Actual end of day (progress led to continuing...) results, addendum to above:

• Egglaying effects are dialed in now, in terms of clarity and volume.  I am concerned that these may be too loud though for people who play with the sound FX turned way up (I keep mine at 30% or so).  I will probably have to add some kind of adjustment control (likely a float globalvariable) to better tune the volume.
• Oral sound effects are complete, though I think I will add some more variations to them.  Unfortunately the video I got them from is filled with music until the very end, so it will be difficult to find additional samples in the same audio spectrum.
• Instead of messing with EC+, I added a visible glowing belly effect on the later parts of the egglaying process.  The effect is still rudimentary, but I can get that better looking as time goes on.  It serves well enough for now.
• The egglaying and other orgasm sounds/events are now sensitive to animations where the egglaying is not the last stage (such as BaboHuntingRape, and most of Billyy's recent egglaying animations).  I've tried to use a modified "animation patchups" file from Apropos to get the needed tags into the animations, but that hasn't worked yet.
• Ongoing refinement to the scripts to make them more responsive and improve the logic and efficiency.
• Continued to refine the Apropos descriptions and synonyms file.
• I'm still hesitant to release any kind of alpha/test yet because most of the ongoing tweaks are to magic effects tied into the race records, and as such require new creatures to get the new data.  Until I feel like the effects are exactly as I want them (or at least no more properties are needed in the scripts), I will probably keep this in-house.

Ongoing progress (and an unintentionally long editorial or three...)

• Spending a lot of time making the script loops more efficient at detecting interactions, when to play effects and when to turn them off.  In hindsight I probably shouldn't have split the race scripts until that part was done, but when I did the split I had no idea just how much control I would be able to exert on the animations themselves (and didn't learn that until I had the notion of getting the audio, which I didn't really think was important until I saw/heard some inspiring videos...).
• As it stands, the script's awareness of events is achieved through animation tags, at least one of which is original ("EarlyOrg" = egglaying is in the second-to-last stage) which will require either manual editing of the relevant SLAL.jsons (unlikely) or some type of scripted tag adjustment (which would be preferred).  I just need to figure out how to do that.  There are plenty of examples out there, just need to pull them apart and see.
• Continuing to work on the oral sounds. (Samples below.)  The general idea is to have a sound progression where it starts with bugcum, and then progresses to egglaying (with a more bass-y sound accompanying that).  Stages of sounds are 1 (initial liquid), 2 (slow egglaying, maybe 1 p second), stage 3 (accelerated egglaying, generally 2 or more per second), ending stage (egglaying falls below 1 per second and sometimes is fluid only).  The script tracks this internally so that it makes the "orgasm/egglaying" stage more internally dynamic, even if the animation itself is not changing.
• Full disclosure: most of the sounds for the female voice are from various "Night Wanderer" CGI videos on Pornhub, where they appear to reuse the same voice actress in the majority of their videos.  This gives a consistent sound spectrum, and I only have to do some editing to get rid of unwanted background noise/slapping/fucking sounds (and then add my own egglaying/cum sounds).  In addition, I am only using those from videos with copyrighted characters, to dodge around any "theft/permission" problems.

Oral1-1.wav

 

Oral2-4.wav

 

Oral3-5.wav

 

OralEnd-4.wav

 

Things that may not make it into the mod due to complex permission issues:

 

So, for my own use I tend to create scenes by combining animations from a variety of sources and then use unique Apropos data to further elaborate on the visual narrative.  Basically, I want to tell a story.  In general these scenes will have one or two lead-in stages, then evolve into the more traditional Sexlab animation, and sometimes have explicit separation on the endings.

 

To give an example that I started work on last night (so it is still rough around the edges and incomplete):

 

"CB_HoldX", a customization of primarily Billyy animations (thus "CB") using a chaurus reaper (or tyrant), and a generally holding animation.

