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 :(
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 :(