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Kirya222

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Kirya222

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About this mod

A lighting mod that makes where light is falling look more natural. Adjusts the seemingly random placement of the lighting smoke effects to make them appear more special. Adjusts virtually every light that isn't in a dungeon or interior space, including campfires, forts, guard towers, all the holds, suburbs, villages, bandit camps, etc...

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Greetings,

Version 2.5 is finally here !!
With it comes 2 versions of Subliminal Lighting.
Subliminal Lighting Vanilla for users not playing any of the DLC content
Subliminal Lighting Legendary for users running both Dawnguard and Dragonborn.
Both versions use the same ESP name, so there's no issues upgrading to Legendary from your current version, or for that matter reverting back to the Vanilla from Legendary if you choose. 

Skyrim Subliminal Lighting has grown substantially from the original plan. It now includes all the holds, suburbs, outposts, villages, bandit camps, guard towers, path lights, exterior area's of forts, war camps, campfires (normal and giant), shrines, approach areas to dungeons/caves, and any place else that has a light in an exterior place and needed an adjustment (which was most of all of them). Screenshots I've uploaded are from a basic vanilla game with the most recent version of SSL, no weather or darkened nights. Most are taken from first person pov, or a simulated first person pov using TFC where hostiles were present. So, what you see with them is what you'll see in game as you play.

A note on Campfires: All campfires have had their lighting radius increased, and lighting intensity increased. Each camp was visited and edited separately, so there is no single value I can tell you as to how much. Some camps suffered from game engine limitations and couldn't be adjusted much in reference to the radius. Some materials in Skyrim (tents, some bones, split logs) have crazy reflective properties that at times limited the amount of brightness that could be added without adding to the game what this mod is trying to remove. The campfires turned out to be a pain in the butt, imagespace lighting be it weather or time of day related has a large effect on them. My edits to the campfire's will NOT effect campfires in dungeons, or misplaced (or ill-assigned) campfire lighting used for fireplaces( or other fixtures) in homes and shops. New campfire forms were created and used in v2.3+ to help get the right look.

The Concept(in brief): Generally speaking people don't walk around being hyper aware of the lighting around them. Until some odd un-natural light or reflection slaps them in the face. It's your subconscious that slaps you, and the goal of this mod is to save your cheeks by reducing how often you get slapped. As the name Subliminal Lighting may or may not suggest to you, it attempts to keep the lighting in the background and not be objectionably noticed by your subconscious that see's everything.
 
The purpose of this mod is to:
-Fix the Mystery Light sources that exist in the vanilla lighting.
-Improve the effect of lighting sources to make it more believable and natural looking.
-Improve performance where possible. 

What is NOT the purpose of this mod:
-Add a light source to every single lighting fixture in Skyrim.
-Make any changes to Creation Kit defined dungeon and interior cells/spaces or areas. Though what plug-ins the future holds is uncertain.

What the mod MAY do is: 
-Give you more corners to sneak in.
-Disable/relocate some of the chimneys placed over lights to improve performance and make the remaining smoke effects feel more special.
-Disable extra light sources that are really not needed. Often these will be moved to a 'dark fixture'.
-leave a few mystery light sources unresolved. Some may have reasons they can't be corrected. But every effort will be made to hide it's presents the best I can.  
-Add a light source where I feel it's necessary. No shadow casters were added.
-If needed, alter items that are directly effected by the lights being worked on. Just as a photographer is concerned with everything in the scene.
 
When Bethesda creates a game, they have to appeal to a broad audience of people. I'm redefining their choices to appease my sense of lighting rooted in 40+yrs of photography. Lighting as always fascinated me, sounds weird but whatever... So in other words, I'm using the terms Fix, Correct rather loosely. They are (generally) not bugs in the vanilla game, they are merely choice's that don't appeal to me and don't feel natural. That said, I'd luv to go through and add a light source to every location that is sharing a light source for 2 or more fixtures, doors for example. As one that plays on a notebook, I can't do that. Would be pointless for me to do that, as there are mods that do that already. Some will say, But Mod X already does this. My answer in short would be No, while they may seem to visually over lap a bit I've not been able to find one that attempts to fix the unnatural look of where the light falls in respect to fixture type, location(s), source of light and acceptable surfaces that could create a believable reflected light fall.

This mod adds no new nor changes any existing scripts

There are a few meshes that have been edited, and 2 new ones added that are name changed(clones) and tweaked of the vanilla meshes. These were done to help correct the fugly glow on embers, you could if you choose further enhance the embers by installing the textures from a popular smoke and embers mod. 4 meshes for the DLC Dark Elf lamps and two cloned and tweaked additional meshes where created to help fully randomize the flickering of the lights on the dock in Raven Rock. These are mostly replacer meshes (the 2 clones are not), so they will effect all of them game wide that use the meshes. Early on, I said I wouldn't do that. However as the mod progressed it became obvious to fix these issues required the meshes to be edited slightly, and in these cases I think it's good it effects all of them.

Load location almost shouldn't matter, later the better. SSL_xxxx_patch(s) need to be loaded After the Subliminal_lighting.esp as they need to alter records from the SSL core, or use resources from it.

Requirements I don't really need to spell this out do I... Other than the obvious, nothing else is required. Though if your modding your game there's a healthy assortment of suggested mods to help keep things running smoothly.

Thanks for looking and giving it a try if you choose to =)

A special Thank You to all of you that have stuck with SSL throughout the maturing process!

Please remember to endorse this, or Any Mod that you continue to use. It lets the author know their work is appreciated, and helps others find the mods you like.