• Stage 1: female is petting a dejected-looking reaper as it squirts precum around (combination of Komotor's Kinky Hound Stage 1 petting and BaboHuntingRape stage 2 and modified squirt effects from Cumshot v2).  In my narrative mind, this would be the loser of a recent dominance bid, sulking and contemplating (as much as a bug can) its likely future as a beta or a hunter.
• Stage 2: female sits on the chaurus' foreleg and runs her foot along its ovipositor (combination of Anub's Shota Bar Table stage 1 rotated and realigned, and BaboHuntingRape stage 3)
• Stage 3: starts the action with Billyy's Chaurus Reaper Holding 2, stage 1
• Stage 4: as above to stage 2
• Stage 5: as above to stage 3 (skipping 4 because I wanted the movement to gradually head towards a semi-standing posture and stage 4 tilts the opposite direction).
• Stage 6: transition to Billyy Chaurus Reaper Holding 1, stage 4 (normally final stage of that one).  Because Billyy is consistent in rig arrangements and positioning, this is pretty seamless and you wouldn't necessarily know that it wasn't supposed to go that way.  In the animation, this is when the egglaying happens.
• Stage 7: end with a return to Billyy Chaurus Holding 2, stage 5 to finish

(Examples of stage 1 (back, front) and stage 2 (front-side)

 

Then I built a narrative of what is happening in the scene to use with Apropos (auto-generated lines shown, not all of which are as elegant as I'd like, work ongoing):

 

 

 

 

...and so on and so forth, trying to use Apropos to fill in the story gaps of intent and transition that might be missing for the animations (especially when they are cobbled together like this).

 

FYI: this narrative informs the female as to why she should never try to fuck with the natural cycle of the chaurus dominance cycle.  The defeated bug, seeing this as maybe its only opportunity in this life to breed, takes full advantage, much to the detriment of the poor girl.  If I had it my way, this animation would only ever trigger as an interaction with a defeated reaper, would likely only ever happen one time in a complete playthrough, and the resulting egglaying would severely piss off the tyrants/other reapers and might lead to some very harsh penalties depending on the female's status in the hive.  If things work out the way I plan, that would all be achievable with just a couple faction conditions and an animation tag or two.

 

So this leaves me in a bit of an odd spot.

 

I'd love to share these edited animations, both for the stories they enable me to tell, and just to diversify the available animation pool, but in the case of this one I'd need permissions from four authors to do so, and one of them (Komotor) left the community, and if he could be reached would be unlikely to greenlight anything of the sort.  To the best of my knowledge, the animation I used (Kinky Hound animation) was not released outside his Patreon, and now likely can only be obtained via piracy.  AFAIK the Babo animation is a Patreon-exclusive, so that likely can't be shared either.  AnubiS and Billyy have shared all the other stages with the community, but would they approve of their work being mixed like this?  I don't know and frankly wouldn't ask.

 

What remains is mostly Billyy's Chaurus Reaper Holding 2 animation.  Only one stage is different, and not significantly enough to warrant doing anything.

 

(If I were to make an attempt at sharing this, it'd be a set of instructions for which animation files to copy and rename, and then a SLAL json and a few FNIS files to hopefully tie it together.  Support on it would be essentially impossible.  I have no faith that most people attempting it would be able to pull it off, no matter how detailed my instructions, and I loathe playing tech support...)

 

Switching focus toward Apropos: many of my lines are too long for even the maximum MCM settings and would be cut off with most setups for Apropos.  In fact, Apropos is arbitrarily limited in many ways, such as a max display time of 10 seconds, (which makes reading so much text difficult when you're also trying to take in the action) and maximum widget width of 400, which cuts lines off even at 15pt text.

 

My solution was to edit the Apropos MCM script to allow for 15 seconds (and I'm now testing it with a 500 width), allowing much larger descriptions, potentially packed with synonym substitutions.  (I have successfully gotten twelve synonyms to fire at once, many of them multiple word substitutions; damn near a full auto-generated paragraph).

 

Next problem: No disrespect to gooser (who doesn't work for me, isn't paid by me and owes me less than nothing), but Apropos is very inefficient.  It makes multiple stacked calls for things that aren't needed simultaneously, and when telling it not to display something, it still goes through all the steps to generate that message and just redacts the result.

 

This back-end inefficiency doesn't leave a lot of json overhead.  Turning off the slavetats wear and tear aspects (which also burden the json and cause it to throw errors) can reduce the logjam enough to allow multiple sentences as wild cards, going way beyond the default Apropos intentions.

 

EDIT: With further testing, it appears that it is alt-tabbing out that generates those error messages, and not slavetats or Apropos at all.

