Fallout 4

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Nikonthenet

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Nikonthenet

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About this mod

Now with user configurable brightness via ENB. This high fidelity dark night mod is built to enhance the True Storms experience, adding realism with cinematic flair and moody, at times claustrophobic, atmospherics!

BEWARE THE DARK! Or, make it brighter on the fly while in-game!

Requirements
Permissions and credits
I'm really pleased to see this mod is still enjoyed by people even in 2023, as it was a real passion project. I am however sorry I had to abandon this and my other mods due to life circumstances. -Nik

4estGimp - True Nights Image Space Fix - This simple mod fixes two image space settings which could corrupt save games.



Please read this information FULLY before posting any questions or feedback.

Don't be put off by the screenshots, which are being butchered by compression. Through use of ENB v0307, you can configure the brightness of the night & day, dawn & dusk, quickly yourself, while in-game with instant visual feedback! -see 'Too Dark/Light?' below for instructions.

When trying this mod for the first time, I STRONGLY encourage creating a save at night during clear weather(console: fw 2b52a). This is not functionally necessary, its only so you have time to adjust to the new ambience and allow weather to build naturally. Loading into harsh weather, for the first time, may leave you cold!

This is a work in progress I currently consider a BETA. Feedback is really important, so if you are running this mod as intended, please leave a comment, both positive and critical are equally helpful in helping me fine tune things to where the majority of people and their rigs are happy!



"
Wow, this is a piece of art."
- OyofMidWorld

"
It looks absolutely fantastic with Subtle Enb."
- emkeystaar

"the screen shots don't really do it justice"
- J Allin

"It makes the nights absolutely beautiful..."
- ramccoid

DESCRIPTION:


The aim of this mod is to provide realistically dark nights but still light enough for high definition visuals with moody atmospherics, while enhancing fadingsignals amazing ‘True Storms’ mod. By high definition, I mean that I have removed most of the unnatural 'fog' FO4 is well known for, to give HD crisp images, and replaced it with True Storms awesome and life-like volumetric fog where appropriate for the weather. I've also maintained high quality cloud visuals for some violently stormy weather. And carefully crafted the colour palette of each weather type to reflect the temperature, atmospherics and light array. It remains very playable on FPS tho slightly edging towards gaming rigs and monitors -you will have no trouble if you already run True Storms.

The main focus for True Nights(and what sets it apart from Unforbidables popular ‘Darker Nights’ mod) is that True Nights maintains high definition visuals by removing static fog layers. True Nights is designed to get darker into the distance just like real life, while closer to you, there remains some usable light. There is much more light than appears in the screenshots. Its an illusion of sorts as distant objects, the horizon, etc, are occluded -which creates a deeper 'sense' of darkness, while there is usable light in the near-ground to move around. The sense of not being able to tell where the earth ends and the sky begins is of profound impact to your experience and True Nights uses it as much as possible where appropriate! This depth creates cinematic visuals with deep shadows and dark alleyways, more akin to horror films and games like 'Silent Hill', darkness where enemies lurk waiting to jump out on you! 

I have carefully crafted each weather pattern individually, making them all unique and distinctive. I have emphasised a cinematic, often moody and at times claustrophobic atmosphere. For each weather type I considered moon light vs ambient light, temperature/hue of the light in the atmosphere, along with a variety of forms of occlusion correct for the weather and temperature: cool mist on a chilly cloudless night, rising mist on a warmer cloudy/rainy night, oppressive thunderstorms, muggy/grey atmospheres with overcast cloud to light fog with clear skys and claustrophobic heavy fogs that swallow you! Its often quite subtle and at times strikingly different, but I've maintained beautiful cloud layers and distinctive lighting throughout, and I hope I’ve not overcooked anything.

The darkness at night varies greatly depending on the weather. While clear skys at night offer very good visibility; in bad weather it gets very dark and inky atmospheres obscure your vision. Its handy to have some form of light to aid you the poorest weather, just as it should be. Its also fun!

To help fight the night, have prepared your choice of illumination: Pip-Boy Flashlight - Tactical Flashlight - Flare GunNight Vision GogglesR91 Assault Rifle with Tactical Torch - Tactical Weapon Lamps or Night Vision Perk for those sub-human mutants! However, abandon all hope if you hit a Dust Storm at night, thankfully very rare.

