It’s just how things get over time, people will take out something others may consider fun, to instead boost performance. Really an inevitable optimization, as something like this could have been done by human testing and external logging, instead of an external tool to simulate attempts.

In regards specifically to Trackmania, the best solution to my mind is to split the leaderboard between analogue inputs and keyboard. I know that’s basically letting the program win, but it exists now, and unless they introduce random physics or performance, the door can’t really be shut.

In terms of speed running, this has also been done in other games, such as TAS runs or the AI they used in SMP64 to find new strats. I don’t really seeing it going away, even if it makes runs less bespoke and more like generic IKEA furniture.

Usually it’s just a legal ass-covering, but in this case, the project most likely depends on F4SE and the address library, which injects stuff at specific places in memory. Theoretically a cracked exe could work, but given something is likely changed from the original, all memory pointer addresses those two previous tools hook into and or override could be wrong. It’s less of a piracy thing, and more of a “We don’t want to troubleshoot things that may require us to do illegal things”. Besides, the issue would have to be fixed in the original libraries, not the mod.

FemShep was in game sculpted until the third game, which is why it looks weird and changes so much from game to game. BroShep on the other hand was a 3d scan of Mark Vanderloo I believe.

OpenGL is a bit like Vulkan, but discontinued since… 2014, with a single update since then. It was actually stopped because Vulkan seemed better, and both API’s were maintained by the same organisation.

In general it’s more likely to work on older devices, but would be less performant than Vulkan.

DirectX is a Windows thing, so you’ll just have those calls translated to Vulkan under the hood (DXVK). You’ll probably get better performance from just setting it to Vulkan directly.

Edit: As some others say, for BG3 specifically, DXVK does a really good job. My personal experience is that “the best” option is very patch dependent. At launch Vulkan was best, then after a few patches did DXVK ran better, but personally I’m back to straight Vulkan, for no other reason than wanting to be a +1 in the statistics.

It’s honestly nearly impossible to keep up with the essentials after any amount of time away. So many groundbreaking mods come out monthly, that I used to stalk the “Updated” tab just about every day.

There are so many essential and almost mandatory mods for Skyrim, lists get outdated fast. Though Lexy’s LOTD list has an entire section of mostly up to date things. I’d recommend giving it a skim, though it may want you to install more mods.

God, Take-Two is probably the scummiest, dumbest, and greediest game publishing company around. I know that most companies of this type are appalling, like Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, or EA, but I feel that they’ve fallen to the point where it’s expected to be bad. Take-Two has been, in my opinion, just as shitty in forever, but the success of GTA and RDR2 makes them slip people’s minds completely.

Depending on the hosting of things by the game, anti cheat can make sense. Payday 2, for example, is almost entirely peer to peer in games, and cheats allow you to be quite mean in game, even if you’re not the host.

But I can’t help but think PvE anti cheat is more about locking people out of skins/events/dlc/things than actually being to prevent cheating. Else you could just have a button that invalidated the gains of the cheated match.

And this came right after they banned el_xox, a vtuber, indefinitely for “nudity”, though the model they used was just zoomed in so you just couldn’t see below the shoulders, instead of actually being naked.

Seems they got unbanned though, but good on twitch to put their more out less already unwritten simp-streamer rules in writing.

zEdit had some patches of it’s own, that were quite popular and widely recommended back in the day. There’s a rather incomplete list of patches the patch may include here. If you only used it for merging, the plugins merged should be in the categories still, or in the .esl’s mod description.

As for the ordering it’s all somewhat complicated imo, and also somewhat contentious depending on where you look online. Last I modded Skyrim, I followed the Open World Loot guide, which I found quite useful.

I will also plug a script I put on nexus that generates bashed tags for all plugins you select in xEdit, as some mod authors forget that Bash Tags are a thing :p

Since the level squish, you level up a lot faster than you’re used to. As most people will say, the real part of the game is the endgame, or at least things you can do at max level.

Gear will mostly come from quests whilst leveling, and somewhat sporadically at that. You could run dungeons for more gear, but you’ll mostly end up getting the same slots over and over if you do. It’s a part of the game that still really feels unpolished.

Good-ish news about professions though! You level them per expansion now. That means that you no longer have to do old content for drops to DE, for example. Instead, once you hit max, you can just learn the latest expansion’s version on top, and not bother with having to catch up.

The lighting in Skyrim has always been one of my gripes with it. Most things in default Skyrim are fairly bright, which is lovely for playability, but makes it so torches and magelight are almost useless. Then if you slap an enb on, suddenly everything not 2 meters ahead of you is just pure impenetrable darkness.

Mods like this kinda fix it, but sometimes the light range is super short, or you have the ball of light stuck at the top of the screen in first person (or is that candlelight?).

Anywho, good recommendation, even if magic mods sometimes claim incompatibilities with stuff like this.

I may be misremembering, but didn’t he add them a bit back and then remove them again?

I know the Patreon versions don’t include those messages, though I’m not sure I’d want to give money to him, due to all the historical drama (and his refusal to do proper naming of versions)