Hell fucking yeah. When running Skyrim I had to play it on such a low resolution it looked like a PS1 game, I also removed trees, reduced mountain textures to 256x256px, and many other mods I put into a group called “Schizo Performance Mods.”
Context for my setup: I was running it under wine with an Intel i3 with iGPU. I didn’t take “no” as an answer, if I wanted to play Skyrim, I will play Skyrim. Since I can’t use dxvk, I had to use Gallium Nine. In the end Gallium Nine gave me the biggest boost, now interiors average about 40-45 fps, and exteriors are about 25-30. I was also crazy enough to want to play with some 150+ mods, so there’s no one to blame here but me.
complex ancient fading lore
It might as well be. Lots of mods got deleted, then there is the split between Legendary Edition, and whatever the newer two versions are, so now we have a shit ton of backports and forward ports of many mods. Skyrim modding was a nightmare, I can’t even imagine trying to mod say, Fallout: New Vegas.
It’s already getting bad. It’s kind of heartbreaking. Around 2015 was the sweet spot where a lot of mods would be updated quickly, authors turned around compatibility patches for other mods very often, and the game was still a big enough part of the zeitgeist that you had a lot of people who were interested in DIY game dev putting time into the modding scene, with the expectation that so many people play Skyrim that surely your mod would appeal to someone.
I even have a little mod idea from 2012. I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I still will.
I played a fair bit at the time and then told myself I’ll go again in the future. About a year ago I tried to start setting up a new mod list and it was complicated by the versions and the need to manually port versions and that kind of thing. Frankly, it was laziness on my part, not trying hard enough to learn the new meta, not bothering to understand the porting process. It looked like so much effort and I quite frankly had way less time and patience for it.
My setup wasn’t great (laptop with a 4700MQ (I think!) and GT750 SLI. Not GTX, GT. Yeah.) but it was plenty to play at decently high settings in vanilla and high with a little bit of ultra after doing all the modded optimizations. Seriously, that one texture compression mod made the game playable at all during the summer months.
Those were the days huh. I still think modding peaked with Skyrim and Minecraft and every successive generation of people playing games is fighting for fewer and fewer scraps.
around compatibility patches for other mods very often
Yeah it almost seemed like every mod had compatibility with some 7 other mods. That’s how I discovered a lot of good mods.
I even have a little mod idea from 2012. I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I still will.
I was honestly shocked to see that LE still gets uploads, even though they are mostly texture mods. Some SE/AE mods do get ported to LE, but like you said, there isn’t much more for compatibility for all of these mods. You have to patch stuff yourself using XEdit, and… Oh boy!
texture compression
playable at all during the summer months
I thought I was I crazy when I said that I shouldn’t play games in the summer. But a couple of screenshots I had showcased a much lower CPU temperature in the winter. So there I was in the winter, toes and fingies frozen, just playing Skyrim. Mostly just roaming and making my own stories and sub plots, I never did any kind of faction quest ever.
Skyrim and Minecraft
My first modding experience with Minecraft was with Forge and Optifine on version 1.12. Tbh it was a very bad experience partly because of my even weaker rig back then. But now I think the Minecraft ecosystem is better than ever, I have seen a huge shift to adopt open source licenses for mods (Although to be fair, when I was a kid I didn’t check for licenses lol). I always thought I couldn’t play the latest and greatest version because I have a weaker system, but Sodium and some other 20 mods turned the table! I’m talking about Fabric here, as it has a much lower memory footprint than Forge, albeit less mods :(
Those trees in the distance (LOD Trees) are hallucinations created by your dwindling sanity as you try to squeeze +2 fps. When you go near them they simply plop out of existence.
Also my game looked worse than this. Interestingly the Xbox360 version of the game not only looked better. but actually ran at a smooth 30 fps.
Your biggest boost will probably be from reducing the resolution, and making sure that you are using dxvk or Gallium Nine, DO NOT USE WINED3D which is basically the default state of wine. Gallium Nine was so easy to install when Mesa 24 was compiled with it enabled, now Mesa 25 stopped compiling Gallium Nine so you have to compile Mesa 1.24.x yourself and enable Gallium Nine support. I tried but for the life of me it wouldn’t fucking compile.+
In the end, I modded Skyrim more than I played it.
Hell fucking yeah. When running Skyrim I had to play it on such a low resolution it looked like a PS1 game, I also removed trees, reduced mountain textures to 256x256px, and many other mods I put into a group called “Schizo Performance Mods.”
