[WIP] Boulderfall Castle - In Progress

[XunAmarox]

When I always set off to look for cool new house mods I always think to myself "I want a castle!" but then I'm always slammed with the realization that the castle mods out there are just way too freakin' big. Okay so maybe I want a small castle! Ah well, nothing suits my tastes. So, I'm making this. It's my first time ever actually making landscape/rooms in the CK. Boy, learning how to do that was quite the experience... I've been modding, modeling, and texturing for years though so I'm no stranger to the game.

Right, so... The focus of this house mod is going to be a few things...
1. Aesthetic as fuck.
2. Makes you feel rich as hell.
3. Usable, and something that I would use personally.
4. Cozy. Big, but not massive. Medium-ish. But it'll be a pretty familiar layout so the size is negated.
5. Have everything you need.
6. Work for spouses and Hearthfires multiple adoptions (e.g. adopt an entire horde of little urchins)

So to start off with... I chose Dragonsreach as the base layout of the home before I started modding. I think it has really nice modding and I could already see really easily how change it and make it a great player home.

The first thing was the entry hall, originally it was just crappy with some maids sweeping on either side of you and some benches and crap. Now the entry hall has weapon racks on either side immediately when you walk in so you can drop your weapons at the door and pick them up before you leave, and it has mannequins and display cases lining the way in along with your banner - a banner made especially for the Dovahkiin. To either side of the entry hall will be the treasury. I haven't started that at the time of writing this but it'll have places for all your dragon masks, claws, and various other things along with some storage and such. In other words, the biggest reasons for visting your home are accessible to you immediately upon entering - your weapons, your armor, your storage, your loot. Right there. No looking, just there. Convenient.

Next, we have the main hall. I didn't want to change too much since the lighting there is amazing, my favorite in the game. I replaced the original dining setup completely with much better golden ware straight from Sovngarde - and it's all static so you aren't going to completely fuck the carefully laid out dishes when you or your follower tries to get something to eat. The food's not nailed down too though, so feel free to nom it up and put your own food out.

Next, ah... the kitchen. How I love my kitchen. It's complete. I thought to myself: "What have I ever loved about other people's kitchen mods, what were my favorite features?" And then I took all of that and added all that shit to mine. I have storage (aesthetic pretty storage that just looks like normal kitchen stuff) for everything you need. Carrots, leeks, apples, cabbages, gourds, potatoes, garlic, snowberry, jazbay grapes, juniper berries, frost merriam, lavender, crab legs, butter, honey, milk, salt, pepper (even though it doesn't even exist!), sugar, flour, cooking ales, recipes, cookware, dishes, tons of respawning rabbits, garlic, salmon, and pheasants, raw beef storage, horse meat storage, and various meats storage, cheese storage, horker meat storage, and of course your enormous barrel of mead. All that stuff I mentioned comes stocked with some stuff out of the box so you're not going to see a crate with 6 things of horker meat then search and it has none. That's so soulcrushing. Well, I mean... if you take them then you will. But just checking it after you install, there'll be stuff in them. That's about as good as I can do!

The garden... it's not done (or even started) yet, but I'm thinking... really beautiful, really aesthetic. I'm going to use the bath/spring thing from BFT Breezehome since it's free to reuse now and I really liked it. I'll probably also have like a pool surrounded by a nice big pretty garden, a waterfall pouring out a grate... well, it'll look nice whatever the case.

Children/Follower quarters... Well, I plan on having enough rooms for at least a few followers and probably about 6 kids which I'll make sure are flagged correctly so it works with hearthfires multiple adoption, cause it's just so soulcrushing when these nice ass houses don't work with spouses or kids.

Library... it's going to be a library, what can I say? Lots of shelves you can put books on and crap. No books pre-installed though, I kinda hate that.

The alchemy/enchanting room... It's going to have pretty much everything you'd want in one of those rooms I'd imagine. It'll be nice.

