wip Chaurus Life

[Elvorana]

4 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

I had seen that centipede mod, but haven't tried it.  They are definitely based on the chaurus skeleton, but it looks like they are permanently partially underground.  I'm not sure how that would work with a lot of the animations.  A lot of times when adapting new races to the existing skeletons, they result in some weirdness that can't really be worked out.

 

Will have to give that a try though and if it looks promising (not horribly misaligned, etc), then I will ask Mihail about including it.  Thanks for the heads-up on it, as I'd forgotten all about that mod.

 

EDIT: His permissions are open use with credit, so that part wouldn't be an issue.  Will test it out.

You should also check out some of his other mods, he has some arachnid ones that might work for some sort of queen or juggernaut kinda thing, though they are based off spiders more so im not sure how well they'll fit in.

[Seijin8]

43 minutes ago, Elvorana_Tanthalasa said:

You should also check out some of his other mods, he has some arachnid ones that might work for some sort of queen or juggernaut kinda thing, though they are based off spiders more so im not sure how well they'll fit in.

So, the giant centipedes in Mihail's mod won't be useful, I don't think.  You can see in this picture that the skeletal nodes are nowhere near anything:

Spoiler

 

However, his smaller centipedes are based on the ice wraith mesh, and have a unique skeleton driven into the ground (so they don't float and instead snake back and forth).  I haven't messed with any of the (very very few) ice wraith animations for Sexlab, but that may have some promise.

Spoiler

 

Assuming the animations make any sense with a non-floating bug, it would be simple enough to give this one some junk to work with.  Then just a matter of figuring out what they do, why they exist, and what value they would have.  All just a matter of thinking it though.

 

That's a good find, and has promise.  Thanks again for bringing it up.

[Elvorana]

15 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

So, the giant centipedes in Mihail's mod won't be useful, I don't think.  You can see in this picture that the skeletal nodes are nowhere near anything:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

However, his smaller centipedes are based on the ice wraith mesh, and have a unique skeleton driven into the ground (so they don't float and instead snake back and forth).  I haven't messed with any of the (very very few) ice wraith animations for Sexlab, but that may have some promise.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Assuming the animations make any sense with a non-floating bug, it would be simple enough to give this one some junk to work with.  Then just a matter of figuring out what they do, why they exist, and what value they would have.  All just a matter of thinking it though.

 

That's a good find, and has promise.  Thanks again for bringing it up.

Glad to help ^_^ i may not be able to help with scripting or texturing or any of that, but i can certainly help seek out bugs (the bad kind) and throw out random ideas.

[MadMansGun]

10 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

However, his smaller centipedes are based on the ice wraith mesh, and have a unique skeleton driven into the ground (so they don't float and instead snake back and forth).  I haven't messed with any of the (very very few) ice wraith animations for Sexlab, but that may have some promise.

the animations that have been made are based on PaulGreen's custom animatable skeleton, so that one is not compatible.

also my own animation uses the whiskers, that thing does not have them.

 

[donttouchmethere]

As ALIEN fan I already like how much thought you put into the biological life cycle of chaurus! ☣️

[Seijin8]

3 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

the animations that have been made are based on PaulGreen's custom animatable skeleton, so that one is not compatible.

also my own animation uses the whiskers, that thing does not have them.

 

Hmmm, well that might be a non-starter then.

 

I'm a ways off from trying to integrate any new species anyway.  Until the interaction layer is done (which needs a better ecological layer, which I'm working on now in Underground Survival), I'm not going to be tackling much in the way of new creatures/effects.

 

Thanks for your input.

[Seijin8]

43 minutes ago, donttouchmethere said:

As ALIEN fan I already like how much thought you put into the biological life cycle of chaurus! ☣️

(I feel saddened that you felt the need to link that.  Everyone should already know precisely what that is.  And tbh, I was more an Aliens fan.  Very formative to my teenage years.)

 

Honestly I tried to stay clear of xenomorph territory, mainly because of the too-obvious connections.  Skyrim Immersive Creatures sort of forces the issue though, since it is hard to reconcile those forms any other way.

[poblivion]

Hi, I guess I'm a complete dumb, but I didn't find out how to run the mod. I installed everything needed, but there is something wrong in the game.  Chaurus attacks and paralyzes me, then kills me.

