The Half Constructed Skyrim Estate

Since FNV companion advancements, and considerable Skyrim graphical overhauls are both long-winded posts, I thought we'd start off with something... smaller.

Over the years of playing Skyrim, I haven't really used the big house mods like in other games. I generally got by with something in the base game; but they all have issues.

Whiterun's house is too small, Riften's, too; Riften has no smelter, Solitude has no smelter; Markarth is so far removed from anything that it's just plain inconvenient. Windhelm has it all -- plenty of space and storage, easy access to enchanting, smelting, smithing, and alchemy... but you have to play through damned near the entire civil war quest to even get the option of buying it. It was only recently that I slogged through that mess -- mostly for the express purpose of trying out that house. Not sure it was worth it.

In the realm of mods, the Riverside Lodge is nice. It's not really me though. I usually end up using it as a place to billet extra companions. The "build your own house!" house is nice, and has suitable requirements to not feel like you got given the place; but it's in the ass-end of nowhere, and a severe pain to get to when you're doing the whole no fast travel thing.

Then Hearthfire came along. Have to curry favor with the Jarl; buy the land, build the house as you go... all nice. Have their own smelters, forges, alchemy and enchanting equipment; the houses even have carriages for no-fast-travel. Trouble is, the Hearthfire houses are... limited. Each wing gets one of three options; and those three options can not be used in any other wing; EG: you get the expanded bedroom in the west wing, or not at all. Want a library? Then you can't have a kitchen. Want a deck outside on the north face of the house for the view? Then you have to have the store room, and don't get the alchemy tower or display area.

Eventually, the urge to mod won out. I had been putting off construction of a Skyrim estate, since I didn't much care for any of the tilesets; and didn't want to cop out and do my usual apocalyptic underground stronghold. Got bored enough to dig through the Hearthfire master one night, though, and saw that its pieces were pretty modular, and could be slapped together into something way less restrictive.

After scouting some areas, I decided on a spot across the river from the Solitude sawmill. It wasn't used for anything, was open and relatively flat; had easy access to water, fish, and so-on; wasn't near a major road-way; and with a mod to expand carriages, it was just a short ford across the river from the sawmill.

In my usual style, though, ideas got the better of me as to the size of the estate, and well...











...it ended up being like 2.5 Hearthfire houses in one.

Built up some rocks to serve as a base; added support posts, ladders, and stairs. The whole mess navmeshed surprisingly easy. Skyrim doesn't work exactly like the Fallouts in that regard, but the learning curve from one to the other was short.

The terrace running around the outside will have the garden planters:










As well as the outdoorsy crafting amenities:












While not completed yet, there will also be a pool (as soon as I can figure out which set of meshes people keep using to make them), and a sitting area. The view is nice:




It's also set up to accommodate dragon attacks:



As well, around the rocks that make up the base are markers for insects, and catchable fish in the river below; although no nets since I didn't figure authorities would take kindly to someone dredge-netting the river at its narrowest and shallowest point.


The interior didn't get very far, as I quickly realized that it will be a framerate destroyer as one cell; and I haven't thus far decided exactly how to break it up. Completed so far are the entryway:




Main dining area:




Kitchen:






and bathroom:





...Yes, the toilet is a chair with a hole in it sitting over a pipe with a shutter. It was the most plausible thing I could think of shut up.

Needless to say everything still has to be cluttered, furnished, and have accent lights added; but as you can also tell from the guests in some of the screenshots the whole thing is already navmeshed and NPC-friendly.

The basement, when constructed (you can see the access hatch in one of the kitchen shots) will have a well, some mushrooms growing, and probably a larder/root cellar thing going on.

In the exterior, I'll eventually be adding a stone wall at the property's edge, a stable, small barn, and path leading out to the road. The house will also be tagged and set up properly to integrate into the Radiant quest system; and marked off into its own area for the AI to have some more flexibility. In the end, I intend to have the girls moved from their current start location in Riverwood to the estate, with a complex package list similar to the one I use in FNV; so that they can live a day-to-day life when not traveling with me.

Sadly, this will all probably take quite a while; since time constraints in my day-to-day life aside, the Creation Kit's cell editor hates both me and my PC.

Delivery From Skyrim

YesIknowtheydon'thavecamerasinTheElderScrollsuniverseshutup.

