Khajiit Hearthfire, Possible mod Options

[mALX]

The picture of Jo'Bashi wasn't actually far from what was intended. If you push the Panic! button when you're on the cart, the horse is moved safely behind it, and the player in front to face the enemy. It's just that he was stuck in his driving pose, and still at that height. Now it's fixed, and he moves to a standing position.

The cart is buildable, drivable, you can store things in it, but I haven't got the sleep option working yet. According to the CK wiki, there's no known way to do that.

I still have to detect the completion of the wagon, and close off the Wronged Wright quest. I should add the canopy option, and put the bedroll in the back, before release, too. And there's a glitch where the horse starts off on its own when you get off the wagon. I think its AI is turned on too soon.

I made quite a few changes from the way things are done in Dragonkiller Cart. There's only the one menu, and the options depend on the current state. Initially you can only sleep in the cart (in theory) or store something in it. When you have a horse, and it's close enough, the "hitch" option is added. Hitching the horse removes the sleep option, and adds "get on", and "unhitch". You can still access the cargo when you're on the wagon, but you can't unhitch until you get off. You have the choice of "get off" which leaves the horse hitched, or "Panic!" which detaches both driver and horse, so you're ready to fight.

A decent amount of progress, and I should have something to try soon.

What a cool idea to protect the horse! I am guessing adding a sleeping mat that can be toggled on/disabled won't work?

If I'm not mistaken, there are mods with portable bedrolls, maybe the Player could have the bedroll in their inventory when needed; and store it in the wagon safekeeping when not in use?

I wonder if that is why that Dragonkiller Cart mod set up a tent/bedroll.




This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 28 2015, 05:27 PM

[ghastley]

My intent was to have the player sleep on a bedroll in the back of the wagon. I may try just having the "sleep" button put the bedroll in place, and see if it can be activated there.

I started on the documentation, and took this screenshot of another minor problem. I don't think I can lower the player onto the seat, as the position is baked into the animation/pose.

[mALX]

My intent was to have the player sleep on a bedroll in the back of the wagon. I may try just having the "sleep" button put the bedroll in place, and see if it can be activated there.

I started on the documentation, and took this screenshot of another minor problem. I don't think I can lower the player onto the seat, as the position is baked into the animation/pose.

BWAAHAA! She'll get splinters in a bad place if you don't give her a seat cushion! A cushion might be the answer for the space issue between her butt and the seat too.

Or maybe place a bedroll there, and have it one where you can either sit or lie down = sit animation cued in the middle of the bedroll; lie down animation cued at the head/pillow end of the mat?

[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?

[haute ecole rider]

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.

Do you mean that little mountain path that winds past that tiny bandit ambush and down to that west gate in Riverwood? If so, I'm impressed! And excited!

As for the hired thugs situation, it depends on whether or not you want them to be highly motivated and stupid, in which case they would be completely random in time and location; i.e. they find the PC purely by luck; be lazy and stupid, in which case it would be a one-off case (then they give up). Or will they be smart and highly motivated? Then they would wait for the PC near the cities and settlements. Just out of sight of the guards. If smart and lazy (or he would say he's "energy-efficient"), he would wait by the house. In both of those cases they would be random in terms of timing, but not random in terms of location.

One of the most irritating things for me is coming home to one of my Hearthfire homes and finding damn bandits (or wolves, in the case of Lakeview) terrorizing my livestock and kids, and no steward in sight! Almost enough to motivate me to learn the ins and outs of the Skyrim CK so I can disable that damned spawn point!

This post has been edited by haute ecole rider: Sep 30 2015, 04:09 PM

[mALX]

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?

I always love hired thugs, they really add fun to the game!

[ghastley]

Not a lot of progress this weekend. I do have a wagon reset spell that the player can use when it's needed (such as overturning the wagon due to driving too fast). It's given to you when you complete building the wagon.

I created the Story Manager nodes and hooked up a kicker quest to start the house rebuild. That requires the the player to have visited all the stables - checking that the map markers show does that part - and the kicker quest checks that the player has the wagon with him when he arrives at one of the stables. If all conditions are met, then the building quest starts. That's empty right now, but will send a courier to say that the carriage drivers have rebuilt the house in the hope it will become a repair shop.

The workbench was in the demolished house, so it's inaccessible when the rebuilt one takes its place. That avoids the temptation to build more complete wagons, but the forge, smelter, tanning rack and grindstone are still out the back, for normal use. The interior has a work-table that's not a crafting station. I'll post screenshots of the rebuilt house as soon as I stop adding clutter.

