These are so great, I have a question though. Would you consider making some kind of API or papyrus function to trigger these as well? Because these work better at brightening dark interiors better than ANY night eye effect I have ever seen when coupled with a darker ENB.
I would absolutely love to be able to trigger your amazingly smooth FX as a spell effect. The possibilities could apply to so many different scenarios. Like a similar low health effect but for when you're reaching higher starvation ranks as a vampire, or use the effect in tandem with a werewolf overhaul to give an visual cue that you're having a forced moon transformation.
Thanks for the input! I don't plan to make a library or papyrus interface any time soon - mostly cause it's out of my area of experience. This is my first SKSE plugin after all. Anyone is free to check out the source repo and make an extension or do a PR though!
Also, I reckon it would require quite a bit of work, since currently exactly three effects and their smooth animations are hard-coded to the three main status bars in a code-simple and performance-efficient way. Abstracting that to an API supporting arbitrary number of effects that wont step on each other would mean redesigning a bunch of stuff.
I am experimenting with more status effects (Light level, Sneak status, Hit flinch, etc) for future updates though! Might end up creating a generalized version of the screen effect animations as a consequence. Right now the biggest limitation is the requirement of having a unique Form record for each effect (has to be defined in some esp).
I assume not since it's using a DLL which probably does a form id look up. Compacting the forms could change those form ids so the DLL doesn't have a form to apply.
The dll exclusively does EditorID lookup (hence powerofthree tweaks) so if those are maintained any merging should be fully compatible. The esp really is just 3 tiny default forms with certain editorIDs. The ID itself only needs to match what's in the .ini file!
Give it a shot. I personally dont want to mess up VR compatibility so I didn't mess with ESL too much.
That... is actually a really really fantastic idea! I am totally going to update some of my plugins to use editor ids. Thanks!
Also, go ahead and compact it into an ESL and if any VR users want to use it point them here: Skyrim VR ESL Support Every VR user should get it anyway :D ESL is the gift that keeps giving ^.^
There's no need to compact forms if mod managers (Vortex/MO2/Wrye Bash...) are saying it can just be marked light. Just click the button. It's safe to do so.
Great to see updates on this. Following the progress. This is something is always wished for diseases, since they're hidden in the active effects list.
you know what I definitely wish this was made for... something like stealth where it would change based off if you're in the dark or spotted. Something like a modifier for being in the dark would be cool so you could see more but that's a bit advanced.
Also, could you make a version that's just for HP and basically turns your screen black and white when you're low health? Usually in fights I'm not that worried about stamina and magika as I have an infinite sprint stamina mod and for early game you tend to run out of both really quickly when using heavy attacks in fights or just spraying n praying. So, you're basically just going to have a flashing screen of different colors in early game and tbh I only really care about if I'm about to die or not.
1) Area darkness effect is a good idea (its also something that Better Resource Warnings had). I'll look into it. My only fear is how it'll permanently mess with night-time scenes, and flicker on-and-off as you pass by light sources, even in friendly everyday town areas.
2) I added a config preset in the downloads that is similar to what you described. Please do tweak it -- the whole point of this mod is to be easily configured to taste! (My defaults are overly-intense specifically for no-HUD VR players' situational awareness and immersion)
I like the idea of the black and white more than the others because one could either make you go blind in a cave or a dark area or the other could hurt your eyes and just make the game look a bit strange. Someone made a mod I found that changes a lighting effect on you depending on your lighting area when you were crouching.. I found it when I was looking into stealth mods. SNAW - Sneak Awareness at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Only problem is this effect didn't show at all for VR use and was completely useless. Very disappointed but that's just VR for you.
SNAW looks like something that applies spell shader effect to your character, which you could usually only see in 3rd person. For VR, I'd check if there is an easy way to make it compatible with the VRIK player avater, that way you'd see the effect on your arms and body. Maybe it just works by default, since VRIK tries to translate most player model-related visuals?
It would be really cool if there was an audio component to this as well. Like a heart beat sound for health, heavy breathing for stamina, or static / sound dampening for low magicka
The audio feature is handled better than I could do by the OG: Better Resource Warnings (Can use alongside StatFX but let mine do all the overlay related stuff)
Vanilla Skyrim already has audio related to low health and stam (heartbeat and breathing respectively) which is customizable using BRW. Magicka muffle effect is an interesting idea though, I'll look into it.
You know, I believe it was apollodown, the guy who made Dragon Combat Overhaul, who made something similar to this back in the Legendary Edition Days, though I totally forgot what it was called.
Anyway, good luck with the mod, it's an interesting alternative to status bars.
This is an awesome concept and I've already seen some really great ideas for expanding it here in the comments. To add my two cents, I think it would be interesting if instead of being a full-screen filter, the effect came in from the edges as if you were slowly blacking out. I'm not sure how well that would work with VR.
Thanks! I actually originally messed around with that, but basically nothing works with VR other than color/cinematic filters.