CGA Skyrim ?
If I remember correctly, there were mods that made the settings go below the lowest available ones.
Suddenly feeling like my Skyrim mod knowledge is some complex ancient fading lore in parts of my mind I haven’t used in years.
Context for my setup: I was running it under wine with an Intel i3 with iGPU. I didn’t take “no” as an answer, if I wanted to play Skyrim, I will play Skyrim. Since I can’t use dxvk, I had to use Gallium Nine. In the end Gallium Nine gave me the biggest boost, now interiors average about 40-45 fps, and exteriors are about 25-30. I was also crazy enough to want to play with some 150+ mods, so there’s no one to blame here but me.
It might as well be. Lots of mods got deleted, then there is the split between Legendary Edition, and whatever the newer two versions are, so now we have a shit ton of backports and forward ports of many mods. Skyrim modding was a nightmare, I can’t even imagine trying to mod say, Fallout: New Vegas.
It’s already getting bad. It’s kind of heartbreaking. Around 2015 was the sweet spot where a lot of mods would be updated quickly, authors turned around compatibility patches for other mods very often, and the game was still a big enough part of the zeitgeist that you had a lot of people who were interested in DIY game dev putting time into the modding scene, with the expectation that so many people play Skyrim that surely your mod would appeal to someone.
I even have a little mod idea from 2012. I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I still will.
I played a fair bit at the time and then told myself I’ll go again in the future. About a year ago I tried to start setting up a new mod list and it was complicated by the versions and the need to manually port versions and that kind of thing. Frankly, it was laziness on my part, not trying hard enough to learn the new meta, not bothering to understand the porting process. It looked like so much effort and I quite frankly had way less time and patience for it.
My setup wasn’t great (laptop with a 4700MQ (I think!) and GT750 SLI. Not GTX, GT. Yeah.) but it was plenty to play at decently high settings in vanilla and high with a little bit of ultra after doing all the modded optimizations. Seriously, that one texture compression mod made the game playable at all during the summer months.
Those were the days huh. I still think modding peaked with Skyrim and Minecraft and every successive generation of people playing games is fighting for fewer and fewer scraps.
Yeah it almost seemed like every mod had compatibility with some 7 other mods. That’s how I discovered a lot of good mods.
I was honestly shocked to see that LE still gets uploads, even though they are mostly texture mods. Some SE/AE mods do get ported to LE, but like you said, there isn’t much more for compatibility for all of these mods. You have to patch stuff yourself using XEdit, and… Oh boy!
I thought I was I crazy when I said that I shouldn’t play games in the summer. But a couple of screenshots I had showcased a much lower CPU temperature in the winter. So there I was in the winter, toes and fingies frozen, just playing Skyrim. Mostly just roaming and making my own stories and sub plots, I never did any kind of faction quest ever.
My first modding experience with Minecraft was with Forge and Optifine on version 1.12. Tbh it was a very bad experience partly because of my even weaker rig back then. But now I think the Minecraft ecosystem is better than ever, I have seen a huge shift to adopt open source licenses for mods (Although to be fair, when I was a kid I didn’t check for licenses lol). I always thought I couldn’t play the latest and greatest version because I have a weaker system, but Sodium and some other 20 mods turned the table! I’m talking about Fabric here, as it has a much lower memory footprint than Forge, albeit less mods :(
Playing morrowind | empty brain
Making skyrim look like morrowind | galaxy brain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUXjZDOE0tM
A man after my own heart. Also here’s how the game looked like
Tree Mesh Remover
Insignificant Object Remover
Those trees in the distance (LOD Trees) are hallucinations created by your dwindling sanity as you try to squeeze +2 fps. When you go near them they simply plop out of existence.
Also my game looked worse than this. Interestingly the Xbox360 version of the game not only looked better. but actually ran at a smooth 30 fps.
For any poor soul that wants to attempt what I did, first you must follow the official guide on the Skyrim Modding Wiki, then take a look at this A Helpful Guide To Increase Skyrim’s Performance and Stability - FPS and Optimization
Your biggest boost will probably be from reducing the resolution, and making sure that you are using dxvk or Gallium Nine, DO NOT USE WINED3D which is basically the default state of wine. Gallium Nine was so easy to install when Mesa 24 was compiled with it enabled, now Mesa 25 stopped compiling Gallium Nine so you have to compile Mesa 1.24.x yourself and enable Gallium Nine support. I tried but for the life of me it wouldn’t fucking compile.+
In the end, I modded Skyrim more than I played it.