Wish You Were Here...

Skyrim Companion Stuff

Apologies if this is a little... ramble-y.

I'm trying to get back in the habit of actually posting stuff; rather than uploading screenshots into the Picasa account of no return and then forgetting about them for months.

I don't think I ever posted about it (couldn't find it in the post list as far back as November, anyway); but I did a while back get the whole custom bodies for companions things worked out in Skyrim.

The Nexus forum post I had read last year that went into details as to just how much of a pain in the ass it would be to set up a single-race custom body was apparently completely and utterly full of shit -- which is the result I'm learning to expect. I had downloaded HoneyVanity's companion Bee-V late last year; since I knew from /tesg/ threads that she had somehow managed to get a custom body working for the one companion. I am ashamed to say that the "trick" was not only something I hadn't considered, but in all takes less than two minutes per race to implement. It's as simple as flagging the custom body parts as being valid for use by the vanilla race your custom race copies its armor morphs from. If you don't know what that means, you're probably not messing around with custom races in Skyrim and don't need to worry about it.

My custom races aren't vampire or werewolf compatible -- because frankly I'm too lazy to script that mess; since it involves editing a vanilla script and would thus conflict with any other custom race mod, and I don't vamp or were my companions anyway. Nice thing about only one person using a plugin is you don't have to make allowances for the stupid ideas that the community on the whole gets.

Since my initial screenshot takin' got interrupted by the new GPU (which changed a bunch of video settings and resulted in the old shots looking like shit by comparison), I got sort of sidetracked several times and never actually got around to posting up the latest versions of the girls as they appear in 4E201.

Being as she's the obvious fan favorite, I suppose we'll start with everyone's favorite demoness. As I've noted in the past, Maeva's always supposed to have been on the muscle-y side. Not bulky; but lean and defined. Since much as I like them, the default UNP textures do not qualify as this, I had to look elsewhere. Enter HoneyVanity's barbarian body textures; which are versions of the same base texture she used for creating Bee-V. I have to say I do like these best, as far as "athletic" textures go; as they're well defined, but not the creepy-body-builder kind of stuff that so many seem to end up being. A few edits later (alright, it was actually about seventeen -- but it took some time to figure out compression settings), and we got this...








(you wouldn't believe how much booze it cost me to get the bikini posing)







And yeah; my shadows suck. Those were interim shots -- taken after the new GPU, but when I was still messing with settings. One of these days I need enough CPU and RAM to handle the game with an ENB active. Most recently, I got some shots of her the other night in full armored glory:











...And just because I love when she gives me this look:




I actually need to edit her textures again; as they ended up with some artifacting because of stupid GIMP. I make .png backups now so I have an original to re-export to .dds when the one I use gets corrupted... but sadly these were made before I started that safety measure. At some point I need to take another shot at making her eye meshes glow; the reflectivity is high enough that they sorta glow now under the right light... but it just isn't the same. Less creepy in a dark room, though.

Next up, we have She Who Shall Not Be Named, who continues to scare the hell out of me. Not only has she learned to bait slaughterfish and lead them up into the shallow water to kill them; but I was playing a few days ago and she can now apparently noclip through locked doors at will, and has learned how to follow me down un-navmeshed rocks and cliffsides -- where the other two have to walk around and follow a valid path. You mark my words: when the army of red-headed gynoids marches on humanity, the short haired one will be their leader.




Since Skyrim includes no skirts and button-up shirts that I've been able to find thus far, she's taken to wearing the "Mourner's Clothing" when not armored.







(WILL. YOU. PLEASE. STOP. BLINKING. WHEN. I'M. TRYING. TO. TAKE. YOUR. FUCKING. PICTURE?!)



Lastly, we have Natasha -- who is turning out to be as bloodthirsty as the other two. Her AI has developed the tactic of using a lightning bolt or firebolt spell in each hand; but instead of dual-casting (which she has the spells and perks for), she chain-fires and uses the spells in normal form; but to land two hits almost simultaneously. Must be something I did with the combat style and didn't realize it...








And lastly we have one of her looking suitably badass; still glowing with the protection spell she cast during the opening of what was one of the most anticlimactic battles in history:



We were heading into Markarth to spend the night somewhere indoors (since Frostfall makes it a bad idea to sleep outside); and were "ambushed" by four Forsworn at a bridge.