Okay so basic layout... You enter, that's the entry hall. Left/right of you is the treasury. Go forward and that's the main hall. If you kept going forward that'd be the picture hall which leads into the garden. If you went back and took a left that'd be a kitchen just like in Dragonsreach (of course way better though), if you took a right you'd have the enchanting/alchemy room - but with 100% less Farengar, guaranteed. Downstairs from the kitchen will be the smithy, and a bed for either your smith or chef... which won't be included, but if you want to grab some poor sod off the street, dress them like a smith or chef and tell them they live there then that's your business lol. I don't like home mods with a bunch of NPC's walking around, it's creepy having some random NPC in my house. Right right, so back to the main hall... You go downstairs on the left side and that's going to be the children's rooms & housecarl/follower rooms. Go back to the main hall yet again (gawd, this feels like a recurring theme...) and then go up the stairs on the right and then you'll be in the library. Go through either one of those hallways that overlook the entire main hall/entry and you'll be in the master bedroom. Well, I'm not sure if that whole damn thing will be the master bedroom or just the upper part of it but it's going to be something to do with master bedroomness. Back to the main hall yet again! Now if you go straight through the main hall where ol Milkdrinker Balgruuf use to sit then you'll be going through the long ass picture hall which I'll have my favorite artwork which is time relevant and will fit into Skyrim. Probably some of my classic favorites like La Naissance de Venus by Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval. Maybe the Mona Lisa or something, hell I don't know. Nothing cheesy and nothing immersion breaking though. Then you'll be in the garden area which doubles as the bath area.

Aaaand that's going to be it. Big, but not too big. And since the layout is mostly like Dragonsreach which you've been in 15 million times you shouldn't have a problem finding anything.

Anyways, enough descriptions...
Progress:
Entry Hall - Complete
Treasury - 30%
Main Hall - Complete
Kitchen - Complete
Alchemy/Enchanting Room - 100%
Master Bedroom - 100%
Master Bedroom Hall / Room - 40%
Library - 100%
Secret Torture Room - 99%
Secret Exit - 90%
Secret Atronach Forge - 99%
Smithy - 100%
Follow/Children's Quarters - 90%
Garden - 90%
Picture Hall - 100%
Navmesh - 90%
Exterior - 0%
 
Now for some WIP screenshots...
 
Entry Hall:

The mannequins here are from my Sculpture Statue Mannequins mod by the way. Which... is actually the only reason I put this under adult mods lol.

 
Main Hall:

 
Kitchen:

 
Everything you see here is intractable storage. Storage for carrots, leeks, garlic, snowberries, cooking ale, dishes, mead, cookware, you name it, it's there. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

 
Master Bedroom:

Entrance to master bed:

 
Room aerial view:

 
Dovahkiin's desk:

 
I've spent about 65 hours so far. Well, back to work! This house isn't going to finish itself... (gawd, wouldn't that be nice?)

Update Jan 21 2014:

Library:

Secret Torture Room:

Update Jan 21 2014#2:
Alchemy/Enchanting Room:

Note: The potions of ultimate healing I only put there in-game. They're empty by default, but they're fully featured potion racks. Each one holds 14x3 and there's one in every corner (e.g. 4 of them).

 
Update Jan 22, 2014:
Alchemy/Enchanting Room Complete:

 
All the jars are containers, the book on the left is for alchemy recipes, the soul gem bowl is for storing soul gems (it's a static container), and yeah. Fun times.

 

[Guest airdance]

Looks great, and what would be great is if it didn't need all kinds of mods to be loaded with it.

  I am looking forward to the beta version...

[XunAmarox]

Looks great, and what would be great is if it didn't need all kinds of mods to be loaded with it.

  I am looking forward to the beta version...

You mean DLC's or other mods like General Displays?

 

It already requires Hearthfires and Dawnguard, but that can't be helped. I may use General Displays for the treasury or I may make my own activators that are scripted to only accept those specific items but that'd be kind of a pain. I dunno, we'll see. Either way, I'll do that part last so I can have a version non-dependent of it no matter what.

