A small but impactful New Atlantis edit.
– Changes the aquariums in the NAT station to be windows looking out into the lake.
– Lighting will look a little different.
– Includes architecture edits necessary to plug gaps.
– Added more underwater objects and plants, very soft overhaul to the lake.
– A few surface Lilypads that may have been intended for use in New Atlantis.
– Mod is based on concept art, and possibly early development, where the windows were underwater.
I’m not sure why the vanilla route was taken, could be related to signs the cities and water content were dialed back. This is just one of the unusually many water themed mods I work on, I should also have a boat home out soon and underwater cities and POIs in the further future.
This mod was initially easy to make, though it had to grow to plug gaps and add detail. It just took a jumpstart of inspiration from messing with aquatic assets a lot.
Things this doesn’t touch:
1. Navmeshes.
2. LOD layer.
3. Culling.
4. MAST itself though I was tempted to change the black glass texture. I avoided the urge to bloat a mod.
5. The station model or texture files. Mods reusing NA assets will work fine.
6. NPC/Crowd/Animal spawns, if you think it’s a good idea to place some fish let me know.
Does not affect quests, scripts, or save bloat, but I tested and if you add the mod while in NAT the station walls can come back/won’t be disabled. Most cell mods have a ‘leave area first’ disclaimer anyway.
Performance:
Tested on a heavily modded New Atlantis (Awaits+Positively New+house mods) and got 42fps without, 41 with. With no mods, NAT was 62FPS vanilla, 60FPS with early mod version, 57FPS once I added lighting and volumetrics.
With my above layman but below professional knowledge of games, the tanks didn’t save that much performance, I didn’t have to touch culling. I speculate it was done this way for style and effort reasons. There are occlusion volumes but they’re everywhere and didn’t rely on the lake heavily for frames.
Fully playable 1.0 mod but some avenues for future updates:
– Better window material; increase refraction and blur.
– Investigate thicker volumetric fog and performance impact of doing so.
– More underwater objects, thicker foliage.
Changelog:
Version 2.0.0
Includes all fixes from 1.1.1.
One swimming manta, (was three, cut two to get this out), size randomised. Didn’t notice an FPS hit unless I spawn 10+ full NPCs so went ahead. Smaller fish are not in yet and will be animated. I made custom models but the skin shows as invisible so I used a vanilla creature as placeholder for now. I also want the birds seen in concept art but unsure if they should be their own mod, and they wouldn’t really fit any of the existing skeletons.
Thick custom underwater fog. FPS should be okay, vanilla already has dungeons that have fog volumes, in fog volumes, in fog volumes, and that runs fine, it’s worth it for much better visuals.
Floating dust motes, same thing I did in an unreleased mod, didn’t think to add them in version 1.
Added a few NPC markers. Won’t mess with navmeshes or need anything regenerated, just makes them interact with the glass a bit more.
More water flora.
Made use of a water underside material I already made.
Reversed back side water surface so it looks like its flowing down the waterfall.
More kelp and rocks.
Static fish decorations.
Better placement.
I don’t see more performance drops versus what already happens from normal framerate fluctuation, hard to measure if there is any impact. I split the mod into an LTS/purist version with 1.1.1 and an evolving perfectionist version with 2.0+.
Version 1.1.1
1.1.1 is designed as an LTS version for people with weaker machines (no shame in it) and minimalists.
The extra .1 in version is due to internal fixes to material and meshes.
Contains the important fix of 1.0.1 plus:
Moved a water surface plane that goes through a wall.
Object placement tweaks and additions outside windows to reduce floating objects.
Redid upper path mesh, now custom modelled: no clipping. Actually it clips across in one spot but I think looks intentional and better.
Edited the bottom of the ramp glass to look better from outside. Made some glass meshes align better.
A slightly toned down glass water material.
Some layers set up not to generate LODs, that’s not a runtime thing just a modder’s thing, nonessential but can’t hurt.
Version 1.0.1
Hopefully fixed ground mesh not showing. Have not yet changed the visuals of mod or added content.
Credits:
Hycas
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
NAT Station Lake Windows-2-0
|
4 MB |
|
Blue Jellyfish-2-0-1
|
60 KB |
|
NAT Station Lake Windows-1-1-1
|
4 MB |
|
NAT Station Lake Windows-1-0
|
4 MB |
