The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

[dmarkwick 261]

I treated myself to the Offical Skyrim guide that comes with a large map, I have never in my life ever done this for a game at all. Although after seeing reviews and youtube reviews it wasn't too expensive from "game", landed on doorstep today, chock full of info and map is great esp the stats section for characters/all weapons.

Although I had bookmarked many sites mirroring information, nothing better to have a large book handy to skim read what you need while in game.

Two things have happened for me ... 1) I needed to use for the first time Steam 2) I bought a game guide .... I think this game has some kind of hypnotic undertones :eek::)

BTW im not endorsing it here becuase im a skeptic about any "guide" but as this is a big ass game and its all new to me it has been worth it, although there is a part of me that remains slightly unclean about what I have done so far ...

I agree as above that LAA fix would be better than addition hoop jumping and external processes running to keep it tidy :)

Hah :D don't feel too bad. Assimilation was inevitable ;)

I won't be buying the guide, in a game like Skyrim it's not necessary to absolutely do everything. In fact, I wish it were more... exclusive, I wish there were certain quests/locations that can only be solved by a mage, for example. It gives purpose to different character rolls and playthroughs in that case, but meh, modern gaming outlooks seem to be like cinema nowadays, nobody is to be excluded at the cost of genuine roleplay.

[mrcash2009 0]

Well, this type of fantasy style RPG type game is the first I have ever bothered with in terms of gaming, and the very first of any elder scrolls so its all new to me.

I do agree on skill specific quests, but then again you would have to be jack of all trades to do certain things, and in some way limited if you didn't have such a skill you weren't going for. Mage is one I have avoided at the moment, but I will start another character for that, and join the guild that would suit, as opposed to my Nord being a bit of everything.

Then again, its pretty much going to be a modders world after January, so I can imagine new map sections & new quests all dedicated to specific types flying out onto the tinternozzle later on.

Edited December 20, 2011 by mrcash2009

[viper[cww] 14]

Is it just me or is there a skyrim update available on steam? it doesn't seem to be running though.. (18.5mb) -- Update Its started now :)

Posting full update news shortly on modsaholic. (when it's released) :p

Edited December 20, 2011 by VIPER[CWW]

[GRS 10]

Yeah, just started for me too the second I read that.

[viper[cww] 14]

I only noticed it because I was checking up on my Lego: Batman time remaining :D

---------- Post added at 18:51 ---------- Previous post was at 18:43 ----------

As promised

http://www.modsaholic.com/page.php?id=74

[mrcash2009 0]

Any issues to report? Thanks for the heads up BTW. I will go online and grab this in bit.

[viper[cww] 14]

Haven't played in over a week, APB has me hooked, great game to play with friends. :)

[krycek 349]

So far so good,it's a puny patch though and the only fix I noticed it's the 4gb enabler.I'm waiting for the real patches because Im getting fucking tired with these 2-3 fixes patches.The broken quests are a pain in the ass although some of them I fixed with console commands.

Not to mention that I read on Beth forums that once you get a specific crash in a place(Jorrvaskr in my case) basically it's the road that leads to savegame corruption.Good thing I always backup my saves with Beth games.

[Flash Thunder 10]

Warning: Contains english language swedish style

I lol'd so hard at that video I love Robbaz :)

[mrcash2009 0]

http://alexander.sannybuilder.com/?category=other&altname=skyrim_script_dragon

For those that use ASI scripted reliant things, Script Dragon just got updated for the latest LAA update patch.

After testing new update, I can say I get less choppy stutters and can do away with both hoop jumping tools I had to use for smooth play, so its all good here. All back to native for launch.

