Bethesda Reveals The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dawnguard Trailer

Subject: General Tech | May 31, 2012 - 05:39 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: skyrim, bethesda, trailer, video, canwehavethisnow?

Today, Bethesda released the trailer for the upcoming expansion for The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, titled Dawnguard. 

I want this - now.  But Xbox 360 users will get it first.  I don't like Xbox Skyrim gamers anymore.

That is all.

Thank you Bethesda; how about some attributions Steam?

Subject: General Tech | February 8, 2012 - 02:50 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: gaming, skyrim, elder scrolls, mod

Attention (PC) Skyrim fans, Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN has some great news!

High Definition Textures have arrived for Skyrim via Steam.  The download is just over 3GB and contains .BSP files which is the file type Bethesda in general and Skyrim in particular store their textures.  This is rather handy as two mods which already add high definition textures do so via a new folder called Textures under your Skyrim folder.  This means that the mods do not interfere with the official HD download as far as crashing the game, however more investigation is needed to discover how the mods interact as far as texture rendering priorities as well as determining which gives you the best looking textures.

Just download it via Steam and ensure that you enable it via the Data Files option on your Skyrim launcher.  While you are clicking on that download you might notice a link to something called Steam Workshop.  This leads you to a section of Steam where you can download mods for Skyrim via Steam which can be applied to your game though it does not necessarily replace Nexus Mod Manager.  When you have clicked on the mod then the next time you launch Skyrim it will run a check and synchronize your game and the mod.  The mods can be enabled and disabled just like the HD textures via the Data Files portion of your Skyrim launcher.

The addition of official HD textures and supported mods is a brilliant move by Bethesda and Steam and the PC gaming community wholeheartedly thanks them for this wonderful addition to the game.  Many PC users initial experience with Skyrim was not positive, especially those using AMD graphics cards.  The patches to Skyrim and AMD's drivers have finally fixed most performance issues users experienced and with the addition of PC specific improvements and mods Bethesda may have gone a long way to wooing back those users who were initially unimpressed with the game.

Along with these additions does come a plea to Steam.  You may notice negative comments underneath the mods which you choose, such as "It should say "Stolen by: Manic Zombie" The uploader gave no credit to the author of this.".  This is very unfortunate for the brilliant mind that decided to model mudcrabs with a monocle and top hat as the number of users of this mod will soar but the modder themselves are doomed to obscurity.  It could be that Manic Zombie was indeed the original modder as the Japanese site links to a download on Skyrim Nexus that he posted.  If Steam is going to offer mods the modding community would greatly appreciate it if Steam researched the mod to ensure that the submitter is indeed the actual source of the mod or at least has the modders permissions.  The "Report" button is a great start but in order to help attract game modders to Steam, reassurance that they will get recognition for their mods would go a long way to bringing even more modders into the fold.

"The long-awaited Skyrim Creation Kit is out, and it’s come with the rumoured High-Resolution Texture Pack all the kids wanted! The game’s also 33% off on Steam in the US and UK at the moment, if this is what you were waiting for."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

• Unstoppable Gorg Review - The Aliens Are Coming! @ Techgage
• Need For Speed: The Run PC Review @ eTeknix
• Paradox Hint At Three New Games, Revealed Next Month @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Microsoft Flight release date pinned down @ Hexus
• PC Gaming - What to expect in 2012 @ eTeknix
• Soul Calibur V @ HEXUS
• NFL Blitz 2012 Edition PlayStation 3 @ Tweaktown
• SOULCALIBUR V Review @ HardwareHeaven.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 (XBOX 360) Review @ HardwareHeaven

You aren't done playing Skyrim yet, the official Mod tools are on their way

Subject: General Tech | February 1, 2012 - 03:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: skyrim, gaming, creation kit, bethesda

Attention all modders and Elder Scrolls fans, the official Bethesda Creation Kit for Skyrim is coming down from the mountain to give a shout out to the community.  It will be a free download via Steam under Tools and will not only give you the tools to mod the game but it can also replace the Nexus Mod Manager for updating and enabling or disabling mods.  From the description of the Creation Kit those familiar with previous versions from Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3 will be familiar with the interface. If you want to see a video of this tool in action head to Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN and feast your eyes on the newest drain on your free time.

