About this mod
Add seasons support to *ANY* grass mod by using its grass in SPR, SUM, and AUT, and swapping in WIN when using Seasonal Landscapes.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Add seasonal grass support to *any* grass mod! You no longer need to wait for your favorite grass mods or grass mod patches/mashups to receive a seasons patch!
Purpose
Previously, if you wanted to do a seasons playthrough, you could either have basic winter-only swapping with your current grass mod(s) and Seasons of Skyrim only, or you could use a 4 seasons grass patch for your mod(s) designed for Seasonal Landscapes. These patches, like the ones performed over at Unofficial Seasonal Grasses, take time (and knowledge) to create. Simple Seasonal Grasses sits somewhere in the middle of these two options. Similar to Seasons of Skyrim, it will use your current grass mods for spring, summer, and autumn, and swap your grasses for winter, but will additionally perform all other form swaps from Seasonal Landscapes for all seasons (such as trees, plants, shrubs, flowers, and other statics), so the changes in non-winter seasons should still be apparent even though the grass itself won't change (see screenshots). All of this without a dedicated patch for your current grass mods!
This mod uses your grass mods' snow grass in winter, so YMMV as to whether these look good or not since not all grass mods were designed with seasons in mind (See the images for Tamrielic Grass, for example... ewww...). I have provided optional files to remove all grass in winter altogether, or use the default winter grasses from Seasonal Landscapes itself. See screenshots for comparisons.
Why only swap grass in winter?
This is to ensure maximum compatibility. Anything more would require very specific patches for each grass mod, thus eliminating this compatibility. With the additional swaps performed by Seasonal Landscapes, lack of spring, summer, and autumn grass swaps won't be as noticeable as it may sound (see screenshots). I have also created some 'simple' patches for popular grass mods which either come with their own variants of grass textures or have user-submitted variants (such as green or brown tundra). See list below for more details.
Installation
Download with your preferred mod manager and install. Manual installation is not recommended. All mods are flagged as an ESL unless otherwise noted, so will not take up a slot in your load order.
Generating Grass Cache
See my guide here on Nexus for instructions on How to Generate Grass Cache (with seasons). For more guides, visit my guides page.
Requirements
- Seasonal Landscapes
- Grass FPS Booster (Optional, but highly recommended)
Available Patches
Below is a list of simple patches available to use in conjunction with this mod.
- Skoglendi Patch - Uses green tundra in spring and summer, and brown tundra in autumn (all other grasses remain unchanged).
- Be sure to enable the Brown Tundra option in the Skoglendi FOMOD installer
- Be sure to also use Grass FPS Booster for this grass mod due to some odd behavior with grass unloading (see screenshots)
- Folkvangr Patch - Green tundra variant coming soon!
- No Snow Grasses Patch - Removes ALL snow grasses from all regions. Use this if you don't want any snow grasses at all (just snow textures).
- Please leave a comment for other patches you wish to see!
Load Order
- Seasonal Landscapes.esp
- Seasonal Landscapes - Solstheim.esp (optional)
- Simple Seasonal Grasses.esp (THIS MOD)
- Simple Seasonal Grasses - Solstheim.esp (optional - download this file from FILES page if you use Seasonal Landscapes - Solstheim)
- Your grass mod(s) and grass patch(es) here...
- Simple Seasonal Grasses ~patches~ (if any)
- Grass FPS Booster (highly recommended)
Compatibility
- This mod works with *any* grass mod or grass patch/mashup which does not already have seasonal support.
- If your grass mod already has a seasonal patch (or was built specifically with seasonal support in mind), I do not recommend using this mod (your mod already performs seasonal swaps and mine will negate them).
- This mod should be compatible with all other Seasonal Landscape mods/patches (with exception of grass patches for the reason above) since those are mostly using form swaps for other things. If you run into any mods that have compatibility issues, please let me know.
- This mod should also be fully compatible with Seasonal Landscapes - Unfrozen as I have not touched any form swaps performed by that mod.