[Elvorana]

3 hours ago, poblivion said:

Hi, I guess I'm a complete dumb, but I didn't find out how to run the mod. I installed everything needed, but there is something wrong in the game.  Chaurus attacks and paralyzes me, then kills me.

this mod doesn't make you their friend, there are other mods that do that. I personally use Defeat, though they dont stay friendly with that. It will however allow them to rape you once you meet the conditions set in the MCM. You can also try a slavery mod that allows you to get enslaved by falmer/chaurus.

[Seijin8]

5 hours ago, poblivion said:

Hi, I guess I'm a complete dumb, but I didn't find out how to run the mod. I installed everything needed, but there is something wrong in the game.  Chaurus attacks and paralyzes me, then kills me.

As Elvorana_Tanthalasa said, this mod doesn't change chaurus factions.  If they are your enemy without the mod, they'll still be your enemy with it.

 

I will have mechanisms for changing this later on, but they aren't implemented right now.

[leirisal]

Finally some love and depth to the chaurus side of the lore is being adressed, couldn't be more excited!

I am so looking forward to the development of this mod. Downloaded and followed this instantly.

And as for the Hybrid chaurus breeder turning people hostile, shouldn't really be a problem since it also happens when you are a vampire or a werewolf. As the PC slowly progresses through with the transformations, it could at the same time start breeding a "defense army" of chaurus (as suggested before). Besides the early stages shouldn't give it away that easily so it would still be safe to visit a city.

Also recommend researching earwigs, since it resembles a chaurus the most.

Keep up the good work

[Seijin8]

28 minutes ago, leirisal said:

Finally some love and depth to the chaurus side of the lore is being adressed, couldn't be more excited!

I am so looking forward to the development of this mod. Downloaded and followed this instantly.

And as for the Hybrid chaurus breeder turning people hostile, shouldn't really be a problem since it also happens when you are a vampire or a werewolf. As the PC slowly progresses through with the transformations, it could at the same time start breeding a "defense army" of chaurus (as suggested before). Besides the early stages shouldn't give it away that easily so it would still be safe to visit a city.

Also recommend researching earwigs, since it resembles a chaurus the most.

Keep up the good work

Thanks for the kind words.

 

I did do some research on earwigs, unfortunately it just made me sad that we can't do so much with animations and behaviors.  If chaurus are like earwigs, then the dominance battles should all be fought using the cercei (tail pinchers), and the most dominant males should have a pronounced asymmetry with their layout.  But those animations don't exist, and it would be a tremendous effort to create those animations and then try to link them to behaviors.

 

Likewise, the reason for pincers on the tail is to make burrowing easier, and while chaurus do seem to dig a lot, they don't burrow in the vanilla game, and there doesn't seem an easy mechanism to make them do so (though I'm considering some things in this regard).

 

As for the transformation, you are right that it wouldn't really be different from werewolves.  My main concern is with making sure that life outside of cities (specifically underground) is truly survivable before doing this.  It seems reasonable that just like the Silver Hand, there might be people who are just not cool with ramping up the breeding of a bug army, and may come to try and stop it from happening.  If chaurus are indeed not from Nirn, it stands to reason those individuals might also not be from Nirn.

 

But its a long way to go still before we get to that part

 

 

[Elvorana]

5 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

Thanks for the kind words.

 

I did do some research on earwigs, unfortunately it just made me sad that we can't do so much with animations and behaviors.  If chaurus are like earwigs, then the dominance battles should all be fought using the cercei (tail pinchers), and the most dominant males should have a pronounced asymmetry with their layout.  But those animations don't exist, and it would be a tremendous effort to create those animations and then try to link them to behaviors.

 

Likewise, the reason for pincers on the tail is to make burrowing easier, and while chaurus do seem to dig a lot, they don't burrow in the vanilla game, and there doesn't seem an easy mechanism to make them do so (though I'm considering some things in this regard).

 

As for the transformation, you are right that it wouldn't really be different from werewolves.  My main concern is with making sure that life outside of cities (specifically underground) is truly survivable before doing this.  It seems reasonable that just like the Silver Hand, there might be people who are just not cool with ramping up the breeding of a bug army, and may come to try and stop it from happening.  If chaurus are indeed not from Nirn, it stands to reason those individuals might also not be from Nirn.