I thought about hijacking the existing black vignette "comfort move" effect, but it's all hard coded in game. VR does not play nice with projecting any textures to the screen (even base game UI doesn't do that and fakes it with floating in-world meshes)
The idea is great, but i already feel how im getting tired of colorless effect playing mage, since you going OOM a lot on early-mid stages. It would be nice to have less intense effects, or maybe more rare condition to activate effect, like, you going colorless screen gradually for not getting over 50% mana for, like, 20-30 seconds. Stil, great idea and great mod!
Thanks! Absolutely, the default config was meant to be intense for demonstration of the features. The mod was designed to be really easy for everyone to tweak the settings using the provided .ini file!
For instance, you could turn up the SaturationMult under the Magicka section to make it less jarring. Something closer to 1 (vanilla) than 0 (black and white). You could even set the easing curve to be very aggressive (say "easeInQuint') so the effect only really kicks in as u run completely dry out of magicka, and quickly fades outs as it comes back. You can turn down the startFraction to closer to zero to have it kick it only at lower magicka. etc etc.
Also, I like that idea with really slowly fading in the effect over many seconds if you stay low. Right now something similar can be done easily in the .ini file by setting MaxDelta really, really close to MinDelta (like min=0.01 and max=0.01001) but it'll also make recovery look slower too (maybe that's more immersive?) .
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I would absolutely love to be able to trigger your amazingly smooth FX as a spell effect. The possibilities could apply to so many different scenarios. Like a similar low health effect but for when you're reaching higher starvation ranks as a vampire, or use the effect in tandem with a werewolf overhaul to give an visual cue that you're having a forced moon transformation.
I don't plan to make a library or papyrus interface any time soon - mostly cause it's out of my area of experience. This is my first SKSE plugin after all. Anyone is free to check out the source repo and make an extension or do a PR though!
Also, I reckon it would require quite a bit of work, since currently exactly three effects and their smooth animations are hard-coded to the three main status bars in a code-simple and performance-efficient way. Abstracting that to an API supporting arbitrary number of effects that wont step on each other would mean redesigning a bunch of stuff.
I am experimenting with more status effects (Light level, Sneak status, Hit flinch, etc) for future updates though! Might end up creating a generalized version of the screen effect animations as a consequence. Right now the biggest limitation is the requirement of having a unique Form record for each effect (has to be defined in some esp).
The esp really is just 3 tiny default forms with certain editorIDs. The ID itself only needs to match what's in the .ini file!
Give it a shot. I personally dont want to mess up VR compatibility so I didn't mess with ESL too much.
Also, go ahead and compact it into an ESL and if any VR users want to use it point them here: Skyrim VR ESL Support
Every VR user should get it anyway :D ESL is the gift that keeps giving ^.^
Let me know if anyone has issues (first time messing around with that for me)
Also, could you make a version that's just for HP and basically turns your screen black and white when you're low health? Usually in fights I'm not that worried about stamina and magika as I have an infinite sprint stamina mod and for early game you tend to run out of both really quickly when using heavy attacks in fights or just spraying n praying. So, you're basically just going to have a flashing screen of different colors in early game and tbh I only really care about if I'm about to die or not.
2) I added a config preset in the downloads that is similar to what you described. Please do tweak it -- the whole point of this mod is to be easily configured to taste! (My defaults are overly-intense specifically for no-HUD VR players' situational awareness and immersion)
I like the idea of the black and white more than the others because one could either make you go blind in a cave or a dark area or the other could hurt your eyes and just make the game look a bit strange.
Someone made a mod I found that changes a lighting effect on you depending on your lighting area when you were crouching.. I found it when I was looking into stealth mods. SNAW - Sneak Awareness at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Only problem is this effect didn't show at all for VR use and was completely useless. Very disappointed but that's just VR for you.
For VR, I'd check if there is an easy way to make it compatible with the VRIK player avater, that way you'd see the effect on your arms and body. Maybe it just works by default, since VRIK tries to translate most player model-related visuals?
Vanilla Skyrim already has audio related to low health and stam (heartbeat and breathing respectively) which is customizable using BRW. Magicka muffle effect is an interesting idea though, I'll look into it.
Anyway, good luck with the mod, it's an interesting alternative to status bars.
Again, great work, thank you!
I thought about hijacking the existing black vignette "comfort move" effect, but it's all hard coded in game.
VR does not play nice with projecting any textures to the screen (even base game UI doesn't do that and fakes it with floating in-world meshes)
The mod was designed to be really easy for everyone to tweak the settings using the provided .ini file!
For instance, you could turn up the SaturationMult under the Magicka section to make it less jarring. Something closer to 1 (vanilla) than 0 (black and white). You could even set the easing curve to be very aggressive (say "easeInQuint') so the effect only really kicks in as u run completely dry out of magicka, and quickly fades outs as it comes back. You can turn down the startFraction to closer to zero to have it kick it only at lower magicka. etc etc.
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