SKYRIMLE Summerset Isle (by yournotsupposedtobeinhere)

[EssArrBee]

Summerset Isle by yournotsupposedtobeinhere

 

https://youtu.be/Rj9zsKg2dYo

 

From blog:

Summary
Approx 40 new Cities, Towns and Villages.
Over 60 caves/dungeons to explore.
3 Daedric Shrines
Approx 600 new npc's
5 Followers
30 Merchants
4 Travel Guides
4 potential player homes and one premium manor.
4 new World spaces including Summerset Isle!
6 Inns/Taverns
1 Main Quest 
Approx 60 side quests 

Blog alos says they are 99% done, so that August 1st date looks pretty good. I have barely started the Grey Cowl of Nocturnal, so I have no idea how I'm going to find time for this. 

[brokenpaine]

 Yes indeed. Wonder how many hours it'll eat up. Still I think its amazing I cant wait. Glad I seen this! Will this take the rank as largest mod? lol Seems huge. xD

[EssArrBee]

This mod is currently uploading, so keep an eye out.

[EssArrBee]

Finally finished uploading. Looks about 1.6GB, so it should be a decent size. Hope the quality is top notch.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68406/?

[Neovalen]

Added to The List ™.

[Pretendeavor]

I just downloaded this and checked for possible conflicts. One thing that I noticed was that the BSA file contained many lod textures and meshes that overwrite Vanilla Optimized, DynDOLOD, the USKP, Vivid Landscapes and maybe other mods. I have MO manage archives as recommended in Skyrim Revisited: Legendary. For this particular mod, does that mean that you should not unpack the BSA? I already saw a comment from Sheson on the Nexus page in which he said you should not let this mod's lod files overwrite DynDOLOD, because DynDOLOD has many improved vanilla assets.

 

It also contains what I'm assuming are vanilla lod meshes that don't directly show as conflicted in MO's Conflicts tab, because I have never unpacked vanilla Skyrim BSA files. So I fear hiding all the lod files in the Conflicts tab still doesn't solve everything.

 

I'm unsure about priorities when it comes to this.. but if you keep this mod's BSA unpacked it should have priority over the vanilla Skyrim BSA files, but not the loose files in MO from mods like Vivid Landscapes and DyndoLOD, right? Is this the best outcome?

 

-

 

Also, there is another small thing. Under 'Texture Set' there are a couple of records called LandscapeCoastBeachDUPLICATE002, LandscapeFieldGrassDUPLICATE003 and a few others. If you use mods like Verdant or Unbelievable Grass Two some of their 'Landscape Texture' records conflict. It also makes some changes compared to Skyrim.esm. The author of Summerset Isle already posted a comment saying that you should load any grass mods after this one if you want to keep their settings. To me it seems like these DUPLICATE002 records don't serve much of a purpose though.. They don't seem to change anything compared to vanilla.

 

For example in Skyrim.esm the Landscape Texture LDirt01 points to the Texture Set LandscapeDirt01. LandscapeDirt01 then points to \Landscape\Dirt01.dds and Dirt01_n.dds. This gets overwritten by summersetisles.esp: it now points to Texture Set LandscapeDirtDUPLICATE002, which also points to \Landscape\Dirt01.dds and Dirt01_n.dds. Does this serve any purpose? It seems to me that instead of bothering to mess with load order you can also delete all the records from 'Landscape Texture' EXCEPT LSummersetSand01. Or would this break all kinds of things? :s

Edited August 2, 2015 by Pretendeavor

[sheson]

Let me first start by saying that the LODs are absolutely horrendous   
They could have at least use the updated and fixed vanilla resources from Nico CoiN. But then, I am biased.
 
As long as you keep the BSA, the vanilla source lod.nifs that have been packed into it do not matter. They are just dead weight and serve no purpose. Since DynDOLODs LOD files are all loose so they always win over them. If you unpack make sure they do not overwrite DynDOLOD.
 
There are also additional _lod files in the BSA, some are almost real LODs, some are just full models renamed. I am testing DynDOLOD World.pas on it a bit. Maybe I do some work for static/dynamic LOD, but no promises.
 
I did spend a couple hours for tree LOD though, because in all honesty WTF...? Using all these GKB trees and whatnot and only use vanilla tree LOD texture? It is like TES5LODGen doesn't exist

At least spend a day doing some tree LOD billboards for TES5LODGen?

Not going to lie, some of the trees simply defy all intents to make nice billboards. Please beta test
Summerset Isle Tree LOD Billboards.7z for TES5LODGen/DynDOLOD

All I care about is that the tree LOD somewhat matches in dimensions and shape and general color, so please only report (by pm so I don't miss) if something is really bad. screenshot and formid please.

Edited April 13, 2016 by sheson

[EssArrBee]

So far the performance is pretty bad around the first city you encounter. It think some occlusion planning optimization might be in order. Also, some texture optimization.

 

The overall design is great though. Contrasts quite a bit from the Skyrim architecture and look. The mix of trees is the only part that doesn't really do it for me so far. Can't have a tropical setting on the coast then a forest setting on mountains. It doesn't really match if you go from palm to pine in such a short distance.

 

Voice acting is pretty good, but there is still some cleaning up that needs to be done with the dialogue scripts. I've noticed some annoyances here and there. There were a few times I could here the cracks from the mics in the dialogue. That's expected when you don't have access to a recording studio and audio producers. Still better than some other mods that come out recently with voiced dialogue.

[EssArrBee]

Just ran textures through DDSOpt with 1k limit. Went from 2.88 GB to 1.38 GB. Just skimming the log there were a bunch of mip levels missing. Should be some performance gains by running it through even if you don't limit the size of the textures.

[Pretendeavor]

Performance might be a bit bad and lods might not be top notch, but my god this mod is beautiful. I haven't become Arch Mage yet, but I couldn't resist coc-ing there to take a look. I just spent an hour making screenshots of perhaps two towns and a little of the area in between. Not sure how well it'd fit into the packs hosted here but I'd recommend just downloading it to appreciate the eye candy :p

 

I recommend using SFO, SFO on steroids (optional) and Unbelievable Grass Two along with it, in that order. Don't let summersetisle.esp overwrite grass changes, crank up ENB and ini settings and enjoy the scenery :D