Animal Mansion 4??? (Dev Thread)

[tasairis]

 

I'll give some minor spoilers about what I was planning regarding actually moving the Mansion. Because in case you missed that little comment, the Mansion will move.

 

Doing the text thing because apparently the spoiler button disappeared. Probably happened at the same time quotes got messed up. Spoiler's back,

Spoiler

Mansion will have to move because [redacted]. Player will have the choice of allowing a contractor to do the work, in which case the building takes some time but happens in the background, or the player can take a more active role and do something like Hearthfire over the course of an hour or so (only mild farming - nothing to the scale of how important iron is in HF). Possibly a bit of both. I do not think the Mansion will be customizable to the degree that HF homes are, but I bet I could get one or two variations in there. I wasn't going to support choosing a location, but I haven't given that much thought yet so I don't know.

Still a ways off in the future though.

[Khrusaor]

I remember you discussing possible staff members for the Mansion, such as vet. What about a bouncer of some sort?

[JesusKreist]

 

Because it's Thaena's business. not yours.

The way I see it the Animal Mansion is basically a guild and all guilds in skyrim award the player an at first limited personal space upon joining.

Yes it is a business at the end of the day but the player is the most valued and valuable employee so an employee benefit isn't out of the question.

Like a room in the house or near the "work stage".

Like after the agreement to help opening the shop a "And by the way if you want you can use the room at the end of the basement. There's a bed there. Don't be alarmed if you get visits by the dog at night ..." with "upgrades" along the storyline as rewards.

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, Khrusaor said:

I remember you discussing possible staff members for the Mansion, such as vet. What about a bouncer of some sort?

Makes sense. There were already going to be Suitable Reasons for hiring a bouncer post-move so I'll plan for it then.

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, JesusKreist said:

The way I see it the Animal Mansion is basically a guild and all guilds in skyrim award the player an at first limited personal space upon joining.

Yes it is a business at the end of the day but the player is the most valued and valuable employee so an employee benefit isn't out of the question.

Like a room in the house or near the "work stage".

Like after the agreement to help opening the shop a "And by the way if you want you can use the room at the end of the basement. There's a bed there. Don't be alarmed if you get visits by the dog at night ..." with "upgrades" along the storyline as rewards.

Yeah, the bed is still there and I do plan to give it to the player, but it just kinda... hasn't happened yet. Never quite got onto my radar because there was some work I wanted to do in that room and Ugh.

It would probably have to be added retroactively at this point, so I might as well get it done during this rewrite when people will "have" to start over from the beginning anyway.

 

As for it being like a guild... I can see the argument for it, in that the player is directly involved in a thing that has a series of quests involving recurring NPCs, but it doesn't feel like a guild. It feels like a business. Even so, most of the guilds do give the player a bed and AMX  is  will be doing that. Regarding payouts and employee benefits, doesn't the mod already do that, nudge nudge wink wink? Bailey is Available To Use, and though it isn't pointed out (Thaena should probably say something) the unlocked animals are also Available To Use. And then there's the bed and assorted items around the Mansion up for the taking.

I'll think about it some more, but I had assumed the payout to playing the mod was simply The Friends You Made Along The Way.

[JesusKreist]

Well ...

I wouldn't necessarily count things that I'm able to do off work as a benefit when I'm supposed to be doing the same things at work.

Basically you are paid to fuck with animals in front of customers but you can fuck with animals for fun. That's the whole benefit? Yeah ... No ... In that case Thaena can count herself VERY lucky that she found the player. With this benefit she'd not grow her business and when the player moves on or has other things to do her business will falter.

Simply because after a while the fun will lose it's fun value and feel like a chore.

"Using a computer" isn't advertised as a benefit for a 9-5 office job in real life either.

Even simple things like as mentioned a bed/room, some free drinks/meals in the mansion per day, special discount with a supplier, ..., could work very well as benefit. But as said being able to do things you already are doing isn't really.

