Skyrim mod gives the game classic cartoon looks
Have you ever wished that Skyrim looked more like a Disney animated film, or maybe a Looney Toons classic? A Redditor by the name of UniqueUses has you covered: A mod called Toon Skyrim, which replaces the game's realistic-ish look with something more like Bugs Bunny might see after being clocked in the head with an apple.
"I'm basically making my own potato texture mod, with an enb and weather that goes with it to help hide that ugly lod," he wrote in the Skyrim Porn subreddit. "I like the potato texture style, but I think a lot of fixing up needs to be done for it to be playable. So I'm going to attempt to make things like signs and faces readable but still fit the potato style. For example, certain puzzles need to be seen, so I'm going to edit those."
"Potato texture," as Kotaku explained, is a flat, low-detail graphical style that's sometimes useful in getting games to run better on low-spec hardware. In this case, however, it doesn't sound like performance will be improved much because of the mod's use of an ENB, a sort of post-processing mod that adds additional effects to the game, but also places increased demand on hardware.
"All I'm doing is making the textures very small and then using an enb. So if textures size is a problem for somebody's pc then performance will go up in that area," he said in response to a question about Toon Skyrim FPS rates. "However enb's are very demanding. Turning off the ambient occlusion could make it at least break even with vanilla skyrim I imagine."
The mod isn't out yet, but the pre-release screens look fantastic. UniqueUses said he plans to upload the mod to Nexus Mods as soon as he's got the bugs worked out.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.