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Animal Mansion Plus

mybrainhurts

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Reesewow said:

I seem to recall mybrainhurts having lots of issues trying to "finish" the original mod and fix/complete all the half-done ideas that were still in the mod data. 

As a professional software developer, I am well acquainted with those sorts of problems. There need to be short-term concrete milestones one can actually feel are achievable, discrete features that can be worked on independently of other aspects, long-term guiding visions to keep in mind when designing changes... yeah.

 

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My suggestion would be to keep only the core functionality that you like from the mod (example, the main animal collection quest mechanics and repeatable activity quests) and remove outdated/broken or inconsistent parts as a starting point.  Then you can add in your own version of the story, with your own characters and style - that is probably way more likely to result in an interesting replay for fans of the mod and hopefully would be more fun for you to create.

I don't want to co-opt "The Animal Mansion" for myself. I like how the characters have developed and how the quests work. Without having identified any particular problems with how things are, I want to stay close to the original vision and style.

 

That said, there are some changes I do want to make, like trying to support male players more*, and most significantly overhauling many of the dialogue trees. But the focus is to improve what's already there, not alter it to become something different.

 

* ...even though I have absolutely no idea how to pull that off. The vast majority of creature animations are for females only, which presents a real technical limitation. (In general there is a lot more I could do if I had animations to support it - like, I've only ever seen one FFC troll animation.) So... what? Do I prostitute my follower? Do I introduce Jala earlier and have her taking most requests? But then what would the player do? I don't know.

 

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I think the main thing the mod could still use is simply more content in and around the mansion - the semi-randomized entertainment quests were always what impressed me most with the original mod, and I found myself doing the party scenes over and over just to see all the dialogue options, even if they were essentially the same scene with cosmetic differences.

Agreed and already planning for.

 

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Also, random ideas for a "platinum extended addition" of the mod (pure idea dump - most of these would take a lot of work):

  • Interior/exterior re-design:  the mod always ended up striking me more as the Animal "Dungeon" rather than mansion, simply because of the way the base floorplan was copied as more creatures were added and you spend most of your gameplay in the basement in same-looking cells.  I think having the mansion be more like a zoo, with areas themed after Skyrim biomes and populated by the creatures you find could be much more visually interesting.  I also don't think it's important that every creature have its own individual room - there could be one "show room" where the player meets a client and the creature is brought in (aka spawned offscreen just for the scene).

 

Haven't spent much time thinking about a mansion redesign, but it will happen. I was considering biomes myself, too. The original mansion was intended to be an inn (with some sort of conference room, I guess?) so the design makes sense, but given a new purpose we could have much more fun with it.

 

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  • Ability to "recruit" Skyrim NPCs to staff the mansion - it could be awesome if you could recruit any unique Skyrim NPCs to help out in the mansion Underground Bathhouse style.  Ysolda does want money, and seems willing to get into some shifty business to get it...  This would be more for eye candy, so players could bring their favorite NPCs in to participate in the shenanigans at the Mansion.

I like it, and this would fit in with something else I have in mind.

 

Given her storyline in Amorous Adventures, having Ysolda help out at the Mansion would be awesome.

 

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  • Enhancements to make the Mansion usable as a permanent player home, so the player has more reason to come back often.

Eh, maybe a little. I wouldn't want it to be Yet Another Player Home, but giving our heroine more than just a room and a bed would be nice. Again, to be considered when the redesign happens.

 

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  • NPC schedules around the mansion, with random small scenes happening.  If the mansion is supposed to be making money off of shows enough to afford expansion and all that feed, then the employees should be working without your direction.  I think it would be cool to be able to hang out at the mansion and just be able to watch the employees bringing in random animals for short shows every few minutes, or "tending" to the larger creatures outside.

Agreed and already planning for. Supposedly the Mansion is making quite a bit of coin, so maybe we can teach Thaena about the benefits of reinvesting.

