Animal Mansion 4??? (Dev Thread)

[Szlordrin]

I think if you make an outfit/uniform required, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to please those folks who use different body types. For some people it may not fit their sense of immersion to wear one outfit vs. another. Maybe you make an amulet instead that has a enchantment on it. This would flag the player as having a uniform, and still allow users to choose the uniform. Or what may be better is make it a learnable enchantment and give it to the player, then you can put on any piece of clothing they want. Could also do something in the MCM where you flag a piece of equipment as "Animal Mansion Uniform". I however would be reluctant to add a uniform unless it activates, or enhances the features of the mansion in some way. Otherwise its superfluous. My question is would wearing the uniform flag certain NPC's and sex workers, (That would be cool), does the uniform activate a script that causes animals to lust after you? Does it cause NPC's to approach/proposition you outside of the mansion maybe? IDK that would be for the designer to decide, but I dislike the idea of forced uniform wear unless I get to pick the uniform & body type I'm using.

 

[monty359]

48 minutes ago, Szlordrin said:

I think if you make an outfit/uniform required, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to please those folks who use different body types. For some people it may not fit their sense of immersion to wear one outfit vs. another. Maybe you make an amulet instead that has a enchantment on it. This would flag the player as having a uniform, and still allow users to choose the uniform. Or what may be better is make it a learnable enchantment and give it to the player, then you can put on any piece of clothing they want. Could also do something in the MCM where you flag a piece of equipment as "Animal Mansion Uniform". I however would be reluctant to add a uniform unless it activates, or enhances the features of the mansion in some way. Otherwise its superfluous. My question is would wearing the uniform flag certain NPC's and sex workers, (That would be cool), does the uniform activate a script that causes animals to lust after you? Does it cause NPC's to approach/proposition you outside of the mansion maybe? IDK that would be for the designer to decide, but I dislike the idea of forced uniform wear unless I get to pick the uniform & body type I'm using.

 

idealy it could be made like that: in the room upstairs there could be a dummy. the items, in would have equipped, would be the uniform for female/male (make that two dummies ;)) mansion worker. I do not know, how complicated it would be, so...

[Ade4u1]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:45 PM, Ramien said:

I've been putting my character in the 'wild bunny' outfit from Deserter X, or things like pony boots and mitts, since they at least fit the scene and add some fanservice. Even something like Forsworn armor could work (give that 'wild woman' vibe). A Mountie costume could work, or a lion tamer outfit...

Wild bunny. That's actually a really good idea lol

[Ramien]

12 hours ago, Szlordrin said:

I think if you make an outfit/uniform required, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to please those folks who use different body types. For some people it may not fit their sense of immersion to wear one outfit vs. another. Maybe you make an amulet instead that has a enchantment on it. This would flag the player as having a uniform, and still allow users to choose the uniform. Or what may be better is make it a learnable enchantment and give it to the player, then you can put on any piece of clothing they want. Could also do something in the MCM where you flag a piece of equipment as "Animal Mansion Uniform". I however would be reluctant to add a uniform unless it activates, or enhances the features of the mansion in some way. Otherwise its superfluous. My question is would wearing the uniform flag certain NPC's and sex workers, (That would be cool), does the uniform activate a script that causes animals to lust after you? Does it cause NPC's to approach/proposition you outside of the mansion maybe? IDK that would be for the designer to decide, but I dislike the idea of forced uniform wear unless I get to pick the uniform & body type I'm using.

 

It could even be something as simple as a particular collar, really. I'm not too picky in that regard, and as I mentioned, have been switching outfits to a separate one in game anyways just because it looks better to me  - being able to keep your own body type you prefer is definitely important, though. I hate finding an interesting mod that doesn't support the body type I use.

[N.Gamma]

14 hours ago, Szlordrin said:

I think if you make an outfit/uniform required, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to please those folks who use different body types. For some people it may not fit their sense of immersion to wear one outfit vs. another. Maybe you make an amulet instead that has a enchantment on it. This would flag the player as having a uniform, and still allow users to choose the uniform. Or what may be better is make it a learnable enchantment and give it to the player, then you can put on any piece of clothing they want. Could also do something in the MCM where you flag a piece of equipment as "Animal Mansion Uniform". I however would be reluctant to add a uniform unless it activates, or enhances the features of the mansion in some way. Otherwise its superfluous. My question is would wearing the uniform flag certain NPC's and sex workers, (That would be cool), does the uniform activate a script that causes animals to lust after you? Does it cause NPC's to approach/proposition you outside of the mansion maybe? IDK that would be for the designer to decide, but I dislike the idea of forced uniform wear unless I get to pick the uniform & body type I'm using.

