Gaming

Charlotte wrote:

*sticks to dying every so often*

*sticks to dying inside*

Unlike a lot of other people I have managed to enter the redeem code and the game does show up as a transaction in my account. I hear they've extended the offer until Sunday, or perhaps indefinitely until they eventually level up and acquire some competence.
I have to admit that it is an evil kind of fun watching everyone abuse them on Twitter and Reddit for their glorious ineptitude.

Three hours later...

MORROWIND!!!

"Move along, Outlander."
"Say your words!"
"N'Wah!!"
And all my other favourite soundbites.
It seems like I have been chosen again. Goodbye spare hours, goodbye.


Edit: And now I'm wondering, should I mod it to make it look a little less ancient? Can you even do that with these "launcher-DRM" games?

Has anyone else here ever tried installing mods to a game? I think I'd be a bit scared to tinker with game files even though the updated graphics do look significantly better.

Valence wrote:

But one downside of getting Morrowind again is having to play through that difficult first hour one more time. Die, fetcher!

Second time around, it doesn't seem quite as tough when you actually know what you're doing.
And I stole the famous Limeware Platter this time!

It seems you can mod the game just fine. I only did the patches and bug-fixes rather than a full overhaul. I did download the graphics extender but, after reading up on it, those fancy shaders do seem to be a bit too much without a graphics card. But even the vanilla looks better than that XBox version and it doesn't have the variable frame rate either. I may try some of the HD textures later though.
Also if you create the desktop shortcut from the game's executable file then you don't have to use that awful, buggy, Bethesda Launcher!

The only problem now is that I've gone two whole days without painting.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Morrowind.

Perhaps that should be the unofficial sequel.

I noticed that the actual sequel (Oblivion) along with the other Elder Scrolls games, was reduced to half price on Steam. They were obviously trying to take advantage of all those technical difficulties to tempt people without patience.

Today I thought it was time to get back into the habit of painting and after a bit of scribbling I drew this face....


Naah, who am I kidding? I'm still modding Morrowind!

It's hard to believe that just a couple of days ago I was a bit scared of tinkering and now I'm throwing all kinds of stuff in that Data folder and I've even learned what anisotropic filtering does.
I confirmed that all those fancy shaders kill my framerate (but I really don't need/want that HDR gimmick or AO and that bloom effect isn't really worth it. Sun rays would be nice but... ) However I do like the real time shadows and having a bit of animated grass getting in the way is a nice touch. And I've managed to map some keys to the graphics settings so that I can toggle them during the game if I need a framerate boost.
Overall it's not quite as pretty as some of the showoff screenshots that modders like to post but even so, there are moments during a nice sunset that make it easy to forget it's a patched up 17 year old game.
Elsewhere I've upgraded the body meshes so that they don't look like segmented, wooden puppets and now I just need to fiddle with the faces and hairstyles and then I'll be ready to actually play the thing!

And when that happens I'll be making an early trip to Balmora now that I know where you can steal the Sword Of White Woe.