 

So... a lot of the time I'm spending on the mod this week is spent on things I don't think I can share (at least not the way I'm using them). While I can and will share the synonyms files and unique animation descriptions, those won't be all that useful for most people because:

1. They would require very specific and custom setups in Apropos which likely means no use of WT slavetats and the descriptions are usually only in 1st person (except in cases where I decide the narrative involves some mindbreak, and then I switch to 3rd person within the 1st person descriptions).  I presume these strictures would alienate a large chunk of the potential user base...
2. The majority of animations being described aren't mine to share (and there's the real stumbling block; I doubt the animators would want such crude patchworks of their stuff being thrown around).

So why display all this stuff that I can't really share? (Because I'm an asshole!  Mwahahahahaha!!  Its mine, alll miiiinnneee!!! Ahem...)

 

Two reasons, mainly:  1) because others might be doing this too and have some cool ideas for how to set these up that I haven't thought of, and 2) to show that your Skyrim experience can be whatever you want it to be.  I didn't think there were enough chaurus animations and that the ones that existed didn't articulate all the layers of interaction I thought they should have.  So I built a database of movement patterns and angles that did exist, and mixed those with the multitudinous available female movements to generate new contextual animations.  Anyone can do that.  Its just time consuming.

 

On my nonexistent future (and spotty past) as an animator:

 

Just in case someone wants to suggest I start my own animations: Been there.  Done that.  Never again.  It is the world's deepest and least rewarding time sink and is filled with frustration and false starts.  I've spent weeks on animations and been ultimately unhappy with the resulting 50+ hours of work.

 

Billyy recently mentioned on his Patreon that he wasn't able to get the chaurus cock to do what he wanted in an animation he is working on.  Consider: Billyy is among the most prolific animators out there, and I would argue that he has one of the two best quality/quantity metrics in the biz.  He was having issues with it.  Fuck that noise.  Fuck that with dynamite.

 

Compare this degree of difficulty to retextures, remodeling, writing descriptions, audio editing and scripting and the difference in results is too much for me to ever go back to animating.

 

To everyone reading this: animation is the hardest of the skillsets I've used for modding.  Short of high-level coding for SKSE plugins and ENB shaders, I've at least dabbled in all of the modding methods out there.  Animation is the hardest.  Pay the fucking animators!

 

Okay.  Enough from me.  Back to work now...

 

 

Proof of concept for larger Apropos entries (don't mind the dialogue, I threw it together just to see how much space it would take up).

 

That is at 500 width, and I extended the read time to 19 seconds (with the slider value going to 25).  Still need to see how reliable this is for regular use.  That description "only" had seven synonyms in it.

Today's conundrum:

• How deep shall I delve into the biochemistry and ecology of the chaurus?  Is there any gameplay to be found there?
• Assuming for a moment that chaurus are colony organisms and that their principal sustenance comes from chemolithotropic symbiotes/parasites, then would there be gameplay value in feeding them special substances not normally found in their prime habitats?  In Skyrim, our only real interaction with rocks is mining (and the occasional bandit boulder trap), and most caves have some mineable resources.
• Would gemstones have any value to them?  Expensive way to do business there.
• I wonder what would happen if you fed a heartstone to a chaurus?
• Perhaps the different colorations have a tie to the available mineral sources?  (That would require a rethink of current color distributions...)
• The Falmer have been known to feed chaurus meat from humans (see journals in Chillwind Depths), so the chaurus must have some capacity to gain nourishment from meat, or at the very least don't just throw it up or die from it.
• Still, there doesn't appear to be any viable macrofauna for them to consume, and they clearly like to burrow, so mineral diets seem most likely.  Also explains the need for a variety of acidic compounds to be produced since different minerals would require different means of reducing them.
• Today's agenda: Figure out a cave foraging mechanism (similar to Hunterborn's), and get the basics for the interaction system in place (likely perk activators).

Oh, and as an aside on last night's work:

• Occurred to me that with the natural tie-in with inflation in FHU and EC+, there needed to be another layer of sounds to the animations.  I found the sound of a running stream bass boosted and slowed to 15%, and dialed to -36db left/-30db right (allowing occasional spikes to -24bd) gave an interesting submerging sound, similar to a waterbed, and I think that sounded good at the later stages of the oviposition sound loops.

Having momentarily dodged the interaction and biochem issues...

