General Update on Stuff and Things

So! Here's a rundown:

    Yesterday, I released my Arcane Market mod, at long last. It's got most of what I wanted, and I learned a few things making it, including just a little about scripting--begrudgingly, unwillingly. I'm glad it's out and done, at least the releasable version, so I can work on some of my other mod projects.

    I mentioned I wanted to do a new modded Stardew Valley playthrough. Well, the 1.5 update ended up dropping in the middle of it, lol. I kept going for a while, but since not every mod updated right away, I had to keep my run on 1.4.5. Eventually the momentum just petered out. I have yet to have a save that lasts the whole two years until Grandpa's evaluation (though I was cruising for an easy four candles anyway). Oh well, it was still fun while it lasted. You can see my forevially in-progress farm below. Notable mods include Vibrant Pastoral Recolor, Seasonal Japanese Buildings, Lungs, Mermaids, and Element Spirits.

    The 2021 Fantasy Faire in Second Life ended just a bit ago. Was fun as always. Shopped, explored, caught some performances, did the quest. The usual. There's some other events going on now that I want to check out, including the Raglan Shire Artwalk.

    Fun stuff. 

Oblivion Update and You Tubes

     So, an update. I have my Oblivion install up and running with what I consider essentials. I also decided to do a more relaxed playthrough with Haela Long-Strider to test things out. As a bonus I decided to roll with some mods I rarely use or wanted to try for the first time, that I don't see fitting in any of the characters I want to play for the near future.

    Game looks super pretty. I actually ended up making a video doing a before/after from a vanilla installation. Was mostly an experiment to see if I enjoyed making videos, maybe I'll do more in the future idk. As if I need another social media void to scream into about breaking video games.

    Performance was actually pretty solid with all the graphics mods... buuuut I couldn't stop there, obviously. I threw in a bunch of heavy mods like Better Cities, which I haven't used in years, and FOMO Imperial Isles, which I'd never used at all. Lots of very pretty scenery, but my fps gets pretty rough in places, especially in areas like Weye and the Waterfront. And I get the expected out-of-memory crashes occasionally. Not a huge deal, as I said this is a more laid-back testing run anyway, so unlike a normal playthrough of mine I'm not really RPing or avoiding fast travel.(Yeah, I know, neeerrrrrrd)

    But in typical fashion, by the time I've gotten everything set up and can just play the game, I'm feeling the urge to play something else. Oh well, at least I've got the modlist ready and waiting when I come back. Maybe I'll mod Stardew Valley next! 

   My brain is absolutely, irredeemably broken.

Adventures In Re-Installing Oblivion

     I'd been putting it off for years, but recently I was finally forced to upgrade to Windows 10. I decided to take the opportunity to do a full re-install of Oblivion- though I had all of my previous files, my old install was held together with dark magic and tape, and thus prone to crashing if I changed anything.

    After creating a clean vanilla slate, I decided to run around ingame to check that everything was in working order... and ended up doing whole playthrough. Including finally, after 1500+ hours of game time in Oblivion, playing the main questline to completion.

    Anything I could say about the main quest was said years ago. Suffice to say I enjoyed my time with it, but am not eager to play through it again any time soon. (Okay, but for real, Oblivion Gates get real tedious, real fast.) That being said, I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed playing vanilla. Don't get me wrong, I miss modded- sooo many times I caught myself trying to use my UI hotkeys- but it was nice recapturing what I loved about this game in the first place. The world, the quests, the core experience of Oblivion is just fun for me. I also realized a few things I didn't need to mod; For example, I actually enjoyed playing with the vanilla timescale of 30 and remembered that I'd originally modded it lower to work with basic needs mods I no longer use. 

    Other games, like Minecraft, don't hold my attention unless modded. But when it comes down to it, I really like Oblivion for itself. (In spite of the bugs, holy crap I forgot how buggy this game is. It makes my creaky old modded install look pretty stable by comparison, lol.)

    All that being said, I am going to be once more modding the shit out of Oblivion. It's been ages since I did a full re-install, and I've learned a lot since then. There's been more work by the community to compile modern Oblivion modding guides, too, such as bevilex's popular one. It's going to be a bit of an ordeal to get back to where I was, and I don't even know how much I'll be able to save of my personal mod projects, but it'll be fun, too. 

    After all, as they say with Skyrim, modding the game IS the game.

