Skywind is a mod that brings Morrowind into the Skyrim engine. It’s like someone at Bethesda took the Morrowind and Skyrim design documents and riffle shuffled them as a party trick, and then forgot to unshuffle them. Somehow–probably through a montage–those files ended up with modders. A less tired Craig would probably recount that montage, but that show-off wasn’t up late playing Starbound and eating takeaway, so you just get facts and trailers. The last time I reported on Skywind, it was just an empty world. You could run around, but you could not do anything, but more recent updates have begun the task of integrating people, monsters, and quests. Which means it might be worth installing. There’s a wee video to demonstrate some of that work.
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According to international law, I am not allowed to post the video I made playing of myself playing this Skyrim Mod, which changes the fighting music into Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. Now, I’ll admit there hundreds of reasons and at least three court orders that should prevent me from going anywhere near recording equipment, but I am sad that one of them is “A man in his pants enjoying a game and wants you to share it with the world.” It seems like my happiness, and the happiness others would get from it, should override petty rules and regulations, particularly when it involves Skyrim and the Top Gun soundtrack.
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If someone is keeping a Big List Of Inevitable Things somewhere, they can cross out ‘modders remaking Morrowind in the Skyrim engine’. For it is no longer inevitable, but is in fact, er, evitable? No, that’s not right. Though I guess you could avoid it, but that would make the modders of Skywind very sad indeed, because all their hard work in rebuilding Morrowind is worth looking at. Even if you just coo over the videos below, because cooing over the scenery is pretty much all that’s possible right now.
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Hunting through impressive Arma 3 mods is a full-time job. Luckily for me, it’s my full-time job, so I get to show everyone what amazing things the community has been making and keep myself in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed (impoverished, hungry, covered in sores). So in admiring this amazing in development Arma 3 Construction Mod, you’re doing me a favour. Go on, admire it. It’s definitely worth a coo over: it’s a building mod that will enable you to create everything from simple shacks to complex, multi-story, er, shacks. The trailer is very impressive.
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3761 AD. Seattle. A line of tourists is snaking around a wrecked skyscraper. If we listen closely, we can hear their guide: “… this is the cupboard where they found the ‘test heads’, and this is where they arrested Robin “Mad Hatter” Walker, who admitted to 243402 counts of decapitation. That’s the rebuilt Dota 2 annex. The war where the Dota 2 team attempted to secede from the union in 2103 caused a brief civil war, but it turned out their tactics when applied to a real world conflict just got them all killed. We don’t know what this place was: a cupboard where we found the skeleton and a crowbar. Just a handyman, maybe? Moving on to one of the more remarkable finds: a PC that was found in the rubble, still running a copy of Alien Swarm. And beside it was this Steam Greenlight page for a mod that turned it into a first-person shooter. What was Greenli…”
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Living in Skyrim must be like having Charlie Kaufman as your god. You’d be pottering along, chopping wood, checking the sky for falling dragon poop, just doing your best as a person living in interesting times. You’re not noticing the changes that are happening right under your nose: the flowers look prettier, you can’t speak when you want to, and before you know what’s going on there’s an airship overhead. The hands of mod, reshaping your reality. I expect most of the inhabitants have just woken up to the new neighbouring landmass of Falskaar. The mod adds a remarkable amount of new stuff to base Skyrim, clicking in a new continent of content for you to play. Everyone seems to be talking about it, and with good reason.
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The sun is beating the UK into sweaty submission. Flowers are blooming, there is blue where there’s usually grey, and lollypops are the staple food source. Summer has finally decided to show up and make the world brighter and sort of happier, so this weekend I closed the curtains and spent my off-time fiddling with Stalker. I decided I wanted to pretty up the original game: I wanted pitch black nights, livelier fauna, blowouts, lovely skies, and more interesting weather. Unfortunately I’d forgotten I’d already modded it, so I ended up with a broken mutant of a game. I’m reinstalling now. It wasn’t at total waste: on my hunt for the Shadow Of Chernobyl mods I discovered that the long-awaited Misery 2.0 for Call Of Pripyat is out this month. And it has a trailer.
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If gathering friends to play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator is a bit cumbersome, and if you find FTL a bit lonely, then I’ve found the perfect game for you. Final Frontier is the result of a nasty transporter accident between the pair, where the Heisenberg compensators decoupled and they arrived on the SS GMOD screaming and inside out. The sick bay did its best, but all it could do is stabilise the life signs. To be honest, the gristly lump that was spat out looks pretty amazing.
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While the Oculus Rift is a fine and interesting thing, I think adding it to the Source Engine might also be responsible for the death of Steam. Think about it: Valve are looking to make a follow-up to Episode 2 and at the same time they’re looking to implement 3D goggles into the Source engine. Gabe decides to take charge, because he’s hands-on, and replays Episode 2 while testing out the Rift. He’s forgotten about that ending. The lights flicker across Bellevue and Steam Towers power down. All of Valve’s engineers are disconnected from their Steam pods, plasma weeping from their DLC holes. They follow the smell of cooked flesh and burning hair to Gabe’s office: he’s sat in the corner, hair standing up straight, the device fused to his face. His tears at the ending shorted out the Rift, sending his sadness into the building’s infrastructure. Steam is set to emo mode and refuses to co-operate until the ending is changed. All because Valve have just added Rift support to the new Source SDK, enabling modders to add it to their games.

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I rarely role-play in games. I’d like to believe it’s because I have such a well-defined personality that I simply can’t accept not being myself, but the real reason is that I’m rubbish. I only ever have one well-defined notion of what I want to be: Garrett. Every opportunity to create a character in a game for me means loading up on stealth options, and when I do I don’t really feel the character. I’m just a dude in the dark. But my last Skyrim character was lost to the great platter splatter* of October 2012, and I’m keen to go back the Fus Ro Dah. The question of whether or not I replay as a Garrett lookalike or roll something more adventurous has been answered with this mod that puts Team Fortress 2’s heavy into the dragon’s lair. I can tell I’m not going to be loading up on stealth options with this one.
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