Animal Mansion 4??? (Dev Thread)

[tasairis]

Where did I leave off...

 

0.5 is still in progress, I ain't dead and this mod ain't dead. Lately I've been doing a couple other things, but at least one of them involved playing with Story Manager to learn more about how that works and what can and can't be done with it. However I've gotten the animal bug again so I'm coming back to this.

I might remove the female animals now because I realized that it's somewhat breaking to do so, so either I do it now or I wait until the next breaking update (likely 1.0) - I'll start rewriting those quests and see how much work it'll be.

[tasairis]

On 1/15/2022 at 2:30 AM, Aequus said:

Some LE conversions if that's ok. Basically the same conversions, the only differeence is the type of plugin file (esp or esm).

 

Anything changed? I've been trying to keep the SE version backwards-compatible with LE, and except for issues with heads and hair (all of which I think were fixed?) it should work fine without any work.

[Tetras66]

8 hours ago, tasairis said:

 

Anything changed? I've been trying to keep the SE version backwards-compatible with LE, and except for issues with heads and hair (all of which I think were fixed?) it should work fine without any work.

 

Would you mind sharing what you do, to maintain compatibility?

[unwashed biomass]

10 hours ago, tasairis said:

Where did I leave off...

 

0.5 is still in progress, I ain't dead and this mod ain't dead. Lately I've been doing a couple other things, but at least one of them involved playing with Story Manager to learn more about how that works and what can and can't be done with it. However I've gotten the animal bug again so I'm coming back to this.

I might remove the female animals now because I realized that it's somewhat breaking to do so, so either I do it now or I wait until the next breaking update (likely 1.0) - I'll start rewriting those quests and see how much work it'll be.

I for one am actually happy with removal of female animals from mansion. 1 - cost-effect is nonexistening (no anims). 2. Paraphrasing some wise monk - you cannot have consensual sex between male human and female animal.

Edited January 17, 2022 by unwashed biomass

[Szlordrin]

2 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

I for one am actually happy with removal of female animals from mansion. 1 - cost-effect is nonexistening (no anims). 2. Paraphrasing some wise monk - you cannot have consensual sex between male human and female animal.

I'm kinda on the same page, not that I'm kink shaming anyone, thats what this virtual experience is about, escaping the morality of real-life consequence. But there very few (if any) male x female creature animations. So... is it really worth the effort? It could be addon on later for inclusion if some more animations suddenly appeared. I'm happy either way, just throwing in my two cents.

[albiondave]

21 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

I for one am actually happy with removal of female animals from mansion. 1 - cost-effect is nonexistening (no anims). 2. Paraphrasing some wise monk - you cannot have consensual sex between male human and female animal.

I think that there is an element of a catch-22.   There are no [or at least very few] anims available now but there is also very little available to use those anims.   Is there an argument for "build it and  they will come"?   

 

Not sure there is a moral argument to be had given the prevalence of non-con, gore, vore, etc that come with fantasy video games and modded Skyrim in particular.  Rule34 type scenario applies, in my opinion... if it can be built, build it.  

 

Just my view to add to the mix.

[kiberme]

Dude. Please, if there is even a slightest possibility for this mod to not ever be complited (exactly by you, I mean)

then please, can you (in 6.0 or something) give this mod more... comprehensive "framework-y" structure.

For there will be more people in the future who pick it up from you and wont be remaking everything from scratch everytime. 

Sorry if I somehow offended you. For real I'm just asking if you think it's a good idea. 

Edited January 18, 2022 by kiberme

[yuubae]

7 hours ago, albiondave said:

There are no [or at least very few] anims available now but there is also very little available to use those anims.   Is there an argument for "build it and  they will come"?

That would be the case if animations depended on quest mods, or even to a degree if the two were completely separate, but within the SexLab ecosystem, animations are actually the foundation for everything.

If you make an animation for SexLab, players can start it in a variety of ways, from running it via SL's MCM to using mods like SL Matchmaker; quests are not required at all. On the other hand, however, building a quest with a specific animation/animation type in mind (e.g. Human Male on Chaurus Female), then not having an animation like this available breaks the quest - either completely, because it gets stuck on a quest stage it can't move on from, or partially, because everyone acts as though sex has happened even though no sex has happened.

A lack of animations also makes testing quest mods harder, since you can't say for sure that you set up your quest to load & react to SL events correctly until you actually see the animation play out.