 

 

And btw. how about a work schedule?

By that I mean having to work a certain amount of shows a week to either be employed, get a bonus payment, enable aforementioned benefits ...

Or a fixed special show schedule like 'mondas 9 in the evening horse orgy' or something along those lines.

[Dragon on the Web]

5 hours ago, tasairis said:

the payout to playing the mod was simply The Friends (With Benefits) You Made Along The Way.

made it better for you.

[tasairis]

5 hours ago, JesusKreist said:

Basically you are paid to fuck with animals in front of customers but you can fuck with animals for fun. That's the whole benefit? Yeah ... No ... In that case Thaena can count herself VERY lucky that she found the player. With this benefit she'd not grow her business and when the player moves on or has other things to do her business will falter.

Simply because after a while the fun will lose it's fun value and feel like a chore.

"Using a computer" isn't advertised as a benefit for a 9-5 office job in real life either.

Even simple things like as mentioned a bed/room, some free drinks/meals in the mansion per day, special discount with a supplier, ..., could work very well as benefit. But as said being able to do things you already are doing isn't really.

That's more immersive than I was really thinking. It's probably also an indication that my own playstyle is getting in the way: I don't play whole mods from beginning to end but mix their content in with the other stuff I'm doing, so I sorta think of it as "since I'm in Falkreath I might as well check to make sure our dogs are doing okay...".

 

As long as we're not talking about major features like making it a player home (at least not to the extent that most mods go) then it's reasonable:

- Accessing the bedroom, obviously

- Daily food and drink. At the very least Thaena could be willing to prepare something for the player. Note that the player has shared ownership* of the cell and that the items inside it are set to respawn, so grabbing stuff for yourself is already possible.

- Merchant discount, I don't know

- Previously mentioned: recruiting an unlocked animal as a follower

- Some sort of item. That's a common reward to give. Presumably something specific and relevant, like a ring to calm nearby animals.

- An employee uniform? If there was a suitable existing mod whose asset(s) I could borrow, maybe.

 

* After completing the first quest. There may also be a bug with that happening in v0.3 so if stuff still says Steal after that quest then know that isn't supposed to be the case.

 

5 hours ago, JesusKreist said:

And btw. how about a work schedule?

By that I mean having to work a certain amount of shows a week to either be employed, get a bonus payment, enable aforementioned benefits ...

Or a fixed special show schedule like 'mondas 9 in the evening horse orgy' or something along those lines.

I've actually thought about stuff like that, but figured it would be better for the player to be the one deciding what they want to happen and when(ish). Like the current client party, where the player asks Thaena to start one and it happens at 9pm.

 

I don't think there can be punishments for missing an appointment-- heh, okay, rephrase, I don't think there can be punishments for the player not being at a regularly-scheduled appointment. Not only does that mean knowing what day of the week it is, if the player "has" to be at a certain location on a regular basis then that limits what they can be doing the rest of the time - questing in Solstheim just got a lot more difficult.

 

So it's a reward for being there. Again, I would think the reward for being there is primarily Being There (and getting paid for it), but it's not like there are a lot of other things that could make sense. Going immersive, the "reward" for doing one's job is first and foremost the ability to continue doing the job, so I'm not sure that thought process will help.

The "Being There" reward could be emphasized by (1) making the event sufficiently random that the player can't predict or control it, and (2) making the event actually enjoyable. Positive reinforcement, as they say. Unfortunately the second requirement is easier said than done.

Side note: a recurring event that is player-optional means it has to be actually player-optional. In that it would need to be able to run with the player spectating; could avoid that with some trickery, like having NPCs go somewhere inaccessible and then just let them sandbox for an hour, but honestly I would rather fully implement it as a feature where player participation actually was optional.

 

Side note 2: that's starting to overlap a bit with the whole "Thaena needs to pull her own weight as an employee" concept that I've only recently (this week) started thinking about.

