Sandboxing for ZAZ 1.0.0

This mod enables sandboxing for all ZAP (ZAZ Animation Pack) 8.0+ furniture. NPCs and followers will walk up to furniture, strap themselves in, play animations, release themselves, and then walk up to another piece of furniture and repeat the process according to their AI package.

 

Ideal for the slave dungeon where you keep all your attractive mod-added followers.

 

What is sandboxing? How does the mod change this?

NPCs and followers "sandbox" while you're standing around or talking to other NPCs. They'll sit on chairs, lean against walls, warm their hands on a fire, appear to use crafting tables etc. By default, ZAZ furniture is ignored by sandboxing. There are good reasons for this:

• ZAZ furniture is designed for the player, not for NPCs. When NPCs enter furniture, they're often out of alignment (see attached images). This is a known issue with ZAP.
• This mod could put you in some awkward situations and even break some quests. e.g. if you're a "slave" strapped into something, your "master"/"mistress" could tie themselves up in another piece of furniture, forcing you to wait or use console commands or other mods to break out of furniture.

 

Despite these downsides, it annoys me when ZAZ furniture added by mods just stands there empty. AFAIK, there isn't a way to strap NPCs into furniture permanently or make NPCs "play" with each other. I made this mod because the out-of-alignment issue doesn't ruin my immersion as much as NPCs just standing around.

 

Technical Notes

This mod was made with SSEEdit. It actually removes the "Ignored by Sandbox" flag from ZAZ furniture, but I didn't want to get into that detail above.

This is my first mod. Any feedback, constructive or otherwise, is welcome.

 

How to Install

Just install with a mod manager and enable. After installing, bring a follower or two to the ZAZ test zone to test it out. Enter the following in the console to teleport there:

coc zbftestzone

Compatibility: This mod just changes some furniture flags, so it shouldn't have serious compatibility issues. It's easy to pull an NPC out of sandboxing: just talk to them. The issues I see are:

• Another mod does something dumb because an NPC is sandboxing.
  • For example, CTDs can happen if some faulty object that was not previously being used starts causing CTDs whenever an NPC uses it.
• NPCs sandbox themselves into furniture while you can't move, breaking some quests or requiring console commands to break yourself out.
• This mod will not work for mods that create new copies of ZAZ furniture, because those may have the "ignored for sandboxing" flag set.

 

Requirements

Requires ZAZ 8.0+. The mod is likely version-specific. Tested only with the CBBE version (so far), though UNP should only differ in armor sets and this should work.

 

Recommended mods:

The Whiterun mod series isn't being maintained or being developed anymore, but is 

the ideal use case for this mod

 

ZAP Helper Addon lets you place furniture, assign an NPC to furniture (only one at a time) and adds an "align" spell to fix the out-of-alignment problem. If I continue developing this mod further, I'll try to add an align spell like this.

 

 

The Hearthfire dungeon addon adds ZAZ furniture, a sleeping area and two pools to your Hearthfire home cellar. This is where I house my co-adventurers.

SE version in this comment has been working for me.