So ultimately, I think removing female animals from this mod is a good choice that won't harm the chances of more MCf (CfM?) animations popping up in the future.

 

As an aside, how big is the demand for these kinds of animations among Skyrim players on here? I don't have any interest in them, but I'm genuinenly curious as to how many people would like to see them.

I know there are some in that vein over in the Sims 4 Subforum, but I don't recall seeing much discussion on the topic in Skyrim threads.

Or maybe I just check the wrong threads.

[Ade4u1]

28 minutes ago, yuubae said:

As an aside, how big is the demand for these kinds of animations among Skyrim players on here? I don't have any interest in them, but I'm genuinenly curious as to how many people would like to see them.

I know there are some in that vein over in the Sims 4 Subforum, but I don't recall seeing much discussion on the topic in Skyrim threads.

Or maybe I just check the wrong threads.

That would make for an interesting pull. From what i've read from the people who actually create the animations, it is extremely exhausting and tedious to make them. 

 

7 hours ago, albiondave said:

I think that there is an element of a catch-22.   There are no [or at least very few] anims available now but there is also very little available to use those anims.   Is there an argument for "build it and  they will come"?   

If someone ever does decide to make those animations, I think there would be a minor community of players would would jump on it.  If I'm not mistaken, I think there are a few ways that a male player would initiate the scenario if they so choose to try it. Though I think you could also do the same thing for female characters if you use the strap-on graphics. 

 

If I were to make a quest mod around that, it would be much more of a comedy than anything. Just my personal opinion.

[Mala Red]

Hey, I'm a little bit new to modding Skyrim (used to mod the hell out of FO4), and I've got every other mod working, but this one seems to give a bit of trouble right when I catch Thaena with Bailey. At first I realized I was missing some properly updated mods, fixed those, but now when I catch them during the intro quest I get an Error that says "Missing Thaena/Bailey" thread or something to that effect. Any idea what I might've done wrong?

[tasairis]

On 1/17/2022 at 7:30 AM, Tetras66 said:

Would you mind sharing what you do, to maintain compatibility?

 

Nothing in particular. For the head/hair stuff I "converted" the SE files back to LE, which seems to have done the job. In the ESP there are some things that are known to be incompatible, but while I don't remember exactly what they are, I believe they were with uncommon form types so I'm fairly sure I'm not using them.

[tasairis]

14 hours ago, kiberme said:

Dude. Please, if there is even a slightest possibility for this mod to not ever be complited (exactly by you, I mean)

then please, can you (in 6.0 or something) give this mod more... comprehensive "framework-y" structure.

For there will be more people in the future who pick it up from you and wont be remaking everything from scratch everytime. 

Sorry if I somehow offended you. For real I'm just asking if you think it's a good idea. 

 

It's exactly the framework-y stuff that's taking me so long to finish 0.5.
 

The main points of extensibility would be the random quests, and I'm making that as extensible a system as I can - in fact the goal is to support addon mods that could introduce more quests for the system to choose from (be that for optional features like slavery or just because someone has ideas for new content they want to see). There's a few aspects involved in that, but I'm making sure that the built-in quests aren't any more special or ingrained into the mod than an addon quest would be.

 

Other than that part, I think the way things are set up makes sense and shouldn't be too much of a chore to try to understand.

[tasairis]

19 hours ago, albiondave said:

I think that there is an element of a catch-22.   There are no [or at least very few] anims available now but there is also very little available to use those anims.   Is there an argument for "build it and  they will come"?

 

That's what I was hoping: there are few because there's not much demand, so maybe I could create some demand.

 

And while I still feel that way, I think I could relatively easily add female creatures later when Things Are Different and more conducive to having multiple animals (given how small those basement rooms are). So I'll pull them out and later on the storyline will gain a handful of "since we have the room now, we should get a couple more <species>" quests.

 

19 hours ago, albiondave said:

Not sure there is a moral argument to be had given the prevalence of non-con, gore, vore, etc that come with fantasy video games and modded Skyrim in particular.  Rule34 type scenario applies, in my opinion... if it can be built, build it.

 

Brings me back to the framework/extensible thing. I don't mind toeing the line of non-con, like what happened with Temba and what will happen with Thaena, but I wouldn't want to go as far as slavery or (explicit) rape or gore or "extreme" stuff like that. (So I'm not going to do the draugr client quest, if you've seen it.) That said, I wouldn't be opposed to people creating mods that add-in that type of stuff in... some way that makes sense, not entirely sure but the radiant system would be the most obvious entrypoint.

Edited January 19, 2022 by tasairis

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, yuubae said:

That would be the case if animations depended on quest mods, or even to a degree if the two were completely separate, but within the SexLab ecosystem, animations are actually the foundation for everything.

If you make an animation for SexLab, players can start it in a variety of ways, from running it via SL's MCM to using mods like SL Matchmaker; quests are not required at all. On the other hand, however, building a quest with a specific animation/animation type in mind (e.g. Human Male on Chaurus Female), then not having an animation like this available breaks the quest - either completely, because it gets stuck on a quest stage it can't move on from, or partially, because everyone acts as though sex has happened even though no sex has happened.

 

My solution to that is altering the quest or giving choices depending on animations. What each quest currently does is poll SexLab for the different kinds of animations available, then the quest progresses accordingly. (That's the "Refresh" thing in the MCM.) For example, in the dog seller quest, when you activate a dog there's a popup asking what you want to do, and the FCC/MCC and FCCC/MCCC choices are only shown if there's at least one animation for it.

 

So from a technical standpoint there is a way to deal with it - as long as there's a default path forward in case there aren't animations. For that, so far the default is "assume the player has MNC installed with all animations registered" (and I have a list of those), but later on when I venture into animals that aren't covered by MNC, I'll probably either prompt the player to install animations before continuing, or worst case skip the quest entirely *.

 

11 hours ago, yuubae said:

A lack of animations also makes testing quest mods harder, since you can't say for sure that you set up your quest to load & react to SL events correctly until you actually see the animation play out.

 

It's actually not that hard. The underlying system is the same regardless of everything: either the player or an NPC plus some animal, find animations that match the animal and provided genders **, then tell SexLab to start. So whether it's a female actor and male creature or a male actor and female creature, it all works the same way.

 

 

There is a lot of complexity in this mod's quests that comes from dealing with genders, that's true, but allowing female animals doesn't add much more because the bulk of it is handling female players vs. male players and supporting followers. I can certainly drop support for female animals, for now, but I can't also drop support for male players. And I do want to support followers for either player gender too. So I'm forced into that much complexity already.

 

11 hours ago, yuubae said:

As an aside, how big is the demand for these kinds of animations among Skyrim players on here? I don't have any interest in them, but I'm genuinenly curious as to how many people would like to see them.

 

I've assumed that there were some people who wanted it. I've actually heard some people say that they're used to the state of MC animations and just go along with it.

 

 

* Except for dogs and horses, since I need to know I have some animals available, all creatures provided will be dismissable from the Mansion and then re-acquirable with a "replay" quest. So skipping a quest for an animal would be okay because the player could replay that animal later.

** Okay, that one was hard. Because creature animations in SexLab was an afterthought. And it shows. And there are also some animations out there that simply aren't set up correctly. The result is that SexLab would return animations that didn't actually match the criteria I needed (especially regarding genders). So what I ended up doing was asking SexLab for a basic set of animations with X actors and Y creatures of race Z, then manually scanning each one for whether the actual actor/creature positions are what I needed them to be.

[tasairis]

7 hours ago, Mala Red said:

Hey, I'm a little bit new to modding Skyrim (used to mod the hell out of FO4), and I've got every other mod working, but this one seems to give a bit of trouble right when I catch Thaena with Bailey. At first I realized I was missing some properly updated mods, fixed those, but now when I catch them during the intro quest I get an Error that says "Missing Thaena/Bailey" thread or something to that effect. Any idea what I might've done wrong?

 

What the mod is trying to do is get Thaena and Bailey "together", pause stage progression until you find them, then enable progression like normal so the scene completes. You got the popup when you found them because they weren't in a SexLab thread at that point: either it wasn't able to pause progression earlier, or the thread died, or something else happened.

 

You should have an objective to talk to Thaena...

[Mala Red]

5 hours ago, tasairis said:

 

What the mod is trying to do is get Thaena and Bailey "together", pause stage progression until you find them, then enable progression like normal so the scene completes. You got the popup when you found them because they weren't in a SexLab thread at that point: either it wasn't able to pause progression earlier, or the thread died, or something else happened.

 

You should have an objective to talk to Thaena...

The specific error it gives is [AM4][FATAL] No Thaena/Bailey thread; so i'm not sure if that just stops the ability to even "engage" with them, but after talking to Thaena and choosing the "I guess" option, when I interact with Bailey to "try him out" Nothing happens. My character moves to them, but aside from that nothing happens.

 

Then after choosing 'how about an encore instead" Thaena walks over to a bench and sits down, then nothing happens.

 

I'm not very far at all so I wouldn't mind booting back to an old save to mess with some mods... but I'm not sure what to fix

Edited January 19, 2022 by Mala Red

[tasairis]

1 hour ago, Mala Red said:

The specific error it gives is [AM4][FATAL] No Thaena/Bailey thread; so i'm not sure if that just stops the ability to even "engage" with them, but after talking to Thaena and choosing the "I guess" option, when I interact with Bailey to "try him out" Nothing happens. My character moves to them, but aside from that nothing happens.

 

Sounds like you have some SexLab-related issues that aren't necessarily related to this mod. Have problems elsewhere? Do you have a lot of script-heavy mods? Experiencing lag? Any other errors in the Papyrus log besides that?

 

1 hour ago, Mala Red said:

Then after choosing 'how about an encore instead" Thaena walks over to a bench and sits down, then nothing happens.

 

Given the problems you're having with Bailey yourself, this isn't surprising.

Edited January 19, 2022 by tasairis

[albiondave]

9 hours ago, tasairis said:

 

That's what I was hoping: there are few because there's not much demand, so maybe I could create some demand.

 

And while I still feel that way, I think I could relatively easily add female creatures later when Things Are Different and more conducive to having multiple animals (given how small those basement rooms are). So I'll pull them out and later on the storyline will gain a handful of "since we have the room now, we should get a couple more <species>" quests.

 

A excellent idea in terms of keeping options open.  

I'm constantly on the look out for good, new animations so perhaps we need a side discussion for who has found what that is public available, patreon-subs, foreign language, etc.

 

[Mala Red]

3 hours ago, tasairis said:

Any other errors in the Papyrus log besides that?

I have no clue where to find the Papyrus log, but i imagine the answer is yes. It seems like a massive mount of mods are just not working aside from MME which I have installed so I think I'm just gonna have to start (very painfully) from scratch

[Sotheter]

17 hours ago, Mala Red said:

The specific error it gives is [AM4][FATAL] No Thaena/Bailey thread; so i'm not sure if that just stops the ability to even "engage" with them, but after talking to Thaena and choosing the "I guess" option, when I interact with Bailey to "try him out" Nothing happens. My character moves to them, but aside from that nothing happens.

 

Then after choosing 'how about an encore instead" Thaena walks over to a bench and sits down, then nothing happens.

 

I'm not very far at all so I wouldn't mind booting back to an old save to mess with some mods... but I'm not sure what to fix

I had the same issue when i forgot to activate animal stuff from sexlab config, Sexlab > Animation settings > Allow creature animation.

[Koiana]

On 1/19/2022 at 12:45 AM, yuubae said:

As an aside, how big is the demand for these kinds of animations among Skyrim players on here? I don't have any interest in them, but I'm genuinenly curious as to how many people would like to see them.

I know there are some in that vein over in the Sims 4 Subforum, but I don't recall seeing much discussion on the topic in Skyrim threads.

Or maybe I just check the wrong threads.

I know the most of current skyrim animators personally, and I can say with confidence that none of them are interested in male x female creature anims. It's fair to say that the vast majority of their financial supporters also have no interest in them. So I gather the fan base for Male x female creature anims is a small minority and I doubt that current animators are ever going to make these anims. 

[bluestun]

What is your favorite animal to work on with this mod?

[tasairis]

1 hour ago, bluestun said:

What is your favorite animal to work on with this mod?

 

Me? I guess the dogs, mostly because the others have been pains in my ass: horses were (are still) screwy, with the wolf I tried to do other things and the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and the bear doesn't fit in the fucking doorways. Sabre cat is the only other one I have meaningful progress on and it's... well, large like the bear, but at least it's an interesting story to go with it.

[lightspeed77]

In terms of similarity to AM+, are we able to complete through all the animal fetch quests and then the side characters stories will further develop with updates? Or will animal acquiring/progression and character story/relationships be updated bit by bit, sorry if this dosent make sense xD 

[DonQuiWho]

FWIW, any chance you might consider (at some point) adding a link to the mod start, or even just one (maybe random) task , as being an outcome from Simple Slavery?  

 

Would add some variety and spice, and ppl wouldn't have to select it as an SS option if they didn't want to ...