 

I forget the industry term for it, but having the player complete daily/weekly requirements for some reward seems alright. One of those daily "Complete X client quests" things. But that's not something done (often?) with Skyrim mods so I'm kinda skeptical about it - those concepts are for mobile games and MMOs, not offline single-player games. Maybe one or two of these, and perhaps as some sort of casual "contest" thing [...redacted...] with Thaena.

[JesusKreist]

The term is "working on commission". Common for jobs like outbound callcenter agent and other seller jobs.

But in this case it's more like "free schedule working with a fixed minimum workload per week"

So for instance:

"We are open 12 pm to 12 am every day. You can work any time you want but I'd ask you to do at least X shows a week. Working more is always appreciated. You are paid a token amount per show/at the end of a shift and a weekly payment according to how many shows you performed in.

There are special fixed shows at 9 pm most days. If you want to do them notify me before 6 pm that day. You can see what special show is planned on which day at the bulletin board I change every sundas before work".

Times are only placeholders and your choice. Obviously.

 

What day of the week it is is visible in one of the vanilla screens. IIRC it was the top right (or left?) corner of the ingame main menu. Been a while ...

Most clock mods I know display the day as well.

 

For work clothes ...

There are hundreds of outfits fit for a slutty maid on the nexus and here.

[skyrim482]

Here is my concern on certain features.

Having a required schedule.. Look this makes mods start to get really messy. Having things start/ stop only appear on a certain schedule is inviting problems, I have seen mods break because something wasn't said \ done at a certain time. While it makes since to schedule the Party  Its not necessary for anything else in the day to day stuff. As a player I can "work 9-5" take a break and sleep in the game. That is my immersion. Not everyone may want to play it that way.

Theana can simply make requests of the player to do jobs /  shows ect. before moving on to the next main quest as the original mod required. That worked and its fine. Passive background works, Jesper might randomly say "I cant be the only entertainment here, get to work".

Instead of a schedule Theana might randomly suggest which creature hasn't "entertained" in awhile. Make suggestions for clients ect.

Clothing - Just simply add a universal dialogue to add clothes to a mansion worker to set their outfit. You do not need to go asking to use someone else's clothing to put it in your mod that's alot of work for clothing only a handful of people might like because then you start dealing with specific body types ect. Just let people add their Own clothing to npcs if you think that is necessary at all. 

This Mod is about a creature driven experience, not building structures, or grindy job experiences. There are plenty of building mods that let you build things, work scheduled jobs, create a brothel, ect.. Certain things need to be kept separate to avoid a mess of conflicts.

Tasairis focus on what you want to do for your mod.

Ideas and features are great, but we need to keep in mind of whats already out there in the community we can use to tailor our experience. We don't want over burden One creator trying to put every feature into one mod.

Just my opinion Happy Holidays everyone!

[tasairis]

14 hours ago, JesusKreist said:

The term is "working on commission". Common for jobs like outbound callcenter agent and other seller jobs.

But in this case it's more like "free schedule working with a fixed minimum workload per week"

It's not quite commission as the player isn't being paid a base wages/salary (probably should, given they're supposed to be co-owner) and then working for more. Closer to being an independent contractor, although here I don't think there's a worry that the Animal Mansion is trying to dodge liability or taxes.

 

Ooh, new mod name: "Animal Mansion LLC"

(FAQ: "Can I still play this mod if I don't have an MBA?")

 

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So for instance:

"We are open 12 pm to 12 am every day. You can work any time you want but I'd ask you to do at least X shows a week. Working more is always appreciated. You are paid a token amount per show/at the end of a shift and a weekly payment according to how many shows you performed in.

There are special fixed shows at 9 pm most days. If you want to do them notify me before 6 pm that day. You can see what special show is planned on which day at the bulletin board I change every sundas before work".

Times are only placeholders and your choice. Obviously.