 

But its a long way to go still before we get to that part

 

 

Or any number of mortal organizations (Thalmor and Vigilants are the first that come to mind) that would be interested in stopping or capturing said bug army.

[Reesewow]

47 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

As for the transformation, you are right that it wouldn't really be different from werewolves.  My main concern is with making sure that life outside of cities (specifically underground) is truly survivable before doing this.  It seems reasonable that just like the Silver Hand, there might be people who are just not cool with ramping up the breeding of a bug army, and may come to try and stop it from happening.  If chaurus are indeed not from Nirn, it stands to reason those individuals might also not be from Nirn.

While less of an immersion thing and more of a gameplay concern - lycanthropy and vampirism only blocking city interaction while in "true form" does feel like an important element for making the vast majority of the game playable as those creatures.  Even if somewhat un-immersive (I mean c'mon, vampires have freaking orange eyes and fangs and nobody seems to notice beyond annoying guard comments).  I do love the idea of an immersive breeder transformation, but I also know that if such a thing was a permanent loss of city access - I'd try it once on a throw-away save and never touch it again.

 

Perhaps for a hybrid breeder transformation - something similar could be achieved in a more immersive way?  So instead of just magically going "poof" and being fully human again, a fully transformed breeder could get back to being able to interact with the outside world by something like:

 

• A once-a-day power where the player attempts to prepare for outside interaction. 

 

• Something similar to above, but require the player to gather materials to effect the transformation (less of a personal preference, but that's because I dislike needs mods and gathering in general).

 

This could auto-fail if the player is carrying any eggs, and also fail if the player triggers any sex animations with a chaurus while trying to fit in (meaning even if you didn't pick up more eggs, you'd need to re-apply your "disguise" or NPCs would be hostile to you).  What she does to prepare could be things like applying makeshift body-paint and purging excess fluids (off camera) and cause a few hours of time to pass.  Once "transformed" (aka disguised) the player could then interact normally with NPCs again, but be required to find a quiet spot to use the power to refresh the disguise every once in awhile.  If the duration of the transformation was attached to a global variable, users could manually set how often they need to do this.

 

However, if a breeder manages to get themselves impregnated by a chaurus - the disguise could be completely blown and the breeder would need to hide from the world until they lay their eggs, so back to the safety of the nest.  Bit harder to hide a belly full of glowing eggs, or that motherly glow.

 

 

"Raids" on a players hive sounds awesome, and definitely something that would help hive-building be an actual game mode with the chance of failure. 

 

[Seijin8]

24 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

While less of an immersion thing and more of a gameplay concern - lycanthropy and vampirism only blocking city interaction while in "true form" does feel like an important element for making the vast majority of the game playable as those creatures.  Even if somewhat un-immersive (I mean c'mon, vampires have freaking orange eyes and fangs and nobody seems to notice beyond annoying guard comments).  I do love the idea of an immersive breeder transformation, but I also know that if such a thing was a permanent loss of city access - I'd try it once on a throw-away save and never touch it again.

 

Perhaps for a hybrid breeder transformation - something similar could be achieved in a more immersive way?  So instead of just magically going "poof" and being fully human again, a fully transformed breeder could get back to being able to interact with the outside world by something like:

 

• A once-a-day power where the player attempts to prepare for outside interaction. 

 

• Something similar to above, but require the player to gather materials to effect the transformation (less of a personal preference, but that's because I dislike needs mods and gathering in general).

 

This could auto-fail if the player is carrying any eggs, and also fail if the player triggers any sex animations with a chaurus while trying to fit in (meaning even if you didn't pick up more eggs, you'd need to re-apply your "disguise" or NPCs would be hostile to you).  What she does to prepare could be things like applying makeshift body-paint and purging excess fluids (off camera) and cause a few hours of time to pass.  Once "transformed" (aka disguised) the player could then interact normally with NPCs again, but be required to find a quiet spot to use the power to refresh the disguise every once in awhile.  If the duration of the transformation was attached to a global variable, users could manually set how often they need to do this.