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DIO over Za Warudo

DIO over Za Warudo

Posted
Posted
19 hours ago, tasairis said:

I want to resume development on the Animal Mansion saga and I need people to push me into actually doing it.

Go for it man! Animal Mansion and Animal Mansion Plus were some of my favorite mods for Legendary Skyrim, and while the original mod is supposedly compatible (in that it loads in and won't crash the game) with SE it does have a few issues here and there with the port, primarily putting the animals back in their pens after a party event or after training Jala. 

 

If you do continue the work on this mod, I'll happily support this worthy cause and I look forward to seeing what you do!

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mozarella89

mozarella89

Posted
Posted

I can only repeat what others have already said. It's one of my favourite mods, so I would be really happy to see it continued.

I'd appreciate an LE version, but I have no idea what the differences/problems in terms of mod developement are.

 

Anyway, it's great seeing someone (probably) picking up this mod again, thanks a lot.

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JesusKreist

JesusKreist

Posted
Posted
17 minutes ago, mozarella89 said:

I can only repeat what others have already said. It's one of my favourite mods, so I would be really happy to see it continued.

I'd appreciate an LE version, but I have no idea what the differences/problems in terms of mod developement are.

 

Anyway, it's great seeing someone (probably) picking up this mod again, thanks a lot.

Development wise not too many differences.

Thing is skyrim and skyrim se are similar but not exactly the same.

Small things mainly.

Black Door slightly more north in SE than in LE, some villages have the height ever so slightly altered from LE to SE. The spawn of some NPC/critters is altered by some (centi-)meters ...

Some mods are compatible with LE and SE. Most are not.

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Xonder23

Xonder23

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, tasairis said:

That said, there are some changes I do want to make, like trying to support male players more*, and most significantly overhauling many of the dialogue trees. But the focus is to improve what's already there, not alter it to become something different.

 

* ...even though I have absolutely no idea how to pull that off. The vast majority of creature animations are for females only, which presents a real technical limitation. (In general there is a lot more I could do if I had animations to support it - like, I've only ever seen one FFC troll animation.) So... what? Do I prostitute my follower? Do I introduce Jala earlier and have her taking most requests? But then what would the player do? I don't know.

Didn't HCOS have several creature animations including males? Also I assume there are some animations intended for females which could also work using a male player.

Anyways, nice to see someone picking this mod up.

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, Xonder23 said:

Didn't HCOS have several creature animations including males?

Right. What I mean is that particular species tend to be regarded as all-male or all-female: canines are male, spriggans are female, that sort of thing. Lesbian animations are more common so there are some FC spriggan animations, but gay animations are harder to find and that means few MC canines.

 

MNC is a notable exception, though, and has helped bridge the gap. Like, it's the only mod I know of that supports female falmer. (Which isn't to say I've looked particularly hard for them.)

 

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Also I assume there are some animations intended for females which could also work using a male player.

Anal, yeah, I considered that. But it's a tiny bit more awkward to deal with (couldn't rely on automatic gender tagging) and would be somewhat risky (animations may include fondling). That said I could make it an "Allow FC,Anal for males" option in the MCM and let the player decide.

 

edit: And oral.

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, Twycross448 said:

@tasairis

 

I'l likely running in open doors when I say this, but might I suggest you open your own thread once you have made up your mind??

I figured I'd start a download for it when I got "far enough along". Like the mansion, prologue, and two or three or so creatures done. Once I have that it should be fairly simple to add the rest of the creatures up until the troll.

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

All I can add is any kind of new quest mod involving all the cool new creature animations with maybe some serious tones would be appreciated. Like I played through bestial essence recently and I like how that mod actually takes itself seriously. 

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
On 4/13/2020 at 10:55 AM, MaximusApp said:

All I can add is any kind of new quest mod involving all the cool new creature animations with maybe some serious tones would be appreciated. Like I played through bestial essence recently and I like how that mod actually takes itself seriously. 

Haven't used that mod. Example of what you mean?