There is that thing I said before, though: co-ownership. It's a minor technical matter that arose not out of necessity but from the logical consequences of how I wrote the whole Jarl thing, so I could change it if there's a reason to. And maybe something does need to change, because right now I'm calling the player a co-owner but treating them as an employee/contractor.

But even as an employee, I can't imagine Thaena firing the player. Fortunately there's a common suspension-of-disbelief regarding timeframes, like how Alduin is totally about to destroy the world!!1! but no rush, go ahead and explore that dungeon, it's cool, he'll wait. (And everyone's favorite: eating cheese wheels in the middle of combat.)

There's also the practical matter of forcing the player to stay close to Falkreath the whole game if they have to meet some quota of on-premise entertainment; my timescale is set so that it's about a day's travel between Falkreath and Markarth or Dawnstar (one-way), and if I have a daily commitment in Falkreath then that means I can't go any further than Whiterun.

 

I can already promise that the whole "how does the Mansion work if the player is gone the whole time?" question will be resolved very soon, so that doesn't need to be a concern. Truth is that I am growing out the Mansion gradually but deliberately, so a lot of things are happening over time instead of all at once - eg, food and drinks are two minor things that happened after two quests, and Jesper and Jala are getting the same treatment.

Thaena also explicitly calls out that the player is an adventurer, so not having them be around all the time is to be expected.

 

I do like immersion and realism quite a bit, but I think this is going to have to be one of those times where we trade some of that in exchange for a nicer game experience. I think the way forward is the optional reward system of doing X client quests per day/week and getting a bonus for completion; Thaena basically says "Hey, great job, the clients have been really pleased, here's a little something extra for you." No punishments for taking time away from the Mansion and working on other stuff - at least as far as this discussion goes ?. Additionally, the daily or weekly "special event" thing makes sense to do, though implementing those will be pretty low on my to-do list (other things are simply more urgent, not to mention easier, to put in place).

 

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What day of the week it is is visible in one of the vanilla screens. IIRC it was the top right (or left?) corner of the ingame main menu. Been a while ...

Pfft, who checks that?

 

Quote

For work clothes ...

There are hundreds of outfits fit for a slutty maid on the nexus and here.

It would have to be something with redistributable permissions. Not that I've looked yet. I'm sure there's something.

[tasairis]

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

I have seen mods break because something wasn't said \ done at a certain time.

Having had to look into this thing myself recently (coughspoiler), I can tell you: scheduling something to happen at a certain time is Not. Fucking. Easy. You may think "oh, I'll RegisterForUpdateGameTime and it'll OnUpdateGameTime when I want it to happen" but you would be wrong.

 

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Theana can simply make requests of the player to do jobs /  shows ect. before moving on to the next main quest as the original mod required. That worked and its fine.

Ah, yes, I forgot about that. I'll need to remember to include it - after the flurry of initial quests is done and the Mansion is up and running, that is.

 

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Passive background works, Jesper might randomly say "I cant be the only entertainment here, get to work".

Thaena, Jesper, and Jala will all be there (at some point), which means Thaena and Jala could both be Downstairs (implied to be, if not actually) while Jesper keeps an eye on things. So at least it won't be quite that bad.

 

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Instead of a schedule Theana might randomly suggest which creature hasn't "entertained" in awhile. Make suggestions for clients ect.

Somewhat already accounted for. It will be mostly random, but recent animals are weighted down so that others are more likely to be chosen. I expect that the client will request one animal but the player can instead suggest one or two others. It'll also vary according to the NPC.

 

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Clothing - Just simply add a universal dialogue to add clothes to a mansion worker to set their outfit. You do not need to go asking to use someone else's clothing to put it in your mod that's alot of work for clothing only a handful of people might like because then you start dealing with specific body types ect. Just let people add their Own clothing to npcs if you think that is necessary at all. 

A custom outfit would be alright, but first I would want to add support for a specific outfit bundled with the mod. Saying that because I'm sure I could find something suitable to use.

