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steveowashere

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NexusModsCaretaker

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About this mod

Gives variety to Skyrim's Imperial Forts and Towers

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Attention: This mod is no longer being supported or updated.

This mod has been uploaded by "The Care Taker" at the request of its owner. The Care Taker account is run by Nexus Mods for the purpose of hosting mods created by authors who are no longer active in the community.

If you are a mod author and would like to learn more about this service or have questions, you can find details regarding The Care Taker HERE.

Happy modding!



Spice of Life - Forts

(Also see: Spice of Life - Clutter)

Read The Install Instructions. Failure to set up this mod correctly will result in purple meshes.

Description: 


This mod has a very simple premise: Give forts more variety in terms of looks. It does this by assigning different forts different textures. The result is that most of Skyrim's forts have a unique variation on textures, instead of the same textures being used for every single fort. 

The mod started off as a small personal project because I hated the fact that there was moss growing on forts way in the north of Skyrim, since they it's expanded a bit more. The texture placement of forts follows a simple bit of logic: 'Is it realistic?' Meaning you won't find any moss or plants on textures that are in snowy/icy areas. In addition forts in the snowy northern depths of Skyrim now actually look like they belong there. Some have icy decals, others have a frozen appearance. This makes sense, likely nothing green can grow very well in these areas. There are exceptions were it makes sense like along the border where the snow stops. Forts not in snowy areas have their location taken into account as well. Forts in the forests of Skyrim have green moss and plants growing on them. Forts in the Tundra and Rift also suit their location. 

This mod includes textures from Vivid Landscapes - Imperial Forts, Noble Skyrim HD, Langey's Texture Workshop, Tamirel Reloaded,  plus a few of my own. Hein84, Shutt3r, Langey, and 32cm were nice enough to let me use their textures. They are awesome. Please if you have downloaded their work consider endorsing/saying thanks/donating to them. Cabal120's aMidianBorn Imperial Forts is also required for this mod, but not provided in the download, so credits to Cabal120 as well for more awesome textures. 


What's finished: 

  • 23 Forts in Skyrim have been customized with new textures
  • 6 Imperial Towers have been customized with new textures
  • Integration with No Snow Under The Roof (This means it's required)
  • (Optional) Parallax Meshes
  • (Optional) UV Scaled Meshes (1.5 scaling on bricks, 2.0 scaling on moss, this is a personal taste as any higher looks too 'cookie cutter')
  • Optimization of texture sets
  • Cleaned and checked for errors with Tes5Edit
  • Removed moss from all Snow/Ice Fort meshes
  • Correct LODs for new texture sets (this was a chore)

What's not finished (in order of priority): 

  • Forts from Dragonborn DLC. Only 3 Forts (Excluding unique places)
  • Make a install tutorial video.
  • Wood Textures may get some variety. 
  • The Mod Page - I need to fancy it up a bit.
  • Patches for forts add by other mods. (Lowest priority)

What will never be included in this mod: 

  • Unique places - They're already unique (i.e. High Hrothgar, Fort Dawnguard)

Performance: 

The long and short of it: Performance shouldn't suffer very much with this mod if you use the correct textures for your system. 

In general 2K textures are fine for system with 2gb or more of Vram, if under 2gb, best take the 1k option. Enboost is 100% necessary for any sort of stability, so set that up as well. 

There is the potential for increase Vram usage, although in many cases this will not happen.

Requirements:



Installation:

It is your responsibility to read and understand everything in this section. Manually installation of some things is necessary. Failure to do so may cause the mod not to work properly and unnecessary whining. If something is unclear, or you are confused about a certain step, please ask in the posts section. Otherwise /r/Skyrimmods is an excellent place to ask as well. 

  • Download this mod and install with Mod Organizer or Nexus Mod Manager (manual install not recommenced)
  • Download aMidianBorn Imperial Forts 'Main File' in 1k, 2k, or 4k and install with Mod Organizer or Nexus Mod Manager. (Optional, endorse)
  • Download aMidianBorn Imperial Forts 'amb forts exterior wall vanilla style' manually and save to desktop.
  • Open Spice of Life mod folder in Mod Organizer or Nexus Mod Manager
  • Navigate to: textures>SpiceOfLife>Forts>AmbFortsVanillaStyle>Imperial Leave window open for later
  • Find 'amb forts exterior wall vanilla style' download from earlier, extract contents, and open textures>Dungeons>Imperial 
  • Drag the 4 texture files from 'amb forts exterior wall vanilla style' to the Spice Of Life folder you left open in Step 5. 
  • Make sure .esp is active in load order. 
  • Install and activate No Snow Under The Roof if you have not already.
  • Install DynDOLOD 2.11 (or higher) + Dependencies
  • Run TexGen & Install output
  • Run DynDOLOD and Install output
  • Done, run Skyrim.