People who understand what I mean when I say you will need to employ; shape, shine, shadow, silhouette and movement...should be right at home here. I tried to balance the direct light vs ambient vs occlusion effects with these effects in mind.

Not forgetting, this mod is designed to be used with ENB, which allows you to adjust the brightness of night, day, dawn and dusk, on the fly, while in-game to your personal satisfaction. For instruction, read 'Too Dark?' below.

Finally, fadingsignals ‘True Storms’ daytime experience and excellent sunrise and sunsets are respectfully untouched. I’ve only altered the night and the patterns that lead into sunrise and after sunset as little as possible to ensure the blend is seamless and natural.



REQUIREMENTS:

True Storms by Fadingsignal.
-Installed with 'rolling fogs' option. Your experience without rolling fogs will be significantly reduced.

ENB v0307 by Boris Vorontsov
- A powerful yet easy to use 'in-hame' graphics tool. With ENB, you can adjust brightness of the night, day, dawn and dusk individually, to your liking. By itself, ENB has little to no effect on FPS. Installing ENB is simple, theres several guides on youtube.


ENB Presets - Optional:

'Subtle ENB' -True Nights was built using noidkid’s excellent preset -I highly recommend it as a minimal performance impact ENB v0.307!

Vogue ENB (LITE)
- User reports suggest this is a good match.

Your experience will vary greatly depending on which ENB preset you choose, and you should expect to make some minor adjustments to get the experience exactly as you wish(see below). If your favourite ENB preset does not work happily with True Nights, post and I'll help as best I can, but it may be best to ask your ENB author. Ask the ENB preset author if they can help and they might be able to do a whole lot more than I can!








TOO DARK / TOO LIGHT?:

*ENB v0307 is a powerful yet simple to use graphics tool, that allows you to adjust the in-game brightness, among many other cool graphic effects.
It has little to no FPS hit.*


As True Nights is intended for ENB users, if you find its too dark or even too light, its quick and easy to adjust live while in game, with instant visual feedback. This is time of Day independent! With so many different PC hardware setups and monitors having an effect, True Nights rarely 'perfect' for you right away. With a little tuning it can be!

As example; I created True Nights on an above average quality Samsung 21:9 monitor with great quality contrast ratio. When I play on my smart TV, I have to increase the Direct light to 9.00 and the Ambient to 3.00 in ENB and it takes all of about 10 seconds. I also adjust Cloud Intensity at night for some stunning cloud visuals during harsh weather. I'll explain how-to below...

First, a note...understand that the atmospherics of True Nights are intended to be realistic. Its also intended that you need to use a form of flashlight during poor weather -if you cannot see the stars and moon, it should be very dark! If you increase the Direct and Ambient light too much, it will reduce the cloud and volumetric fog visibility as those layers rely on contrasts. Ultimately, try adjustments until you are happy, but be aware the intended atmosphere is dark, moody and at times oppressive requiring you to take shelter from the storms. 

Adjusting ENB is no more complicated than adjusting the brightness in a game menu, its just way more powerful / more options. Here's how to make it perfect for you:

  • Open the ENB Console with 'shift+enter'
  • In the lower left box, expand the 'Environment' tab by clicking the '+' symbol.
  • Locate the setting, 6th from the top 'DirectLightingIntensityNight'
  • Increase to increase brightness, you can afford to increase this in single digits, eg from 1.00 to 2.00 to 3.00, etc. 10.00 is a BiG jump.
  • Once you're happy with it, you can fine tune using the + and - next to the number.

You might wish to adjust the 'AmbientLightingIntensityNight', found much further down the list under Environment. If you increase the Direct light above, too much, it will create stark shadows which can look strange. Increasing Ambient will add light to the shadows, reducing it will make the shadows darker. I found a goo balance to be 2:1 favouring Direct Light. Its worth taking the time to get the balance right for you and your monitor setup. Have a tinker, no harm done!

'CloudIntensityNight' is also very worth while, for some stunning cloud visuals during the storms. This can be found under the Sky options quite far down the list. Note however, you only want to make small adjustments here for a large visual effect. I prefer 1.15. I suggest using the + and - buttons rather than whole numbers.

You can even do the same for ' DirectLightingIntensityInterior' to effect the lighting on interior locations.

