Animal Mansion 4??? (Dev Thread)

[krotiks]

I just got started with this mod and I think I have a bug, after showing the dogs to their rooms I can't innitiate any dialogue with Thaena, does anybody know how to fix this?

[krotiks]

Nevermind, I just realized the only main quest is the dog quest right now.

[Unicom1981]

18 hours ago, krotiks said:

I just got started with this mod and I think I have a bug, after showing the dogs to their rooms I can't innitiate any dialogue with Thaena, does anybody know how to fix this?

 

As you have already noticed, no BUG is currently only the dog quest. Hope the modder has not given up and continues to do a good job so far.

[tasairis]

On 9/6/2020 at 9:19 PM, coffeeandcynicism said:

Have you abandoned all hope, tasairis?

Only temporarily.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 2:15 AM, MadMansGun said:

i wish i could help but i don't know how doors & navmesh work.

Theoretically,

 

So the navmesh. It tells the engine information about where NPCs can go and how they get from point A to point B. For the most part it's what places can be walked over, but there's also tidbits like spots that can be jumped down from (the NPC actually jumps down) and what are preferred paths (which is how they'll stay on a road when travelling between locations instead of taking a direct path).

They also indicate doors. Spots on the navmesh are linked to doors, and doors are linked to their counterparts on the other side of the loading screen, and those doors are naturally linked to that area's own navmesh, to form a complete chain that the engine can follow.

 

When the engine's pathfinding for an NPC has to make them go across loading screens, the NPC follows the local navmesh to the location of the door, activates the door, then gets moved to the other side. Rinse and repeat until they arrive at their destination.

The "activates the door" is a fun little nuance. Races that are flagged as being unable to interact with doors can't do that. But even more than that, a door can have a script attached to it which runs when an actor activates it, and that script can then stop the NPC from using it. Ever notice that followers don't go into the DB Sanctuary? (Couple other places like that too.) It's because while there's all the requirements for navmeshing and such set up, the outside door has a little script on it which recognizes when NPCs interact with it - then stops them from opening it.

 

Fun fact: researched that because the next AMX quest will make use of that scripted capability. Not that there's anything particularly mind-blowing about it.

 

 

On 9/7/2020 at 2:52 PM, tragix said:

Is there a git repo accepting PRs?

lol no. Not even considering that until 1.0, and even then I very likely will not open-source the mod. Besides, I feel like I'm open enough to suggestions and feedback already.

 

(I do have a local Git repo for it, though, if you're wondering. which reminds me that I forgot to tag 0.3.0.)

 

2 hours ago, Unicom1981 said:

As you have already noticed, no BUG is currently only the dog quest. Hope the modder has not given up and continues to do a good job so far.

Ain't given up.

The Conversion thread has my soul tied to this plane of existence, so to speak, so as long as I'm still maintaining that then I'll still be working on this.

[tasairis]

v0.3 - adds MQ02 and the MCM

Save files are compatible.

 

Animal Mansion Extended v0.3.0.rar

ASOS-HuskyBareCompanion-Patch.esp - patch for Animal SOS users (unchanged from 0.2 and will likely never change)

 

Incomplete list of changes (minor spoilers to old content):

Spoiler

General

- New: added MQ02

- New: added an MCM ("Animal Mansion Ext") with some stuff

- Bug fix (retroactive): player is added to the Mansion ownership faction upon completion of MQ00/Prologue

 

MCM - Status page

- New: health checks

- New: player profile settings (currently just their vague level of experience)

- New: Thaena's disposition towards the player

 

MCM - Current Quest page (shows when an MQ quest is running)

- New: shows quest stage (you don't care about this)

- New: Refresh button (refresh animation counts in case the player adds/removes relevant animations to affect quest logic)

- New: animation counts (mostly informational, mod only cares if there's >0)

 

MCM - Debug page

- New: debug logging checkbox (you don't care about this but leave it enabled)

- New: Zoo Refresh button (might solve problems with weird edge cases that shouldn't even exist)

 