• Completed another sound set for post-oviposition "bloated/wet" sounds.
• As a complete aside, I was naming/calling these "dry" sounds, since the egglayer is dry/spent/empty, but these are ... not at all dry sounds.  Odd in hindsight.
• Considering adding a lingering sound effect if the character is listed as "encumbered" enough (from FHU or EC) to slow the movement speed.  I'm not entirely sure what mod is making her unable to run when encumbered... regardless, I may add a residual sound effect of the more agitated sloshing as the encumbrance effect grows.  She should sound like two fat kids jumping on a waterbed by the end of it.
• Oh, and I figured out the animation tagging issue.  Linked it to the voice script, so it is easy to reboot the script in-game if needed (for updates).  These tags deploy automatically and will tell the mod how to use the sound effects.
• Now I just need to figure out how to do the same with FHU so she is getting filled up on the correct stages...

Contemplating the best way to work in the underground survival elements, and I'm thinking that will have to be a separate esp.  Not everyone uses the survival mods I do, and I don't want the requirements list to be too cumbersome.

 

For instance, I use iNeed, Campfire, Frostfall and Hunterborn, and while that isn't an uncommon set, I don't use RND, which is also commonly used in place of iNeed.

 

Also, the mod YASH has a great concept in that many normally un-interactable types of flora become potentially harvestable.  Mixing that idea with the foraged ingredients from Hunterborn gives an automatic link to iNeed through its compatibility.  "Edible roots" and "edible insects" should be very common underground.

 

Living underground with the chaurus required being able to live at all.  Unfortunately survival mods tend to treat caves as unlivable in the long term.  There is nothing for Campfire to use as wood (despite there being obvious root systems around), and nothing can be foraged (despite the fact that entire tribes and colonies live in these places and must subsist on something).

 

For now (and to limit my headaches), I will be adding a patch that makes all of this stuff work together, and keep it separate from the main ChaurusLife.esp.

 

Oh, and addendum to prior message: Made FHU aware of the "EarlyOrg" anim tag and how to use it.  All good there, and will add that script to the package.

Small update... (really just taking a break between game loads...):

• Decided that FHU should apply double value for explicit oviposition animations.
• This means that an animation with "EarlyOrg", "Oviposition" and "ResidualOrg" tags (meaning orgasm/egglay one stage before the end, and maintain some kind of fucking action into the last stage, even after the egglay, as is the case with Billyy's Chaurus Breeding animation) would apply the FHU effect three times in a single act.
• In a completely, totally unrelated note, I really need to work on those walking/sloshing sound effects...
• Oh, and the foraging elements are coming along.  Just need to adjust drop rates to something that would be barely survivable without venturing outside.  This will also be improved once I get the connected cave systems going.

Interesting thing of the day:

 

Was testing out the plant/root harvestables in Lost Echo cave...

 

 

... thats a lot of spider webs for a place with no spiders in it.  And all in the breeding area... hmmm...

 

On the assumption that breeders eventually get used up, maybe the previous breeder in the area was a spider?  That'd be... interesting.  I guess as a matter of bug-production economics, it would make sense for the falmer to do it this way.  Frostbite spiders are naturally occurring, so they wouldn't be too difficult to replace.

 

Assuming the chaurus are otherwise unable to reproduce, this makes some sense.  I keep coming back to the ovipositional breeding being their only means of survival, and that there is a missing form that handles this stuff, but maybe none of them made it to Nirn, or there's only a few of them, or they're very shy?  Or maybe the entire species/colony organism is parasitic/symbiotic in nature?)

 

So I have the food/supplies side of the underground living partially handled now.  Fluids are still tough to come by.  Or, well... I didn't want to go too far into debasement territory, but lacking any other options...

 

Investigating now whether ejaculate puddles can be grown and then used for nourishment.  Seems that Zaz has an adequate animation for the feeding part, and there was a puddle in the rain mod way back that got the general mechanics of making puddles right.  I already have some fluid effects in the works.  Just not totally sure I want to go there.