Dungeon-Making In Oblivion

In my last post, I mentioned my project to add a wizard-themed marketplace to Oblivion with vendors and attractions. An idea I had for one of said attractions was a dungeon run with random loot including some of the fancier wizard swag in my mod collection. Thing is, I'd never made a dungeon before, and I didn't want this to be my first effort, especially considering that I'd want it to be interesting enough to run multiple times.

So now I'm making a "practice" dungeon, loosely following the official My First Dungeon tutorial put out by the CS devs. I've got one cell completed with lighting, clutter, enemies, pathing etc. Now that I've gone through all the steps for one cell, I want to add at least one more with a boss room, then create the exterior worldspace linkage to integrate it into the game properly. 

yep, that there is a dungeon alright

It's been an interesting process, and I've expanded my knowledge of the CS a bit. Level design is its own skillset and I'm definitely a rank amateur. Lighting has been one of the trickiest things to get right, even more so than normal interiors as there are more considerations for gameplay. Since I'm deliberately copying the vanilla devs' style closely, the dungeon itself is going to be pretty generic and not worth a mod release. But I'll have some experience I can put into making a really cool dungeon for the market! It's a useless hobby, but I'm enjoying myself.

Catching Up On My Oblivion Adventures

It's been a while since I mentioned Oblivion on this blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been modding or playing. Thought while I was here I might as well post an update on my adventures.

First off, my Khajiit thief Kzhirra, after many adventures in Cyrodiil and Elsweyr, eventually managed to complete the Thieves' Guild questline and inherited the title of Gray Fox. She immediately decided to shirk any and all responsibilities as Guildmaster and retired to the desert with the Cowl and all her ill-gotten gains. It was refreshing to have a character come to the end of their story naturally rather than have the playthrough end prematurely due to boredom or bugs.

gg skooma kitty

The same could not be said for my subsequent character, an Imperial whose goal was to make his riches through crafting and business mods, and who largely relied on companions to stay alive. Sadly one of said companions broke in a big way and I stupidly did not keep backup saves from far enough back. RIP Vilja, never came back from shopping in Skingrad :(

So I decided to take a break from playthroughs for a while and focus on modding. One of my quarantine projects was to learn how to convert clothing to new body types. My preferred body mod is Luchaire's TGND2; I feel it manages to be both naturalistic and attractive. It also has conversions available for most of the big overhaul mods I use. 

I'd been "converting" various mods' clothing that was simply retextured vanilla meshes by taking an already-converted model and pointing it to the mod's retexture, then saving over the mod's mesh. In other cases I used outfits that covered the whole body, as in the above picture of Kzhirra, and didn't care if that meant the character went up a couple cup sizes because I am very lazy.

But there are other modded clothes I want to use where that simply won't work. While TGND2 is based off the HGEC body and uses the same UV maps, the wrists and hands as well as feet and ankles are smaller. This creates a noticeable gap in those areas when you wear a HGEC outfit in a game with TGND installed. (The mod attempts to circumvent this with equippable "HGEC" hands and feet, but they never made a difference for me). Now, there is an automated tool called the Clothing Converter that can attempt to make the appropriate edits to meshes based on a configured "lattice", but even in the best of times the results are imperfect. 

Eventually, I realized there was no other option. I'd have to learn some Blender.

I'd been brainstorming an Argonian mage character for my next playthrough, so some cool mage robes seemed a good place to start. My first project was to convert the vanilla robe remodels by yuravica aka Fly. These remodels vary, some are skimpy, some are just odd, but there's some that I could totally see fitting into my game. Once I converted a mesh, I could have a huge variety of robes by pointing the models at various robe textures, as done in this mod.

some are very odd

The process has left me a broken shell of a human being. First, all the Oblivion tools for Blender are based on the ancient 2.49b version (though at least there is a handy compilation of said tools available here from Room207). This makes general Blender tutorials hard to follow as so many are meant for later versions of the software that made significant changes in the UI.

Then there's the models themselves: I may have chosen a rather poor place to start as the remodels already suffer from clipping issues and the like before I bumble in with my poorly-done conversions. I can't really blame Fly, as they're deliberately doing weird and experimental things with these meshes while keeping the UV maps the same. But after converting 8 of the 15 or so unique models, I decided it was time to take a break. Perhaps permanently. I may try and see if I have an easier time on other conversion projects before going back to this one. I definitely have a newfound respect to the effort that goes into converting dozens of meshes from the big overhaul mods and the like!

