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Due to some recent confusion on what the new Steam Trading Cards are all about and how they affect you, i decided to take some time to explain just what they are. I'm going to use Skyrim as an example for this as we can all relate to it. This might be long, *deep breath* Steam has always had Achievements. Beat certain challenges in games and get a little picture to prove you did it. However Steam has never given you points towards a profile level, unlike other gaming networks like Xbox live, Playstaion Plus or even Kongregate. Now Steam has added in a profile level, but attached it to badges, not achievements. For 98% of these badges you craft them with Trading Cards. To collect Cards, all you have to do id play the game. With every game you buy that supports Cards, you get a certain number of cards drops. About 1/2 of the total number of cards to collect. What can we do with these cards? You use the cards to craft badges which give you random prizes and always give exp. You might get a new emoticon for chat or a discount on a different game. It's random. So here's how it works so far: You buy Skyrim --> You get 4 card drops ---> While playing you get cards Now we need 8 cards to craft the Skyrim badge. We get 4 through playing. This is where Valve made a genius decision. To get the other 4 we have 3 options: 1. Trade with friends. You can trade your cards back and forth between friends. 2. Wait. By playing the game every week you enter to win a draw for more card drops. 3. BUY THEM. Yes, you can buy and sell your cards on the market. So lets say I take my card and sell it for 0.25$ to a another person. Valve gets 3 cents. At 2$ Valve gets 25 cents. Valve gets a cut off every single purchase. EVERY SINGLE ONE. That's what these cards are all about. Money. Valve say a way to get thousands if not hundreds of thousands of its users to spend money on something that could do nothing. So. Why should you spend your money? Let's find out. Through my purchases during the Summer Sale, I have got enough cards to craft a badge. let's see what I get for crafting it. I received: 100xp, A background, An emoticon and another trading card. I also got an extra 5 friend slots. Whats even better, is the the background and emoticon are sellable. So Valve can make even more money off this. And I got another card, so that i would incentive to craft the second level of the badge. I salute you Valve. you have came up with another idea as big as hats. EDIT: Apon farther looking. It appears that valve splits the money with the makers of the game as well. tl;dr version: Ignore them, they are mostly about money.

I hate to say this now after all the trouble you went through, but there really is no need to do a wipe and re-install. Not like the days of Oblivion when you had no choice. You can just do a Verify Cache Integrity through Steam and it will download any files that are seen as corrupt. You should also test by starting a new character, to determine if it is something in your existing save files that is borking things. Using an Alt Start mod (like this) and you can create quick test characters. Go out into the world and just walk around to see if the problem still occurs. Are you using any hi-rez texture replacers? These increase the amount of VRAM used and could potentially cause the problems you describe. Also try lowering your video quality through Options down to Medium or Low and see if it still occurs. Do all these tests with no mods installed, double check Data Files before you start to make sure no mods are active.

Don others have your problem too ~ http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2828059 They seem to think it's got something to do with save game bloat

There are some programs which who's core function is to uninstall items, this mean say for Oblivion I had an issue which it seemed to be still in like 3 places in the libraries. This finds all ties right down to the registry and allows you uninstall it completely. I forget the name of it now. Of course a good computer forensic guy probably could find it still, but this is good for what's needed. Anything else, I'm not sure.

More useless crap to clutter things up with. I miss the days when games were stand-alone. In every sense of the term.

Let's be clear on this though: You buy them from other players, not Valve. I would say that the main thing valve gets out of this isn't short term profits, it's customer loyalty: They build a meta-game around their service, and anyone invested in the meta-game will only use their service. An what do we get out of it? A few things; obviously we get to fill up bars and gain levels. But there are more tangible things too; it seems designed to make consumers more active in the community, and to grant a user more self-expression through their steam account, and more investment in their own gaming hobby. That kind of thing is good for all gamers. Ultimately all that is controlled by Valve though, and will always be circumscribed by their rules, unlike the kind of thing we have here at TESA. That seems to me like the only way they can have it though.

You can look at my glass pieces in the Levelers Tower. (Its on the nexus) \Data\Meshes\WillieSea\LevelersTower\Clock\GlassSquare.nif I added the 'NiAlphaProperty' to the 'NiTriShape' list. I also added an environment texture to the Texture Set list. On the 'BSLightingShaderProperty' I set the Alpha value to 0.2500. There was probably other stuff I did too. I basically took a look at the glass bottle that holds the insects, and looked at how the glass part was created, then I made my own from another object.