Skyrim

About this mod

WARZONES 2015 : CIVIL UNREST brings the SKYRIM CIVIL WAR to life! Revived. Rebuilt. Reborn. It adds 10000s of really pissed NPCs, new SCENERY, new BATTLEFIELDS and new BOSS-LIKE characters.

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For all this in-game discussion of 'WAR'...

...there wasn't that much 'WAR' in SKYRIM, was there?

Now there is.

This mod does what it says... It adds EPIC battles, ambushes, encounters and skirmishes throughout SKYRIM!

While exploring the SKYRIM, you will come upon battles containing many, many NPCs spanning many, many acres of in-game ground.  Many of which are randomized.  In the course of normal play, you'll never see every WZ!

At last count, well, it's impossible to count the amount of NEW, ANGRY NPCS spanning hundreds of DYNAMIC WARZONES!



WARZONES 2015 has been completely rewritten from the ground up using the latest tools (many of which were not available the first time around).

I’ve added a TON of stuff to the latest version… not the least of which is a team of talented modders to help refine, repair and create the finest mod we can.

Round of applause for Grand Bulwark, Deapri and Tony971!

Give a look at the biggest addition to WZ15 : The WARZONES ARMORY. It adds 100s of Weapons and Armor to WARZONES NPCs.  As well as allowing you to craft them!

A huge overhaul of the RANDOM ENCOUNTER system now includes DAY/NIGHT Awareness (no more Werewolves during the day), a deeper RANDOM AMBUSH system and huge new RANDOM WARZONES for a constantly changing Skyrim.

CIVIL WAR FORT SIEGES are bigger than ever!  With more DYNAMIC WARZONES & SKIRMISHES added to make travel in Skyrim more dangerous than ever!

We’re happy to report that the GOD OF WARZONES has been executed and replaced by an MCM (Mod Configuration Menu) which will allow you to very easily set all WARZONES options without ever having to enter a console command.

The Artificial Intelligence of all NPCs has been redone.  Now, some will fight, some will cower, some will threaten and some will come straight at you like a bat out of hell.

The SPAWN-O-METER has undergone a renovation so you can control how many NPCs are spawned!  

An entirely rebuilt PAPYRUS DEBUG LOG system has been incorporated for those of you who read your logs – and to help us help you troubleshoot!  Far more information about what’s happening behind the scenes with Warzones is available to you, and you can control the level of detail offered via the MCM.

NEW in 2015.2:

- WARZONES COOLDOWN : This great new function ensures that namedWZs don't respawn immediately upon leaving a nearby interior.  The default is 24 in-game hours.  Via our MCM, you can change the timing as you like.  Should you prefer to see a particular WZ "again", you can override this by entering MCM and re-enabling the WZ should you prefer more carnage.

- WARZONES ARMORY TOGGLE : Don't like the Armory?  Turn it off!

- PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS : Updates to scripts and NPC placement for a better, faster, smoother WARZONES experience.

- PERFORMANCE MODE : For users with "lower-end" systems or users who believe their rigs are "in-between" our preset SpawnCounts.  Let's say that our preset of 2 is a little "too much" for your system, but you'd like to see a few more NPCs than our preset of 1... now you can.  For instance... with a SpawnCount of 2, you are likely to see 2 NPCs per point... of course, the points are invisible to you, but generally speaking in large WZs, there are 3 SpawnPoints per Faction for a total of 6 SpawnPoints and therefore a possible total of 12 NPCS.  PERFORMANCE MODE increases the chances of a "randomNoSpawn", effectively putting the SpawnCount at 1.5 from a SpawnCount of 2.  2.5 from a SpawnCount of 3.  And, of course, .5 from a SpawnCount of 1.  While I can't say a WZ will really be a WZ at .5, this option will allow more users to enjoy WARZONES!

- DEADCOUNT : Too many corpses clogging your battlefields and choking your performance?  Turn 'em down!  Corpses disappearing too quickly depriving you of your ill-gotten gains?  Set them to stick around longer!  (please note, we will not support this feature and recommend you leave them as is, but it is up to you)

- UPDATED CIVIL WAR BATTLES : Bigger and more randomized Civil War battles are now at your fingertips.  