After putting that effort on hold, I turned to other projects. I scoped out various house mods for my next playthrough, and really liked the look of one from Trollf called Alchemists Cave. It had a few issues that needed fixing, and after cleaning it up I decided I might as well chuck it up on Nexus in the rare case that someone else found themselves in the same situation as me. Most of the modding I do isn't shareable, as I mostly tweak, compile, or build on the contributions of others to make my own perfect game world. I might as well put up what I can without running afoul of permissions issues.

My new project is a marketplace to house vendors selling the robes, staves, and other magical swag from various mods I've collected over the years. The original mods usually dump their wares in a chest somewhere or into the inventory of a vanilla shopkeeper. My vision is a sort of weekend wizard farmer's market with various vendors and activities, that also serves as a handy way to compile all these resources into one .esp. I may put up the marketplace itself as a modder's resource, sans actual modded content, then add what I want to my local version. Don't know if anyone would actually care or have a use for it, but hey, that's modding for you!

Magical Waifu Wonderland in Minecraft

Like the Ark post previously, this is a wrap-up/showcase of the Minecraft instance I've been playing. It used a weird, self-made pack focusing on magic, new dimensions and weeaboo trash; fun while it lasted, though of course I didn't get nearly through all the available content before my interest waned.

Here's a overview of my base. I tried to keep my building above-ground for a change, adding new buildings for each purpose. The result was a cute little hamlet, though I couldn't manage a consistent architecture or color palette. The Torchmaster mod was so nice for being able to keep the base area safe without spamming torches all over the place. Especially with the very nasty nighttime mobs from Grimoire of Gaia to deal with.

Here's the interior of my house. The first building of the base, over time it grew less important as storage and the like was moved elsewhere. I enjoyed decorating it, though. A lot of the furniture here came from the Chinjufu mod, great for that Japanese aesthetic.

A cozy place to relax with your Friends.

This is the storage room, using a neat mod called Arcane Archives. I really liked it as a relatively simple yet aesthetic storage solution.

Featuring a shy bunny-maid.

Finally, the room for enchanting, potion making, and other magic goodness. Also functioned as a trophy room; you can see some of my progress from the Twilight Forest.

Like I said, I didn't get nearly as far as I wanted and only visited a few dimensions, though I did defeat the Ender Dragon, for a a change. After a while I started getting the urge to try a more low-key, rustic playstyle again, going for a "Terrafirmacraft-lite" experience. However, while I was contemplating, I stumbled upon a standalone game, Vintage Story, that appears heavily inspired by the TFC, with hopefully less of the jank that results from being bolted onto the Minecraft engine. And it even has mod support! Be still, my heart.

My Ark: Valguero Server for Little Babies Who Don't Know How to Ark

My partner and I recently wound up an Ark server we'd been playing on. It was on the new Valguero map, with some mods, mostly QOL stuff and decorative bits. Server settings were pretty easy, both of us were pretty noobish when it came to this game so we treated the server as kind of a training-wheels learning experience.

We divided the labor- he is more interested in building and infrastructure projects, while I enjoy the exploring and combat and animal raising aspects of the game. We shared resource gathering duties. It worked out pretty well, and for the most part we were able to focus on the parts of Ark we enjoy while still progressing as a mini-tribe.

I wanted to share some pictures he took of our base, which was cool as hell if a bit laggy. Castles, Keeps and Forts Remastered is responsible for the building pieces- my partner spent a lot of time looking at real castles to get an authentic-feeling layout.

The trees were provided by one of Eco's mods- more on them later.

We took over the whole peninsula in the center of the map. Took a long time to secure the area, and the massive wall we had to build probably contributed a lot to the lag in the base. It was so huge you couldn't even load it in all at once, which was such a shame.

This doesn't even show the whole peninsula. It was a lot of space to try and keep spawns out of.

It was functional as well as pretty. All our crafting and storage was conveniently located near the animal pen for easy drop-off of resources. My only issue was finding space to stash breeding projects; my partner vastly underestimated just how much space a bunch of bangin' dinosaurs take up.

His pride and joy was our garden. Beautiful, with plenty of crop plots, and small pets ambling about. Eco's mods are so much fun to decorate with. I ended up coming to the garden sometimes just to sit and take in the atmosphere.