 

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Tasairis focus on what you want to do for your mod.

Y'all keep saying that but don't worry! I have distinct opinions about some things, and I think I've demonstrated that I have no problem pushing back or turning down stuff I don't want, but I really am open-minded about other things. Cool ideas are cool regardless of who comes up with them.

[skyrim482]

4 hours ago, tasairis said:

Having had to look into this thing myself recently (coughspoiler), I can tell you: scheduling something to happen at a certain time is Not. Fucking. Easy. You may think "oh, I'll RegisterForUpdateGameTime and it'll OnUpdateGameTime when I want it to happen" but you would be wrong.

My concern exactly, from my super limited CK experience it is very difficult to get a scheduled event to function well.

Im certainly guilty of sharing idea after idea, but thats why we have this thread so we can talk it all out and see what fits. I just don't want you to get burned out, this is alot of work.

[tasairis]

2 hours ago, skyrim482 said:

My concern exactly, from my super limited CK experience it is very difficult to get a scheduled event to function well.

Theoretically it's not that hard. You can know what time it is and you can ask the game to update you in X hours, so those two things combine with a bit of math to make it really easy; if you want a timer to go off at 8am the next day then you ask the game to update in 24 hours - the current time + 8 hours.

 

(Reminder: by "timer" I mean calling RegisterFor[Single]Update[GameTime] with some desired duration and idling until OnUpdate[GameTime] gets called. There's no actual timer thing. Because Papyrus is basically a crippled version of Lua.)

 

The most annoying problem is if the player sleeps or waits. Stuff pauses while that goes, and only when it finishes will the game call on your script (if the timer elapsed). Someone can sleep right on through 8am. So you have to check the current time. But someone could be annoying and sleep not just through 8am but through that whole day until 8am the day after. Checking the hour isn't enough - you have to check the actual date too.

Another grievance: the timer isn't accurate. Okay, fine, computer timers aren't always. But Skyrim's timer does not do what virtually every timer capability in existence does: guarantee that the timer will elapse on or after the desired point. Set a timer for midnight to detect the next day starting? Will it fire at 12:00? Maybe! Or maybe it'll happen at 12:03. Or maybe 11:58. Or maybe 12:09. Or maybe 11:52.

 

Want multiple timers at once? Ha! Not possible. What you have to do is set them up incrementally: a timer for 3 hours and 10 hours actually has to be accomplished as a timer for 3 hours and then another timer right after than for 7 more hours. But then you remember back to what I said before about synchronous waiting and timer inaccuracies, so now you have to be able to support skipping that 3h timer and going right into the 7h wait (which is now <7 of course) - not to mention the potential to skip the 10h wait entirely.

 

So much of Skyrim's internals make more sense when you realize that the game engine isn't so much of a game engine as it is a rendering engine buried under a mountain of patches, each one adding some minor piece of functionality that the game designers needed. A tradition that carries on to this very day with each new Creation Club release.

[JesusKreist]

2 hours ago, tasairis said:

The most annoying problem is if the player sleeps or waits. Stuff pauses while that goes, and only when it finishes will the game call on your script (if the timer elapsed). Someone can sleep right on through 8am. So you have to check the current time. But someone could be annoying and sleep not just through 8am but through that whole day until 8am the day after. Checking the hour isn't enough - you have to check the actual date too.

The maximum time the player can wait or sleep is 24 hours. So regardless of how much of a troll the player is sleeping through multiple 8 am "roll calls" simply isn't possible.

Therefore you DON'T need to check the date as well for this case.

[nomkaz]

9 minutes ago, JesusKreist said:

The maximum time the player can wait or sleep is 24 hours. So regardless of how much of a troll the player is sleeping through multiple 8 am "roll calls" simply isn't possible.

Therefore you DON'T need to check the date as well for this case.