Adjusting these values will only alter the lighting at 'Night', so its a great and easy way to make the overall light to suit your taste, exactly. And you can do the same for Day, Dawn and Dusk if you want.

Finally, if you find it becomes too bright too early at Dawn, or too dark too soon at Dusk...be sure to check the 'Time of Day' menu. There you an adjust the switch ENB makes between Night > Dawn > Day > Dusk. As True Storms offers 2 options for sunrise and sunset, setting this should match your choice in True Storms.

This is the power of ENB, don't be afraid to use it to craft your experience. There are lots of settings, which can be daunting. However, you cannot break your game or saves this way, so no worries there. You can always revert back to either your previous setting by clicking 'Load' at the top, or revert back to the downloaded settings.


Be sure to click 'save configuration' at the top of the ENB window, once your happy, and shift-enter to close the ENB window. You can always go back later to make adjustments.

As example, my smart TV settings look like this:

Sky menu
> CloudIntensityNight = 1.15

Environment menu
> AmbientLightingIntensityNight = 9
> DirectLightingIntensityNight = 4.5


THE MONITOR TEST!:

Setting your monitor correctly can be the difference between night and day, haha! Most notably any dynamic contrast or game mode settings, can turn a great image black. A good test is that you should be able to read clearly, the stylised text "For True storms with Subtle ENB" immediately below the bold capitol and much clearer text "True Nights v0.1" in the lower left corner of the screenshots. If you can't, somethings not right! Ensure you're facing your screen correctly, your eyeline should be 1/2 to 2/3 the height and looking flat at the screen. Try adjusting the screen angle if not and that you haven't over-cooked your brightness and contrast settings, and check for game mode or other dynamic contrast settings, you might find its better with them turn off as they can make a huge difference. Thats worth doing before you set about adjusting your brightness in-game via ENBs window.




UPDATESs:

v0.3 - Updated Volumetric fog for improvements on standard monitors

v0.2 - Updated to work with True Storms 1.4
ENB v0.307 Released - User configurable brightness is back!

v0.1 - Original Version


RECOMMENDED MODS:

'Pip-Boy Flashlight' by akkalat85
-Imo the best flashlight mod out there! Has a huge range of choices for flashlight beam appearance, range and atmosphere.

Enhanced Interiors’ by fadingsignal.
-For the complete dark nights indoor experience. Makes a big difference, really great mod!


SIDE EFFECTS:

There are 2 minor side effects to True Nights, one of which is resolved, the other doesn’t affect gameplay at all, but the pause menu! The 3rd, rain ripples on water.

1. As the nights are dark, the image space adapter used during ‘Low Health’ -the visual distortion- didn’t play well with my mod at all. I have recreated the image space to work correctly, and you are unlikely to notice any difference.

2. I will hopefully clean up the pause menu asap just to keep things tidy looking. -Fixed in v0.2

3. Due to the lighting, the ripples you see on water with the vanilla texture appear very bright. To resolve this I have increased the alpha on the ripples texture. The result of this is the ripples appearing less ‘bright’ during the night. As a consequence they also appear less ‘bright’ during the day. If you don’t like this change, just delete the file Data > Textures > Water > ‘WaterRainRipples’


INSTALLATION:

Best to use NMM and keep track of updates!

Manual - Copy the Data folder to your games Data folder.

NOTE:
True Nights .esp should be loaded after True Storms.
True nights is not compatible with Darker Nights, and may not be compatible with other mods that effect the lighting.


UN-ISTALLATION:

Simply disable and un-install in NMM. 

Manual - Remove the True Nights.esp and Data > Textures > Water > ‘WaterRainRipples’


CREDITS:

fadingsignal for kindly allowing me to mod his mod!
Unforbidable for kindly helping me out to identify what some files and stuff do!
-I hope you both like what I’ve done here :)

FO4EDIT -for the tools to edit it all with!
ENB v0307 by Boris Vorontsov


MY OTHER MODs:

Better Beds - Comics & Posters
Better Beds - Vault-Tec
Lovers Luxury bed - The LADY KILLER
Lovers Luxury bed - The BLACK WIDOW

Bloody Realistic - HD Blood Textures 
Bloody Mess - EBT ADD-ON
Bloody Comical - Enhanced Blood Textures ADD-ON