It's hard to pick a favorite spot, but mine might be the dinosaur topiary garden.

On my end, I got to experiment a lot with taming, breeding and using dinosaurs. There were successes- like figuring out how to breed for and stack mutations, or stealing and hatching a wyvern egg, and failures... but that's Ark for you.

RIP Jade, my beautiful Aberrant Spino, died to my own stupidity.

We had fun, and certainly learned a lot. Next time we play we decided we want to do a progression series, starting on the Island and working our way through the bosses and story. I also have more mods I want to try out, naturally. I recently got an SSD, so hopefully loading in will take less than 20 minutes this time...hopefully.

Going Elsweyr in Oblivion

Oh, I have a blog? I forgot.

Well here's an update, then, before the end of the year. I've been playing a few games, including some less-moddable ones, for a change. MMOs and mobile games- just the worst! 

But of course, in the end, I always come back to Oblivion. After bungling a Thieve's Guild job, my clumsy cat burglar was forced to flee Cyrodiil 'til the heat died down a bit. This gave me a great opportunity to explore the province mod(s) of Elsweyr. I use the plural because there have actually been several mods that add on to the original work of Iliana. I think it's a sign of a truly great mod that creates its own mini-ecosystem of submods like this. After spending some time in the province, I understand why.

The amount of work that's on display here is incredible. The desert land of Anequina has been realized to a remarkable degree; everything from the cities to the landscape itself feels very unique and distinct from the vanilla game, with tons of custom meshes used. Even within the province there's distinct cultures; the rough-and-tumble Orcrest is very different from the shining domes of Dune. The new breeds of Khajiit are very cool, and helped sell that this was an alien culture.

 I almost had a Morrowind-y feeling exploring the province; Elsweyr is a much less safe and civilized place than ol' Cyrodiil. In fact, because of this mod, some of the biggest baddies from WAC were wandering the deserts looking to chomp my poor kitty's butt. She really isn't a terribly effective fighter, and I ended up turning the difficulty slider down (way, way down).

I've been to most of the major cities of Anequina at this point, and am now wandering about looking for adventures. Most of the quests available here are short but sweet; my favorite adventure so far has been thwarting a fiendish saboteur from Valenwood in his attempt unleash a plague upon the cat-people.

The mod has been relatively stable- I've encountered a few bugs here and there, but I can't be certain that they're the fault of the original authors since I'm actually using an unholy merged ESP of several Elsweyr mods (no longer available on Nexus), and who knows what trouble that's caused. A little bit of Construction Set knowledge goes a long way to deal with such things, though. 

All in all, I'm having a lot of fun so far, and I still haven't seen everything in Anequina. Then there's a newer mod that adds some of Pelletine as well. Well, here's to many more adventures in 2019! 

Playing a Klepto-Kitty in Oblivion

So, I started a new character in Oblivion. I've been wanting to do a new thief playthrough, with the goal of actually doing the whole Thieves' Guild questline- something I have yet to accomplish. I've played thief and stealth-focused characters before, but none of them found the Guild a very good fit. I had a Bosmer who stole purely for the thrill, and didn't have any interest in dealing with fences or Robin-Hood codes of honor. Another, "ethically-challenged" Argonian, joined the Guild but soon found that he preferred the more exciting (and less self-righteous) life of an assassin.

But I figure that it's high time I actually played through the Thieves' Guild proper. Introducing Kzhirra, a fun-loving Khajiit open to new and radical interpretations of the concept of personal property:

She loves fashion, especially when she can get her clothes for free!

She's actually one of the Khajiit sub-breeds added by the Elsweyr mod, which I am very much looking forward to playing through for the first time. I actually have a number of mods revolving around the province; the nightmare of sorting through and patching all these has been one of the biggest things delaying this playthrough. Hopefully I've got it all sorted out right (hope is a lie).


Though Kzhirra is still low-level and hopeless at combat, she's been a blast to play so far. I've been having a lot of fun moving through the various underground communities added by Nernie's Thieves Grotto mod. This modder does wonderful work with the poor and lower-class areas of the game, creating places that are beautiful, unique, and yet authentically rotten.