 

I would do it the way other modders have done it. An outfit that tasairis chooses or determines together with us. And then additionally in the MCM create a settings option, where everyone who doesn't like the standard outfit, can set his own.

[JesusKreist]

Or the people-pleaser solution to call for a uniform in the mod and actually have the uniform in a separate submod (or FOMOD option) that exists in several versions.

One for furries.

One for bdsm folks.

One for tribal women.

One for aristocracy.

One for anime girl weebs.

...

Edited October 1, 2021 by JesusKreist

[unwashed biomass]

I would suggest to take that from shoulders of @tasairis. He could maybe give an option to have such outfit, rest would be a submod. Same with voice speech, I bet when the mod will be somewhat ready some1 will make Voice pack for it.

[PippinTom]

With each day passing it's less and less probable that this mod will ever be ready ?

And it was most promising of them all IMHO

[Ade4u1]

5 hours ago, PippinTom said:

With each day passing it's less and less probable that this mod will ever be ready ?

And it was most promising of them all IMHO

I understand that feeling. I really do. But tasairis is very good at what he does, and he does it when he can. The thing is that as far as mod progression goes, he's made a LOT of progress on the game for only being one guy. I've seen mods at roughly the same size take more than twice as much time as he's had with a team of people. It's exhausting work I imagine. Not trying to marginalize your concern. Just pointing out that it's actually amazing that he's gotten done as much as he has in such a short time.
With that said, @tasairis i hope you will be able to go the distance. Your the last hope at getting this mod where it deserves to be. Your work thus far has been impressive. The dialog itself has actually made me laugh out loud a few times. 

Keep up the good work man.  If I knew more about modding, I would surely offer to help. And thank you for all your hard work.

[tasairis]

Still going to happen, guys. Sorry it's taking so long.

 

Half of my free time these last few weeks has been going towards revamping The List*, and the other half to slogging through the general unpleasantness** that is the internals of this mod. Like:

- How does it manage clients coming to and leaving the Mansion? Which clients can it choose? Which should it not choose? How many and from where? How do they travel to the Mansion? How long do they stay while waiting for the player (or until we pretend Thaena got around to serving them)? How do they get back home safely?

- How are random quests handled given that I don't want to hardcode everything? How can I set up client quests so something can say "here is a quest, it falls into categories X and Y, please make use of it" without having to hack into dialogue or mod code? How does it know which client to choose for a quest, and/or which quest to choose for a client? How do I make sure only one quest is active at a time? How do I ensure that each client is only served once and then leaves?

 

As of last night, the client stuff seems to be done except for a couple weird glitches that might be my fault because I'm screwing around with the engine trying to force it to do things so I can test them. If there's no major bugs (I think there are a couple minor ones I'm ignoring for now) then today I can enter in one or two client quests, and I think I might stop there and focus on cleanup for a release instead of adding more content. Because today is June 125th and that's a really, really long June.

 

The client/quest stuff is the last big feature planned so when that's out of the way I can go back to the easy stuff of writing quests. And I've got a backlog of those. Being able to get back to those is my main motivation right now - and it's actually working.

 

Advance notice: v0.5 is going to be a breaking update because of the number of internal changes I had to make (the kinds of changes that the engine is too dumb to notice and deal with), so you'll have to do an uninstall (new MCM button) and clean save and start over, but I'm putting a Skip button in the MCM for each old quest so you don't have to replay them.

 

 

* The current work is slogging through a list of every LE and SE mod on the site and seeing what other mods it might be related to. Got stuff in place to help that massively, and many mods clearly aren't related to any others, but I still have more than 4000 mods to go through and I can only do about 100-200 per day until my brain can't take any more.

** While I do enjoy the work as a whole, what's "unpleasant" is that the internals of clients and quests and planning for future features and trying to stop myself from cramming complicated things into the MCM is simply not as much fun as writing quest content. But that's the nature of writing software: gotta push through the boring parts to make it to the interesting parts.

[skyrim482]

Bailey looking at the coming update.

[Vaalesha]

On 10/4/2021 at 12:39 AM, tasairis said:

Spoiler

Still going to happen, guys. Sorry it's taking so long.