 

And yes, I do plan to make some rather significant additions to dialogue. That's my favorite part of modding and I'll spare no expense with it - gotta make a new playthrough worth the effort, after all.

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sfeile

sfeile

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, tasairis said:

So yeah, guess I'm doing this then. PMed sky_mds and mybrainhurts a couple days ago just in case they're getting notifications, but haven't heard back.

I think something may have happened to mybrainhurts. Him and I were messaging back and forth and he had just given me a test version with some new features he was working on to play through and give feedback, then just stopped responding and disappeared. Unfortunately, I really don't think you will get a response from him.

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MadMansGun

MadMansGun

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, tasairis said:

I do plan to make some rather significant additions to dialogue. That's my favorite part of modding and I'll spare no expense with it

do you happen to know anything about npc to npc dialogue scenes? because i can't get them to run in one of my mods.

the guide i used:

http://skyrimmw.weebly.com/skyrim-modding/making-dialogue-scenes-skyrim-modding-tutorial-by-jac

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, tasairis said:

Haven't used that mod. Example of what you mean?

 

And yes, I do plan to make some rather significant additions to dialogue. That's my favorite part of modding and I'll spare no expense with it - gotta make a new playthrough worth the effort, after all.

Tbh hard to make one example, I just mean well written dialogues so It is pretty great to see that is your favorite part since I agree that it has a huge impact on how good a quest ends up being. Bestial essence just had all around interesting conversations with its characters.

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, MaximusApp said:

Tbh hard to make one example, I just mean well written dialogues so It is pretty great to see that is your favorite part since I agree that it has a huge impact on how good a quest ends up being. Bestial essence just had all around interesting conversations with its characters.

As long as you don't want to see Interesting NPCs-style dialogue - I really don't like how they did characters. But choices between different personality styles for the player, and options that NPCs will remember and that will affect future events, and trying to give characters real personas instead of $GenericShopkeeperGreeting01-03? Definitely.

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MadMansGun

MadMansGun

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, tasairis said:

By the way, you know how to deal with start-game enabled dialogue? Use xEdit to create an SEQ file for the mod

yes i/we are aware, me and blaze69 have worked on other dialogues (player to npc / npc to player) before.

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, tasairis said:

As long as you don't want to see Interesting NPCs-style dialogue - I really don't like how they did characters. But choices between different personality styles for the player, and options that NPCs will remember and that will affect future events, and trying to give characters real personas instead of $GenericShopkeeperGreeting01-03? Definitely.

Ah ye I don't really enjoy interesting NPCs since all of the characters they add just have these super long monologues they unload on you whatever you choose. Good dialogue shouldn't mean some long convoluted story the NPC spams you with, rather something short but apt for the situation is what I prefer. But yeah that's just my preference. :)

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tasairis

tasairis

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, MaximusApp said:

Ah ye I don't really enjoy interesting NPCs since all of the characters they add just have these super long monologues they unload on you whatever you choose.

YES. A couple times I've thought "oh, look, an NPC I don't recognize, let's say hello" thinking it was a regular Skyrim NPC (since they look like regular Skyrim NPCs) but no, I get forced into some dumb conversation where my choices are totally out of left field with no context whatsoever, and I'm afraid to Tab out because this might be one-time stuff. So I'm stuck going through the whole thing until I finally make them happy - unless, of course, they're one of those NPCs that starts doing things in the middle, like the one old guy who starts walking around in a monologue, or the other guy who's like "follow me" and starts walking away (and of course I have to follow because I don't know what's going on). Yeah sure, you made them ~immersive~, but they come across to me less like some relatable person and more like the homeless guy on the bus who you accidentally made eye contact with.

 

If they had made all that optional by making it normal top-level dialogue then that would have been fine! Still wouldn't fix the random crashes and freezes that ultimately made me uninstall the entire damn mod, though. Shame that it was a great collection of fuck-buddies... I wonder if the Nexus version is better?

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