 

Conversely, should be easy enough to send a mod event that trips iNeed during oral animations to initiate drinking.  In-built compatibility with no downside since it needs no dependency.  Still, I gotta think that ain't healthy over the long term.  Maybe a hidden skill/perk system for this, slowly getting used to it, or maybe slowly dying from it.  In my own mods using Untamed with a beastess werewolf playthough, I tweaked iNeed and made a new perk that allows you to use Namira's feeding ability sans Namira quest.  After all, you don't have to worship Namira to be a cannibal.  Maybe some similar implementation could work here.  Always bothered me that you couldn't use Hunterborn on people/Falmer.  Not because I wanted to make a habit of it, but Wood Elves by lore tend to eat those they kill.  It should be an option anyway.

Been thinking further on the animation/story aspects...

• Turns out FNIS has a way to re-use animations already in your loaded animation list, drawing them from the base folder structure.
• That could offer a way to release the "extra" animations I've done without needing to worry about permissions.
• If the user didn't have the needed animation, the actor would just do their normal idling animation (which would hardly be satisfying, but... /shrug)
• In the instance I partly storyboarded, if people only had the publicly available animations, the whole thing would look a bit weird until stage 3, but the Apropos description would at least give a sense of what was happening until the public anims (stage 3+) kicked in.  So long as I was careful to only reference public anims in the latter stages, this could work.  I could also add a tag to the anims that told the script to listen for a global set by the user to potentially skip missing anim segments and jump ahead if so.  (Not sure how Apropos would handle that at all, but either way it would eventually catch up).
• To prep for this and similar more agile adjustments to be made, I'm splitting some parts off the main scripts into separate modules.  This may push the release back, so please don't hold me to the June 1st thing too much.  Might be early morning on the 2nd instead.
• In a related note I keep telling myself I should wait another week, but fact is I just want to put something more complete out there, and this will be an excuse that endures for all eternity.  I am enjoying it in its current state and it has few enough bugs (as in... oh nevermind, pun sustained) that it should be safe to use for everyone.  Worst case would be it simply doesn't work or the bugs stop doing special things, which leaves the user no worse off then it not being there at all.
• To facilitate the more agile animations, and use of them as story pieces, I would need to split off many animobjects I'm using to be spell effects and attached artobjects instead.  This is actually a better process overall since it gives more granular control (through effect keywords and such).  Because of how variable this could get, and that every new idea would require a script rewrite, this would need to be a quest-driven effect added to the player, and rebootable via the voice registry method.  This would allow me to put the bugs' scripts on lockdown and not need to adjust them too much anymore.  But that means a couple last spell effects I want to get in there need to be done ASAP, even if they are just dummy/placeholders for now.
• (Examples include swapping the ovipositor to a more translucent one to show eggs loaded into it, pulsing lighting effects for the act of egglaying, a subtle strobe light effect for very high arousal states, so the player can tell when trouble might be coming, etc.)
• So, yeah.  Back to the trenches.

Launching the Underground Survival mod shortly, which is pretty minor right now and gives me a chance to learn how to launch a mod on LL.

And, its a thing: 

 

Publishing was simple enough.  CPU looked over the most complex of the chaurus scripts and thought it could use some optimizing but was otherwise sound, so I just need to tidy up the race scripts a hair and then Chaurus Life v0.0000001 is good to launch.

Countdown to release

(Will update as the day goes on.  All of this is doable today as long as I hit animations dead last, else I will get distracted.)

 

In final testing and packaging now.

 

...And the fucking Tyrants won't fight each other... fml

May launch anyway...

 

Target release: June 2nd, before 10pm PST.  Swing and a miss... looking at maybe 3am PST now.

(Might go faster, but I do need to sleep at some point. Update: Doing that sleep thing now. Just spent two hours fixing something that wasn't broken, so I think I may need some rest.  Will review progress when I get back up and decide if it is ready or needs to have the date pushed off another day.  Only things I haven't tested yet are the sex effects triggering in a timely fashion in edge cases, and long-term molting behaviors and data transfer from nymphs and flyers.  These take a while since even with the global variables set to fruit fly lifespans, it still takes a while for them to do their thing.)

 

... And back to work.

 

The following things need to be done/tested/tightened up (or intentionally ignored) prior to a v 0.1.0 release:

 

Race Scripts:  Priority High Finished

All: Need to add missing spell/art effects.  These won't do anything yet, but enabling them now makes them upgradable later without a clean save.  Done.

 

Reapers: Coding done, tested and working (using as a base for other setups)

Nymphs: Coding done, tested and working (lack of sex interaction makes them the simplest of the bunch)

Flyers: Coding done, testing complete

Tyrants: Coding done, testing complete.