I always roleplay my characters to some extent; though I'm definitely not as hardcore as some people, I find that even a little roleplay can really breathe life into the game mechanics. For example, I know that when Kzhirra's stealing something, as long as that sneak crosshair isn't lit up at the moment of theft, I've gotten away scott-free. It could be broad daylight with half a dozen people in the room, yet none will be the wiser. But I find trying to actually remain undetected- working at night when a mark is asleep, staying in the shadows, cut-and-running if a guard does see me prowling about, has been a lot of fun and actually makes me feel more of a proper cat burglar. With the balance changes added by Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, it's more of an effort climbing the ranks and gaining the respect of the Gray Fox. When Kzhirra does eventually earn her place among the legendary thieves (or gets run out of the province), I'll know that she's definitely earned it.

Status: Always Modding

Even if I'm not blogging about it very often, I'm still always modding my games. It's just how I am- something integral to my experience of playing PC games. In the last couple months, I've bounced around between a few:

-In Ark: Survival Evolved, I played for a time on a small private server with my partner. We were on the Ragnarok map and had a fair few mods going. One of the standouts was Castles, Keeps, and Forts, which let us build suitably grand castles that fit the style of the map quite nicely.

-In Minecraft, I puttered around building a new modlist for a magic/exploration themed playthrough. Still waiting on a couple of mods to update to 1.12 before I get going (including Thaumcraft, assuming the author doesn't quit again), but so far I'm liking the direction of the pack. Open Terrain Generator makes some gorgeous worlds to explore, and mods like Ice and Fire add cool new magical beasts to fight and tame.

I'm also planning new playthroughs of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim... eventually, and probably not in that order. Morrowind especially will be a lot of work, as it's the game I'm least familiar with in terms of modding. I watch a pretty neat Youtube channel called Morrowind Modding Showcases; he does a great job showing off a lot of cool mods the Morrowind community has produced over the years. Even if you're not looking to mod Morrowind, the love and dedication of that community is pretty incredible- and for a game that's 17 years old!

I've also spent some time in Second Life, trying to find interesting and beautiful places. I recently went to an art installation called Eidola- a fascinating exploration of vision and perception. I really liked the tone of the build, a mix of informative and artistic, grounded and spiritual. There was so much to take in that I definitely think I'll need subsequent trips to really get everything out of the experience.

So, that's my little status update. I always say I'll post more, and I always forget. What can I say? There's just so many games, and so many mods, and so little time.

Stardew Valley and Chill

(This is an older post that I forgot to actually publish to the blog. Nice going, me!)

When I started playing some Stardew Valley recently- after not having touched the game since soon after its release- I didn't much consider the modding aspect. I'd seen that a Nexus Mods portal existed for the game, but figured it would likely be confined to graphics replacers and the like. I just wanted to relax and do some farming, maybe marrying Shane in the process (I'd been so sad to learn, during my first playthrough, that he wasn't available to woo).

Soon enough, however, I found myself in the familiar state of wanting to make some changes to the game. My biggest priority was in fact the graphics, which while vibrant and cheerful can be a little weary on the eyes with how bright and saturated they are. So I set to see what was out there in terms of replacers. 

In the process, I was pleasantly surprised to find a much larger and more substantial modding community than I had expected. There are a number of mods which alter or add to the game content; many of these being based on the SMAPI tool. Because I have no self-control, I ended up with a substantial modlist- and more mods hoarded away for potential future playthroughs. The list is in fact too large to detail fully here. Suffice to say that it includes without a doubt the most important mod- the one that allows me to have multiple pets, thus saving me the agony of having to choose between the equally adorable dog or cat. For my humble homestead I chose the picturesque Whitewater Farm, to be filled with Overgrown Fairy Buildings.

Mixed into this list were also a fair number of graphics replacers. Just A New Map Recolor, Classy New Interior, and A Toned Down Stardew Valley mellowed out the colors of the environment, while Vintage Interface kept a consistent tone in the menu. I really loved the look of Kal's portraits of the town's eligible singles because I am weeaboo trash, and so to keep at least some aesthetic consistency I used Variant Anime Portraits for the rest of the villagers. 

The results of these and other changes were striking to me. None of it altered the core gameplay of Stardew Valley; even in the larger graphical changes I felt the game's charm and fundamental heart were preserved. But some aspects of the game that previously had been somewhat disarmed by the vibrant, cheery colors now came to the surface. 