That's right. Four people in animal skins, with stone weapons attacked four people decked out in full armor, expensive fur cloaks, and carrying glowing weapons. Hell, one of our little party is damned near seven feet tall in her armor -- armor that I might add glows red in places. I know why the Forsworn lost the Reach: because they're morons. The "fight" lasted all of ten seconds; they went down so fast that I think the protection spell was pretty pointless... but it made for a nice screenshot.

I don't actually have many well-lit shots of new-Natasha. There's nothing wrong with her AI or combat prowess; it's just that my toaster-like computer doesn't much care for three custom-body companions in tow at the same time. Runs fine if they're not in the party (sandboxing around the house while I do crafting stuff, for example), but once they go into follow mode my FPS tanks for some reason. So I tend to leave Natasha to watch the house.

Not to mention all the pathfinding and traffic jam problems that occur when you take more than two companions into a cave or other close area of questionable navmesh quality.

And finally, in one of my alternate characters, I ended up using Lydia as a companion rather than just leaving her at Breezehome. I decided if she was going to tag along, she'd need to look less bad. This happened:





Interestingly, I didn't rework the face at all -- that's just the normal game-wide UNP textures I have installed. All I did was switch her to red hair (34, 0, 0, I think it was). I guess making them a redhead really does automatically make any woman more attractive.

Unnamed Post Series: Companions

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the bulk of my recent modding time has gone into companions, and further expanding their already considerable capabilities.

Firstly, I've made oblique references on several occasions now to a system for creature companions that I was working on. Well, after logging fifty odd hours of play without him getting lost once or having to have his follow status forcibly reset; I'm about ready to call it a working framework.

Everyone, this is Cid:













Cid is a slightly mutated Gray Wolf; who stands about 30" at the shoulder and tips the scales up near a hundred and eighty pounds. He sports the standard NosCo companion features: follow, stay here, go home, inventory; as well as a tracking plugin with summoning and reset functions. The system I ended up using is slightly different on the back end than what I normally use; in that Cid's packages aren't added and removed on the fly -- they start on him, as his behavior is controlled by variable settings in his script. While not yet implemented, I am considering adding hardcore needs to him, as well.

As usual, I overdid it a bit on Cid. In the past, creature companions (Dogmeat, Rex) haven't been terribly useful for me -- they tend to get their furry asses handed to them on a regular basis. I didn't want this to happen to Cid, so I set up a few actor effects for him.

...I created a monster. In early testing, we were out at that travel trailer south of the Wolfhorn Ranch; the one where you get ambushed by Vipers. I let Cid run off to do his thing while I picked off gunmen where I could. Soon, I heard the telltale explosion of that one asshole with the grenade launcher. He wasn't shooting at me, so that narrowed it down. I kept working, expecting any second to see a message pop up that my pooch was unconscious. The message never came. What I saw instead, several seconds later, was the Viper come hauling ass out across the field; a giant (extremely pissed off) gray wolf hot on his heels, snarling and trying to bite him in the ass. ...You ever have one of those gameplay moments when you'd have given a great deal to have had FRAPS running to catch something? This was one of those. Sadly, it was over before I could aim and screenshot... but what a .gif it would have made. Afterwards, when I went to loot the Vipers, I found the one with the grenade launcher (missing half a leg). He still had grenades; his AI had just decided that a full rout was the proper response, apparently. Which to be fair, is usually the best idea if you shoot something in the face with a grenade launcher and it only gets mad.

He tanked the giant roboscorpion in OWB. The poor robot couldn't even get 20% of his health down; and Cid had beat the roboscorpion back several paces in the time it took me to get up the stairs to find a firing position with some cover. He wasn't doing any significant damage; but neither was the robot.

Obviously, I overdid the DT increase effect a tish. Going to have to scale that back, somewhat.

Cid, you may notice, is not made up of a vanilla game model. I had originally tried to use the wolf model from the monster mod; and almost immediately remembered how horrible the author of that mess is at modding. Decided to do it myself, instead. Took the Legion mongrel model, edited it to remove the shagginess, and then reworked the texture to make it gray, white, black, and some light blue. Sadly the finer details don't show up in the game; even with large textures and full anisotropic filtering. And yes: he has blue eyes in those last couple screenshots. He was originally supposed to have blue eyes. I changed it because I couldn't get the shade of blue I wanted; and I saw a photo of a wolf with pale yellow eyes that I thought looked fairly good. It didn't render correctly in-game either... but it's less bad than the pastel blue.

