Into the grove...

I have been dancing around the idea for a long time. Over the years, a few people asked if I had a tip jar online, so I eventually made one.

I will use it as a neutral ground to post updates about my mods.

☕Ko-fi - link if you feel like buying me a coffee

This week's project came out of nowhere.

I was testing ReShade profiles for Johnny impersonation and Cyberspace scenes, and I had to go through that sequence between Act 1 and Act 2 of the game. On a good day, it takes at least 1h30 to run through. This time, it took close to 3h because of having to go through scripted car chases with drones and those Arasaka goons on their bikes, with difficult combat mods and Dark Future installed.

So I spent a few hours and came up with Cinematic Immunity, a mod that will grant you temporary immunity to go through parts of the game that are meant to be cinematic.

The mod currently covers the scenes below the fold, with more to come (like the car chase after saving Saul in Riders on the storm).

This may be the fastest mod I ever developed.

And just like that, after a day or so of directed vibe coding, happy to share we now have a Reshade to Redscript bridge for Cyberpunk 2077.

It is a Red4ext plugin that bridges ReShade's addon API with  REDscript, enabling any REDscript mod to dynamically switch the active ReShade preset, toggle effects, or enable/disable individual techniques at runtime.

Applications include switching between day and night reshade profiles, weather based profiles, night vision, what it looks like inside optical camo. Take your pick!

This is a Modders Resource and will not do anything on its own. It will be a requirement for future mods designed to use dynamic ReShade profiles.

To anyone who would like to build a mod using this - this is still in early testing stages. The switch between presets does work. I am writing a mod to make use of it. Other features are implemented but not tested yet.

Update: The Conditional Reshade Optics mod is now available on Nexus! 

I wanted to share a little passion experiment I’ve been tinkering with in Cyberpunk 2077. It started as a tiny visual concept and it is slowly evolving into something bigger.

The initial idea was simple: I wanted a tangible, visual contrast between what V sees before and after getting their Kiroshi optics from Viktor. 

I started with two different ReShade presets to switch on manually.

"Before" Viktor: Features a slight blur and a more pronounced vignette. (Funny enough, as a glasses wearer, I actually find this one more realistic!)

"After" Viktor: Strips away the blur and vignette, swapping them for a crisp sharpen filter and a subtle optics distortion on the edges of the screen.

Once I got a taste of that extra layer of immersion, I went a little down the rabbit hole. I started building out custom ReShade profiles to match different stages of V’s lifepaths.

Current Profiles in the Works:

No Cyberware: A raw, unfiltered baseline for the early Nomad and Street Kid starts. This one is blurry with a grittier look.

Arasaka HUD: I went a little overboard here, but I love the concept. It’s a highly stylized, strict black, white, and red view of the world. It felt entirely on-brand for corporate culture to literally force a rigid perspective on their employees.

Cheap Cyberware: The slightly less blurry, high-vignette view before you get your first real upgrade.

Kiroshi Optics: A sharp, colorful, subtly distorted high-tech view post-Vik.

What's Next?

Manually switching presets is fine for testing, but the ultimate goal is seamless automation.

I am starting to look into red4ext C++ coding. Based on the available APIs, it looks entirely possible to build a bridge between redscript and ReShade via red4ext. If I can pull that off, the game could automatically trigger these specific visual profiles the exact moment certain quest milestones or lifepaths are reached.

Things I would love to filter my games by on Steam:

Hours played but in reverse order. Hide unplayed games and show me games I barely played first.

List only unplayed games

Random! Pick a game I haven't played yet.

Sort games by recommended play time. Is this game something I can finish in a weekend or will it cost me half of my year and a part of my soul?

Once again, another year dominated by games that never end.

Can someone explain to me like I am 5 how to get Tumblr on IOS to stop displaying notifications of new messages when I only selected direct messages as the option for notifications?

It's that time of the year, when I finally have enough downtime to catch up with piles of unread discussions for my Skyrim mods, review the list of issues I should be working on next and make plans for the next updates.

This is the third year the same pattern repeats itself, in part due to work and family demands, burnout from mindless testing of the same obscure issues in mods, and other games to play or updates (looking at you CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077).

Zoomed out, cropped, framed shots, playing with lights.. I forgot how beautifully cinematic this game is.

I keep thinking what Cyberpunk 2077 would have looked if CDPR had kept this art direction.

Since the last season didn't scratch my Witcher itch, I went back to dusting off my copy of The Witcher 3, that I had not touched since the Next Gen version came up.

I had started a new playthrough with mods just as the new versions came up and broken everything.. five years later, it took me about a weekend to sort out which mods were still broken and which ones were new.

It also took me a while to re-learn how to use Script Merger and how to avoid the same mistakes with it (do not install mods that have to merge with half of your scripts or more).

Of course, No Man's Sky managed to maintain the cycle of pulling me back for another round of mindblowing updates and expeditions.

fortunately, the last two expeditions, 'Voyagers ' and 'Breach' were as short and forgettable as they were fun to go through. The corvette system is so good it will easily make this the only space game I need for a long time.

After five months of tinkering with Cyberpunk 2077 (again), to update my mods after an update (the last one, promised, for sure this time.. again), I have to say I am very happy with my current set up this time.

I am getting a very high ratio between scenes I want to take a screenshot of and scenes that make me itch to pop open the hood and fix something.

The soundtrack of Arcane (the songs mostly) meshes really well with the backdrop of V and Night City.

There are obvious titles like "Paint the Town Blue" (definitely a Mox song), "Hellfire" (wouldn't be out of place in a Maelstrom club), or "Gun for Hire" (perfect fit for the James Bond feel of Phantom Liberty).

And if you listen to the lyrics of "Ashes and Blood" and "The Line", the message is all about transformation, becoming something else, and struggling through that change.

Sounds familiar.

Forget vibe coding.. vibe fighting is better

Remove the crosshair. Remove their healthbar and yours.

Enjoy pure fights where you missing and arrow or a spell is actually down to your own skills.