

LOLWUT? Hitting Pause/Break only affects ENB. It has been THAT WAY with ENB in GTA San Andreas, and GTA IV. You can toggle ENB on or off in-game by pressing Pause/Break.

In this case it is a part of STEP, which is essentially iCCC ENB(ENB + Injector + TheCompiler's combination of settings for both) and mods/tweaks he recommends.

The only difference between the screenshots were pressing Pause/Break, which TURNS ON/OFF ENB ONLY. Of course getting the non-ENB versions (from the iCCC ENB Merge) would obvious NOT have such functionality. ENB is essentially just some dll's and another ini file. A mod would mean it has to be a file or files (dds) that can be read by the game, and only read once (when the game is first started) and thus makes it impossible for the toggle on/off functionality in-game. Because of ENB's nature (it essentially acts ON the exe, and not acted UPON by the exe) it can be turned on or off in-game.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

^ Prepare to be pleased.

Ah, that makes sense. The only alcohol I've ever tried tasted like piss

My life would be so much simpler if I shared this assessment.

thank you jesus

lol

 

[1Kurgan1]

LOLWUT? Hitting Pause/Break only affects ENB. It has been THAT WAY with ENB in GTA San Andreas, and GTA IV. You can toggle ENB on or off in-game by pressing Pause/Break.

In this case it is a part of STEP, which is essentially iCCC ENB(ENB + Injector + TheCompiler's combination of settings for both) and mods/tweaks he recommends.

The only difference between the screenshots were pressing Pause/Break, which TURNS ON/OFF ENB ONLY. Of course getting the non-ENB versions (from the iCCC ENB Merge) would obvious NOT have such functionality. ENB is essentially just some dll's and another ini file. A mod would mean it has to be a file or files (dds) that can be read by the game, and only read once (when the game is first started) and thus makes it impossible for the toggle on/off functionality in-game. Because of ENB's nature (it essentially acts ON the exe, and not acted UPON by the exe) it can be turned on or off in-game.

LOLWUT, you must be drunk. Pause turns on/off FXAA, not ENB, take a look at the FXAA mod please. It seems like you are rambling about the ENB of the past in games of the past. We aren't talking about games besides Skyrim, you are basing your information on hunches and games that aren't this one.

I don't know why you keep posting on the subject, you proved my point earlier in agreeing with what Viper posted, which said ENB only does fixes at this current time. I'm not interested in what ENB has done in other games of the past, or what it will do in the future. When the future comes I will worry, until then, I could careless.

 

[Ahhzz]

*sigh* moving on, before this becomes a pointless flame-fest (*too late*) Has anyone heard or seen news about the construction set release for Skyrim?

 

[digibucc]

thank god you're here to steer us back to the path

let me predict every single answer: "no, i don't know, no one knows yet" or variations thereof.

 

[Delta6326]

*sigh* moving on, before this becomes a pointless flame-fest (*too late*) Has anyone heard or seen news about the construction set release for Skyrim?

This is the only thing I have heard. So maybe it will come out then too?

"A patch for Skyrim will launch the week beginning Monday November 28th, Bethesda has announced.

The update is for all three versions of the game. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 updates are currently in certification with Sony and Microsoft.

Bethesda PR boss Pete Hines said the patch will improve performance for "long-term play on PS3". This relates to a bug currently making the PS3 version unplayable for some. The bug occurs when save files exceed a certain size. After that point, the PS3 version suffers from lag and, according to some players, eventually becomes unplayable.

Skyrim on Xbox 360 suffers from a curious texture problem that sees performance drop when the game is installed to the hard drive.

The issue only seems to occur if you have the Xbox 360 version of Skyrim installed to the hard drive - a process that is entirely optional. In this case, the highest resolution versions of the textures appear to stall and not load, meaning you're not seeing the game at its best. If you remove the install, and run the game directly from the DVD, the best quality artwork returns to the game.

Hines reassured gamers that the update will not reset your characters or save games." Source

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

*sigh* moving on, before this becomes a pointless flame-fest (*too late*) Has anyone heard or seen news about the construction set release for Skyrim?

I fail to see how what Kurgan said qualifies as pointless or even as flaming. That said, I hope to not see any further talk of this particular subject either anymore (though likely we will...).

 

[1Kurgan1]

Has anyone heard or seen news about the construction set release for Skyrim?

As far as I have heard, "we are working on it as fast as we can and it will be soon". But in those cases I like to refer to the Blizzard definition of "soon"

Copyright 2004-2011 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. "Soon" does not imply any particular date, time, decade, century, or millennia in the past, present, and certainly not the future. "Soon" shall make no contract or warranty between Blizzard Entertainment and the end user. "Soon" will arrive some day, Blizzard does guarantee that "soon" will be here before the end of time. Maybe. Do not make plans based on "soon" as Blizzard will not be liable for any misuse, use, or even casual glancing at "soon."

 

[qubit]

Skyrim: the TF2 look!

[yt]Yeyzi8e6-yw[/yt]

 

[1Kurgan1]

Change graphic settings enough my ass. That is more than just changing settings.

 

[Black Panther]

Just installed the first two mods on my Skyrim. I was planning to hold till the big patch is out next week... but didn't make it

1) No More Blocky Faces by Xenius: Fantastic. Finally got rid of that effect which looked like I tried to sculpture the faces myself out of limestone.

2) Landscape Texture Pack WIP by xclear & gorefest: This really improved the terrain. 2048 textures instead of only 512. Everything looks more natural now. I was expecting to get a fps hit, but my fps remained the same.

____________________________


Nonetheless, I'm getting a bit tired of tweaking this game now.

Straight out of the box, I had 3 problems:

- fps always under 30 in the cities; and
- shadows which were all blocky and changed 'jumped' position drastically every 30 seconds; and
- crash to desktop every hour or so of gameplay.

I detested the shadow issue so much that I barely noticed the fps and wasn't really bothered by the C2D since I save very often...

***

I solved the shadows with some skyrimprefs.ini tweaking.

***

After that I really welcomed 11.11a Catalyst.

Due to some driver issue, Skyrim's performance gets much worse with crossfire than it is with a single card. Now if I simply had 2 cards, it'd be easy to disable one of them. However with a 5970 (one card with 2 GPU's in crossfire) you can't do it through Catalyst settings. I had found a way to do it, using a program called Radeon Pro. But I preferred the low fps to using it since it made my screen strobe-flicker when I'm in the game's menus! :shadedshu

The latest 11.11a hotfix however fixed this - by disabling crossfire even for dual GPU cards like mine and the 6990.

Before 11.11a, I used to get less than 30 fps in the cities, ~ 40 fps outside and 60 fps indoors and in dungeons. With 11.11a I get 40+ fps in the cities, between 45-60 fps outside and 60 fps indoors and in dungeons.

Now I'm really looking forward to a good and proper AMD driver which makes correct use of crossfire. With only one single GPU running it means I'm using the equivalent of a 5850 @ 2560x1440 and getting great fps. Now imagine if CF were to be correctly implemented... *drooool*

***

So only my final problem needed to be solved - that of random crashes to desktop. The game just goes *poof* and literally vanishes. No errors, nothing. Apart from being warned it's gonna happen by having something turn a nice shade of purple (once I had purple trees, another time a Jarl donned purple clothes...) then I go into 'save mode' alert knowing the game's gonna vanish within seconds...

I solved this by installing FordGT90Concept's LAA fix (Large Address Aware to prevent the game from running out of RAM), and voila' problem solved, no more purple textures, no more crashes to desktop

**************************

Or so I thought...........


Till some bright bulb decided to create a measly and pesky 18MB patch, changing the .exe of Skyrim while bringing no improvements to game quality or performance whatsoever.







The consequences?

- My LAA fix stopped working, starting C2D's again.

- I searched and found another LAA fix, which this time worked. I was really happy.... till...

- I started the game and found myself back to 20 fps in the cities

- Realized the new LAA fix changed the .exe file hence driver hotfix 11.11a wasn't recognizing it as Skyrim and wasn't disabling my crossfire!!


*******

Solution so far:

- I went to the real .exe in steamapps/common/Skyrim, and 'restored previous version', made a shortcut on desktop for quick launch.

Now I hope this holds... At the game's official forums there are people saying it isn't working. But perhaps it's because Steam would keep updating the 'old restored .exe file' back to the newer one?

We'll wait and see...


Edit: Lol ... tl;dr

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah...PC gaming ain't all grins and giggles. But the bs is so worth it in the end.

 

[Cold Storm]

I'll be up and running come the next few days! Woot woot.