- More Random WZs!  Kill 'em all!

FIXED THE FLYING ANIMALS!

Thanks to all the Guinea pigs that helped us to isolate and mitigate the FLYING ANIMALS issue.

WZ 2015.2 now includes the "cure" - at least as regards WARZONES.  With the help of a good many of you, I believe I've found a stable way to "raise the threshold" at which it occurs - and that "fix" now exists in WZ 2015.2 - since WZ seems to be the tipping point for many.  This "fix" is harmless to those of you who don't know what they heck I'm going on about and those that have never seen the FLYING ANIMALS bug.  

Basically, this means that if you continue to run your game at 60FPS or lower, you should now no longer see FLYING ANIMALS.  If you do, please take the time to comment here and please be willing to be helpful.

To be clear:

Animals Flying is a vanilla issue that manifests for some at high frame rates (along with other things like flying plates and the like).
It is therefore ABSOLUTELY STILL RECOMMENDED that your enable your VSYNC and be sure your FPS does not go above 60.
The issue will likely still exist at high frame rates for some of you.  This is more likely to continue to happen in the area of Whiterun, Morthal, Solitude and Windhelm.  This is NOT a Warzones "bug".  

We have exhaustively tested it for stability, renovated the scripts, removed the “problems” and are now proud as heck to offer WARZONES 2015 to you!

Enjoy.

David (MyGoodEye)



INSTALLATION & DOCUMENTATION:

You will no doubt notice that the page is full of links... Rather that fill this page up to the character limit or provide you with a 26 page Word document (that very few of you read, I bet), I've created a standalone documentation website that I will refer to (and update) regularly. 

The complete ONLINE DOCUMENTATION can be found here.  I encourage you to read it. 

WARZONES is a big mod with many options and can be impacted by many things, so by saying "encourage", I guess I'm being polite.

Since I suspect many of you won't have the time or inclination to read it in its entirety, here is a list of subjects with direct links.

PEOPLE SUCK : An Introduction to WARZONES

KILLIN' TIME : Getting Familiar with the Options
MCM REPLACES “The GOD of WARZONES”
SPAWN-O-METER : Adjust SpawnCount In-Game
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS : Always Evolving World
BATTLE SELECT : Enable/Disable WZs In-Game
BATTLE SELECT : Alphabetical List
WARZONES : Monsters

THE WARZONES ARMORY

INSTALLING WARZONES 2015
INSTALLATION : Gearing Up for Warzones 2015
INSTALLING WARZONES : Using the FOMOD
INSTALLING WARZONES : Manually
UPDATING WARZONES : Best Practices
TROUBLESHOOTING and UNINSTALLING WARZONES
TEST YOUR SETTINGS on MOUNT PAIN
TWEAKING YOUR COMPUTER
ENHANCING YOUR SYSTEM : Memory and You

BURNING DESIRES and CURIOUSITIES
HOW TO BEST OFFER ADVICE...
CRASHES!  A LECTURE and SOME SUGGESTIONS
MODS : Compatible and Incompatible
FREQUENTLY ASKED REASONABLE QUESTIONS
FREQUENT RANDOM CRASHES?  Cleaning Your Polluted Save
FAQ: THE DEAD DISAPPEAR VERY, VERY QUICKLY
FAQ: DANCING/FLYING Animals and WATER ODDITIES

FREQUENTLY ASKED UNREASONABLE QUESTIONS


BROUGHT TO YOU BY : The Makers of WARZONES

Help us to help you by reading before asking... 

If you find errors/omissions in the documentation, please feel free to let me know.

COMMENTS & ENDORSEMENTS: 

I love 'em! 

If you have constructive criticism or an idea you'd like to see implemented, PLEASE let me know... if you're just going to whine, save it for your Mommy. 

Any REQUESTS? Leave 'em in the COMMENTS section!!!

- David

Please make any suggestions either in the COMMENT thread (so others can chime in) or PM me.



THE RETURN :

My thinking on “my return” was simple, really: I don’t like leaving things unfinished.