---------- Post added at 05:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 PM ----------

I just loaded a new script tool with SKSE (script extender, a bit like Arma's CBA) that deals with executing code better, and everyone is posting FPS increase. With LAA update and this running I get a much smoother play and fps is deff higher in places where I would get dips ( never got better fps with any other tools I was using previously posted here when I started out like ENB freeze and 4GIG patch), if people want to add scripts then this is well worth a try.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1321657-tesv-acceleration-layer-offers-cpu-optimization-massive-possible-performance-increases-now-in-skse-plugin-format/

A good post from the thread:

Lemmie give it a shot:

In programming a very core concept is breaking your code down into things like functions which are kind of single-task operations which you can then use where-ever you need that task accomplished. Sometimes you'll write a function that even though what it does is very fast and only a few instructions it just made sense to create it as a function instead of directly writing those lines into the spots everywhere, that is inefficient from a computer's point of view but could be very efficient from a programmer's point of view (let's say you want to edit some small aspect of that code, much easier to edit one function then chase down every spot). When you crunch code down into a finished program it runs through a compiler, compilers often have optimization flags that do neat tricks like in the above example they'd break up any of those really light functions and just put what they do directly in the larger functions instead, more efficient. Bethesda seems to be not know how to do this very basic thing but this mod does it for them and we benefit immensely from it.

In short: sometimes the act of going into a function and coming out is more work then what the function itself is supposed to do, this optimizes things by removing the call to the function and just substituting what it did into the same spot instead. Again: This is something even a 1rst year computer science student should know and its inexcusable that Bethesda isn't taking advantage of such things.

SKSE is need and both are real simple to set up:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1321294-wipz-skyrim-script-extender-skse/

Also NVIDIA beta driver is up with more performance increases for Skyrim.

Edited December 22, 2011 by mrcash2009

[dmarkwick 261]

It all sounds good, but as ever, I'll wait a couple of weeks & catch up when the wrinkles are ironed out :)

[mrcash2009 0]

No wrinkles as none of it is a major patch, the LAA is only an update to the testv.exe only and nothing else. All other script mods and dll's are updated to the latest and its all fine. Much like 4gb patch for launcher they are the same, no direct effect on saves and gameplay just exe and launch. Simply slot in the Dll's in root as per readme's , run a test see if you get fps increase (many report it has and it does work).

Dont get anything from it, remove, no effects on game at all.

EDIT: I also updated post toe the FPS increase mod in another post but heres the new thread:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1321657-tesv-acceleration-layer-offers-cpu-optimization-massive-possible-performance-increases-now-in-skse-plugin-format/

Check the posts and reports.

EDIT: Full info on this FPS increase (puts the game coders to shame really) - Its now on the front page of tweak-guides:

Only a fraction of the speedup comes from using SSE2 code. The original exe also uses SSE2 code, just not in the right places where it is truly needed. This could've been prevented by using automated SSE2 vectorization and/or another math library. Interestingly, in this case, it's the dot product function that has been rewritten, which is somewhat ironically the #1 textbook example for automated vectorization in compiler demos.

Much of the speedup is gained by manually eliminating (only possible if the entire function can be reduced to 5 bytes or less), or at least simplifying calls along the critical code paths as far as possible. This doesn't even produce nearly as good results as an optimizing compiler could have because of many restrictions a compiler doesn't have to deal with in the first place, so every optimizing compiler can do and usually does an excellent job at this if told to do it.

Skyrim would probably experience an execution speed gain of over 100% just by applying this single optimization, as it has drastic consequences to the amount of code that could be detected as being redundant and thus completely eliminated. I know that sounds exaggerated, and normally would be, but it isn't when you've read and profiled enough of the code to know just how bad the compiled code is. Just 3 functions have truly been rewritten, everything else is either a variant form or an instruction-level simplification of functions consisting of things like "return *this;" which are at the very top in the profiled list because the compiler was obviously told not to inline it.

So, every time a certain kind of pointer needs to be dereferenced, the game will call a lengthy function to do what can be (and is) replaced by a single instruction. Fixing this manually isn't feasible after a certain point, but the compiler can do this for the whole binary at the cost of just a few seconds extra compiling time and much better than ever possible by a human (at least at these code dimensions).

In general, the TESV code has pretty high register pressure. A huge part of this is simply due to the completely missing optimizations which would otherwise eliminate the unneeded allocations, but an x86_64 build would also definitely help improving this condition. Jump targets are completely unaligned, including the so-called hot targets which are hit millions of times in short periods, leading to cache stress due to multiple fetches being required to execute a jump, whether correctly predicted or not. Optimizing compilers can automatically align them properly.