 

However, if a breeder manages to get themselves impregnated by a chaurus - the disguise could be completely blown and the breeder would need to hide from the world until they lay their eggs, so back to the safety of the nest.  Bit harder to hide a belly full of glowing eggs, or that motherly glow.

 

 

"Raids" on a players hive sounds awesome, and definitely something that would help hive-building be an actual game mode with the chance of failure. 

 

 

All good points.

 

My thoughts right now on breeder transformations and being able to interact with people anyway:

• High levels of illusion, alteration or certain spells could allow you to change back (or appear to).  If so, certain individuals might be able to see through this, but would generally not be directly hostile, and instead would lead to side quests.
• I had a lot more typed here, but I'm redacting it.  No sense starting a runaway discussion on things that aren't technically feasible in the game, and if it turns out that I can do them, it should be a surprise.

 

About the "raids":

• The plan is to give the player several branching points in the over all quest/story, and each of them produces different threats to the emerging hive.
• Some of these branches may tie back into the main quest or other quests to make the theme seem better connected to the overall game.  (In the event that people play as non-Dragonborn, none of these quests would be shut off if the related quests weren't active, just that there might be new ways to complete some quests that only a chaurus playthrough would offer).
• At many stages, the player should be confronted with the alienness of the chaurus and what they represent, and have to make choices about proceeding.  If the choice is "are you really sure you want to fuck this bug?" then... well lets be honest, I don't need to do flesh out the "no" option because most people downloading this would never use it.  Instead, these would need to be real gameplay choices, similar to what some of the better daedric quests in the game present, and similar to what Dawnguard's vampiric quest endings are like.  Actual trade-offs with consequences that make you hesitate and really need to think on it.

As an example of the choices above:

• Maybe a particularly great hive location is found, but it is under the mines in Stonehills and conflict with the little mining town will be inevitable.
• A variety of options present themselves, ranging from: 
• Be as stealthy as possible and try to remain unnoticed
• Wipe out the town, feed on its inhabitants, and make it look like a vampire attack
• Produce pheremonal chemicals and put them in the mine so that the town is slowly taken over.  The men are food, the women are breeding stock, and the hive champion will guard the mine against intrusion
• Make a deal with the other side of the civil war and help them take over Dawnstar or Morthal in exchange for leaving the town to you.  Will they agree? Will they care? Will they betray you? None of these responses would be set in stone

So, yeah, still a long ways to go with this.  Many, many plans for it.

[poblivion]

2 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

As Elvorana_Tanthalasa said, this mod doesn't change chaurus factions.  If they are your enemy without the mod, they'll still be your enemy with it.

 

I will have mechanisms for changing this later on, but they aren't implemented right now.

I didn't expect Chaurus to be friendly. But I thought that once a PC was paralyzed after a bite, it would be raped and then left in place (Chaurus no longer attacks the PC). Similar as like in Defeat mod.

[Seijin8]

23 minutes ago, poblivion said:

I didn't expect Chaurus to be friendly. But I thought that once a PC was paralyzed after a bite, it would be raped and then left in place (Chaurus no longer attacks the PC). Similar as like in Defeat mod.

That depends on how you have Defeat, Estrus Chaurus and other mods set up.

[Elvorana]

1 hour ago, poblivion said:

I didn't expect Chaurus to be friendly. But I thought that once a PC was paralyzed after a bite, it would be raped and then left in place (Chaurus no longer attacks the PC). Similar as like in Defeat mod.

46 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

That depends on how you have Defeat, Estrus Chaurus and other mods set up.

 

I believe that by default, Estrus Chaurus+ does make the player friendly towards Chaurus while pregnancy progresses. If you want that, you'll need Estrus Chaurus+; at least until Sijin8 set up the player interaction side of this mod. As for Defeat, it is a very temporary "Get up and run the hell away from your rapist" moment which ends after a few seconds. My personal recommendation (and what I do myself) is to use both mods alongside this one.

[phil01991]

looks good, but animations not working. I cant wait to see this baby get flushed out.

[Seijin8]

4 minutes ago, phil01991 said:

looks good, but animations not working. I cant wait to see this baby get flushed out.

EDIT: Rewording and elaborating to try to be more helpful.