MQ00/Prologue

- Bug fix: saving and loading before the Mansion is renamed restores the original BBI name (because this process requires scripting)

- Improvement: player can change their mind after Thaena gives them a turn with Bailey

- Improvement: Jarl's final statement to allow the business change invokes the dialogue menu

- Improvement: miscellaneous dialogue changes

 

MQ01/Dogs

- Bug fix: incorrect gender detection of an F(player)M(follower)C(dog) scene

- Bug fix? dogs use the regular Follow AI package when returning with the player

- Bug fix? spectators arrive at the sale location faster

- Bug fix? spectators spectate

- Improvement: rewritten and expanded follower dialogue options when testing the dogs

- Improvement: miscellaneous dialogue changes

 

TODO (minor spoilers for old content):

Spoiler

General

- More colorful language (this is an aspect of the mod I'm not very good at)

- Make quest animation counting async with startup (means faster quest startup time)

- Check that all quests support advancing/completing when there are no animations available

 

MQ01/Dogs

- Seller needs a more varied wardrobe

- Persuade check grants skill XP

 

MQ02

- More people are available to ask for advice

- Sellers need more varied wardrobes

 

Post-MQ02

- After making use of one of the (new) animals for their non-LL purpose, they're too eager to leave you

 

Walkthrough (tiered spoilers):

Spoiler

0. Complete MQ01

1. Talk to Thaena

2. Find the right person to talk to

Spoiler

It's the guy outside the Mansion. How did you miss him?

 

Optionally: before you talk to him, talk to one or more Falkreath guards. For fun.

3. Talk to Thaena

4. Buy the animal from someone

Spoiler

Look for a custom NPC situated exactly where you think they should be.

Spoiler

The custom NPCs "replace" vanilla NPCs, who have decided they should take some time off from work. You won't be able to conduct regular business with them until the quest completes.

 

Your first couple attempts are supposed to fail. Save your shoes some wear and tear by spending 70g. You can afford that, can't you?

 

5. Return to the Mansion

Spoiler

If you're wondering whether you really have to run all the way back, consider making use of the resources available to you.

 

Mind the bear traps.

 

As with the dogs in MQ01, your new friends need to be shown where they will be living before the quest can advance.

6. Talk to Thaena

 

If you have problems, please include your Papyrus log in your post.

 

Quest skipping is still supported. I think MQ02's skip has a bug, but it wasn't significant enough for me to remember what it is. I'll check it before the next version.

setstage amx_MQ00_Prologue 999
setstage amx_MQ01_Dog 999

Spoiler

setstage amx_MQ02_Horse 999

 

 

Q&A (no spoilers):

 

Spoiler

 

Q. OMFG tasairis, where have you been?

A. Ehhh...

 

Q. Are you going to disappear again?

A. I'm trying not to. Really, I am. But sometimes it happens.

 

Q. Is it just me or does the quest end rather abruptly?

A. It does. This is intentional because it's supposed to lead into the next quest pretty much immediately, but there are Important Things About That Transition so I can't simply stub it out now and fill it in later. So the conversation ends a bit short.

 

Q. I'm trying to interact with one of the animals but nothing is happening/I get irrelevant dialogue options?

A. Try the other one.

 

Q. Can I make use of the new unlocked animals after the quest completes?

A. I can think of two ways you can use them. For the first one ?, yes. For the second one, yes but it's a bit buggy right now.

 

Q. Why does it say "Talk" for AMX's animals but not for others?

A. Because Skyrim~.

Q. When I "talk", I get dialogue options?

A. You have one or more mods that actually do give them dialogue options. AMX is not one of them.

 

Q. Is there a way for me to change the way the animals look?

A. No, but I am open to commentary on which ones look better. (aka the mutt vs. husky conversation)

 

Q. How do I get the MCM to show up in the list?

A. So we all know that sometimes MCMs don't show up for some people. Me? Never been a problem: SkyUI generally wants to be slow and take a long time to load, but if I go into any mod's MCM and then close all menus, it tends to update a few seconds later. If that doesn't work for you then try the usual recommendations of getting that one MCM "kicker" mod, if that is even still something people mention, or running the "setstage <I forget which quest> 1" console command which does the same thing.