I guess I don't have to mention how bad the threading is; this isn't trivial to fix though. Just sad that it's almost 2012 and this thing can't even properly use two threads. Besides all the other obvious flaws, this is the main reason why the game is so strongly limited by the CPU. Single-core speed didn't grow nearly as much as the number of cores did. Everyone knew it 10 years ago, but back then they could still just wait for the hardware to provide the additional power needed to run the sloppy code - this trick doesn't work anymore.

Edited December 23, 2011 by mrcash2009

[[aps]gnat 28]

No crashes now with the new patch

But .... I can't Alt-Tab back into the game :(

[viper[cww] 14]

Have you tried alt tabbing twice? the first time brings up the window but not the game, second time brings up the game.

[dmarkwick 261]

No wrinkles as none of it is a major patch

Well, by wrinkles I mean everybody's wrinkles, Bethesda's included. I'm still running Skyrim in it's initial installed state, no patch and no Steam. I'm still wary of all the new bugs & restrictions introduced in the patches. As I understand it the required SKSE script addon in turn requires a fully patched Skyrim install. So, not for me just now ;)

In any case, I'm getting fine enough FPS for me to fully enjoy the game, but eventually the see-saw will tip in favour of updating everything. Particularly when the CK is released.

Edited December 23, 2011 by DMarkwick

[sickboy 13]

Gnat;2076962']No crashes now with the new patch

But .... I can't Alt-Tab back into the game :(

I haven't been able to do that since day 1, seems nothing new.

But easy workaround.

[mrcash2009 0]

I also have never been able to alt tab back into game I simply CTRL+ALT+DEL for task manager .. go to Applications list and "Bring To Font" Skyrim .. I leave task manager open and switch using that process for now.

@DM - I see your point, no need to fly in if your happy and its runs how you like. For me though I have to admit latest patch + LAA patch + the new FPS addons has made a massive difference for me which also means I can kill off ENB and other bits.

Edited December 23, 2011 by mrcash2009

[[aps]gnat 28]

Before the last patch, it was possible to "Alt-Tab" back to Skyrim, but it was actually a 2 step "fiddle" process.

Its was more like, select the application on the Taskbar, and then and only then alt-tab through all applications until Skyrim was select, then wait 10 seconds.

Now it seems no end of fiddling about will get it to display.

Win7 64Bit

[sickboy 13]

Yikes :O :) Well hmm, I think I would've ran into it already if I experience the problem...

[Flash Thunder 10]

Pretty irritated that the low sound issue has still hasn't been fixed except with shitty workarounds, loudness equalization.

Also the Alt-tabbing function, very little but pesky issues.

So far no crashes while using the Texture packs that i had before the patch would cause CTD's like mad, especially near or in Solitude.

[mrcash2009 0]

The Testv Acceleration layer mod (FPS increase) has had a good effect all round and a new test version has been added which fixes some effects with certain game moments that were reported, and are reported to be fixed also:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1322545-rel-tesv-acceleration-layer-thread-3/page__view__findpost__p__19888544

Edited December 24, 2011 by mrcash2009

[mrcash2009 0]

As an update the Acceleration layer mod for more fps has a nexus link:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387

The previous thread I linked was getting a bit messy.

Well so far performance is what I would have expected out of the box on high settings now so very happy.

Now I have got more used to the game and how it works I have a Nord as warrior mainly in whiterun based on main story and will eventually start civil war as stormcloacks, another character as thief / elf as archer based in Riften mainly dealing with small side quests and roaming the map at random, and will then set up a mage via city based on all mage aspects as a roaming character.

I guess that evenly covers the game and all aspects without each of the characters crossing paths as such and repeating much of the game per character, I imagine as RPG I could say they are all living at the same time but in different places :)

[mrcash2009 0]

05_4pwSNrf8



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:bounce3:

[ArmAriffic 10]

mSDfxde8fSg

:D :D

[viper[cww] 14]

^^ My thoughts exactly