I gotta say, while I still don't like anyone else's creature companions, I like Cid. He screws up my sneaking on a regular basis, and much like a real dog he's constantly too close and trying to get underfoot... but he reminds me of the pets I had when I was playing WoW: a big furry ball of hate and damage absorption that jumps between me and enemies and holds their attention while I shoot them in the face.

Plus, I think it would make for a hilarious first entry into the Prospector Saloon...

"Cheyenne, stay. Don't worry, she doesn't bi-OH MY GOD what is that?!"

"Yeah... he does bite; so I'd keep my distance."


Of course, I haven't been neglecting the humanoid companions, either.

One thing I've wanted for a while that I finally got added was a sort of affection stat. Now, most companion makers want an affection-tracker stat so that when the player has completed enough bullshit fetch quests, the companion will decide they want to spend the rest of their lives with this particular pushover and et cetera et cetera. My girls are established characters, and don't do romance quests. Nonetheless, I wanted a means of tracking how they feel about the player on a per-game basis; to delay some dialogues or behaviors from kicking in until later (whether via cumulative niceness or by meeting specific requirements), so I added what I called "regard". This pulled double duty of giving me a way to control when the aforementioned dialogue and behavior would start and stop from a new game; as well as letting me test out the system and figure out how it works, for eventual inclusion in the mega-companion that will blow all others out of the water but you should totally forget I mentioned all the same.

LOOK! A BLIMP!

Anyway.

Part of this system was gifts. Mostly standard stuff -- ammo, food, drinks. Hard liquor for the demon. Natasha gave me a bit of an avenue for trying something different, however, as she's more a normal girl than the others. She likes stuffed animals. Rather than just pull the standard cop-out where you give the NPC the item and it poofs away; I instead set up some shelves in an unused corner of the bedroom in the Estate. When I give Natasha a teddy bear, she puts it on the shelf to display.



The shelves hold fourteen bears total, in various sizes; and all placed using the Havok engine so that they sit on the shelves normally, instead of hanging stiffly as though suspended by wires.

It was a fun if minor piece of combined scripting and cell design; and I think it turned out well.

I also added a new method whereby the cell we're in will be tracked and categorized. Originally I had planned it to go indoors and out; and be used to trigger all sorts of neat dialogue... but I forgot that Bethsoft are fucking slackers. The GECK will allow you to put cells into a formlist... but it will not allow that formlist to be read by GetInCell -- requiring that rather than just having a formlist for each category of location, you have to name them explicitly and check one cell at a time. Worse yet, the script function that drives such code does not function on any cell except those in the Interiors worldspace -- not only will it not work outdoors, but it won't even work in places like the Lucky 38 penthouse or lounge; the Gomorrah courtyard; the legion camp in general. This severely cut back the number of cells I was able to work with; and all but destroyed most of the outdoor dialogue I had been planning.

Still, I managed to get some dialogue implemented; and the girls can now use alternate greetings and other dialogue based on where they are:











The three categories of cell I've set up are: safe, might-be-safe, unsafe. Only a few new dialogues are actually added right now because I hate to write a hundred lines of dialogue only to find out the script that decides whether they're valid or not doesn't work.

As well, I added some code that causes the girls to comment on entering a cell for the first time:




To keep it from being the same every game, the script is set up to choose one of them at random to comment. Since it only happens once per game, this combined with some random dialogue will hopefully keep the idea from ending up tedious and annoying; and rather give them some extra personality.

If the companion chosen to speak isn't in the party at the time, the script resets and tries again until it either gets a valid choice, or you're no longer in the cell in question. Probably not the most elegant of scripting; but in a half dozen tests now, it's proven perfectly reliable.

I also created a replacement for my long-serving Pip-Boy Plugin icon, that I've been using since RR days.



The new one is an icon-o-fied section of screenshot showing the Pip-Boy open to the world map tab. The original displayed a quest marker and the cursor to indicate you were finding something... but it ended up having to be reduced in size so much that those tiny details were lost.

There was probably more... but I've been typing at this stuff no one reads for like five hours off and on. I've long since lost my train of thought; so I think I'll end it here for now.