The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim patch next week; Steam Workshop-powered mods in January
Valve's Steam Workshop will support The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mods after the Creation Kit mod tools are released in January, developer Bethesda announced today. "Continued game updates" are also promised, starting with a small update next week.
Next week will bring an "incremental update" to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with fixes for the infamous backwards-flying dragon and other recently-introduced bugs. After that, developer Bethesda has revealed, there'll be "continued game updates," and mod tools will be released for PC in January, using Valve's Steam Workshop.
Fixes for broken resistances and the silly dragons are confirmed for next week's patch, but Bethesda isn't sharing the full changelog just yet. Beyond that, Bethesda plans to release "full title updates" plus "a lot... not just a few" smaller "gameplay updates" after the holidays. PC will get more frequent, and faster, fixes, as Steam doesn't have the rigid certification process of consoles.
After the fun of the backwards dragons, and less fun broken resistances, Bethesda says, "we need to treat our updates with greater care. If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this." It's prioritizing code-side fixes over data-based quest and balance fixes at first, "to be safe."
The real long-term Skyrim excitement, however, will come from January's release of the Creation Kit for PC. It'll be integrated with the Steam Workshop, allowing mod authors to upload their work directly to Steam, where it can be browsed, rated, and easily installed for free.
"The Creation Kit will bundle your mod and upload it to the Workshop, where everyone can browse, rate, and flag mods for download. You'll be able to do this from any web device, including your smartphone," Bethesda explains. "Like a live Netflix queue, when you fire up Skyrim, mods you flagged will be automatically downloaded and installed."
The Steam Workshop initially launched for Team Fortress 2 to track user-made items submitted to Valve in the hope of becoming official.
Mod authors will still be able to release mods the old-fashioned way, if they so fancy. Or, one imagines, if they have particularly lewd content to distribute.
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Alice O'Connor posted a new article, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim patch next week; Steam Workshop-powered mods in January.
Valve's Steam Workshop will support The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mods after the Creation Kit mod tools are released in January, developer Bethesda announced today. "Continued game updates" are also promised, starting with a small update next week.-
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I like the nexus sites. Good resource for mods, easy searching and sorting, usually good descriptions of how the mods work along with detailed instructions for use, and on top of rating they have well comments for each mod and forums for discussing any issues, plus screenshots if it does something visual.
Skyrim Nexus is extremely sparse right now because the tools aren't out yet, I've had no real problems with it though I'm sure it will be a lot easier to download something through steam workshop directly, if you know what you are looking for and can find it right away.-
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Weird. I never noticed ads but there's like probably a good reason for that on a modern browser with extension support.
As for speed, most of the real construction set mods are so tiny it doesn't matter, but the Skyrim Nexus site itself seems snappy. Huh. My only beef is that you have to login to download. -
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I've never had problems finding mods for Oblivion and Fallout 3 on their respective nexus sites. And the few I looked for with Skyrim I found right away? Their database is rather small at the moment because the tools aren't out yet so searching may not be the best solution right now (still worked for me), but if you go to files > categories every mod will be listed there, and you can sort by date / size / rating / etc.
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Thanks to Bethesda Games for releasing mod tools to their game so quickly after release, in comparison to other PC games:
Call of Duty: Black Ops: released November 9, 2011; mod tools beta released via Steam on June 22, 2011: http://www.gamefront.com/treyarch-quietly-launches-black-ops-mod-tools/
Rage: released October 4, 2011; still no mod tools, despite promising an editor on release (the console command "idStudio" does nothing): http://www.shacknews.com/article/68361/rage-will-ship-with-level -
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Well you have to pay for the current TF2 items that are available, so yes.
You can browse the Steam Workshop here - http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?browsesort=accepted&p=1
Items have to be approved by Valve before they can be downloaded. I'm guessing this won't be the case for Skyrim.
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