 

Q. What's the "Zoo"?

A. The name of the AMX mechanism that manages your acquired animals. Releases that add new quests/animals will modify the Zoo, but this is a little tricky Because Skyrim~ so there has to be some amount of deliberate work around making sure the Zoo runs correctly.

 

Q. So when's the next quest?

A. The rest of this month and most of October is going to come with a higher-than-normal IRL workload for me. (A workload which I'm already behind on.) On top of that, the next quest is going to be the most complicated one so far: it will come in two parts, with the first being fairly simple but the second being highly complex. Complex enough that even thinking about it ties my brain in knots. I'm expecting the end of October. After that, I think I can get back to 2-3 week releases.

 

 

[MadMansGun]

9 hours ago, tasairis said:

.

maybe some sort of trigger box could be used to fire a "creature.MoveTo(PlayerRef)" script when they are not in the same cell.

 

[coffeeandcynicism]

18 hours ago, tasairis said:

Only temporarily.

 

Thanks for the update. 

[Lucifeller]

If I may make a suggestion, it'd be nice if Animal Mansion covered the rarer beasts from Sexlab Achievements. The non-hostile animals and the leveled monsters in particular can be inordinately hard to even find, let alone trigger a sex scene with...

 

[tasairis]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:14 AM, MadMansGun said:

maybe some sort of trigger box could be used to fire a "creature.MoveTo(PlayerRef)" script when they are not in the same cell.

Next time the need comes up, I'm going to investigate putting a magic effect on the creature that fires when the player goes into a different area and moves the creature to them.

[tasairis]

2 hours ago, Lucifeller said:

If I may make a suggestion, it'd be nice if Animal Mansion covered the rarer beasts from Sexlab Achievements. The non-hostile animals and the leveled monsters in particular can be inordinately hard to even find, let alone trigger a sex scene with...

The primary goal of AMX is to have quests for every single species with animations - vanilla or otherwise.

 

For leveled creatures, I'm not sure what you mean. They're only really about differences in stats. Occasionally there are minor visual differences, but the animations are all the same. Do you have an example?

[Katauni]

Just found AM Plus and saw this thread, excited to see it's being worked on! I'll probably give this one a whirl after i finish most of the content in the old variant, keep up the good work and stay safe out there!

[Lucifeller]

9 hours ago, tasairis said:

The primary goal of AMX is to have quests for every single species with animations - vanilla or otherwise.

 

For leveled creatures, I'm not sure what you mean. They're only really about differences in stats. Occasionally there are minor visual differences, but the animations are all the same. Do you have an example?

Yeah, the mod I linked has separate checks for bear, cave bear and snow bear, as well as troll and frost troll, and sabrecat and snow sabrecat. As you know, these appear past certain levels, with few exceptions like set encounters (such as that damned frost troll on High Hrothgar - whoever put it there is a sadist).

Also, it requires a base Spriggan - and depending how fast one levels up, they might become hard to find in a hurry.

 

EDIT: That said, the primary thing I'm interested in is the list of non-aggressive creatures. Those are extremely hard to get a sex scene with unless you use extra mods like MatchMaker, as they prefer to flee instead of attack, so Defeat can't be used to initiate a scene.

[tasairis]

15 hours ago, Lucifeller said:

Yeah, the mod I linked has separate checks for bear, cave bear and snow bear, as well as troll and frost troll, and sabrecat and snow sabrecat. As you know, these appear past certain levels, with few exceptions like set encounters (such as that damned frost troll on High Hrothgar - whoever put it there is a sadist).

Then I think what you're looking for was going to happen already: leveled creatures in the general case of "I need to put a <thing> here", then for more specific use cases there would be a more specific creature (for example, I don't think Temba has seen a snow bear).

 

15 hours ago, Lucifeller said:

Also, it requires a base Spriggan - and depending how fast one levels up, they might become hard to find in a hurry.