Workers: Coding done, testing complete.

Testing in progress and had some issues to fix.  Overall pretty dialed in now.  Nearly complete.

 

Animations:  Priority Moderate (easy to update after the fact)

Go over currently available animations and tag them as needed to produce the correct sounds and effects.

Note that some SLAL setups aren't tagged correctly and that can be difficult to work around.  I typically just produce my own anim sets from them and adjust as needed, but that isn't a "downloadable" solution.

Status: In Progress  Pushing to next release.

Amendment: Adding more tags so that the chaurus remember a degree of their interaction with the player.  This will be used to shape future behaviors and interactions.

 

Permissions: Priority Low (and not in my control, so I'm not sweating it)

Waiting on permissions for particle effects.  Will enable the spells and art objects regardless, so that adding them will just be a matter of producing the nif.  Can do this myself, but re-using the existing ones would be soooo much less time consuming.  Not having the permission won't hold  up release, but it may mean the mod is released without the needed meshes for effects.

Status: Still waiting, will likely have to release without the particle effects for now.

Apropos:  Priority... Mother of God that is a lot of work...

Frankly the difference between the description sets I have recently been working with and those I created months ago are night and day.  This isn't getting "fixed" anytime soon.  It will have to be an ongoing process.

Status: Tweaking in a Sisyphean effort. Never going to "finish" this, status irrelevant for pushing version out.

 

Effects:  Priority Low

The Husk effect is obviously from the ghost effects with the color shifted, but it doesn't look right.  Not a big deal as they don't stick around all that long (automatically disappear after 18 in-game hours), but still a minor annoyance.  Update: Husks now also dissolve away if they are looted, just to keep the area clean.  Not an issue in practical use, but at accelerated testing, things got littered quickly.

Status: Done

 

Additional Stuff

As I crank through this, and write out the mod description, I keep finding myself typing "not implemented yet" and then thinking of a way to just do it...

• Added a few more global controls so the user can adjust their experience.
• The bugs can now pass specific traits to their next selves after a molt.  This includes relationship rank to the player.  Also testing if they can pass unique names as well. Name tracking doesn't work right now.  Probably just a syntax issue, but I'm not holding things up to solve it right now.
• The bugs keep track of the style of animations they are using with the player and this will effect their relationship.
• iNeed is now fully integrated (with no dependency) for the purposes of gaining some nourishment from oral.  This no longer needs any script overwrites and is done through the voice sub-quest.  As it seems that many people use RND as well, I am looking into doing the same with that prior to release or on the first version update.

 

Something I never thought I'd complain about:

Between Billyy's new animation pack yesterday, MNC new version today and now Baka updating the ABC meshes pack... it'd be really nice if the people making awesome stuff could wait another day.

Packaging up now.  Mod page going up in 30 min or so.

 

Okay, took and hour.  I should stop with time estimates, I'm clearly no good at them.

So, today's mission is to actually play the game a little bit, see what things jump out at me as lacking.  Working on varying the items found through UGS based on visual effects in the area.  For instance: see dripping water effects?  Probably a higher chance of finding water bulbs, and any wood you find is going to be garbage for fire-making.

 

The chaurus high arousal effect (blue glow) is definitely in need of customization with the effect being a more cyan-colored glow radiating from the abdomen.

 

Also added RND to the needs mods for CLUGS (Chaurus Life + Underground Survival... that acronym probably won't take off.  Needs more cowbell.)  Was fairly easy, but I don't use that mod, so I can't guarantee it.  Still, the method used in RND is largely the same as iNeed.

 

Thinking on version updates, I think I will aim for weekly or bi-weekly updates.