Before, Stardew Valley seemed like a pastoral paradise. When Sebastian or Abigail talked of feeling trapped in their small town, I thought it sounded absurd. But in my latest playthrough, I thought I could understand their claustrophobia a little better. The darker, more muted interiors gave the town a more run-down feeling. I saw the marks of poverty, and it seemed easier to believe the residents who talked about the struggles of living in a small, isolated community.  There's a lot of pain in Stardew Valley underneath the surface, even if it never truly overtakes the relaxed, wholesome atmosphere of the game.

I should stress that this isn't something that mods injected into the game, nor do they fundamentally change the character of the experience. Yet I think it's interesting to consider how mods can enhance aspects of the original work, to complement them and present them in new ways to the player. I gained a new respect for the writing of Stardew Valley on this playthrough, an aspect which didn't at all factor in to my initial desire to revisit the game. I found a world that seemed far more compelling and fleshed-out than I remembered. 

This experience has really impressed on me that mods can be more about "fixing" a game, or wholesale altering it to fit one's own preferences or fantasies. Mods can be something akin to a pinch of salt in a dish- something to enhance the natural flavor and goodness of the food, of the experience of eating the meal. I hope that analogy makes sense, anyway. I never was any good at cooking.

Morrowind and The Breaking Point

So I've been playing a bit of Morrowind lately. This is my first runthrough of the main quest- after a few flailing attempts and short-lived characters, I finally feel like I've got the hang of the more old-school mechanics and feel of the game. Where I was mostly frustrated before, now I can actually enjoy the experience for what it is- a rich atmosphere and story, an alien world that truly feels unique with its own culture and customs. Harsh, unforgiving, but still strangely beautiful.

For a 15-year-old game, at least.

For this playthrough I've been keeping it all vanilla. I'm a firm believer in not modding a game before you've experienced the original first. You should know what exactly you want to change before you go changing it. Even someone's bare-minimum "must-have mods" list is going to be subject to personal opinion. Form your own opinions, first.

Now, there are a bunch of things I want to change, based off my current experience with the game. But I'd resisted the urge thus far, strolling around enjoying the blocky faces, the infohub NPCs, and those lovely, lovely cliffracers.

But everyone has their limit, and I found mine. What was my breaking point? Vanity, of course.

Morrowind has a surprising variety of clothing, from the familiar Imperial styles to the native Dunmeri fashions. As someone who likes to ogle their character in third-person, I was having a good time trying out various items.

But then I decided to spring for an enchanted robe from a vendor, and encountered the hideous white saran-wrap shader Morrowind uses for enchanted items. After mere minutes of walking around looking like I'd been abducted by Dexter, I broke.

Correctly guessing that I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand the effect, I settled on Pluginless NoGlow as my solution of choice. I prefer the simple replacer solution, with the least impact possible on my game. Now my character can strut her stuff in style and continue her almost!vanilla adventure.

Stunning.

Well-Diving in Oblivion

So I've been back to Oblivion again- testing mods, experimenting with my own additions, and actually getting to play the damn game sometimes. I have a long-running "test" character who mostly goes around murderhoboing her way through various content mods.

Haela Long-Strider, mod-tester and grumpyface extraordinaire.

Currently I've been exploring a dungeon mod called The Well Diver. As you might imagine, it adds dungeons accessible through various wells from the vanilla game. I'm enjoying the mod a lot so far-even though there's no grand quest or storyline here, it's still a lot of fun as a good ol' dungeon romp. The new cells are well-designed (heh); they're unique-looking with some great use of modder's resources, but still fitting to the game's world. There's environmental storytelling, some secrets and a few neat rewards. Plenty to keep the spelunker occupied.

There's an ingame book you can find which will mention the location of a couple wells, but others must be found on your own. I haven't found all the dungeons yet, but I'm having a blast so far. If you're in the mood for some new dungeons to stumble on during a playthrough, I definitely recommend checking out The Well Diver. 

Minecraft Mods I Think Are Pretty Neat

So, as mentioned in my last post, I wanted to point to some cool Minecraft mods I'm considering for my 1.12 mixtape modlist.