"Bethesda is soon to release the Creation Kit for Skyrim, that’ll allow official modding to begin, along with some really powerful-looking tools. It will also plug directly into the Steam Workshop, which will make adding user-created mods to your game over 39024% easier. You can see a video giving an overview of those features below."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

• Know Your Enemy: Firaxis On XCOM, Part 1 @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Star Wars: The Old Republic @ Tweaktown
• An Hour With… King Arthur II @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Most Anticipated PC Games of 2012 @ Techspot
• Syndicate Video Preview @ IGN
• FIFA 12 (PS3) Review @ HardwareHeaven

The NVIDIA Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Tweak Guide Is Now Live

Subject: General Tech | December 8, 2011 - 11:45 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: tweaks, skyrim, nvidia, gaming, elder scrolls V

NVIDIA has put together a comprehensive tweak guide for getting the most from Skyrim. The tweaks themselves also apply to AMD GPUs so just because you aren't running an NVIDIA GPU right now doesn't mean you should skip checking out the information they've posted. Much of the information deals with the settings you find under the options menu, from choosing how you want autosaves to work to how far you should set your draw distance to.

They focus on the effects of the graphical settings for the majority of the article as it will be there that most of the tweaking will be done. Results of combining FXAA and MSAA are covered, both in terms of visual quality and performance impact at several different resolutions. As well, textures and shadow quality are examined in depth, including object detail. There are settings which seem to give you improved visual quality with little to no impact on your frame rate, options such as reflections, anisotropic filtering and actor fade can be turned up without crippling your system.

From there they get into the real tweaks, requiring you to edit .ini files (make a copy first) and become acquainted with the console. The steps to disable V-Sync to uncap your frame rates and ditch the annoying mouse stuttering, increase your field of view and fine tune the shadows of Skyrim are revealed. They also cover the console commands in the game, not just how to turn god mode on and off but also how to teleport, turn off grass and other effects for troubleshooting, setting up batch files that can be run during the game and even the 'triple q' quick quit to desktop.

The best console port I've played yet ... at least when Skyrim feels like letting me play

Subject: General Tech | November 23, 2011 - 01:08 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: gaming, elder scrolls V, skyrim, consolitis

Starting Skyrim for the first time was an interesting experience, obviously you once again start as a prisoner but perhaps one with some serious brain damage as reality seems to move in starts and jerks as if your eyes had a stuttering problem.  Eventually the stuttering cleared up, providing a weekends worth of gaming but by Tuesday the stuttering had returned.  It became clear that it was time to embark on every PC gamers favourite pastime; troubleshooting the game you just bought in the hopes of some day playing it.

Some troubleshooting revealed a serious case of consolitis, the game was not Large Address Aware and limited its self to a maximum serving of 2GB; the adoption of 64bit versions of Windows being very limited by the end of 2011.  Even more damning was what happened when Intel's SpeedStep technology was enabled in the BIOS, the CPU would dip to about 60% of its maximum frequency when you played the game and the process would use under 10% of a core, maybe two if you were lucky.  GPU usage was variable and was sometimes actually sitting at or above 90% usage, but for the most part varied widely. 

A little research showed that SandyBridge owners and those with the previous generation of chips who overclocked above 4GHz were not having many problems, proving that the brute force method of overcoming consolitis could work.   For those who haven't upgraded yet and are waiting for the new year to do so, they must either wait or find a more elegant solution.  To the intarwebs!

INI file tweaks are always popular and Gamefront has a few, the most notable are bMouseAcceleration=0 and iPresentInterval=0 which disable mouse acceleration and V-Sync respectively.  As well, over at Skyrim Nexus is a modified TESV.exe that makes the game LAA and more importantly does not need to replace the main executable in your Skyrim folder so that you won't need to worry about having a modified executable.  As well adding the string +fullproc to the end of the path in your executable should help Skyrim utilize a bit more of your processor.  In the end though, more tweaking is needed for some PC gamers to fully appreciate the latest Elder Scrolls game and more time needs to be spent researching general tweaks as well as Bethesda specific ones.

If you are experiencing no issues with Skyrim, but would like to tweak it to look better then [H]ard|OCP offers a guide for a variety of tweaks and you can grab a variety of game mods from GameFront.