Choosing between species is really going to be up to the quest. It's not like a spawned creature will be totally random among everything available - the quest is going to want a spriggan, so you could be level 1 and still have the spriggan. Sub-species too, like a "mother spriggan" is a separate thing from a regular spriggan. But from there it'll be random.

 

It's like enemy NPCs. Bandit versus Forsworn is a choice, mage bandit versus melee bandit is a choice, but after that it's leveled.

 

15 hours ago, Lucifeller said:

EDIT: That said, the primary thing I'm interested in is the list of non-aggressive creatures. Those are extremely hard to get a sex scene with unless you use extra mods like MatchMaker, as they prefer to flee instead of attack, so Defeat can't be used to initiate a scene.

This last update dropped a Really Big And Painfully Obvious hint as to one idea I have, and it's specifically catered to those types of animals, but otherwise supporting an animal is a matter of designing the quest for it.

 

So the issue isn't about whether to support those animals but rather how. I still am, and will always be, looking for ideas...

[N.Gamma]

@tasairis as I told you some time ago I intend to translate Animal Mansion Ex into German. With version 0.3 I'm already finished. I have only one question about the dialogues with the horse dealer. The horse dealer often says mah girls or mah boys. Should this mah be a speech impediment or does it stand for my or what? It would be very nice if you could briefly explain to me how to interpret this word.

[walkingwounded]

It would be a pronunciation shift on the word 'my'.  In effect 'mah boys' = 'my boys' as you mention.

In this context it would be an accent (Country/redneck drawl).  So whatever the cultural equivalent is in German I'd say.

Tsairis will of course be the final authority on this (their creation).

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, AreaGamer said:

@tasairis as I told you some time ago I intend to translate Animal Mansion Ex into German. With version 0.3 I'm already finished. I have only one question about the dialogues with the horse dealer. The horse dealer often says mah girls or mah boys. Should this mah be a speech impediment or does it stand for my or what? It would be very nice if you could briefly explain to me how to interpret this word.

Ah, thank you for the reminder. I specifically wanted you to hold off until this last update because I expected a lot of changes, but that's done so there shouldn't be any more on that kind of scale. I am constantly tweaking dialogue so keep an eye out for that.

 

"mah" (my), along with words like "ya" (you) and "yer" (your) and the abundant use of -in' (-ing), is more of a low-class rural dialect than a physical speech impediment. Suggesting that he's not educated or from a rich background, probably grew up working on a farm instead of going to school, that sort of stereotype. (The Solitude woman is quite the opposite.) That should hopefully be even more apparent through the loose grammar - at least I tried to make it apparent, and I'll go back over it sometime to make sure I was consistent about how he sounds.

 

I made an deliberate effort to make sure everything could be translated, including using the translations file I'm sure you've seen by now. (And the MCM's sources are there to help you understand that file too - AnimalMansionConfig.) I'm amazed enough that somebody already wants to translate this stuff, so any more questions you have or anything you need to make your job easier, feel free to post here or PM me.

[N.Gamma]

12 hours ago, tasairis said:

Ah, thank you for the reminder. I specifically wanted you to hold off until this last update because I expected a lot of changes, but that's done so there shouldn't be any more on that kind of scale. I am constantly tweaking dialogue so keep an eye out for that.

 

"mah" (my), along with words like "ya" (you) and "yer" (your) and the abundant use of -in' (-ing), is more of a low-class rural dialect than a physical speech impediment. Suggesting that he's not educated or from a rich background, probably grew up working on a farm instead of going to school, that sort of stereotype. (The Solitude woman is quite the opposite.) That should hopefully be even more apparent through the loose grammar - at least I tried to make it apparent, and I'll go back over it sometime to make sure I was consistent about how he sounds.

 

I made an deliberate effort to make sure everything could be translated, including using the translations file I'm sure you've seen by now. (And the MCM's sources are there to help you understand that file too - AnimalMansionConfig.) I'm amazed enough that somebody already wants to translate this stuff, so any more questions you have or anything you need to make your job easier, feel free to post here or PM me.