[Guest airdance]

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[Deep Red]

Damned fine home indeed! It's almost like Breezehome, Dragonsreach, and Proudspire Manor all fucked and had a baby. Looking forward to seeing more.

[doomdoging]

is it going to have sexy servents and guards?  mabe haveing to hire them or quest for them like fighters stornghold in oblivion?

[WizzyD]

i got one suggestion auto sorting chests.

like jaggarsfeld http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38392/?

[XunAmarox]

Alrighty! I made some progress today. I finished the library and I have the secret torture room 99% done, just waiting to do the last couple of things when the rest is complete so I can have one version not dependent on GeneralDisplays.

 

I updated my opening post with some pictures of the new rooms.

 

is it going to have sexy servents and guards? mabe haveing to hire them or quest for them like fighters stornghold in oblivion?

It's definitely not going to have servants or any NPC's in the interior for that matter - I hate it. You can use a mod like AFT and My Home Is Your Home to hijack any random NPC you want and have them sandbox there wearing whatever you want though.

 

Outside, I'm thinking draugr deathlords that are friendly to the Dovahkiin that only say "dovahkiin" like one of the greybeards when you interact with them and are otherwise invulnerable and will guard/patrol around the outside of your castle.

 

Draugr & dragon priests were loyal to dragons, right? Well, why not some loyal to the dovahkiin?

[XunAmarox]

I just posted some screenshots of the Alchemy/Enchanting Room. I'm ~80% done with it. It's done visually. I just have to make all of those 45 jars interactive containers which I won't get around to until tomorrow. That's going to take awhile, lol. So then we only have 4 rooms and the exterior to go. If I manage to keep up the pace I'm hopeful for a beta ~Sat/Sun or so.

[XunAmarox]

omg I hate myself so much right now... I just realized I could have just added all these jars as containers instead of statics then adding click triggers and linking them to containers... fffffffff...

 

Well, I'm only 1/4th done with them... I guess I'll just redo them all as containers instead.

 

edit: Half done then CK crashes... I didn't save... fuck my life. >_<!

 

edit: Alrighty. Done with that! All containers now. I added a satchel and strongbox as well; the book to the left is for storing alchemy recipes.

 

 

 

 

That makes the Alchemy/Enchanting room complete. Moving on! Hmm... I think I told myself I'd do the garden today.

 

I designed on paper how I want the rooms I have left laid out by the way, so all I have to do is make it. Should be fun times.

[XunAmarox]

Alright... I'm scrapping everything I did today after the Alchemy/Enchanting room. I made a really big cave similar to the Eldergleam Sanctuary with light coming in and nice trees and a bunch of flowers and other harvestables and such, but I just don't like the way it turned out. So, that's off the table.  I was going to just try to copy my interior to a new worldspace so I could actually use the landscape editor to generate grass and such since it's impossible to make good surfaces with interiors but my CK locks up every time I try to copy my interior so screw it.

[XunAmarox]

I dunno what the rules are for these threads for double, triple, quadruple... what's five?... -posting. But, I finished the garden room, just the room itself. I still have to decorate it, add all the flora, planters, the bath and such.

 

Here's a WIP shot:

 

 

 

I spent way too long on my original idea... wasted so much time.

 

Anyways, I'll finish the garden tomorrow then knock the smithy out since that'll be super easy. Then the only real room I'll have left is the children/follower quarters... I'm worried about putting it in the same interior cell since my cell size is getting so large... already over 200MB. I think I'll have to make it a separate cell. That'd make it easier for me anyways. I'm not sure how marriage & kids will work with their beds being in two different cells though.. that's troublesome to think about.

[XunAmarox]

Eesh... no interest. I'll probably just stop posting updates until I release then.

 

I ended up doing the smithy & secret atronach forge first since I was hoping there was a way to do planters more easily than one at a time linking each one to an NPC in a separate cell painstakingly one at a time... you'll see why in a minute...

 

Forge:

 

 

 

Secret Atronach Forge:

 

Not only is it fully functional, but the candles even got an upgrade.