If DynDOLOD is already installed, it will be necessary to re-run TexGen and DynDOLOD and then overwrite previous install. 

Conflicts/Incompatibilities: 

  • Any mod that changes the exterior of Forts: For obvious reasons, mods that alter the exterior of forts somehow are not compatible. I am not aware of many that do this.


  • Any textures in the default /textures/dungeons/imperial that are not 'aMidianBorn Imperial Forts'. To elaborate on this, while this is not a hard compatibility and this mod will work with other textures. This mod was built off of the textures from aMidianBorn Imperial Forts meaning when I designed each fort, I designed them with a certain look and expectation that aMidianBorn textures are also installed. You can use other textures, but no promises on how it will look and if you do so and something looks wrong, expect no support from me.

  • You must use the meshes included with this mod. If not, I can't promise the texture sets will be applied to the models correctly. 


Full list of forts that have textures changed:

Forts:
  • Broken Tower Redoubt
  • Cracked Tusk Keep
  • Darklight Tower
  • Dirftshade Refuge
  • Faldar's Tooth
  • Fellglow Keep
  • Fort Amol
  • Fort Dunstad (Only Farmhouse)
  • Fort Fellhammer
  • Fort Greenwall (now actually has a green wall)
  • Fort Greymoor
  • Fort Hraggstad
  • Fort Kastav
  • Fort Neugrad
  • Fort Snowhawk
  • Fort Sungard
  • Gallows Rock
  • Harmugstahl
  • Ilinalta's Deep
  • Mistwatch
  • Morvunskar
  • Northwatch Keep
  • Treva's Watch
  • Western Watchtower

Towers:
  • Falkreath Watchtower
  • Pinefrost Tower
  • Refugee's Rest
  • Rift Watchtower
  • Snowpoint Beacon
  • Stendarr's Beacon

Not touched: 

  • Helgen
  • Fort Dawngaurd
  • Nightcaller Temple. 
  • DLC Forts (Dawngaurd & Dragonborn) 
  • Faldar's Tooth
  • High Point Tower
  • Any forts added by other mods
  • Quests, markers, navmesh, scripts, leveled lists ect. (Literally just statics and texture sets have been touched)

Global Changes: All Imperial Fort Ice/Snow models no longer show moss/growing things. 


FAQ: 

Q: Why do I have to manually install aMidianBorn's stuff?
A: Cabal120 has made it clear on the mod page he doesn't wish to have his content rehosted/reuploaded. This is totally 100% his call and I respect his decision, as should you. Don't ask or complain about this. 

Q: Wait, so if aMidianBorn's textures aren't included... how do you get proper LODs?
A: In a word: Texgen. In more than one word, sheson is very clever. 

Q: Why is No Snow Under The Roof required?! I don't like it. 
A: Too bad, it's a great mod and there's no reason not to have it. It doesn't impact performance, makes snow actually look real, and if you don't like then sorry, but 12500 endorses shows that the vast majority do like it.

Q: Why is DynDOLOD required? 
A: It's not strictly required, but if you want LODs to show up correctly it is required. 

Q: Is this compatible with ModX?
A: Mostly likely yes. But ask yourself, does ModX modify vanilla forts in anyway? Then it might not be. Tes5Edit can quickly check if another mod is touching forts. Otherwise feel free to ask. 

Q: Will this destroy my save/PC/Life/Lore Friendliness/Lore Unfriendliness/childhood dreams?
A: No on all counts. 

Q: Why is there no parallax on the snow/ice forts?! I looked at your meshes and parallax isn't even enabled?!
A: Objects with shaders applied to them (snow) can't have the parallax effect. 

Q: Why aren't there more screenshots?! I want to see what the mod looks like. 
A: I intentionally didn't add many because I want the look of the forts to be a surprise.

Q: LODs don't match the full models!
A: Are you using DynDOLOD 2.11 or higher? Did you install the 'Edit Scripts' provided with this mod to DynDOLOD?, Did you run TexGen while having Spice of Life Forts active in your load order? Did you install DynDOLOD/TexGen output(s)? 

Q: Will you create a version that keeps moss on the Snow/Ice forts?
A: No. 

Donations:
Please do no donate to me. I don't want anything for my mods. This mods uses so much of other people's work it isn't morally right to take money for it. Consider donating to one of the authors that let me use their textures instead. Hein84, Langey, 32cm, Shutt3r and even though none of his textures are included still consider donating to: Cabal120. 

Credits:
Hein84 - Vivid Landscapes
Shutt3r - Noble Skyrim HD
Langey - Langey's Texture Workshop
32cm - Tamriel Reloaded
sheson - for the personalize help on LODs and compatibility with DynDOLOD, the LOD meshes, and updating DynDOLOD to suit my needs.
Bethesda
Crazybump
NifTools

Obligatory Meme: