Animal Mansion 4??? (Dev Thread)

[unwashed biomass]

On 9/13/2022 at 5:49 AM, tasairis said:

A two-part "ghost" story introduction followed by the player standing in a fucking cage while NPCs talked

Is this from your untamed verions? Any way googd luck for both projects. Dark Console UT2 will come probably in 2432 or later ( and it will have fuckton of features that prolly won't play bnice in vr.) I rooting for you m8 (dont mind waiting- i just hope ill live long enuf to actuallye xperience your mods - no pun intended). Take your time, above all don't burn youself. (maybewhen i finish my Scripting lessons ill contribute to modding commmunity (had an idea for mod quite quite a long time ( Finding wolf - nor so ordonary (Fenris his mane) that sole purpouse is to make Dovaking her personale bitc ( With unortodox mariage system - gildergreen and custom faction and affinity- also he wouldn't mind sharing his bitch to other animals) But for now I m hidered with my skills unfortunatelly). Anyway god speed. Hingh hopes, such project dont wanna me wish for nuclear holosaust XD

[Incubusbul]

I'm stuck with the following quest:

The Refuge: I met a woman named Abelone. She needs my help to realize her dream of living amongst the Falmer.

After talking to her, she said, “Let's go. Just follow my lead”, but she didn’t enter the cave, just stayed outside. And there are no other lines about the quest.
 

Spoiler

 

What should I do?

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Incubusbul

[Koiana]

59 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

I'm stuck with the following quest:

The Refuge: I met a woman named Abelone. She needs my help to realize her dream of living amongst the Falmer.

After talking to her, she said, “Let's go. Just follow my lead”, but she didn’t enter the cave, just stayed outside. And there are no other lines about the quest.
 

  Hide contents

 

What should I do?

 

That hasn't been implemented in AM4 ? That's Animal mansion plus. Wrong thread. Wrong Mod.

[Incubusbul]

19 hours ago, Koiana said:

That hasn't been implemented in AM4 ? That's Animal mansion plus. Wrong thread. Wrong Mod.

 

Okay, thanks. I didn't realize that.

[tasairis]

Been away a while, haven't caught up on posts yet, but I do want to put something out there to think about before I get to that.

 

State of the union: I'm spending pretty much all my time working on a portfolio I can show to potential employers. Because I don't have much knowledge about the current fads and my resume won't have anything useful for my last job. Got a couple projects I could use for it so that's what I have to do for a while longer, but I also need to start applying soon.

 

Upside, I've had lots of time to think about the Animal Mansion concept. And I've got what could be a controversial idea, but if you want to weigh in then you'll have to deal with a lot of text and full spoilers of almost everything:

Spoiler

The original AM/AM Plus mod goes something like this:

 

You find Thaena, there's a main story line where you gather animals and stick them in the basement, then there are a handful of random quests you can play with. You pick up a bard named Jesper at some point. There was another woman named Jala who was planned to appear to serve some role I don't remember, if it was even decided.

 

The Mansion is on the outskirts of Falkreath (town) only because the Jarl allows it. Later in the main story, Siddgeir would confront our hero(ine)s and make them suffer a bit for his continued blessing; I don't know how it would have worked with Dengeir post-Civil War, had you correctly sided with the Stormcloaks.

 

My version of the mod has been keeping that mostly the same, at least as far as the important parts are concerned:

 

Jesper still comes in. Jala would also come in and act as a hostess (or whatever you want to call it) along with the player. The main story would introduce about 9 (?) animals until Siddgeir reasserts himself.

At that point Thaena would be so disgusted that she decides the Mansion must move to get away from him. Probably to the Whiterun Plains because those are so conveniently central to everything, but maybe into a corner of The Reach, or possibly even The Pale or The Rift. I hadn't scouted that yet.

 

Then comes the process of moving. Jala is a quirky alteration magic genius who plays a large role in making all this happen. The new location is chosen not just because it's suitable for a building but also because it connects to a large cave - at least twice the size of Eldergleam's, probably more. The animals would stay in that cave instead of in a basement, affording more room for new animals, not to mention space for them to roam around. The Mansion itself would probably expand somewhat to offer beds for the NPCs to stay in overnight, since the alternatives are kicking everyone out at night or keeping the place open 24x7.

 

The process of building would be very simple: the player does whatever for a week while NPCs do the building, and/or contributes to building a la Hearthfires.

 

Once built, the player would have to lead the accumulated animals to the new location. There would be convenient and inconvenient interruptions of sex. At least some of them would be treated as follower-pets, allowing you to take your sweet time to eventually make it to their new home.

 

Note that some of these changes are necessary, in one shape or another:

 

The original design of the Mansion has the upper stories with the waiting room/tavern and upstairs bedrooms. There are only two beds, one for Thaena and one for the player, despite there being two additional NPCs who need to work there.

 

The basement had 8 small rooms, 7 of which were used for animals and the other for a creepy necromancer and his "friends", plus 1 larger room for parties. This puts a rather definitive cap on the number of interior animals at 8 (because I would have made the necromancer rent the party room). I count at least 24 species that could reasonably be kept indoors, which easily means the player and Thaena are forced to decide which ones they want to keep and which ones to kick out. To that end I already remodelled the basement into 12+1 rooms, but that's still not enough.

 

Nevermind that keeping them in that basement all the time is animal abuse.

 

There would be some other unrelated modifications to the current mod first:

 

Given my realization earlier that I was improperly using the mod to try to vent creativity, some things would be toned down for the sake of simplicity. One of each animal, for instance; the interesting scenarios with multiple dogs and wolves (and I think one or two other species) could be provided by a client bringing their own dog/wolf/whatever, and Thaena could probably be convinced to allow the occasional use of Bailey too. One horse also makes the exterior much less annoying as the single stable could thus double in size.

 

The writing also needs to be simplified. At varying points and with varying degrees of success, I had tried to cram in some occasionally unnecessary bits into quests. The best example of this (though I don't remember if it's survived through rewrites since then) was incorporating some amount of romancing of Thaena into the dialogue: here and there you had a choice of how to respond to something, where one option would increase her disposition (not relationship rank) to you while another would lower it. Sometimes increase or decrease a small amount, sometimes a large amount. This concept went nowhere because it was half-assed, and later on I decided that the romance angle should be handled as a totally separate thing.

 

The main problem in all this was, and still is, the quests:

 

Developing everything to be able to work with the old and then with the new Mansions was painful. It was turning into a lot of aliases that would have to shuffle around. It meant some dialogue that had to vary based on location. It meant some AI packages would have to get more complicated. The other choice was to duplicate everything, and I didn't want to do that because I wanted to support a fairly large number of quests before the move happened (it being so late in the story that there needed to be a good number quests by then).

 

Thus I wanted to accelerate the timeframe: get only three or four animals in, allowing only a couple clients into the Mansion at a time and a relatively small number of available quests to repeat, so that there wouldn't be as much work required. But that meant making some rather significant changes to how "The Animal Mansion" worked. This then led to me thinking I should resign myself to making larger and larger changes because I had managed to get my foot in that open door. And it wasn't long until I noticed that it wasn't "The Animal Mansion" anymore.

 

I could resolve this by doing the move now instead of later:

 

The exact location of the Mansion isn't critical to the story. Because while being in Falkreath Hold gives Siddgeir a good reason to worm his way into your life, that could be accomplished with something as easy as "even though I'm building in <other hold>, Jarl Siddgeir loaned me the money I needed", half of which is the plot already in place, yet still not too significant a departure from the original design. Regarding Thaena's disgust of Siddgeir, rather than use that as a plot device to move location, it could serve as just a normal plot point that could be handled any number of ways: emptying the piggy bank to pay him off, finding a benefactor to buy the debt, coercion, etc, none of which are particularly dependent on being in Falkreath Hold or not. Hell, why not make all three of those options for the player to choose from?

 

The biggest gain is, of course, a single location that will not move. I can make the building similar to how it is now, including putting the first few animals into the basement, but if the cave - cave system? - already exists then I can transition to using that early on - say, after getting the bear ("I'm really, really not comfortable with having a bear downstairs"...). Honestly, I've also been looking forward to setting up that cave as I have no lack of ideas for what to do with it, ranging from jumping puzzles (omfg <3) to scenery design (Sorlis Balarn's Treasure has a simple cave that still took my breath away when I saw it) to bandit caches (because otherwise it wouldn't be Skyrim), and the chaurus/Falmer quest even offers a convenient excuse to connect the cave to Blackreach.

 

Using the cave as a place to hold the animals means I don't have to put as much effort into those damned fucking doors: something special for dogs, wolves, and bears (horses stay outside) just to start with, then after transitioning to the cave, all I have to do is put a locked gate on the outside which any animal can walk through without extra effort on my part. However, I hate those doors so much I'm considering whether to partially adopt the cave right at the get-go - perhaps as an exterior entrance to the Mansion's basement, given the cave itself wouldn't be suitable unless the player cleared it out...

 

There are some other benefits:

 

Development time is first on my mind. Everything I've been stuck on so far has been somehow related to The Move (and The Damned Fucking Doors) so if I can get rid of that then I get rid of a huge chunk of complexity. Which means client quests are much less complex, which means I don't really need as much beta testing, which means I could actually switch to a normal development process of releasing this as an actual mod instead of as a file buried in a thread.

 

It also adds/retains some spice with the existing story. It's still very much "The Animal Mansion", but putting it in a new location gives it some variety that can make it a little more interesting for people who've managed to memorize the mod across playthroughs, and allows me to decrease the amount of spice I was adding in other places. Additionally, if the basement doesn't have to be dedicated to supporting many animals plus a party room, it can be arranged in a much more typical basement style - even function as a working basement for the business above it (and even more so when the few animals who need to occupy it can move out).

 

Obviously there are a couple drawbacks:

 

Development time is first on my mind. While time spent in Creation Kit would go down for the most part, I'd have to invest some more time into writing the quests: the ones now don't quite translate over like they would need to, mostly because there were considerations made in their writing to account for what I thought the future would be. Not a whole lot of change, and even less if you consider some of these changes I was having to make anyway as part of the simplification process, but enough. What's more, I haven't put a whole lot of time into thinking these changes through either.

 

What also counts as a drawback is that I don't have a whole lot of choice. While the current situation is unsustainable, until now I've had exactly two options to consider:

1. Fight through it and make it happen. Suffice it to say that's an unpleasant prospect, and one I don't know how to do.

2. "Give up". I don't mean kill the mod but change what I wanted to do. Give up on the new Mansion. Give up on many of the larger changes. Focus on revamping the original mod, bringing the main story to a conclusion, and then spending the rest of my time creating random quests for it.

 

A compounding factor here is my imagination. As I think more and more about NSFW modding in Skyrim, I come up with random ideas here and there, and they distract me from the rest of my work. I need an outlet for them, and if I can't throw that into this mod then I have to throw them into something else. I mean, creatures are nice and all, but sometimes I want something different. So far I've been successfully dumping the non-creature stuff into another mod concept. Then I realized that if I chose option 2 above then that means I'll have some amount of creature stuff that can't be dumped here and would have to go into a third mod concept - and honestly, that's appealing, because I could do something totally new with a blank slate.

 

I've already decided that I need a second mod for non-creature stuff. It's going to happen. It's already started, to some extent. But I'd really rather much put as much of the creature stuff into this mod as I can.

 

Where I am now:

 

I don't have a good alternative beyond the one I've described: move the Mansion now, give it the caves now (albeit somewhat unused to start with), and adjust the stories so far to suit. Which will take more time in addition to the stuff keeping my life busy as it is. But what I'm doing now obviously isn't working and has to change, and I would much rather change it for the better than for the worse.

 

[zarantha]

17 hours ago, tasairis said:

Been away a while, haven't caught up on posts yet, but I do want to put something out there to think about before I get to that.

 

State of the union: I'm spending pretty much all my time working on a portfolio I can show to potential employers. Because I don't have much knowledge about the current fads and my resume won't have anything useful for my last job. Got a couple projects I could use for it so that's what I have to do for a while longer, but I also need to start applying soon.

 

Upside, I've had lots of time to think about the Animal Mansion concept. And I've got what could be a controversial idea, but if you want to weigh in then you'll have to deal with a lot of text and full spoilers of almost everything:

  Hide contents

The original AM/AM Plus mod goes something like this:

 

You find Thaena, there's a main story line where you gather animals and stick them in the basement, then there are a handful of random quests you can play with. You pick up a bard named Jesper at some point. There was another woman named Jala who was planned to appear to serve some role I don't remember, if it was even decided.

 

The Mansion is on the outskirts of Falkreath (town) only because the Jarl allows it. Later in the main story, Siddgeir would confront our hero(ine)s and make them suffer a bit for his continued blessing; I don't know how it would have worked with Dengeir post-Civil War, had you correctly sided with the Stormcloaks.

 

My version of the mod has been keeping that mostly the same, at least as far as the important parts are concerned:

 

Jesper still comes in. Jala would also come in and act as a hostess (or whatever you want to call it) along with the player. The main story would introduce about 9 (?) animals until Siddgeir reasserts himself.

At that point Thaena would be so disgusted that she decides the Mansion must move to get away from him. Probably to the Whiterun Plains because those are so conveniently central to everything, but maybe into a corner of The Reach, or possibly even The Pale or The Rift. I hadn't scouted that yet.

 

Then comes the process of moving. Jala is a quirky alteration magic genius who plays a large role in making all this happen. The new location is chosen not just because it's suitable for a building but also because it connects to a large cave - at least twice the size of Eldergleam's, probably more. The animals would stay in that cave instead of in a basement, affording more room for new animals, not to mention space for them to roam around. The Mansion itself would probably expand somewhat to offer beds for the NPCs to stay in overnight, since the alternatives are kicking everyone out at night or keeping the place open 24x7.

 

The process of building would be very simple: the player does whatever for a week while NPCs do the building, and/or contributes to building a la Hearthfires.

 

Once built, the player would have to lead the accumulated animals to the new location. There would be convenient and inconvenient interruptions of sex. At least some of them would be treated as follower-pets, allowing you to take your sweet time to eventually make it to their new home.

 

Note that some of these changes are necessary, in one shape or another:

 

The original design of the Mansion has the upper stories with the waiting room/tavern and upstairs bedrooms. There are only two beds, one for Thaena and one for the player, despite there being two additional NPCs who need to work there.

 

The basement had 8 small rooms, 7 of which were used for animals and the other for a creepy necromancer and his "friends", plus 1 larger room for parties. This puts a rather definitive cap on the number of interior animals at 8 (because I would have made the necromancer rent the party room). I count at least 24 species that could reasonably be kept indoors, which easily means the player and Thaena are forced to decide which ones they want to keep and which ones to kick out. To that end I already remodelled the basement into 12+1 rooms, but that's still not enough.

 

Nevermind that keeping them in that basement all the time is animal abuse.

 

There would be some other unrelated modifications to the current mod first:

 

Given my realization earlier that I was improperly using the mod to try to vent creativity, some things would be toned down for the sake of simplicity. One of each animal, for instance; the interesting scenarios with multiple dogs and wolves (and I think one or two other species) could be provided by a client bringing their own dog/wolf/whatever, and Thaena could probably be convinced to allow the occasional use of Bailey too. One horse also makes the exterior much less annoying as the single stable could thus double in size.

 

The writing also needs to be simplified. At varying points and with varying degrees of success, I had tried to cram in some occasionally unnecessary bits into quests. The best example of this (though I don't remember if it's survived through rewrites since then) was incorporating some amount of romancing of Thaena into the dialogue: here and there you had a choice of how to respond to something, where one option would increase her disposition (not relationship rank) to you while another would lower it. Sometimes increase or decrease a small amount, sometimes a large amount. This concept went nowhere because it was half-assed, and later on I decided that the romance angle should be handled as a totally separate thing.

 

The main problem in all this was, and still is, the quests:

 

Developing everything to be able to work with the old and then with the new Mansions was painful. It was turning into a lot of aliases that would have to shuffle around. It meant some dialogue that had to vary based on location. It meant some AI packages would have to get more complicated. The other choice was to duplicate everything, and I didn't want to do that because I wanted to support a fairly large number of quests before the move happened (it being so late in the story that there needed to be a good number quests by then).

 

Thus I wanted to accelerate the timeframe: get only three or four animals in, allowing only a couple clients into the Mansion at a time and a relatively small number of available quests to repeat, so that there wouldn't be as much work required. But that meant making some rather significant changes to how "The Animal Mansion" worked. This then led to me thinking I should resign myself to making larger and larger changes because I had managed to get my foot in that open door. And it wasn't long until I noticed that it wasn't "The Animal Mansion" anymore.

 

I could resolve this by doing the move now instead of later:

 

The exact location of the Mansion isn't critical to the story. Because while being in Falkreath Hold gives Siddgeir a good reason to worm his way into your life, that could be accomplished with something as easy as "even though I'm building in <other hold>, Jarl Siddgeir loaned me the money I needed", half of which is the plot already in place, yet still not too significant a departure from the original design. Regarding Thaena's disgust of Siddgeir, rather than use that as a plot device to move location, it could serve as just a normal plot point that could be handled any number of ways: emptying the piggy bank to pay him off, finding a benefactor to buy the debt, coercion, etc, none of which are particularly dependent on being in Falkreath Hold or not. Hell, why not make all three of those options for the player to choose from?

 

The biggest gain is, of course, a single location that will not move. I can make the building similar to how it is now, including putting the first few animals into the basement, but if the cave - cave system? - already exists then I can transition to using that early on - say, after getting the bear ("I'm really, really not comfortable with having a bear downstairs"...). Honestly, I've also been looking forward to setting up that cave as I have no lack of ideas for what to do with it, ranging from jumping puzzles (omfg <3) to scenery design (Sorlis Balarn's Treasure has a simple cave that still took my breath away when I saw it) to bandit caches (because otherwise it wouldn't be Skyrim), and the chaurus/Falmer quest even offers a convenient excuse to connect the cave to Blackreach.

 

Using the cave as a place to hold the animals means I don't have to put as much effort into those damned fucking doors: something special for dogs, wolves, and bears (horses stay outside) just to start with, then after transitioning to the cave, all I have to do is put a locked gate on the outside which any animal can walk through without extra effort on my part. However, I hate those doors so much I'm considering whether to partially adopt the cave right at the get-go - perhaps as an exterior entrance to the Mansion's basement, given the cave itself wouldn't be suitable unless the player cleared it out...

 

There are some other benefits:

 

Development time is first on my mind. Everything I've been stuck on so far has been somehow related to The Move (and The Damned Fucking Doors) so if I can get rid of that then I get rid of a huge chunk of complexity. Which means client quests are much less complex, which means I don't really need as much beta testing, which means I could actually switch to a normal development process of releasing this as an actual mod instead of as a file buried in a thread.

 

It also adds/retains some spice with the existing story. It's still very much "The Animal Mansion", but putting it in a new location gives it some variety that can make it a little more interesting for people who've managed to memorize the mod across playthroughs, and allows me to decrease the amount of spice I was adding in other places. Additionally, if the basement doesn't have to be dedicated to supporting many animals plus a party room, it can be arranged in a much more typical basement style - even function as a working basement for the business above it (and even more so when the few animals who need to occupy it can move out).

 

Obviously there are a couple drawbacks:

 

Development time is first on my mind. While time spent in Creation Kit would go down for the most part, I'd have to invest some more time into writing the quests: the ones now don't quite translate over like they would need to, mostly because there were considerations made in their writing to account for what I thought the future would be. Not a whole lot of change, and even less if you consider some of these changes I was having to make anyway as part of the simplification process, but enough. What's more, I haven't put a whole lot of time into thinking these changes through either.

 

What also counts as a drawback is that I don't have a whole lot of choice. While the current situation is unsustainable, until now I've had exactly two options to consider:

1. Fight through it and make it happen. Suffice it to say that's an unpleasant prospect, and one I don't know how to do.

2. "Give up". I don't mean kill the mod but change what I wanted to do. Give up on the new Mansion. Give up on many of the larger changes. Focus on revamping the original mod, bringing the main story to a conclusion, and then spending the rest of my time creating random quests for it.

 

A compounding factor here is my imagination. As I think more and more about NSFW modding in Skyrim, I come up with random ideas here and there, and they distract me from the rest of my work. I need an outlet for them, and if I can't throw that into this mod then I have to throw them into something else. I mean, creatures are nice and all, but sometimes I want something different. So far I've been successfully dumping the non-creature stuff into another mod concept. Then I realized that if I chose option 2 above then that means I'll have some amount of creature stuff that can't be dumped here and would have to go into a third mod concept - and honestly, that's appealing, because I could do something totally new with a blank slate.

 

I've already decided that I need a second mod for non-creature stuff. It's going to happen. It's already started, to some extent. But I'd really rather much put as much of the creature stuff into this mod as I can.

 

Where I am now:

 

I don't have a good alternative beyond the one I've described: move the Mansion now, give it the caves now (albeit somewhat unused to start with), and adjust the stories so far to suit. Which will take more time in addition to the stuff keeping my life busy as it is. But what I'm doing now obviously isn't working and has to change, and I would much rather change it for the better than for the worse.

 

 

I like the idea of moving it at the start. I like the idea of sticking it in the whiterun plains somewhere. The caves don't even have to be utilized at the start, they can be found later by the player. Kinda like, we decided to keep the animals, where do we stick them? Putting them in a room is mean...  Oh hey, i found this cave right out back...

 

I would like for the main quest of the mod to be completed sooner rather than later, but the ideas you have put forward are also awesome. If moving the mansion to start somewhere else would remove a lot of the problems you have had that prevent you from finishing those ideas, i'm all for moving and then fighting through to make it happen. But don't stress yourself out over it. I'm sure most of us would be perfectly happy with just getting a basic rewrite that would let you finish the quest and then add other things later. Could even be a new quest line after the original quest is finished.

Edited October 8, 2022 by zarantha

[Fakenet]

On 10/8/2022 at 2:40 AM, tasairis said:

Been away a while, haven't caught up on posts yet, but I do want to put something out there to think about before I get to that.

 

State of the union: I'm spending pretty much all my time working on a portfolio I can show to potential employers. Because I don't have much knowledge about the current fads and my resume won't have anything useful for my last job. Got a couple projects I could use for it so that's what I have to do for a while longer, but I also need to start applying soon.

 

Upside, I've had lots of time to think about the Animal Mansion concept. And I've got what could be a controversial idea, but if you want to weigh in then you'll have to deal with a lot of text and full spoilers of almost everything:

  Reveal hidden contents

The original AM/AM Plus mod goes something like this:

 

You find Thaena, there's a main story line where you gather animals and stick them in the basement, then there are a handful of random quests you can play with. You pick up a bard named Jesper at some point. There was another woman named Jala who was planned to appear to serve some role I don't remember, if it was even decided.

 

The Mansion is on the outskirts of Falkreath (town) only because the Jarl allows it. Later in the main story, Siddgeir would confront our hero(ine)s and make them suffer a bit for his continued blessing; I don't know how it would have worked with Dengeir post-Civil War, had you correctly sided with the Stormcloaks.

 

My version of the mod has been keeping that mostly the same, at least as far as the important parts are concerned:

 

Jesper still comes in. Jala would also come in and act as a hostess (or whatever you want to call it) along with the player. The main story would introduce about 9 (?) animals until Siddgeir reasserts himself.

At that point Thaena would be so disgusted that she decides the Mansion must move to get away from him. Probably to the Whiterun Plains because those are so conveniently central to everything, but maybe into a corner of The Reach, or possibly even The Pale or The Rift. I hadn't scouted that yet.

 

Then comes the process of moving. Jala is a quirky alteration magic genius who plays a large role in making all this happen. The new location is chosen not just because it's suitable for a building but also because it connects to a large cave - at least twice the size of Eldergleam's, probably more. The animals would stay in that cave instead of in a basement, affording more room for new animals, not to mention space for them to roam around. The Mansion itself would probably expand somewhat to offer beds for the NPCs to stay in overnight, since the alternatives are kicking everyone out at night or keeping the place open 24x7.

 

The process of building would be very simple: the player does whatever for a week while NPCs do the building, and/or contributes to building a la Hearthfires.

 

Once built, the player would have to lead the accumulated animals to the new location. There would be convenient and inconvenient interruptions of sex. At least some of them would be treated as follower-pets, allowing you to take your sweet time to eventually make it to their new home.

 

Note that some of these changes are necessary, in one shape or another:

 

The original design of the Mansion has the upper stories with the waiting room/tavern and upstairs bedrooms. There are only two beds, one for Thaena and one for the player, despite there being two additional NPCs who need to work there.

 

The basement had 8 small rooms, 7 of which were used for animals and the other for a creepy necromancer and his "friends", plus 1 larger room for parties. This puts a rather definitive cap on the number of interior animals at 8 (because I would have made the necromancer rent the party room). I count at least 24 species that could reasonably be kept indoors, which easily means the player and Thaena are forced to decide which ones they want to keep and which ones to kick out. To that end I already remodelled the basement into 12+1 rooms, but that's still not enough.

 

Nevermind that keeping them in that basement all the time is animal abuse.

 

There would be some other unrelated modifications to the current mod first:

 

Given my realization earlier that I was improperly using the mod to try to vent creativity, some things would be toned down for the sake of simplicity. One of each animal, for instance; the interesting scenarios with multiple dogs and wolves (and I think one or two other species) could be provided by a client bringing their own dog/wolf/whatever, and Thaena could probably be convinced to allow the occasional use of Bailey too. One horse also makes the exterior much less annoying as the single stable could thus double in size.

 

The writing also needs to be simplified. At varying points and with varying degrees of success, I had tried to cram in some occasionally unnecessary bits into quests. The best example of this (though I don't remember if it's survived through rewrites since then) was incorporating some amount of romancing of Thaena into the dialogue: here and there you had a choice of how to respond to something, where one option would increase her disposition (not relationship rank) to you while another would lower it. Sometimes increase or decrease a small amount, sometimes a large amount. This concept went nowhere because it was half-assed, and later on I decided that the romance angle should be handled as a totally separate thing.

 

The main problem in all this was, and still is, the quests:

 

Developing everything to be able to work with the old and then with the new Mansions was painful. It was turning into a lot of aliases that would have to shuffle around. It meant some dialogue that had to vary based on location. It meant some AI packages would have to get more complicated. The other choice was to duplicate everything, and I didn't want to do that because I wanted to support a fairly large number of quests before the move happened (it being so late in the story that there needed to be a good number quests by then).

 

Thus I wanted to accelerate the timeframe: get only three or four animals in, allowing only a couple clients into the Mansion at a time and a relatively small number of available quests to repeat, so that there wouldn't be as much work required. But that meant making some rather significant changes to how "The Animal Mansion" worked. This then led to me thinking I should resign myself to making larger and larger changes because I had managed to get my foot in that open door. And it wasn't long until I noticed that it wasn't "The Animal Mansion" anymore.

 

I could resolve this by doing the move now instead of later:

 

The exact location of the Mansion isn't critical to the story. Because while being in Falkreath Hold gives Siddgeir a good reason to worm his way into your life, that could be accomplished with something as easy as "even though I'm building in <other hold>, Jarl Siddgeir loaned me the money I needed", half of which is the plot already in place, yet still not too significant a departure from the original design. Regarding Thaena's disgust of Siddgeir, rather than use that as a plot device to move location, it could serve as just a normal plot point that could be handled any number of ways: emptying the piggy bank to pay him off, finding a benefactor to buy the debt, coercion, etc, none of which are particularly dependent on being in Falkreath Hold or not. Hell, why not make all three of those options for the player to choose from?

 

The biggest gain is, of course, a single location that will not move. I can make the building similar to how it is now, including putting the first few animals into the basement, but if the cave - cave system? - already exists then I can transition to using that early on - say, after getting the bear ("I'm really, really not comfortable with having a bear downstairs"...). Honestly, I've also been looking forward to setting up that cave as I have no lack of ideas for what to do with it, ranging from jumping puzzles (omfg <3) to scenery design (Sorlis Balarn's Treasure has a simple cave that still took my breath away when I saw it) to bandit caches (because otherwise it wouldn't be Skyrim), and the chaurus/Falmer quest even offers a convenient excuse to connect the cave to Blackreach.

 

Using the cave as a place to hold the animals means I don't have to put as much effort into those damned fucking doors: something special for dogs, wolves, and bears (horses stay outside) just to start with, then after transitioning to the cave, all I have to do is put a locked gate on the outside which any animal can walk through without extra effort on my part. However, I hate those doors so much I'm considering whether to partially adopt the cave right at the get-go - perhaps as an exterior entrance to the Mansion's basement, given the cave itself wouldn't be suitable unless the player cleared it out...

 

There are some other benefits:

 

Development time is first on my mind. Everything I've been stuck on so far has been somehow related to The Move (and The Damned Fucking Doors) so if I can get rid of that then I get rid of a huge chunk of complexity. Which means client quests are much less complex, which means I don't really need as much beta testing, which means I could actually switch to a normal development process of releasing this as an actual mod instead of as a file buried in a thread.

 

It also adds/retains some spice with the existing story. It's still very much "The Animal Mansion", but putting it in a new location gives it some variety that can make it a little more interesting for people who've managed to memorize the mod across playthroughs, and allows me to decrease the amount of spice I was adding in other places. Additionally, if the basement doesn't have to be dedicated to supporting many animals plus a party room, it can be arranged in a much more typical basement style - even function as a working basement for the business above it (and even more so when the few animals who need to occupy it can move out).

 

Obviously there are a couple drawbacks:

 

Development time is first on my mind. While time spent in Creation Kit would go down for the most part, I'd have to invest some more time into writing the quests: the ones now don't quite translate over like they would need to, mostly because there were considerations made in their writing to account for what I thought the future would be. Not a whole lot of change, and even less if you consider some of these changes I was having to make anyway as part of the simplification process, but enough. What's more, I haven't put a whole lot of time into thinking these changes through either.

 

What also counts as a drawback is that I don't have a whole lot of choice. While the current situation is unsustainable, until now I've had exactly two options to consider:

1. Fight through it and make it happen. Suffice it to say that's an unpleasant prospect, and one I don't know how to do.

2. "Give up". I don't mean kill the mod but change what I wanted to do. Give up on the new Mansion. Give up on many of the larger changes. Focus on revamping the original mod, bringing the main story to a conclusion, and then spending the rest of my time creating random quests for it.

 

A compounding factor here is my imagination. As I think more and more about NSFW modding in Skyrim, I come up with random ideas here and there, and they distract me from the rest of my work. I need an outlet for them, and if I can't throw that into this mod then I have to throw them into something else. I mean, creatures are nice and all, but sometimes I want something different. So far I've been successfully dumping the non-creature stuff into another mod concept. Then I realized that if I chose option 2 above then that means I'll have some amount of creature stuff that can't be dumped here and would have to go into a third mod concept - and honestly, that's appealing, because I could do something totally new with a blank slate.

 

I've already decided that I need a second mod for non-creature stuff. It's going to happen. It's already started, to some extent. But I'd really rather much put as much of the creature stuff into this mod as I can.

 

Where I am now:

 

I don't have a good alternative beyond the one I've described: move the Mansion now, give it the caves now (albeit somewhat unused to start with), and adjust the stories so far to suit. Which will take more time in addition to the stuff keeping my life busy as it is. But what I'm doing now obviously isn't working and has to change, and I would much rather change it for the better than for the worse.

 

Starting the mansion in a different place straight away is a good idea, Falkreath always was out of the way.

Below are some fractured and maybe stupid ideas, disregard them if you don't think them any good. You probably don't need any more ideas.

Spoiler

Iirc the original mod had it set up soe the mansion was originally meant to be a regular tavern, maybe keep it that way. Reveal Thaena's relationship with her dog and let the player join. Have Sidgeir abuse his position over Thaena and the player, like he takes his payment as an installment from the player. While digging out the cellar they break through into the cave and find the first wild animal. There could be spores in the cave which pacify the animals and get them into heat almost all the time.

 

[delirium23]

Moving the mansion is a good idea.  One location that comes to mind if along the rocks near the main road fork going to Whiterun/Markarth/Falkreach/Solitude.  Further away from Falkreach and any town overhaul overlapping, main road that connects several major holds, lots of cave opportunities and generally unused space.  A place I felt always needed a quality inn placed at.  Placed a little bit up gives a nice view of the plains too.

 

If you're scratching your head over structure design/inspiration then perhaps something like Bathing Beauties or Beefcake Luxury Suite (BBLS).  Large spacious multi leveled long house(or whatever) that instead of the large center pool has a elevated platform for viewing/shows with lots of private or open room opportunities or smaller platforms on the additional levels.  I never liked it's blocky basement design but a cavern or ruins would be interesting. 

 

Incase anyone thinks this, I'm not suggesting a rip or stealing others work without their permission only a suggestion for inspiration.

[Chrystalline]

To be honest, it sounds like you have pushed the limits of the original mod as far as you can - and far further than it was ever supposed to go!

If you are feeling too constrained by the original author's intents then there are a few possibilities I can see - 

 

1. Move the location from the beginning and forget it was ever in Falkreath

2. Start over from scratch with your own ideas and story, inspired by the original.

 

3. End the main storyline for this mod with the 'normal' animals and start a 'sequel' mod that begins with the move and carries on the storyline with as much or as little baggage from this mod as you want to carry over.

 

4. Try to keep forcing everything into this until it breaks something (either you or the mod XD )

 

 

As a side note, if you did decide to start your own mod *based* on AM, you could (if you wanted) set up the 'inn' portion of the building as a traditional brothel as a cover for the 'less acceptable' activities downstairs - which would also give you a means to include your other ideas if you wanted to just work on a single mod.

 

[ercramer69]

23 hours ago, delirium23 said:

Moving the mansion is a good idea.  One location that comes to mind if along the rocks near the main road fork going to Whiterun/Markarth/Falkreach/Solitude.  Further away from Falkreach and any town overhaul overlapping, main road that connects several major holds, lots of cave opportunities and generally unused space.  A place I felt always needed a quality inn placed at.  Placed a little bit up gives a nice view of the plains too.

 

If you're scratching your head over structure design/inspiration then perhaps something like Bathing Beauties or Beefcake Luxury Suite (BBLS).  Large spacious multi leveled long house(or whatever) that instead of the large center pool has a elevated platform for viewing/shows with lots of private or open room opportunities or smaller platforms on the additional levels.  I never liked it's blocky basement design but a cavern or ruins would be interesting. 

 

Incase anyone thinks this, I'm not suggesting a rip or stealing others work without their permission only a suggestion for inspiration.

 

I may be wrong here but that sounds like where Granite Hill is located, an area done by several mod authors.

 

I do like the idea of just moving it from the get go to a new location though.  The current location can conflict with several Falkreath overhauls.

What about on the road to Markarth that road has mountains on both sides of the road, maybe at the end of the left side where the path leads to bard's leap summit.

[Cotytto]

This is just my opinion but just skip Falkreath entirely. You get very little out of it except one and as you said a planned second scene and a bit of story that is more an excuse to show said scenes. Heck I'd leave Jarls out of it entirely, they are more trouble than they are worth storywise imo. I mean they have to be proven to be corrupt and really the only one that is hardcore corrupt and in a decently traveled location would be Blackbriar. Also Falkreath was always out of the way, no one really goes there even in the game lore. If you wanted a good story place to have a Jarl looking the other way while still having many possible customers (again for story reasons, not actual gameplay reasons) Falkreath is the last place I'd have put the operation. Hell even the inn/tavern idea couldn't have flown due to lack of customers. That was part of the reason it became the Animal Mansion, because literally no one showed up. And while yeah some people would be willing to travel out of their way braving all the dangers of Skyrim (civil war, dragons, bandits, wolves, ect), most would prefer to stick to the safer well patrolled locations.

As to you having ideas you couldn't reasonably (nor want to) cram into AM or your other mod, why don't you make a small standalone mod or two and see if that helps some? You know it might be just a little content, but working on something even kind of different can help you from burning out while still being creative. I know a lot of AVN devs that do that, work on their main story then when they start feeling overwhelmed or tired of it they work on a different (sometimes much smaller) story. They say it helps them clear their heads by switching gears.

[genericuser27]

is there a mod that lets you give birth to animals in SE?

[Fakenet]

11 hours ago, genericuser27 said:

is there a mod that lets you give birth to animals in SE?

Not that I know of but there are a few mods that let you get pregnant from humans and mer. And then there is the soulgem pregnancy you can get for every partner.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Fakenet

[Rakshasa89]

Can anyone help? I'm trying to get both huskies into the basement, the problem is neither of them enter the mansion with me, and skipping the quest via console commands doesn't place them there either, is my playthrough fucked?

[Szlordrin]

2 hours ago, Rakshasa89 said:

Can anyone help? I'm trying to get both huskies into the basement, the problem is neither of them enter the mansion with me, and skipping the quest via console commands doesn't place them there either, is my playthrough fucked?

I had the same problem I used a mod that transported them to the quest location to solve. It's been a long time though so I don't remember which one.

[unwashed biomass]

On 10/13/2022 at 5:44 PM, Cotytto said:

This is just my opinion but just skip Falkreath entirely.

Personally i think tasair should keep what he done already, no need to give him extra work, it is very decent what is as for now (exceptional i dare to say). Huge fan of moving Mansion to another location. Riften or somewhere between Whiterun and Riverwood is best bet imho, thou there would need to be lil research about popular mods and their placements in later case specially, or not - fuck it AM is priority anyway xD.

[marktwin]

On 10/13/2022 at 12:44 PM, Cotytto said:

This is just my opinion but just skip Falkreath entirely. You get very little out of it except one and as you said a planned second scene and a bit of story that is more an excuse to show said scenes. Heck I'd leave Jarls out of it entirely, they are more trouble than they are worth storywise imo. I mean they have to be proven to be corrupt and really the only one that is hardcore corrupt and in a decently traveled location would be Blackbriar. Also Falkreath was always out of the way, no one really goes there even in the game lore. If you wanted a good story place to have a Jarl looking the other way while still having many possible customers (again for story reasons, not actual gameplay reasons) Falkreath is the last place I'd have put the operation. Hell even the inn/tavern idea couldn't have flown due to lack of customers. That was part of the reason it became the Animal Mansion, because literally no one showed up. And while yeah some people would be willing to travel out of their way braving all the dangers of Skyrim (civil war, dragons, bandits, wolves, ect), most would prefer to stick to the safer well patrolled locations.

As to you having ideas you couldn't reasonably (nor want to) cram into AM or your other mod, why don't you make a small standalone mod or two and see if that helps some? You know it might be just a little content, but working on something even kind of different can help you from burning out while still being creative. I know a lot of AVN devs that do that, work on their main story then when they start feeling overwhelmed or tired of it they work on a different (sometimes much smaller) story. They say it helps them clear their heads by switching gears.

I think the issue is finding another character who has both the influence and the personality to help start the mansion instead of Siddgeir. I agree that Falkreath is very inconvenient for the story since it's so far away, but I can't see any other character going along with funding the Animal Mansion once you tell them your plans, at least anyone already present in the game

[Fakenet]

18 minutes ago, marktwin said:

I think the issue is finding another character who has both the influence and the personality to help start the mansion instead of Siddgeir. I agree that Falkreath is very inconvenient for the story since it's so far away, but I can't see any other character going along with funding the Animal Mansion once you tell them your plans, at least anyone already present in the game

Sibbi Black-Briar,

Belethor,

Proventus Avenicci,

Nazeem.

 

I limited myself to what first came to mind and Whiterun. There are probably a lot more. Most NPCs in Skyrim are very flat so you can easily add to what they do behind closed doors.

All they need is to be in a position to start a business, that goes for almost anyone who isn't explicitly poor. It doesn't have to be openly "perverted" from the start.

It can even start with the Khajiit caravans or the likes. Only with those it would probably start without a permit and in tents.

[Chrystalline]

Honestly, if I were to rework AM (which I am nowhere near good enough to do), I would avoid using named characters at all. I would have a new NPC representing an 'unnamed benefactor' who could be anybody from the Emperor himself, to a Jarl, or the High Priestess of an offshoot of Dibella or Hircine (or both). Hell, even Sheogorath himself is a possibility at that point or maybe Clavicus Vile (he might even loan out Barnabus on occasion...)

My point is that by keeping things one step removed, you don't need to worry about what the story or other mods do with the benefactor.

[lightspeed77]

Just curious for the progress made so far. Is the main story mostly complete? I remember playing through the plus version, and it sorta ended right as the PC and Thanea romance started to really take off. Is the progress made so far at least more than plus atm? I’ve only just begun and do enjoy how much more fleshed out it is!

[Fakenet]

On 10/29/2022 at 12:23 AM, lightspeed77 said:

Just curious for the progress made so far. Is the main story mostly complete? I remember playing through the plus version, and it sorta ended right as the PC and Thanea romance started to really take off. Is the progress made so far at least more than plus atm? I’ve only just begun and do enjoy how much more fleshed out it is!

I think it's less than AM+ at this point.

It's more a remake than a conversion.

Right now "we" are overthinking the position of the building and storyline.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Fakenet

[lightspeed77]

On 10/29/2022 at 2:16 AM, Fakenet said:

I think it's less that AM+ at this point.

It's more a remake than a conversion.

Right now "we" are overthinking the position of the building and storyline.

Oh gotcha! I know initially one of the goals was to flesh out the romance storyline + built up, and was curious if that got accomplished (knowing + never finished and sorta stopped abruptly) thanks for the reply! 

[java42]

Hey guys, I just finished the first customer's business, after collecting the Bear, but now I'm not getting any more quests, any idea of how to progress from here? I haven't seen a comment with this exact issue as of yet. Thanks!

[marktwin]

 

14 hours ago, java42 said:

Hey guys, I just finished the first customer's business, after collecting the Bear, but now I'm not getting any more quests, any idea of how to progress from here? I haven't seen a comment with this exact issue as of yet. Thanks!

 

There's no more content past that point currently

Edited November 3, 2022 by marktwin

[java42]

6 hours ago, marktwin said:

 

 

There's no more content past that point currently

 

Ah okay, thanks!