Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 5
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 4 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.
Skyrim mods are quite popular: two million downloads in three days
The Skyrim Creation Kit was released last Wednesday. Within hours, the Steam Workshop was stuffed with mods, including good ones, bad ones and downright scary ones. In case it wasn’t obvious already, Skyrim mods have proved extremely popular with players. Bethesda say that two million mods were downloaded within three days of the release of the Creation Kit.
Players have had plenty to choose from. According to Bethesda “more than 2,500 mods have been published by the gaming community.” It’s an almost overwhelming selection that ranges from new armour and upgraded textures to new combat moves and devastating magic. Thankfully, the Steam Workshop now has a much needed search bar, making it easier to find mods your friends have recommended. Speaking of which, here’s our round up of some of the best Steam Workshop mods so far.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 4
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 4 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 3
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 3 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first. We’ll be posting part 4 this time tomorrow.
The Elder Strolls, Part 10: The Pale Horse
After weeks of contentedly walking everywhere at a snail’s pace, I suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to rush. With my wedding over, I’m eager to leave Riften behind and start my new life in Whiterun. I can’t wait to move into my new home, to find a place to store my various collected possessions, and to get back to a quiet life of smithing and hunting. Oh, and also to find my wife, I guess, who wandered away halfway through our wedding ceremony and hasn’t been seen since. (You can watch the entire ceremony here on YouTube.)
So, I’m in a hurry, for a change. It feels like a cheat to hire the wagon outside the city, so I decide instead to buy a horse from the Riften stables, and moments later I’m galloping along the trail, with Jasper following. It’s strange to be traveling this fast, mostly because I’m zooming past all these flowers and herbs and thistles. I should be picking them. I’m… compelled to pick them. It’s almost making me tense, passing them all by like this. But, like I said, for once I’m in a hurry.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 2
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 2 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first. We’ll be posting part 3 this time tomorrow.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 1
Making a mod for Skyrim is easier than you might think. The Creation Kit, released this week, lets you create new monsters, quests, buildings, landscapes and weapons without having to take up programming. Grab it by selecting ‘Tools’ in your Steam games library – it’s under C for Creation Kit rather than S for Skyrim.
Best of all, the developers themselves are doing a great series of video tutorials on how to use the Creation Kit, aimed at absolute beginners. They’re in easily digestible 15 minute chunks, so we’ll be posting a new one every day. Until Bethesda can’t keep up, of course, at which point we’ll start calling them and asking “Is it out yet? Is it out now? How about now?” until they do. Part 1 is above.
Skyrim video shows fantastic unused features: colossal crabs, spear fighting, house building
This video is from Todd Howard’s speech at the DICE 2012 keynote in Las Vegas, spotted on Eurogamer. It shows the results of a week-long Bethesda game jam, in which developers were given one task: “Do anything you want, and add it to the game.” The results were impressive. Enormous crab monsters, a lycanthrope skill tree, seasonal foliage, moving platforms, adoption and house building were just a few of the ideas the team came up with.
The best Steam Workshop Skyrim mods
Last night, the Steam Workshop was updated to support Skyrim mods. It’s a central repository for community made content, from tiny tweaks to total overhauls. After one night, there are already 459 mods up that you can add to the game with a click.
Steam handles downloading, installing and activating them in-game, and will even automatically update them when a new version comes out. But the sheer volume is kind of daunting right now, so we’ve trawled through to find you the highlights, divided into three categories that broadly reflect the trends in what people have made so far.
Skyrim gets high resolution texture pack
Last week Bethesda mentioned that the Skyrim Creation Kit would arrive with a “special surprise.” Rumours immediately appeared which hinted at an official high-res texture pack, rumours which turned out to be entirely true. You can download it now from Steam.
It could tax your machine a bit. Bethesda recommend the mod to those with “a minimum of 4GB of system RAM and a DirectX 9.0c compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI video card with at least 1 GB of RAM and the latest drivers.”
The pack adds three gigabytes worth of sharpened surfaces, which should hopefully clean up some of Skyrim’s smeary walls and blurry rock textures. I quickly booted it up to have a look, but was stabbed by a barbarian while I was busy pushing my face into a wall :(
Skyrim Creation Kit released, Skyrim goes mad
The Skyrim Creation kit is live! The Steam Workshop is already filling up with dozens and dozens of mods, some of which are quite mad. Not enough goats? Download the goat summoning mod. More dog eyebrows? Mod some in. Giants not big enough? Download the bigger giants mod. Skyrim is going nuts. In a very good way.
Skyrim Creation Kit to be released tomorrow with “special surprise”
A tweet from Bethesda’s VP of PR, Pete Hines, on Friday announced that the long-awaited Skyrim Creation Kit will be out tomorrow. TOMORROW. The tools will let modders create their own campaigns using the same tools that Bethesda use to create their environments. Take a look at last week’s Creation Kit trailer for an idea of what’s included.
The Elder Strolls, Part 9: Groom and Gloom
There’s a spring in my step as I prepare to make my way to back to Riften to get married, because my future, once uncertain, now holds many treasures. A home to live in. The love of a wife whose name, I’m pretty sure, begins with a Y. The realization that I no longer have to interview NPCs and help them solve their problems. Best of all, I feel like I’ve cheated Skyrim, a world intent on throwing adventure in my path, by getting engaged without any bloodshed.
Marriage in Skyrim begins with deeds, the priest told me, and deeds in Skyrim generally involve killing people. Not murdering them, necessarily, but fighting them, scores of them, while completing a favor for your intended life-partner. My engagement, however, came about by simply buying a mammoth tusk and handing it to a woman. Take that, Game Filled With Adventure! I got a bride with zero casualties! Unless you count the mammoth, which I didn’t even kill. And, it’s not like I’m going to kill a lot of people on my way back to Riften, right?
Skyrim patch 1.4 optimises performance, fixes Wabbajacks
Wabbajack-loving Skyrim players will know that there’s nothing worse than a Wabbajack you can’t equip, which is why it’s vital that Skyrim players log into Steam immediately to download the full release of patch 1.4. It fixes a “rare issue” in “The Mind of Madness” that would leave players burdened with a Wabbajack that they’d be unable to wield. A fate worse than death.
Now we’ve won search ranking for the Word “Wabbajack,” we can move on to the full list of patch notes, which will be familiar to those who road tested the beta version. The patch will apply automatically through Steam, and adds some behind the scenes support for the incoming Skyrim Workshop. According to yesterday’s Skyrim Creation Kit trailer, that’ll be arriving soon.
Skyrim Creation Kit trailer shows mod tools in action
Here’s a video Bethesda just sent over showing off the Creation Kit for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The video mentions extensive wiki documentation written by Bethesda staff and shows how Skyrim mods will integrate with the Steam Workshop. It’s exciting to contemplate the astonishing things that modders will make with the kit in the coming months. They’ve already been hard at work making massive changes to the game, as you can see in our round-up of the top 25 Skyrim mods.
But what’s this at 1:12, on the left of the centre row? Mudcrab armour? A familiar sight for readers who reached the back page of PC Gamer UK issue 232, drawn by the lovely Marsh Davies. The mod tools are due to arrive soon, which isn’t soon enough.