Better With Mods

There's an old, famous/notorious, surly beast of a mod called Better Than Wolves. Its creator offers it as a sharp criticism of the direction Minecraft development took, and as a vision of what he sees as better content (hence the title). A lot of vanilla mechanics are altered, and the early-game especially is more challenging. While the mod has a lot of cool ideas and interesting mechanics, it's incompatible with the majority of mods for Minecraft and has been kept on a version of the game from 2012. Better Than Mods is a "re-imagining" of the original's content that is designed with a mind for compatibility, and updated to the latest game versions. I'm excited to try it out- I steered clear of the original mod for, ah, various reasons.

Rustic

This rather charming mod adds some more low-tech and agrarian content to the game. New crops and building materials, an alcohol brewing system, pottery, and more. It reminds me of an older mod, Growthcraft, which I love.

Minecraft Comes Alive

Minecraft Comes Alive makes the boring, ugly flesh-Squidward villagers into something more resembling actual people. Aside from giving them a nose job and a face lift, villagers now have moods, personalities, and relationships between each other and with the player. You can chat with villagers, exchange gifts- even potentially marry a villager and raise a family. Even if you're not into the latter, I think the mod does much to make villagers more interesting and developed- more than empty shells to be bartered with (or stuffed into horrifying contraptions to be bred and slaughtered en masse).

Nomadic Tents

These tents are a great help for the explorer. The inside of a tent is a dimension unto itself, so that you can have a safe place to rest your head at night. But I feel it's "balanced" in a good and mechanically interesting way- after placing your tent, you have to erect it by whacking the various blocks with a mallet. This means the tents aren't just an instant escape-you still have to be careful and have a plan to set up camp as night falls.

EDIT: Unfortunately, on further inspection, this is not yet available for 1.12. My mistake!

Totemic

I love the themeing of this mod, and the way it implements magic seems interesting and unique. In the Great War of Magic and Tech Mods, one sometimes hears the critique that magic mods are merely tech mods with a different skin. So mods like this that present a more mysterious, even spiritual approach are exciting.

There are a lot more mods that I'm interested in trying out for 1.12, and others that I sigh wistfully at and hope they soon will be updated. But hopefully you can get a sense of the pack I'm working towards here- an experience not so focused on technological marvels, or world-shattering arcane power, or an intense RPG experience. Something more down-to-earth, more focused on the early game- the part of the game I most enjoy, when you're doing things by hand and "survival" is actually a meaningful struggle. Maybe in a fit of uncharacteristic un-laziness I'll put the pack up somewhere to share it- but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

I Don't Even Like Minecraft, And Yet I Keep Playing It

Minecraft. Every time I think I'm out, eventually I come crawling back. It's like a drug addiction, or a rocky relationship.

Minecraft's stupendous popularity seems mystifying at first for some observers, but I think it just comes down to the incredible potential that the game seems to offer as a creative platform. From in-game builds, to user skins, resource packs and mods, there's so many aspects that are open to the user for creative expression. The bare-bones graphics and gameplay seem like a blocky canvas that one can paint their blocky vision on.

Or so it feels to me, for about a week. Then stagnation, frustration and boredom set in. I lose inspiration and will to continue a playthrough, with half-finished builds, aborted expeditions, personal goals left hanging. I quit, swearing that this time I have learned the error of my ways, that Minecraft is just not the game for me. Then some time passes, memories fade, and I start feeling the pull. The sense of freedom, the creative inspiration. The cycle starts anew.

When I do come back, most times I want a fresh start. A new adventure, a new modlist. The Minecraft modding community is large and prolific, with new and exciting creations popping up all the time.

It's also a giant burning tire fire of rumors, drama, politics, and terrible fragmentation. I've never seen a community so split between different versions of the same game. Since Minecraft is still being updated, and each update tends to break compatibility between mods, a cycle has developed where many people stay on the old version while authors update their mods; at some point, a critical mass is reached where enough mods are ported that a large chunk of users adopt the new version. By this point, the next official update is in development, and just when everyone's getting comfortable the update is released, and here we go again.

For every update there are some mods that never get ported and new ones making their debut. Authors appear and disappear, or pass the mod along to a succession of maintainers. Some people never bother to upgrade, not wanting to lose their current playthroughs and favorite mods. The majority, though, move on, and some really innovative, fun mods get left in the dust.

So the first question facing me as I look into building a new modlist is- what version am I going to be playing? In this case, I'm thinking about the current update, 1.12. As it is- for now- the bleeding edge, a lot of mods I'm interested in aren't ported yet. But there are others I've never used before, and am eager to try out. I'm still feeling out the theme of the modlist; I prefer more focused playthroughs over giant "kitchen sink" packs that attempt to fit in as many mods as possible. But, in the next post, I'll try and spotlight some of the ones I've currently got my eye on.