One of my 1,300 installed mods lets me sleep/wait for up to 72 hours. Sot here's a monkey wrench in that. ;p

[JesusKreist]

A mod.

 

*throws monkey wrench right back*

[Gukahn]

So as far as i understand the Comment on last page, the Follower support is allready in it, even for the old quests?

(i really like the whole idea of an annoyed follower doing the "dirty" work for me. )

[tasairis]

2 hours ago, Gukahn said:

So as far as i understand the Comment on last page, the Follower support is allready in it, even for the old quests?

"Old quests"?

 

But yes, you can have your follower play with Bailey in front of the Jarl, or test out those dogs for sale, or try to convince the horse guy to sell you a horse. Only exception so far is that one moment after you catch Thaena having a Good Time; male players only have the option of asking her for an encore.

 

The promise is that male players will be able to play through every quest, which means that one or more of the following will be true:

1. There will be a female creature available (but generally not)

2. A female NPC relevant to the plot will be able to complete the objectives (though it may take some convincing)

3. A female follower will be able to complete the objectives (through dialogue)

[Gukahn]

9 hours ago, tasairis said:

The promise is that male players will be able to play through every quest, which means that one or more of the following will be true:

1. There will be a female creature available (but generally not)

2. A female NPC relevant to the plot will be able to complete the objectives (though it may take some convincing)

3. A female follower will be able to complete the objectives (through dialogue)

Thank you for clarifying ?
 

[skyrim482]

So how's the progress on 0.4? I know there has been some back and forth with alot of feature topics since the last release.

What features are new/ changing if any in 0.4?

Wolf quest companion party?

Radiant quests / party

Character development / new characters

 

(Not rushing you in any way) I think it would be good to have an updated progress/ goal report the the entire 0.4 release.

[tasairis]

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

So how's the progress on 0.4?

Still going. I've spent far less time these last couple months working on it than I had been doing before, but in this weird holiday haze I've been pushing myself to put more into it.

The main thing left was finishing the Companions party, but I also decided to get another main quest out at the same time, plus catch up on some other things I had been putting off.

 

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

What features are new/ changing if any in 0.4?

Mostly it's the next two main quests and switching to an ESM. Handful of other less significant things.

 

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

Wolf quest companion party?

Yes.

 

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

Radiant quests / party

Side quests are 0.5 when I deal with the client system. That will come with some quests for the existing animals. / The party is included in that.

 

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

Character development / new characters

Yes: there was some Thaena dialogue that I had pulled out pending some rewriting, and I think there's even a little more now. Plus there's more of the same stuff that happens as you complete quests. / Mmm... kinda.

 

1 hour ago, skyrim482 said:

(Not rushing you in any way) I think it would be good to have an updated progress/ goal report the the entire 0.4 release.

It probably would be good, yeah. The details are still changing some but I am keeping track of what I've been changing. Mostly.

[unwashed biomass]

If only Riding Styles would work for SSE, that could lead to interesting advertisement missions.

[N.Gamma]

15 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

If only Riding Styles would work for SSE, that could lead to interesting advertisement missions.

The mod "Horgasm (Riding Horse/Orgasm Mod)" would then also fit in with this.

 

However, instead of "Riding Styles" I would find a normal saddle with attached Dildo/Plug more interesting.

[lanastara]

2 hours ago, AreaGamer said:

The mod "Horgasm (Riding Horse/Orgasm Mod)" would then also fit in with this.

 

However, instead of "Riding Styles" I would find a normal saddle with attached Dildo/Plug more interesting.

I made such a saddle some time ago for myself based on the convenient horses travelersaddle.

It's really badly made since I have no idea how to actually 3d model (so I just sticked the Smurf Average SOS Penis on top of the saddle and gave it a wood texture (the one from the devious devices))

 

I could maybe look into making a replacer for the generic skyrim saddle but I prefered replacing the convenient horses ones so my horse is the only one with an exotic saddle ^^

 

https://www.loverslab.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=1009724