When something carries a warning that it “will require your first born and a pint of your blood”, you know it’s going to be good.
User sheson over on the ENB forums has posted what he’s calling the Skyrim Memory Patch. The full explanation is very technical, but the gist is that it frees up more memory for Skyrim to use, which means more mods, greater draw distances and more characters on-screen (and also, reportedly, less crashes as well).
Of course, the risk in doing this – and he’s kind enough to warn you at every step of the way – is that in taking on the extra burden, you can screw up things like your saves.
A key part is the changing of the game’s “ugrids” value. This is how the world draws and populates itself on your screen. By default, it’s set to a low value. We’ve been able to get it higher for ages now – indeed, I finished the game first time with a higher ugrid number – but sheson’s guide goes way past just that basic tinkering.
You can see the results in the screens below. What you’re looking for isn’t the texture quality (they’re not the crispest screens), but just how much detail is being displayed and the range it’s being displayed at.
Skyrim Memory Patch – fixing ILS, uGrids CTD, freezes [ENB]
Comments
16 responses to “Skyrim Modding Gets Its Doors Blown Off”
Pretty cool, but hoping the next Elder scrolls has zero loading screens beyond the initial one. I’d love to walk into a city, find a wall, climb over it, go outside that way, scurry in via a sewer, maybe bash through a wall somewhere via magic etc *shrug* with zero loading screens with me going in and out of cities/caves/anywhere.You know, all the regular old stuff.
AC4 has it fairly good but there is loading when entering the major cities or quick travelling.
Not if they stay on shitty gamebryo. They really need to get rid of that.
This. The engine has been holding them back since the Oblivion days. It really needs to be completely replaced.
Absolutely they do.
The only problem with this, That unless they re-make the entire engine themselves, They’ll have to use an alternative engine, which means we’ll lose the extensive modding system in place.
Sadly, in my opinion, The Elder Scrolls series is made by the engine, and ruined by the engine.
There not using Gamebrio anymore. There using an in-house one called Creation Engine.
It’s still gamebryo. We all know it. Changing the name doesn’t change what engine it is. See: all the modding tools, etc
There is actually a mod that makes no load times for all cities but building etc still have load times
Yep. Open Cities: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8058/?
Ahh, you beat me to it, you prick. 🙂
Smurf, as @Bringbackthefez said earlier, there’s a mod that will allow you to realise, at least, part of this. It’s called Open Cities. It essentially moves instanced cities Whiterun, Markarth, Riften, Solitude and that shit hole of Nordic fascist, nationalists, Windhelm (Boo!) into the game world, removing the loading screens and allowing seamless entry into any city, even on horseback. Although it hit a snag in dev and while it’s mostly playable, there are a few compatibility issues with some mods and some CTDs if you’ve modded around towns, ie, adding Arenas, Wild Mountain Dairy near Whiterun, etc. Also, if you add it into an existing save and then remove it, it can screw with your load order process which may require reinstalling.
…k, I realise how bad I’ve just made that sound, but as relatively simple as the notion of riding into Whiterun sans loading screen is, it’s pretty incredible. but starting with a new character is pretty much the way to go. Starting anew, I’ve only have the rare CTD, and by and large, it’s been quite stable after adding the plethora of mods I’ve used previously.
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8058/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D8058%26preview%3D&pUp=1
It still has loading screens for caves, buildings, houses, etc, but it does make slinking out of a town more realistic insofar as you can choose how and where to escape, once you’ve shitted off the local constabulary, instead of having to make a run though the normal bottlenecks like main gates and so on.
Then again, if the number of objects and models is what causes the ctd issues around towns with Open Cities, ENB could, conceivably if not solve, then reduce these issues if it’s freeing up extra resources for Skyrim to use…
Heads up – the link doesn’t work.
“Welcome to ENBSeries project. This is the trap page for bots and hotlinking protection. Real site address is http://enbdev.com“
Anyone else getting hotlinking protection when clicking the source link?
Yes I am, bit of a shame as this probably would have brought me back to finish the story finally.
You have to click on the “real site address” – http://enbdev.com , and then News, and then Forum (on the left), and then forum again, and then it’s in the Advertise Mods – Other section. :/