Thank you very much for the explanation, I feel the translation of the dialogues is very easy except for this "mah". The dialogues read really well and the story is really interesting, even if you already know The Animal Mansion.

If I have further questions about the dialogues, I will write to you personally next time.

[nomkaz]

Aside from some of the dialogue flying by too fast to read this is a major improvement!  That being said, I'm having an issue with MQ02. It triggers just fine, but then I can't progress to the next stage. I ask all around Falkreath and nothing happens. I tried using "setstage" to advance one stage, and nothing (next stage doesn't trigger), advance one more, and still nothing. Is it a bug, or are they empty stages right now?

[DIO over Za Warudo]

Having given a test run of the latest test file, I'm already liking where this is going! Here's to hoping that we get a customer update soon (unless that comes with MQ02, as I only just started it), but I'm in no hurry.

 

I understand just as much as anyone when real life gets in the way of hobbies, so take all the time you need. Better development take some time to finish rather than sending out a buggy mess just to save some time. Plus, the original Animal Mansion is a decent placeholder until that day comes. I'm perfectly happy to wait. 

[Rokabur]

Definitely looking forward to possibly having female creatures in the future and its able to be done without having to use half a dozen mods to set up the scene and then move the parties into position

[Lucifeller]

On 9/24/2020 at 12:51 AM, tasairis said:

Then I think what you're looking for was going to happen already: leveled creatures in the general case of "I need to put a <thing> here", then for more specific use cases there would be a more specific creature (for example, I don't think Temba has seen a snow bear).

 

Choosing between species is really going to be up to the quest. It's not like a spawned creature will be totally random among everything available - the quest is going to want a spriggan, so you could be level 1 and still have the spriggan. Sub-species too, like a "mother spriggan" is a separate thing from a regular spriggan. But from there it'll be random.

 

It's like enemy NPCs. Bandit versus Forsworn is a choice, mage bandit versus melee bandit is a choice, but after that it's leveled.

 

This last update dropped a Really Big And Painfully Obvious hint as to one idea I have, and it's specifically catered to those types of animals, but otherwise supporting an animal is a matter of designing the quest for it.

 

So the issue isn't about whether to support those animals but rather how. I still am, and will always be, looking for ideas...

I understand, thank you.

I gave the current version a spin, and it has some mild issues with Skyrim Underground (the mansion is literally a stone's throw away from the Old Falkreath Vault entrance) and possibly Bring Out Your Dead (which enlarges Falkreath's cemetery): both of these cause the mansion to kind of uh... float a lil' bit above the ground. It'll probably require patching to use it with those two mods, but aside from that I see no major issues.

[Rokabur]

One thing I wondered is, what if we have a mod replacer for a creature, how would that work with this mod? (Have the stand-alone Hagraven replacer installed so that Hagravens are more attractive and can use Sexlab on 2 named Hagravens).

[tasairis]

On 9/25/2020 at 11:17 AM, nomkaz said:

Aside from some of the dialogue flying by too fast to read this is a major improvement!  That being said, I'm having an issue with MQ02. It triggers just fine, but then I can't progress to the next stage. I ask all around Falkreath and nothing happens. I tried using "setstage" to advance one stage, and nothing (next stage doesn't trigger), advance one more, and still nothing. Is it a bug, or are they empty stages right now?

It's too slow for me. Do you have the same problem with other mods? Are you using the original or alternate sound files that Fuz provides?

[tasairis]

17 hours ago, Aizen525 said:

Having given a test run of the latest test file, I'm already liking where this is going! Here's to hoping that we get a customer update soon (unless that comes with MQ02, as I only just started it), but I'm in no hurry.

The next quest will tackle this subject. They are coming, but like any new business, the waiting area is not going to be crowded on the first day.

And I'm going to stop there before I say any more.

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, Rokabur said:

Definitely looking forward to possibly having female creatures in the future and its able to be done without having to use half a dozen mods to set up the scene and then move the parties into position

Both animals available so far includes female creatures. Animation support is up to your mods and SexLab itself isn't great at setting up MCf scenes, but AMX is trying.