 

 

 

These are both effectively done. I'll just add some more stuff later when I add a dependency to General Stores in the Atronach Forge. It could probably use some banners or something too, come to think of it...

 

Now here's the Garden... look at all those planters....

 

 

 

14x4, 10x4, 2 (very large)x4, and of course the 9 around the centerpiece. It's ~9x3 for the large ones probably, so that's 132 things of fertile soil if you're counting along, which all need to be uniquely named and individually linked to an also uniquely named NPC in a separate cell... That.... will be the bane of my existence. If you know an easier way, please, by all means... tell me... Cause, as much as I'd like to have that... that's... just too much. I may just end up filling them with pretty flowers and only do the center piece with fertile soil as to reduce my work load if there's no alternative.

 

Oh and of course, the rest of the garden:

 

 

 

And of course, the pool:

 

Let's go for a swim! Here's the view looking up from under water:

 

Ohh, what's down there? Who knows!

 

...he might.

 

 

In other news, I talked to TMPhoenix the author of Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions and it seems that only the Location matters as far as the kids are concerned, so I can go ahead and make them their own cell. That's a huge relief.

[2pac4eva7]

Im Interested. Been Following This Topic

[shedidwhat]

same here, been watching and reading (i just never use the like button)

Im also looking forward to a beta version, pre-release for testing (if you choose to have one )

[The Matrix Prime]

Any secret rooms planned? And by secret room, I mean one with a hidden door, like Daphne's secret room in the Sleeping Giant Inn, which is hidden by a false wardrobe? Or even a secret passage or something. I hate it if things like this are over done, but every castle needs at least ONE secret passage/room.

[XunAmarox]

Any secret rooms planned? And by secret room, I mean one with a hidden door, like Daphne's secret room in the Sleeping Giant Inn, which is hidden by a false wardrobe? Or even a secret passage or something. I hate it if things like this are over done, but every castle needs at least ONE secret passage/room.

There's 3 secret rooms so far. Well, if you count the tunnel under the pool as a secret room. I'll have another secret room as well. I had an awesome idea when I was laying in bed last night.

 

I will actually have some NPC's in the castle and around the castle. They're going to be female draugr deathlords but that are vampires. I already made a few of them and have them patrolling the children/follower quarters, guarding it. I wrote up a pretty cool backstory too which will be included as an in-game book which I've already made.

 

A little teaser of that:

 

 

 

Hmm, what have I done since my last update... gosh, I don't even know, I've done so much... I added all the proper stuff for spouses & children, I created some female vampire draugr deathlords and set them on patrol routes, I created a follower/children's quarters - very similar to the layout of the jarl's quarters except the 3 rooms belonging to the Jarl have been remodeled into 3 children's rooms with no door between them and the 2 side rooms I'm going to convert to follower bedrooms. If you go out the door from the children's room there's a training room, it's cute.

 

Here's some WIP shots of that stuff:

 

 

 

I think I'm going to change the lavender to snowberry... goes better with the red. I still need to decorate the children's rooms and do the follower rooms.

 

I changed the chair textures:

 

 

 

I'm probably going to replace those stubby ones with the ones from Elianora's latest mod that are retextured ones the Greybeards use, but I'll use the same material as on the screenshots above for the cushions; already got permission so if I decide on doing it it's a go.

 

I changed the lighting in the secret atronach forge room since it was annoying:

 

 

 

Oh and I made that picture hall that I was talking about earlier. Here, you can see my painting choices:

 

 

 

 

Artists all died in like the 1800's so none of it is copyrighted.

 

I have the layout for a barracks, prison, and the exterior already drawn up in my notebook so I'll be working on working them into reality today and tomorrow. The barracks & prison will be connected. I'm going to have a stable for your horse too and have it properly keyworded so the horse actually gets stored there when you fast travel.

 

The prison's going to be mostly ancient nordic, then there's going to be the barracks which will have a big talos shrine and also be mostly nordic, and there'll be a secret passage somewhere in there that leads through a tunnel to a priestess and a different shrine.