 

Half of my free time these last few weeks has been going towards revamping The List*, and the other half to slogging through the general unpleasantness** that is the internals of this mod. Like:

- How does it manage clients coming to and leaving the Mansion? Which clients can it choose? Which should it not choose? How many and from where? How do they travel to the Mansion? How long do they stay while waiting for the player (or until we pretend Thaena got around to serving them)? How do they get back home safely?

- How are random quests handled given that I don't want to hardcode everything? How can I set up client quests so something can say "here is a quest, it falls into categories X and Y, please make use of it" without having to hack into dialogue or mod code? How does it know which client to choose for a quest, and/or which quest to choose for a client? How do I make sure only one quest is active at a time? How do I ensure that each client is only served once and then leaves?

 

As of last night, the client stuff seems to be done except for a couple weird glitches that might be my fault because I'm screwing around with the engine trying to force it to do things so I can test them. If there's no major bugs (I think there are a couple minor ones I'm ignoring for now) then today I can enter in one or two client quests, and I think I might stop there and focus on cleanup for a release instead of adding more content. Because today is June 125th and that's a really, really long June.

 

The client/quest stuff is the last big feature planned so when that's out of the way I can go back to the easy stuff of writing quests. And I've got a backlog of those. Being able to get back to those is my main motivation right now - and it's actually working.

 

Advance notice: v0.5 is going to be a breaking update because of the number of internal changes I had to make (the kinds of changes that the engine is too dumb to notice and deal with), so you'll have to do an uninstall (new MCM button) and clean save and start over, but I'm putting a Skip button in the MCM for each old quest so you don't have to replay them.

 

 

* The current work is slogging through a list of every LE and SE mod on the site and seeing what other mods it might be related to. Got stuff in place to help that massively, and many mods clearly aren't related to any others, but I still have more than 4000 mods to go through and I can only do about 100-200 per day until my brain can't take any more.

** While I do enjoy the work as a whole, what's "unpleasant" is that the internals of clients and quests and planning for future features and trying to stop myself from cramming complicated things into the MCM is simply not as much fun as writing quest content. But that's the nature of writing software: gotta push through the boring parts to make it to the interesting parts.

 

Just played through the current build and I had to come here to say that I loved it. The dialogue was really well crafted (as an aspiring author myself this is a focal point for me), the quests are enjoyable, and I really like the replacement of the normal wolfhound dogs with huskies and the addition of female versions of the dogs and horses (now if only there was more support for them...)

Either way you're doing a great job, the quest where you have to collect a horse got me kinda excited because of the initial premise of the quest, going for a different animal at first, but I totally understand how that isn't realistic due to a number of issues.

 

But the main point I wanted to bring up about the horse quest is that when you go to Whiterun and then get chased off for your, ahem, deviancy, you try the same stunt at Solitude. Here I thought to myself that there should at least have been an option, especially with how the dialogue was being led, to try to decieve the saleswoman into believing you just wanted to do "normal horse things."

 

On the other hand, I think it's fine because it ties in nicely with the flyers quest where you first see how some people dislike the idea of laying with a beast and then the upside where even when some people do disagree, they're not total assholes about it and still try to help you find like-minded people for the Animal Mansion.

Overall, I support your dedication and am invested in the future of the mod, if you ever need help there's a whole community here to support you. Don't let the workflow overwhelm you and remember to take care of yourself.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Vaalesha
Formatting

[agelmar]

8 hours ago, Vaalesha said:

Just played through the current build and I had to come here to say that I loved it. The dialogue was really well crafted (as an aspiring author myself this is a focal point for me), the quests are enjoyable, and I really like the replacement of the normal wolfhound dogs with huskies and the addition of female versions of the dogs and horses (now if only there was more support for them...)

Either way you're doing a great job, the quest where you have to collect a horse got me kinda excited because of the initial premise of the quest, going for a different animal at first, but I totally understand how that isn't realistic due to a number of issues.

 

But the main point I wanted to bring up about the horse quest is that when you go to Whiterun and then get chased off for your, ahem, deviancy, you try the same stunt at Solitude. Here I thought to myself that there should at least have been an option, especially with how the dialogue was being led, to try to decieve the saleswoman into believing you just wanted to do "normal horse things."

 

On the other hand, I think it's fine because it ties in nicely with the flyers quest where you first see how some people dislike the idea of laying with a beast and then the upside where even when some people do disagree, they're not total assholes about it and still try to help you find like-minded people for the Animal Mansion.

Overall, I support your dedication and am invested in the future of the mod, if you ever need help there's a whole community here to support you. Don't let the workflow overwhelm you and remember to take care of yourself.