I was very aware that I had left my Skryim mods before:
  • Bethesda actually finished the game
  • “Cleaning” tools like TESVEDIT and WRYE BASH were released
  • MCM was available
  • Memory Management for Skyrim was understood
  • All the official DLCs were out.

It bummed me out a bit because I’d spent many hours making the mods and I was proud of them – so in the back of my mind, I always figured I’d get back around to them and fix ‘em up… but real-life responsibilities have to take priority…

About 5 months ago, I had nothing to do for a day or so, so I dug around the Nexus. I was mindful that I had left the mods unfinished and figured I could do a quick update/clean and wrap them up.

I came across Grand Bulwark’s page on which he had WZ listed in the “blacklist”… so I wrote him a note which said, in a nutshell:

“Put up or shut up.”

More precisely, I invited him to explain – exactly – what the trouble with WZv5B was, how it could be fixed (now with the benefit of 2 years advances in Skyrim tech) and if he was using the buzz-terms “dirty edits”, “bloated save” and whatever other ones properly or if he was just vomiting back what he’d “heard” and perpetuating the rumor-mill.

Turns out, he opted to “put up” and now we’re buddies.  Grand Bulwark recruited our team and with our combined knowledge and efforts, we have rebuilt WARZONES.

Had I not found a collaborator as interested in collaboration as he was, I would have just run WZ through TESVEDIT, removed the helper and been done with it. But he was excited to repair and expand WZ… and here we are.

WZv5B : THE PROBLEMS AND MY MOOD AT THE TIME :

WZv5B worked for a load of people.  There were stalwart defenders of the mod here in the comments for years after I "left" all of which would say "it works if you do a, b and c".  And, obviously, there were the detractors that, for whatever reasons legitimately had problems with WZv5B.  Honestly, I expect some of that to happen again 'cause WZ is a big mod and everyone has different systems.

I’m not saying that WZv5B wasn’t flawed – in fact, it was “unclean” because TESVEDIT wasn’t available at the time to clean the mod…  WZv5B wasn’t updated to the final version of the game – because the game wasn’t “final” when I had to go off and attend to real-life concerns… many tools available now were not available then... and, taking ownership of some of the issues, I was learning (always am). 

Hate to say it, but I found myself in a defensive position with dwindling free-time…

… and being in a defensive position on a hobby is hardly worth the energy. I honestly became disinterested in helping those that refused to help themselves (have you looked at your Papyrus log recently?). And REALLY tired of explaining the notion that a 32-bit game engine (pre ENBBOOST and SKSE memory hacks) has limitations… like a cup, you can only fill it so much before it spills over… so it was a combination of things - including real-life - that led to my discontinuing the work on WZv5B.

As MostlySlowJoe said once, "you gotta give a little with your take".

Let's be honest most users (especially back then) were ignorant of how resources are used. 
 
I'm not blaming anyone or anything, simply stating the facts of the time.  

When we decided to revisit it, we found that there really was only one major problem and that was the Helper (The God of Warzones).  SAVE BLOAT - although I never personally experienced it - seems to have legitimately been caused by his code.

There were other bits of sloppiness that became evident as I deconstructed what I’d done which may or may not have contributed to issues some users were having.  It was obvious that there were some “growing pains” left within the mod (y’know, a variety of methods to do the same thing as I’d developed and learned)… 

Anyway, enough of that looking backwards stuff...

…NOW :  With the help of Deapri, Grand Bulwark and Tony971, I’ve rescripted most of it, killed the “helper”, added an MCM, added TONS more dynamic WZs, random WZs, daytime WZs, nighttime WZs, WZs that only show up every now and again, so on so forth.  Many of the “original WZs” remain, but are now more randomized making it not “always on”.  It’s really pretty exciting…

- David (MyGoodEye)


CLARALUX is next on my list of UPDATES... coming soon!  But if you're going to use it, use V2.  If you'd like to test CLARALUX 2015 BETA, let me know via PM.

DYNAVISION - Dynamic Depth Of Field for SKYRIM
IMAGINATOR - Visual Control Device