Khajiit Hearthfire, Possible mod Options

[ghastley]

Yes, it's probably a good idea to have a separate thread.

The idea is for a Khajiit merchant to be able to get a mobile home, i.e. a horse-drawn carriage/cart that will carry his wares, and be suitable for sleeping in, with a bit of re-configuration in-game.

It would add a canopy (Conestoga-like) and a removable board to fill the gap between the seats/containers when used for sleeping. The seats would theoretically hinge up for storage, but could be activated as containers without the need to add that animation, if it proves too difficult.

The game has animations for driver and passenger to enter/exit/use the carriage, so as long as it's the base model, they should work.

Unknowns: Can I add sleeping furniture to the cart? Will animations to show/hide elements in the nif be playable by script, so the re-configuration works?

I'm also considering having the player do some of the building work. Make pieces from iron ingots and lumber, at wainwright's forge only.

Player can already buy a horse, no need to add that. Lumber purchase at mills only starts with Hearthfires quests, but this will be one. The log pile will be at the wainwright's home, in this case.

OOOHHH!! Sudden idea. Wainwright is dead, house derelict. Journal contains plans for wagon-making, notes about loss of tools. Player tracks down tools, and makes own wagon. This avoids the need for dialog and minor town site. There are a couple of derelict houses near the roads that could be converted by adding a forge. Might need a derelict forge that can be repaired as step one. Hmmm....

[ghastley]

I've been letting my latest Orc (the one in the hovering pose) drive the wagon around Skyrim, to try and get the niggling glitches out, and get a few screenshots for the mod documentation. So far, it seems that all the roads, and many of the larger trails, are passable, even the back route from Helgen down to Riverwood.

I need to start a new character to test the bedroll code I added, as it needs a save before the mod is loaded. It's a good thing there's god mode to get through the fetch quests, and COC to go to the bandit dens.

There's really only one situation that's still a problem. When the player gets off the wagon, and leaves the horse hitched, the cart will sometimes take off on its own, and drift slowly off towards the skies, leaving the horse behind. Turning the horse's AI on or off doesn't seem to affect it.

I'm starting to think I need a Power to settle the cart - i.e. restore it to a stable, usable, parked position - for the times when the player has lost control, either by glitch, or just bad driving. I need to figure out how that will work, but initial thoughts are to move the wagon to a fixed position relative to the player. So you'd move to a place where there's room for it, and cast. The horse moves to the wagon when you hitch, so it's implicitly also fixed by that mechanism, as long as it's close enough to hitch. In most cases you can just ride it back to the wagon. The wagon would return with brakes on, unhitched, of course.

I've also console-enabled the restored house for a photo-shoot, and I'll post pictures soon. I keep re-thinking how the quest for that will work. My initial thought was to check the map markers for all the stables where there are hire carriages, but the player can go to all those without the wagon. I need to make sure that at least one of those visits has the wagon present, before the drivers will know about it, and sponsor the rebuild. Probably the "wagon present" test will be part of the conditions for the Story Manager event that triggers it, and the kicker quest will then check the set of map markers.

Any thoughts on the "hired thugs" situation? Should that be a one-off that can happen anywhere, triggered by elapsed time after the house is rebuilt, or more like the bandits at the Hearthfires homes, where they're randomly waiting when you come home? Or something in between, with no fixed location, and random intervals?