 

Outside it's going to be like the first little bit of dragonsreach's exterior, just the middle one, and it'll disappear into the face of the mountain. Then outside there'll be a wall surrounded by a moat and there'll be guards patrolling the parameter and a few guarding the door to the castle itself. It'll effectively create a little yard that'll be safe for your kids to go out and play in, cause since I'm doing it right by Boulderfall Cave if I don't have some kind of wall and guards your kids would probably get killed by random necromancers or animal spawns or something.

 

Anyways, it's going to be cool. The priestess will be dressed in a CBBE version of the dragon priest outfit. I'll put an apiary outside too. I was going to put one in the garden but it's just not aesthetic, so it'll go outside.

[XunAmarox]

Right so, I finished the entire barracks & prison, and a really nice bonus secret room which will probably be the hardest to find. That area is completely navmeshed now as well and I messed with the NPC's a lot to see if I could get them to do what I wanted... I got the ones in the secret room to do exactly what I want but it's difficult to find a way to make vampires sleep in draugr alcoves like draugr. In the end I had to resort to sending them to just "patrol" in their alcoves for the time period that they'd be sleeping... and believe me, I tried pretty much everything... lol

 

I changed the door in the library - that's what leads to the Barracks & Prison.

 

 

 

Here's some shots of the entry to the barracks/prison, then some shots of the prison followed by the barracks where the guards will relax then "sleep" in their alcoves.

 

 

 

I'll change the textures of the chairs and beds most likely.

 

And this is a super spoiler if you want to experience the super secret room when you play the mod, don't look in here...

 

 

 

When I wake up tomorrow I'll work on the exterior and get the guards set up with their patrol, relax, "sleep" schedules in their proper shifts and then make sure all the adoption stuff is working properly. After that there's just a few things I'll need to finish up, nothing nearly as major as all the stuff already done. I probably won't have it ready for a beta tomorrow. It'll be at least a few more days.

[XunAmarox]

I'm not sure what I did today. I didn't end up even starting on the exterior. Whatever it was, I spent all day doing it. Still, doesn't seem like I accomplished that much. I dunno, let's see, what did I do...

 

Well, I was messing with textures and trying to get my beds & chairs and such to have a reflection map so they'd look like proper gold but I haven't been able to get it working... I'm pretty sure I have all the nif settings right so I don't know why it isn't working in-game. I made a thread about it. I'm still scratching my head on that one.

 

Let's see... I navmeshed the barracks/prison, fixed the navmesh for the follower/children's quarters, I finished the rooms for the followers - you'll be able to have 6 children and 4 followers... or 8. I don't know if they'll share beds, but it was designed for 4. And uh, let's see... I changed the lavender to snowberry, I changed the live style mounted dragon head to a dead one. There wasn't actually a plaque for it so I just used a big log that I clipped through the wall lol, that was creative...

 

Ummm... I set up some NPC's. There's guards on the entrance of the barracks, one by the door to the prison, and in the prison there's a jailer which has a little table setup so they don't get bored out of their minds.

 

I totally reworked the barracks. The huge barrels are gone, it's a lot more aesthetic now. Gold candles, gold plates, bottles of blood on the plates, golden goblets filled with blood, and some new gold chairs with red fabric. I made some similar gold beds with red fabric as well.

 

Oh and I also started the planters. After a little test I realized I wouldn't have to individually name 500+ of them by hand, twice. Turns out, if you give one a unique ref id name then duplicate it that it'll do the next subsequent number. So if you start with aaBCplanter001 it'll be aaBCplanter002 and so on. It'll actually be 002 even if you started with just 1, minus the 00 (e.g. planter1 -> planter002 still). I got all the planters placed and my army of enormous dick planter npc's... (they're used as some sort of container or something, but it's kind of amusing...)

 

Here, take a look:

 

 

 

Literally... an army of them!