 

Hi Vaalesha,

 

Reading your above post and I've been tracking the process of this mod by Tasairis for awhile now. My question to youself after reading your post is it worth installing and playing the mod in it's current form compared to the old version? Has much changed from the Animal Mansion Plus version? 

 

I've been waiting until the mod was out of beta and an offical full release before installing or trying it, but it seems like the mod still might be worth trying from what I'm reading.

Edited October 9, 2021 by agelmar

[mircislav]

3 hours ago, agelmar said:

is it worth installing and playing the mod

Yes. it's worth and only disappointment is that it's not finished yet... but that's not so bad because we will see more of it, if Tasairis is willing to finish it. This is one of few mods worth waiting for...

[Vaalesha]

7 hours ago, agelmar said:

 

Hi Vaalesha,

 

Reading your above post and I've been tracking the process of this mod by Tasairis for awhile now. My question to youself after reading your post is it worth installing and playing the mod in it's current form compared to the old version? Has much changed from the Animal Mansion Plus version? 

 

I've been waiting until the mod was out of beta and an offical full release before installing or trying it, but it seems like the mod still might be worth trying from what I'm reading.

You should absolutely give it a try, despite it not being finished there are still a few things you can do, a lot of it revolves around talking to different npcs, so if reading dialogue isn't your thing then I would wait for more content to be added in a future build. Not that there isn't any, for only having five quests there's a lot of sex already.

Personally, I'm hopeful that Tasairis can finish this mod because the direction the mod is going in is looking very good so far.

[agelmar]

6 hours ago, mircislav said:

Yes. it's worth and only disappointment is that it's not finished yet... but that's not so bad because we will see more of it, if Tasairis is willing to finish it. This is one of few mods worth waiting for...

 

2 hours ago, Vaalesha said:

You should absolutely give it a try, despite it not being finished there are still a few things you can do, a lot of it revolves around talking to different npcs, so if reading dialogue isn't your thing then I would wait for more content to be added in a future build. Not that there isn't any, for only having five quests there's a lot of sex already.

Personally, I'm hopeful that Tasairis can finish this mod because the direction the mod is going in is looking very good so far.

 

Thank you both for the replies and feedback. I'll give it a try in it's current form, as I' just going through my modlist and updating seeing I've been on break for several months but want to start playing again.

[unwashed biomass]

3 hours ago, agelmar said:

Thank you both for the replies and feedback. I'll give it a try in it's current form, as I' just going through my modlist and updating seeing I've been on break for several months but want to start playing again.

I suggest to not include AM4 in serious playthrough just yet, just test it.

[mircislav]

6 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

I suggest to not include AM4 in serious playthrough just yet

I was wondering, what's "serious playthrough"? In my time, games where made for having fun. Any game can be started again without any consequences, right?

[agelmar]

7 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

I suggest to not include AM4 in serious playthrough just yet, just test it.

 

Thats what I intend to do. As I say just updating mods and going play to iron out any issues before moving on to a full playthrough with a lot of new quest mods added in. I was just wondering if AM4 was worth investing the time into in its currect form compared to the old version and if there was many changes.

 

Thank you for your help.

[agelmar]

Ok just gone to the mansion for the first time and I have clipping issue with outside of the building as I'm using the Great Cities mod that improves Falkreath and gives it an outer wall. The wall only passes through the back of the building exterior cell, and doesnt seem to effect the interior of the inn, so I can live with the clipping issue.

 

Does anyone know if the clipping of the wall at the back of the inn at the exterior area will effect any quests/animations are needed to be performed in this area? 

 

I can see stables to the right of the entrance so those are not effected.

Edited October 10, 2021 by agelmar

[zarantha]

10 hours ago, mircislav said:

I was wondering, what's "serious playthrough"? In my time, games where made for having fun. Any game can be started again without any consequences, right?

 

Serious playthrough is anytime you want to keep the same character for an extended time - like complete the main quest. Some people don't like restarting until they've reached some goal with their current character.

 

If you don't care about restarting every time something breaks, or when the mod is updated and not 'save safe' and requires a new game, then you should be fine to use it.

[tasairis]

On 10/8/2021 at 7:23 PM, Vaalesha said:

But the main point I wanted to bring up about the horse quest is that when you go to Whiterun and then get chased off for your, ahem, deviancy, you try the same stunt at Solitude. Here I thought to myself that there should at least have been an option, especially with how the dialogue was being led, to try to decieve the saleswoman into believing you just wanted to do "normal horse things."