 

This mod doesn't add any animations (yet), nor does it trigger animation events.  To attempt to troubleshoot your issues, can you tell us how it is that you are trying to initiate the animations?  Are creature animations working for other races?

[Elvorana]

I know you're trying to avoid further dependencies....but instead of using a shader for the glowing belly effect, why not use one of the Racemenu body tattoo slots? Ive been using it to manually set asymmetric glowing runes all over my characters body. SlaveTats does this both manually, and it has a hook for mods to do it automatically (as seen in Apropos 2) I'm not sure if you would be able to do this natively, or if it might be better to set up a basic native system and have it default to SlaveTats if it's installed?

[Seijin8]

5 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

I know you're trying to avoid further dependencies....but instead of using a shader for the glowing belly effect, why not use one of the Racemenu body tattoo slots? Ive been using it to manually set asymmetric glowing runes all over my characters body. SlaveTats does this both manually, and it has a hook for mods to do it automatically (as seen in Apropos 2) I'm not sure if you would be able to do this natively, or if it might be better to set up a basic native system and have it default to SlaveTats if it's installed?

Its a good question.  I haven't figured that out yet, but there are enough references to look at that I should be able to work it out.  I'm kind of torn on it.  The Slavetats would be better in some ways (most notably not showing up on the throat and hands), but the glow is static and doesn't strobe at all, which is something I wanted to go for with the shader.

 

Ultimately, I probably will go with the Slavetat version once I figure that out (on the to-do list).

[Elvorana]

9 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

Its a good question.  I haven't figured that out yet, but there are enough references to look at that I should be able to work it out.  I'm kind of torn on it.  The Slavetats would be better in some ways (most notably not showing up on the throat and hands), but the glow is static and doesn't strobe at all, which is something I wanted to go for with the shader.

 

Ultimately, I probably will go with the Slavetat version once I figure that out (on the to-do list).

Maybe a combination of them? have a strobe effect that doesnt conact the areas that hit the arms and throat (i'm not well versed in shader mapping so i don't know where that area actually is) while the main glow texture is using slavetats/racemenu body markings?

 

EDIT:

Other than that, I can't think of anything else other than custom belly meshes or anim objects but those run into armor and body mod clipping and conflicts.

[Seijin8]

16 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

Maybe a combination of them? have a strobe effect that doesnt conact the areas that hit the arms and throat (i'm not well versed in shader mapping so i don't know where that area actually is) while the main glow texture is using slavetats/racemenu body markings?

 

EDIT:

Other than that, I can't think of anything else other than custom belly meshes or anim objects but those run into armor and body mod clipping and conflicts.

With shaders, unfortunately they hit everything and apply the same shader texture to head, body and hands.  I've asked several CK experts and they all say the same thing: no way to mask out other areas.  I might make it so that the shader version plays only if an animation has both oral and vaginal components, since then the shader on the throat doesn't look so out of place.

 

And your assessment on custom shapes to apply is correct: they would clip with everything and would need Bodyslide files or other editing to fit everyone's bodies correctly.  That one is a no-go.

 

Now, there may be a way to use a combination shader/slavetat effect where the shader only shows on areas with an explicit color (which would be provided by the slavetat), but I don't know how well that would work in practice and I suspect even if it could work, it wouldn't have subtle gradiations because the alpha wouldn't be exactly right in most areas.

 

So, yeah, probably just needs to be a Slavetat.

 

 

[Elvorana]

24 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

With shaders, unfortunately they hit everything and apply the same shader texture to head, body and hands.  I've asked several CK experts and they all say the same thing: no way to mask out other areas.  I might make it so that the shader version plays only if an animation has both oral and vaginal components, since then the shader on the throat doesn't look so out of place.

 

And your assessment on custom shapes to apply is correct: they would clip with everything and would need Bodyslide files or other editing to fit everyone's bodies correctly.  That one is a no-go.

 

Now, there may be a way to use a combination shader/slavetat effect where the shader only shows on areas with an explicit color (which would be provided by the slavetat), but I don't know how well that would work in practice and I suspect even if it could work, it wouldn't have subtle gradiations because the alpha wouldn't be exactly right in most areas.

 

So, yeah, probably just needs to be a Slavetat.

 

 

Yeah sounds like it. Dang engine limitations. Ah well, keep up the awesome work ^_^