Finally, Skyrim has realistic rug physics—complete with tripping!

Just this morning while stumbling out of bed to make coffee, I tripped on the bunched up corner of my bedroom's area rug. I thought to myself: “I sure wish I could do this in a videogame.” Thanks to johnskyrim's JS Rumpled Rugs mod, spotted by our colleagues at GamesRadar, I can finally have the rug-tripping experience I crave in Bethesda's seminal 2011 RPG.

The mod replaces “nearly 300 rug references” in Skyrim with custom meshes. These new custom rugs have a chance of entering an “unkempt state” as ingame time passes by, and can be set to rights by interacting with them. Feel like leaving a rug in an unconscionably slovenly condition? Okay bucko, now you and all NPCs have a 3%-7% chance of slipping and falling on them depending on whether you're walking, running, or sprinting.

This rocks. It's a fantastic example of modding's occasional “could over should” ethos, and I have nothing but respect for anyone who would put a ton of work into making this kind of small change to a videogame.

Johnskyrim has stiff competition when it comes to PC Gamer's “Absurdly Specific Mod With a Lot of Work Behind it of the Week” award, however. The Black Mesa Classic project to demake Half-Life's remake in the original engine is a herculean effort of doing something (almost?) nobody asked for extremely well.