 

I didn't know if they fell my plants would die so I put a big floor under them... xD

 

Anyways, I've only link ref'd about 10 of them. I'll finish up the rest of them tomorrow; it'll only take a few hours. Though, I don't know what anyone's going to do with 523 planters... I mean, you're gonna have to have one heck of a green thumb (and an army of slave labor)... Ah hell, at that point it's probably more than just a thumb... who knows what all you have that's green!

 

Hm... screenshot time? Yep.

 

The re-vamped barracks:

Jailer:

New beds:

New chair fabric texture:

And here's the changes to the living quarters:

And here's the follower rooms (both rooms are indentical so it'd be repetative to show both lol):

 

[Parky]

I have a large stable of followers, so adequate beds for followers is very useful

[XunAmarox]

I had the exterior complete, just needed to be navmeshed but the navmesh is totally fucked (nothing connects to anything!) so I'm scrapping it entirely. Also... I was sick yesterday so I didn't do anything. I'm still kinda sick today but I'm going to try to do something at least.

 

With the navmesh being so completely fucked for exteriors I may just make the entrance for the place be inside a cave so I can put the exterior inside an interior instead and the navmesh will be easy to work on.

[XunAmarox]

I think at this point I'm going to separate my mod into two different houses as two separate mods, to preserve the integrity of either part. All of the draugr stuff will be split to a draugr/ancient nord themed home and the barracks/prison removed from the original, along with the draugr guards.

[XunAmarox]

Well, since I started working on my draugr themed mod instead I can at least show you some WIP's of its front yard instead:

 

 

Also, as a little intro to my draugr styled home I'm working on, here's the scene you'll be greeted by when you first step foot inside once entering through the newly excavated entrance of puzzling pillar ruins:

 

 

 

Of course, as if it's any indication of what you should expect... should you survive this room and manage to figure out the puzzle to open the gate into that gauntlet of death... you're presented a new little gift from yours truly:

 

 

 

Aside from the obvious swinging deathblades which have higher damage than normal -- you definitely won't want to be stepping on the wrong pressure plates on your way through. And as an added bonus to make things interesting and so you can't just blindly whirlwind (or otherwise) sprint your way through... I introduced another little puzzle. See all those pull levers? Ah, but which one opens the door..? I guess you'll just have to try them all... Better watch your footing is all I can say.

 

Oh and that armor that I was wearing will be a reward after everything...

 

Aside from the palace and such, of course. Well, more of an easter egg reward that you can find than one that is directly given to you.

[XunAmarox]

Oh god... I just fucked myself over so bad... I just replaced my current esp with a backup that was a day old because apparently I forgot to make a backup yesterday... I lost an entire day's work...

 

It's worse than it sounds, if that's even possible.

[XunAmarox]

Would anyone be upset if I took the garden+picture hall and moved them up to the loading door in the library and re-walled off that area and put thrones there instead (that way I can cut down on cell size since it's way too big atm), and then drop the long under water adventure from the pool in favor of just a short swim to a load door which leads to a small cave room that has a secret exit/entrance to Tamriel?

With the draugr stuff out of the way I just don't see any reason to have the tunnel anymore, save for a secret exit. And well, I was thinking about it and I really do think I should probably try to cut the size of the cell down a bit if I can.

Right now I think I'll have some tables and a lot of chests in the treasury for storage, along with their main focus being one side having dragon claws while the other has dragon priest masks, and then have storage for the black books, elder scrolls, and daedric artifacts in the secret atronach forge along with adding all the daedric statues for worship (scratch that, most don't have statues and the ones that do mostly suck) since it's all fairly daedra type stuff or stuff you wouldn't want others to see.

I just don't know how I can do the exterior in a way that I will be happy with it aesthetically. The exterior of Dragonsreach is just so incredibly massive... I don't know. I can have just the front of it sticking out from the mountain but without having a fort/drawbridge around it (which to be honest I'm just not going to do because navmeshing exteriors is way too much of a bitch) the front yard becomes incredibly dangerous. I may have to get creative...

 

edit: On second thought, I'm not sure I should move the garden/picture hall...