Oblivion, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Potato

Out of all the games I've played, my favorite, the one that has stolen the most hours of my life, is... TES IV: Oblivion.

Elder Scrolls aficionados and people of good taste are probably laughing and/or shaking their heads. Oblivion is something of the red-headed stepchild of the series. From the three "modern" TES games, you have Morrowind, the beloved classic, Skyrim, the stupendously popular latest entry, and then you have... the potatoes.

Pictured: A screenshot of an Oblivion NPC.

I've seen Oblivion described as "the worst of both worlds" between Morrowind and Skyrim, an awkward stepping stone between the more traditional RPG of the previous game and the more action-oriented experience the series was trending towards. It suffers from an incredibly un-fun levelling system, an overuse of random- and procedurally-generated content in a bland setting (made even more so in contrast to the alien environment of Morrowind), a laughably small cast of voice actors, and of course, the infamously ugly characters of the FaceGen system.

Of course, you can mod most of these problems away, and end up with a much improved game experience. But a common opinion is that even considering mods, Oblivion comes up short- that, while you might want to smooth out the wrinkles of Morrowind and Skyrim with mods, you need an industrial-strength hot iron to mash Oblivion into something good.

I don't agree with all of these opinions. I think Oblivion does genuinely have its own strong points compared to the other games in the series. I think it is still a game worth experiencing. But honestly, I find it hard to disagree that Oblivion is a deeply flawed game. So why is it my favorite?

Well, the honest answer is that it was my first Elder Scrolls game, and so my nostalgia goggles probably warp my perception of the game's true quality.

But I think I also really do enjoy the game for what it is. I love the atmosphere, the coziness of the countryside, the beautiful score complementing the game's ambiance perfectly as I stroll along the roads. I love the writing; I genuinely believe that many questlines are among the strongest in the series. I even love some of the sillier bits, like the random conversations NPCs have that seem inexplicably focused on mudcrabs. They make for a nice background chatter, in a more realistic way than the same scripted conversations of Skyrim cycled over and over. 

I love this dumb game. And modding makes it even better.

Look Mom, I'm Blogging!

This blog is about my trials and travails with modded video games. Rants, raves, recommendations, possibly downloads if I ever make something fit for public consumption. I'm probably screaming into the void, but hopefully someone finds the madness useful or entertaining.

 If not, I'm sure it will be handy for the psychologist when I'm finally driven insane by this wonderful and infuriating hobby.

To start things off, here's some of the games I play. I don't only play modded games, but for reasons that probably make sense to the aforementioned psychologist I am most drawn to them. These games allow the user to customize their experience beyond a simple model or texture swap. Some games even allow the user to alter core mechanics and gameplay (sometimes to hilarious or tragic results).

The Elder Scrolls Series

Bethesda's beautiful, buggy mess. I love these games and they clearly don't feel the same, with how often they break, crash and implode horribly on me. I've played the three "modern" games- Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, and I swear I'll get to Daggerfall and Arena someday (probably not).

Minecraft

The ludicrously popular block game that turned a lonely Swedish nerd into a lonely Swedish nerd with a party mansion. Minecraft mods are incredibly varied and can change so much of the fundamental game experience- probably because the base game itself is so simple. 

Elona

Kind of the oddball in this list, Elona is a weird open-world roguelike deal. It's very fun, and has its own cult following. It's also very Japanese. I haven't actually played it for very long, and I'm still learning all the various ways to cook the flesh of a little girl.

Second Life 

Not actually a game (and some people are Very Serious about it not being referred to as such), Second Life is really just a glorified 3D version of AOL Instant Messenger- and at the same time, so much more. I'm including it here because it is by design a creative platform for its users. So many incredible and horrible things have been made in Second Life. Horrible, horrible things.

Others

There are other moddable games that I play occasionally. Ark:Survival Evolved, The Sims, etc. And other games I want to play, and will totally get to once I figure out why Oblivion is crashing this time-

I'm looking forward to sharing my love and undying hatred of games, here on this corner of the internet. I can't promise any amazing insights or exclusive downloads, but hopefully this evidence of impending mental collapse is amusing to someone.