 

As far as I can remember, I'm copying the style from the original quest: player is naive in Whiterun, more cautious at Solitude but then it seems like things are going okay (until they don't), then very cautious in Markarth (until you realize that's unnecessary).

 

I'm open to redoing a little bit of any step in there, but the pattern should stay about the same.

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, agelmar said:

Ok just gone to the mansion for the first time and I have clipping issue with outside of the building as I'm using the Great Cities mod that improves Falkreath and gives it an outer wall. The wall only passes through the back of the building exterior cell, and doesnt seem to effect the interior of the inn, so I can live with the clipping issue.

 

Does anyone know if the clipping of the wall at the back of the inn at the exterior area will effect any quests/animations are needed to be performed in this area? 

 

I can see stables to the right of the entrance so those are not effected.

 

Screenshot? If it's bad enough then I might make a patch to move the wall.

 

But from the sounds of it no, that will not affect anything important. It may or may not screw up the navmeshing in that area, preventing followers and animals from navigating correctly back there, but if that's the case then it only means you would only have to avoid going that way as a shortcut to/from Falkreath - which, given that there's a wall there, you couldn't do anyways.

 

Note that Great Cities should almost certainly load after AM4, which should already be the case - unless their ESP is flagged as a master.

[tasairis]

Re: "should I install and play this?"

 

My official stance is: please do, but not on your normal save and/or don't hold onto the saves you make once you install it. Because occasionally I may change things that will force you to do make a clean save and reinstall, and that's a risky process. To encourage this I'm adding quest skipping so at any point you'll be able to take your normal save, install the mod, skip whatever quests you've seen before and start where you want, and then throw it away.

I do expect to reach a normal release within the next couple versions where it will be safe to install on a real save.

 

As for content, it's trickling in. There isn't any repeatable content released yet but that's coming. If you're really itching for stuff, consider Animal Mansion Plus; playing that will spoil stuff in this version, but the further in we go the more I'm doing stuff differently so it won't be that bad.

[agelmar]

1 hour ago, tasairis said:

 

Screenshot? If it's bad enough then I might make a patch to move the wall.

 

But from the sounds of it no, that will not affect anything important. It may or may not screw up the navmeshing in that area, preventing followers and animals from navigating correctly back there, but if that's the case then it only means you would only have to avoid going that way as a shortcut to/from Falkreath - which, given that there's a wall there, you couldn't do anyways.

 

Note that Great Cities should almost certainly load after AM4, which should already be the case - unless their ESP is flagged as a master.

 

Hi Tasairis. I tested the mod for few hours today and the great Cities mod didnt seem to be an issue with the wall clipped through the back of the inn.  I think if you was to make a patch it would mean you moving the mansion building forward more so not sure its worth it.

 

53 minutes ago, tasairis said:

Re: "should I install and play this?"

 

My official stance is: please do, but not on your normal save and/or don't hold onto the saves you make once you install it. Because occasionally I may change things that will force you to do make a clean save and reinstall, and that's a risky process. To encourage this I'm adding quest skipping so at any point you'll be able to take your normal save, install the mod, skip whatever quests you've seen before and start where you want, and then throw it away.

I do expect to reach a normal release within the next couple versions where it will be safe to install on a real save.

 

As for content, it's trickling in. There isn't any repeatable content released yet but that's coming. If you're really itching for stuff, consider Animal Mansion Plus; playing that will spoil stuff in this version, but the further in we go the more I'm doing stuff differently so it won't be that bad.

 

I played the AMP before and from the time I spent on AM4 today, I can already see a lot of improvemnt with dialogue and the quests. So really looking forward to seeing how far you take this mod. Thank you for your time and mod  

 

Only main issue I had when trying AM4 today was I was playing female Wood Elf character, now with Morningstar - Minimalistic Races of Skyrim at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) That gives you the command animal funtion. I also use Vokrii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) by the same author. Now one of the talents in the sppech tree is to Tame Animals. 

 

The reason I'm mentioning this is because when I had to talk to the animals tduring the quests I sometimes had to try serveral times to get the quest pop-up as I was instead getting the box with the 'Tame Animal & Command Animal' options first. 

 

I still managed to get the quests to progress with using console commands but was a bit annoying at times as sometimes took serveral tries of talking to thew quest animals to get your quest option to appear.

 

Only other issue I had was the during the horse quest the female NPC at Solitude attacked me without warning after the animation(is that meant to happen?) and I couldnt talk to her until I left the area, waited and came back then was able to progress the quest sas somehow she lost aggro on me.

Edited October 10, 2021 by agelmar