Weekend Plans:

• I'll admit that BattleTech and Stellaris releasing anticipated expansions on the same day has slowed development somewhat.
• There is unlikely to be an update this weekend.  Most changes are under-the-hood and it would break existing chaurus.
• The majority of work this week was on Underground Survival, and the effects are presently subtle.
• Would change my mind about an update if the particle effect permissions come through as that would be something the player could see, and IMO would be worth displaying.  Of course if this happens I will have to re-jigger the effects since many of them are currently animobjects, and those don't align quite the same as art objects do.  Tweaking with that was quick on the couple cases I did it though, so it shouldn't be an issue to do in a few hours.
• Currently plotting the interaction layer and how to determine which chaurus are from which hive without needing explicit quest aliases for every chaurus on Nirn.
• I'm thinking the best way is: once there is a Tyrant, I pull its FormID as a decimal and make that number the "FactionRank" of the hive, passed to all others via quick quest script.  In the event that there is only one Tyrant in an area, no issue, make all the chaurus that hive rank.  If there are two, check for any existing hive factions, pair them off until only the workers and nymphs are remaining, and then see if a fight should happen.  Any interaction that might be combative would say "what is my faction rank" and "are they the same faction rank". If so, friendly.  If not, check status of hive war.
• Most of the time on finishing up such a battle, the remaining tyrant (if any, could be they all die) then re-sends this quest event, and changes all remaining chaurus ranks to its own.

Update:

 

Permissions for particle effects received.  Will be pushing an update (hopefully tomorrow) with new eye candy.

Didn't think I'd be building an MCM so soon...

 

Go figure.

 

Next update will have an MCM for controlling the Global Variables as well as a few other controls enabled.

Note gonna lie, I'm preening a bit over this one...

 

It really wasn't that hard, but I feel like it's a milestone of sorts.

Hmm, new AnubiSs chaurus animation is out, making great use of the ABC skeleton.

 

At 7 stages it adds a lot of new options... but...

 

Unfortunately, at stage 4 it makes a major reposition, and then again at stage 5, and at stage 7... really seems like some great pieces to several animations.

 

Stages 1, 2, 3, 7 work as a singular missionary animation.

 

Stages 5 and 6 are a good doggy anim to egglaying.

 

Stage 4 doesn't fit at all.  Sad because it is an excellent stage unto itself, but has no flow.  It has some similarities to the "test" anim though.

 

Maybe a project for today and tomorrow: Mix this with AnubiSs' other animations to create one or two new anims out of it.  I can use the FNIS lookup system to make these and experiment with that.

I have successfully gotten FNIS to compile and SLAL to recognize animations taken from other sources as a combined whole.

 

Now I just have to contact the relevant authors to see what they will permit with this.

 

Not really sure how permissions on this should work, as the user has to already have those animations for it to function.  Is a mashup under those cases actually something that needs permissions?  I don't know.

 

May as well ask.

 

EDIT: AnubiSs gave the thumbs up.  Fucking awesome.

 

EDIT2:  Billyy is also on-board.  Also fucking awesome.  That makes all but a very few animations fair game, and I can find other ways around those.

Hmm, working on animation effects, seems like I can't reliably get the effects to attach to chaurus the same way they do for the player.  Might have to do with trying to attach them to animating bones?  I don't know.

 

I may have to stay with animobjects for that, which unfortunately would mean needing to build that right into the FNIS generation file.  That would be sad since it would mean those show up only in animations that I create for the mod (or refurbish, or otherwise re-engineer).

 

Not sure how animators would take to the core files being messed with that way.  Might be able to do it as an overwriting situation like in the other patch files, but would have to limit it to older animations, or stay on top of them and push updates every time a new animation pack releases, which would be... obnoxious.

Okay, pushed an update.  Debated holding off, but the MCM and its faction manipulation might alleviate some less useful comments on the mod, so I figured it was worth it.

 

I will admit that between Jessica Jones, BattleTech and Stellaris, I haven't done as much with the mod this week as I otherwise could've.

 

Coming for next week:

• Another re-texture added to the pile, and it might be resident or result of interactions, depending on whether I can get a new overlay system working or not.
• Overhaul of molting system to allow data to pass from one form to the next without some of the elaborate workarounds I am doing now.
• More SLAL and Apropos elements, likely at least one from Billy based on his Reaper Holding animations.

Things have gotten brighter on the scene creation options: Gunslicer of GPoser fame has given permission to use his animations.

Unlikely to be an update this weekend, just hasn't been much done on it.  Blame Stellaris.

Ya know, I never really paid much notice to these things before.  Just seemed like another mouth part with no clear purpose, or maybe a shovel-esque device (still could be), but the placement here in Billyy's Holding anim (might be Reaper Hold 2) makes me wonder if these are some type of chemical injector.

 

The positioning right over the carotid is interesting.