I can tell that I'm back into modding full-time. I spent two hours one night trying to enhance Player Voice Sets for myself and add more dialogue lines and discovered that the MaleEvenToned voice I use for my Woodelf, his voice lines for this mod actually go onto the mods folder for MaleElfHaughty. I spent a lot of time delving through scripts (and making a couple of personal tweaks) to get the ability to add more lines in this using conditions. 

So with that, here's an update on my modding journey!

THE FILTHIEST COMPANION

My personal follower mod is coming along. I have renamed and vamped up my scripts, cleaned up the naming conventions, added more notes, and basically trying to help myself more in my journey. Notes have become imperative to my learning, and while I may look at different scripts on different mods, these notes help me pick up where I left up and quickly identify what part of the code does what. 

Bit risky having so much skin showing!

I've also been playing around with conditions, setting up voice lines where my follower might warn there's a Draugr crypt nearby, or make comments on my character's armor they have equipped (particularly if it's revealing and the follower is just looking at my Bosmer's ass all day). I've built a few options in, some neutral, some sexual (we are on LoversLab!) with timers so I don't see them constantly, but all in good fun. This has really allowed me to customize the follower beyond the "I need to trade with you" options. I'm exploring the possibility of adding branches that lead to options for sexual encounters, but I'll wait to see how that goes. I have the ideas, so I'll just need to see if the theory works.

One of my struggles was to get keywords that were unique to play on certain armors that were revealing without requiring them to be masters. There are a lot of options when it comes to revealing armor, and I wanted Rydin to make a quip or two when seeing my character in such gear, particularly when sneaking (I may add an arousal check to it to enhance it further). I reached out to the forum and I got some awesome responses (again, thank you) and I opted to use Keyword Item Distributor (KID) which suited my needs the most. It took a couple of tinkering to get the code right, but now, I can add the keyword to gears in these other mods without making them masters, which allows me to be a little more creative and specific in targeting when using conditions. Feels like a bit of a level-up!

GIVING THE HERO A VOICE

As mentioned, I have made some personal edits to Player Voice Sets to give my player character more voice lines. This came on the back learning conditions and detection lines, which I thought would work with this mod too. After a few hours of dissecting the code and the mod on Creation Kit, I managed to crack it and started to add more lines and triggers.

My personal goal for this is to add more battle lines, lines for being close to defeat, and lines where you have been defeated and before a defeat mod would take over. This will help to enhance immersion and give more flavor to these mods I play, something that I have yearned for since I first started learning how to mod. I am excited to see what I come up with!

SHAMEFUL BANDITS EVERYWHERE

With all of this in mind, I did consider a public mod, one where perhaps enemy factions like bandits in camp may threaten or harass the player more, maybe even making sexual threats. I also considered that perhaps they could entice the player for "fun" and potentially reward them with some gold at the end for their "time". It's an idea, and I think it could be done, but I need to learn a little more about scripting events before this could happen. Right now, all I have is some personal detection calls, making some of the threats more sexual in nature, and see how this pans out as I play. 

LEGACY EDITION FAVORITES

If you played LE before moving to SE/AE, then you will like to have some favorite mods that you want to bring over. For me, that was Dangerous Nights and Random Sex. While luckily, I found both have ports for SE/AE, it seems that Dangerous Sex is the only one working. I haven't been able to get Random Sex to trigger (using the NG version) so I've put that on hold for now. Dangerous Nights works mostly as is (I tried it once and my follower was stuck in the laying down position with I was assaulted by bandits and didn't even get up when they were done), so I took a dive into its files to take a look and see if I could clean up the MCM menu and if I could add voices to the voice lines through adding the files in my own mod data folder. It looks doable for a part, but for some dialogues, there seems to be a missing path linked to the custom QuestAliases. I'll need to take a better look.

Abducted at the start of the Isle of Mara

I also installed Isle of Mara (even though it has no up-to-date SE/AE port) to look at the source scripts and see what it's doing in the game. Isle of Mara was a bit cheesy in my opinion, but I liked what it could do, and it was a great inspiration back in my early days. I remember the source scripts weren't supplied in earlier versions, and I couldn't figure out what was done and how, but now that they are and I have a better knowledge of the code, I might be able to dissect it and make a question script for my follower, and any of the other silly quest ideas I've had in the past.

Taking a look through the source scripts, I've made a couple of notes on some of the elements that interest me into making a quest in my follower mod to help me dissect and learn. It doesn't look complicated at first glance, but this mod is very script heavy and well-made, so I'll need to dive into every aspect of it. I did think there was a lot going on in one cell, which could cause problems, so if I did make something, one of the things I've noted is to keep it light and make sure that scripts have a clear endpoint if a player leaves the area. Its implementation of animations to run on their own accord was what interested me, as well as the forced control of the player and its use of conditionals to really add flavor. I also noticed it had SEQ files, and I'll need to learn about these to up my quest design. 

BACK TO ROOTS

To leave the post with some good news, I have been able to get my tools for animating back to work again. I have all my files from when I stopped in 2016 still saved, but the knowledge is gone, so I'll need to go back through all sources and relearn the process. I'd like to make some new animations and update old ones, but I'll need some time before I can do that. Just watch this space!

Thanks all for now. If you got this far, thanks for reading!