Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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They're so many, that I've decided to post all the Starfield articles in this special post, so those that don't care can skip it and those that want to know more can get an overdose:

STARFIELD RELATED MODS

Barely a day after launch, Starfield already has over 100 mods
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-starfield-mods/
Betheda's RPGs have always been highly moddable, and that's great because—let's be honest—Bethesda's RPGs always need a lot of help. Beyond bug fixes and optimization mods there are also new quests, locations, weapons, gear, and characters constantly being added by Bethesda's industrious and creative modding community. Right now there over 60,000 mods for Skyrim Special Edition and nearly 50,000 mods for Fallout 4, with downloads of those mods totaling in the billions.
So, it's not exactly a surprise that modders are diving right into Starfield, though it's impressive that less than 24 hours after the RPG went into its five day early access period, there are already over 100 mods available for download.
>> The article only mentions 5 of those mods.

Starfield DLSS 3 Mod available for download and yes it has a DRM
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/starfield-dlss-3-mod-available-for-download-and-yes-it-has-a-drm/
Following the free DLSS 2/XeSS Mod for Starfield, PureDark released the DLSS 3 Frame Generation Mod for it. This mod is only available to the modder’s Patrons and yes, it does have a DRM protection.
The DRM that the mod uses is similar to the one PureDark added to the DLSS 3 Frame Generation Mod for Red Dead Redemption 2.
After becoming a Patron and downloading the mod from his Discord server, players will have to authenticate it. What’s crucial to note is that any account that has subscribed to PureDark’s Patreon will be able to pass the authentication procedure. In other words, the mod does not require an active membership. If you have subscribed and then unsubscribed from PureDark’s Patreon, you’ll still be able to pass authentication. Also, after your first authentication, the mod won’t ever ask you to re-authenticate it.
>> There's a video, a bit over 4 minutes long, that demos the mod... and you've probably already read Chazore's post about it being cracked.

Starfield Mod fixes its elevated black levels/washed out graphics
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/starfield-mod-fixes-its-elevated-black-levels-washed-out-graphics/
Yesterday, PureDark released a must-have mod for Bethesda’s latest RPG that added support for NVIDIA DLSS 2 and Intel XeSS. And today, modder “fadingsignal” released another must-have mod for Starfield that fixes its elevated black levels/washed-out issues.
As the modder noted, this Starfield Mod removes the color filters from the game, making the colors more uniformly neutral with deeper blacks. Do also note that this isn’t a Reshade preset as it uses the game’s own textures. Additionally, it doesn’t affect the Photo Filters in any way.
>> The article has some screenshots and a 2:07 video.

Starfield gets its first AI-upscaled 4K Texture Pack
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/starfield-gets-its-first-ai-upscaled-4k-texture-pack/
Modder ‘Epiphany Absolute’ has released the first AI-upscaled 4K Texture Pack for Starfield, weighing around 13GB in size. This pack will improve the game’s textures and we are certain that a number of PC gamers will find it useful.
(...)
Going into more details, the modder has used AI techniques in order to enhance the vanilla textures. To be more precise, the original textures have been upscaled by two times. This basically means that in most cases, the standard 2K textures of Starfield are now in glorious 4K. Now let’s wait and see how long it will take until we get the first 8K Texture Pack.
>> The article has some screenshots.

STARFIELD NEWS

Tragic: Skyrim's ultra-sneaky bucket trick doesn't work in Starfield
https://www.pcgamer.com/tragic-skyrims-ultra-sneaky-bucket-trick-doesnt-work-in-starfield/
Back in 2011, scores of Skyrim players became master thieves overnight thanks to the discovery of a simple exploit. The bucket trick, discovered just one day after Skyrim launched, made any NPC completely oblivious to thievery simply by blocking their line-of-sight. The trick? Put a bucket on their head. You'd think an exploit that trivializes pickpocketing and stealth would've been removed at some point, but the bucket trick survived through Skyrim's many re-releases, and the same trick even worked in Fallout 4.
Which is why I'm sad to report that the bucket trick does not appear to work in Starfield. I can't say definitively that there's no way to block an NPC's vision in Starfield, but I do know a humble bucket is no longer fit for the job.
>> Worry not, because there are still ways to steal things with a bucket.

Surprising no one, Starfield players are already filling their ships with junk
https://www.pcgamer.com/surprising-no-one-starfield-players-are-already-filling-their-ships-with-junk/
The true nemesis in all of Bethesda's big RPGs isn't dragons or raiders, it's encumbrance. It's back again in Starfield and your junk collecting habits will not go unpunished. When your personal inventory fills up you can start storing items in your ship cargo hold, but when that fills up too, some folks have just decided to chuck space junk all over their ship as a last ditch effort to never leave any piece of trash behind.
>> Talking about ships, fans are recreating all kinds of popular spaceships.

Nope, not a bug: Starfield's city maps just look like that
https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-city-maps/
My mom recently showed me that you can pick a point on Pikmin 4's map and then press a button to return to the game with your character looking in that direction—a delightfully convenient feature. Nintendo really has a knack for designing in-game maps. Bethesda, however… well, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, don't we?
Among all the praise and other commentary, "bad maps" has emerged as a common Starfield criticism as players make their first excursions into outer space. The starmaps aren't very exciting, but it's really the surface maps that are the target here. They're rendered as topographical point fields, which looks sort of cool, but communicates little, especially in cities, where buildings and streets aren't represented at all. (...)

Starfield players agree that its first dozen hours are its weakest: 'OK, 12 hours in, and I love it'
https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-players-agree-that-its-first-dozen-hours-are-its-weakest-ok-12-hours-in-and-i-love-it/
The moment at the start of Fallout 3 when you step out into the wasteland blew some minds back in 2008, but Starfield's intro isn't quite having the same effect. The short narrative sequence that casts you as a miner isn't quite as captivating as growing up in a Vault, and the simplified space travel and somewhat dull first hours that follow has players wrestling with one of Bethesda's most divisive opening acts yet.
>> By the way, once you're free to go whenever you want, don't go to Pluto, it's not worth it.

Starfield's name-remembering robot buddy can't do 'Glenn' or 'Greg,' but it will call you 'Captain Assface'
https://www.pcgamer.com/starfields-name-remembering-robot-buddy-cant-do-glenn-or-greg-but-it-will-call-you-captain-assface/
When Todd Howard revealed that Starfield's robot buddy Vasco could vocalize your character's name, I knew there were bound to be some "Bort license plate" situations waiting to happen. Reddit user andy24olivera claims to have datamined the list of hundreds of recorded names Vasco can draw from, and in my testing, it seems to be accurate⁠—both the omissions, and the more out-there inclusions.

Bethesda hired a noted modder to help with Starfield's clutter and lighting
https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-hired-a-noted-modder-to-help-with-starfields-clutter-and-lighting/
Want to work for Bethesda? Making mods for the studio's games might help you get you noticed. A couple of years ago, Ryan Johnson from the Fallout: London mod team was hired to be a level designer on Fallout 76, and modder Elianora, aka Emmi Junkkari, just revealed that she worked as additional lighting artist on Starfield.