^{Now if only BF3 multiplayer would stop locking with a loud noise that sounds suspiciously like a raspberry.}

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance and IQ Review @ [H]ard|OCP
• Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Performance and IQ Review @ [H]ard|OCP
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance Test @ Techspot
• Cities XL 2012 @ Techgage
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Community Game Review @ HardwareHeaven
• Minecraft @ AnandTech
• Battlefield 3 @ kitguru
• Battlefield 3 @ Bjorn3D
• Battlefield 3 major patch incoming, PC first @ HEXUS
• I Am Alive Dev Dismisses ‘Bitching’ PC Users @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Nature’s Neuroscientific Review Of Games @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox360) @ HEXUS
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Game Review (Wii) @ HardwareHeaven
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 @ Tweaktown
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary @ Tweaktown
• Assassins Creed: Revelations @ kitguru
• Assassin's Creed Revelations @ HardwareHeaven

Need For Speed: The (30fps) Run

Subject: General Tech | November 16, 2011 - 01:13 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: skyrim, need for speed, gaming, games, elder scrolls V, consolitis

[H]ard|OCP has been having a hard go of it with recent game releases.  CoD Modern Warfare 3 was described as being useless for benchmarking as any mid range GPU can play at maxed settings even at high resolutions.  That discovery came after the Rage incident, when benchmarked it hit 60fps and refused to move, no matter what hardware was thrown at it.  Picture the expression on the reviewers face when they fired up Need For Speed: The Run expecting the Frostbite 2 engine of Battlefield 3 fame to torture their test bench only to find a similar result to Rage, except locked at 30fps.

Thankfully for the continued sanity of their review team, [H] also got hold of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to benchmark.  Benchmarking this game was much more productive, especially in multi-GPU setups and it also revealed a small oddity with the games auto-detection of graphics settings.

"Need for Speed: The Run was released today, utilizing the Frostbite 2 engine, same as Battlefield 3, it should have some pretty good graphics. However, after we dove into this game this morning, we found that it falls rather flat for a PC game. We'll talk about performance and image quality in this article."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

• Today's mid-range GPUs in Battlefield 3 @ The Tech Report
• Contemporary Graphics Accelerators in Battlefield 3 @ X-bit Labs
• Battlefield 3 Gaming and Performance Review on NVIDIA GTX 500 Series Video Cards@Hi Tech Legion
• Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 @ HEXUS
• Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 @ Kitguru
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 @ The Inquirer
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Tested, Benchmarked @ Techspot
• RAGE the PC Game by id Software @ Benchmark Reviews
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim @ Kitguru
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim guide: how to slay your dragon @ HEXUS
• Hot PC Games for the 2011 Holidays @ Techspot
• PayDay: The Heist PC Review @ eTeknix
• Minecraft Is Finished @ Slashdot
• Patent Issue Delays Doom 3 Source Code Release @ Slashdot
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review (XBOX 360) @ HardwareHeaven
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception PS3 @ Tweaktown
• Sega Renegade Ops @ XSReviews
• Battlefield 3 multiplayer impressions - rant included @ HEXUS

Win a Free Copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from PC Perspective

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards | November 11, 2011 - 12:09 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: skyrim, giveaway, contest

Want to play Skyrim?  Want to play Skyrim...for FREEE??  Well to celebrate the release of the new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim game this week we are giving away a free retail Steam code for it right here on PC Perspective.  

What do you have to do to enter?  There are a handful of ways:

1. Make a comment on this post.  That's pretty simple right?  You don't have to register, though we would appreciate it!
2. Like PC Perspective on Facebook: http://facebook.com/pcper
3. Follow PC Perspective on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pcper
4. Circle PC Perspective on Google+: http://gplus.to/pcper

If you do all four, you'll have four entries into the contest.  If you already follow @pcper on Twitter, then you are already entered.  (And likely you'll be entered for future contests as well!)  If only do one or two, then you are still entered, just with fewer shots at the goal.

The contest will run through tomorrow (November 12th) at 4pm EST so get your entries in SOON!!  Good luck!

UPDATE!!  We have our winner.  Picking from a random.org number between 1 and 3850 (combined entries on comments, Google+, Facebook and Twitter) the winner was....Jared H!!!  Congratulations!  I have sent off an email to verify and pass on the Steam code.

Make sure you stay tuned for Monday morning when we should have another BIG contest starting around a certain processor launch...