Month: January 2012

SkyUI

One of the worst things about Skyrim is its clunky UI. I almost didn’t buy the game because of it, and it’s been something of a thorn in my side ever since. It’s really annoying to have to wade through an endless succession of menus if you want to equip an item from your backpack. True, you can create a favorites list, but if you have a bunch of stuff there, scrolling through it all gets old really fast.

Thankfully, I managed to find a cool mod that makes the inventory a lot more manageable. It’s called SkyUI and it replaces the succession of menus with a single tabbed interface, where each tab contains a different item type (e.g. weapons, armor, potions, ingredients, etc.). It makes for a much nicer presentation, and it speeds up inventory management by quite a bit.

If you do download SkyUI, you should make sure to download the Nexus Mod Manager first. It makes installation a breeze. Plus, if you download other mods, it will help you manage them. Unlike other games, *cough* Diablo III *cough*, Skyrim is wide open to modding (the developers are even producing a Creation Kit to allow fan-made quests). Sites like Skyrim Nexus offer a ton of mods to tailor the game to fit your preferences. Want to wield Gandalf’s sword from LOTR? Now you can! Want to change the game’s flora? You can do that, too! The opportunities for customization are almost limitless.

Iteration, or why I love Blizzard Entertainment

The sturm und drang surrounding the development of Diablo III continues. Back in September, the game’s release was postponed until “early 2012,” but Blizzard has still not given any hint of when we’ll be seeing it on store shelves. The game director recently took to the official D3 blog to explain what the team has been working on over the past few month. Some of the changes concerned core elements of the game, and many fans expressed outrage that the designers were still making major changes this late in the development cycle. As usual, Blizzard was unapologetic, stating once more that they will only release the game “when it’s done.”

Why am I bringing this up? Well, it occurred to me that Blizzard and I have a lot in common: we’re both addicted to iteration. I’ve technically been done with Evil in Thebes for months now, yet I can’t seem to stop tinkering. I suppose the most notable change was the main character’s name (Ptahmose is now Khamtir), but most of these changes are rather small: some additional wordsmithing here, a few extra tidbits of lore there.

None of these changes are particularly earth-shattering, so you might be wondering why I’d bother making them. After all, every minute I spend making changes to EiT is a minute I can’t spend querying or working on the sequel. But, like Blizzard, I’ll only stop fiddling with something when it’s actually done. However, there comes a point where you’re just making changes for the sake of changing things, and that’s when it’s time to stop and close the Word document for good. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to figure out when you’ve reached that point. In most cases, there’s no objective standard you can use to make that determination. It ultimately boils down to gut feelings and hunches, but the more you write and revise, the more self-aware you’ll become. “Übung macht den Meister,” as my German professors would say.