The thing that's still eluding me is the bedroll in the back of the wagon. I tried moving one there from a holding cell, and found that you can't move furniture. So I tried creating one with PlaceAtMe, but that didn't work either. Since there are camping mods that spawn bedrolls, (including Dragonkiller Cart), I'll just have to poke around in those and extract the relevant parts. I may even have it working, but be suffering from save-bake. It's hard to tell if I went back far enough in the saves each time I re-tested.

I'll probably add quest markers to one of the quests for the wagon, and the player's horse. Keeping that quest active will let you select it when you need the directions.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Oct 5 2015, 03:14 PM

[haute ecole rider]

You can overturn the wagon?? Cool! Does it do wheelies too?

Sounds like you're in the boring part of the mod process. Tweaking all the nuts and bolts to get the desired result. Laying the framework for the quest/story. Sounds like quite a bit of work.

Still, I'm looking forward to the finished product!

[Grits]

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?

I’m in favor of the one-off Hired Thugs situation. It makes sense that they would track you down like a courier does instead of waiting around until you return to the workshop, plus it’s kind of fun to have the thugs stroll up in some random location. I think one time because the player will probably kill them, and even if the player gets away the organization in Cyrodiil would have paid the thugs to attack just once. (Lesson learned either way.)

I’m delighted that you’ve made a wagon reset spell. I’m sure there will be many unanticipated ways for players to overturn the wagon!

Is there an invisible bed marker you can use on a static bed-thing that you make for the wagon yourself? I’m sorry I don’t have any ideas for the bedroll part. I love the idea of having it inside the wagon, though, because the lone traveler would want to pack up in a hurry. Like car “camping” in an unofficial camping spot without a tent!

Your progress is exciting to watch, ghastley!

[mALX]

I somehow picture Maxical being seen in an overturned state in various locations throughout Skyrim from here on out,

[ghastley]

You can overturn the wagon??

You can also get killed if you're underneath when it does so.

The first attempts at the "recover wagon" spell had the wrong offset and the wagon landed on the player, fatally. It now lands a safe distance ahead.

There are two parts to the bedroll problem, neither yet solved. I want a bedroll to appear in the back of the wagon, and I want the player to be presented the sleep dialog. The bedroll can be a dummy, as the wagon is the activator for the sleeping. It just needs to be there when you wake up.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Oct 6 2015, 04:47 PM

[ghastley]

Major breakthroughs today!

I'd been having a problem with starting the quest that rebuilds the wainwright's house. The Story Manager log said that it passed on the event, but the kicker quest that checks all the conditions wasn't running. It had a debug.trace statement at the start, so I could confirm it got there.

Today I discovered that was the cause of the problem. Removing the trace attempt lets it work as intended!

So now Jo'Bashi has a workshop to go back to.

Exterior
Interior
Looking left
and right

The other big one was placing the bedroll in the back of the wagon. A bedroll can't be moved, so I ended up moving an X-Marker to the right place and creating a bedroll at the same location each time. The marker gets recycled in and out of a holding cell, but the bedroll is deleted when you hitch the horse.

Bedroll in place at last (and usable)!

I still have to add the canopy option, and create the hired thugs quest, but what's there is testable if anyone wants to try it.

One known gotcha: If you read the letter that rebuilds the house before you made all the crafting stations, you can't reach the workbench to do so. Make the smelter, grindstone and tanning rack before you read it!

This post has been edited by ghastley: Oct 18 2015, 04:50 PM

[Grits]

Woo, got it! I have a Khajiit hanging around Whiterun ready and willing to play.

The house looks great (screenshot, I haven’t gotten there yet), and I love the sign! Yay for the bedroll in the wagon. I did not really get the problem until you explained that you’d solved it.

Thank you, ghastley! This is exciting!

[ghastley]

One thing I noticed yesterday that probably belongs in the readme or wiki notes: if you reload a save with the player driving the wagon, the horse will walk away (or run away) having become untethered. I need to review the logic in the OnLoad process to see if I missed something.

Fast travel moves the player and horse only. The reset spell will fetch the wagon. However, if I'm in that kind of a hurry, I leave the wagon behind, anyway.

Otherwise, what's there appears to work, and what's not there isn't reminding you it's missing. You can't make the non-existant canopy yet, and the thugs aren't being threatened, except for the hint in the journal.

I use the Panic! button whenever I want to stop and exit, so it might get renamed.

Feedback on whether the house needs anything added would help. I'm conflicted about making it a viable "only fixed residence". The wagon-owner has no private alchemy, armorer or enchanting stations.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Oct 19 2015, 07:40 PM

[Grits]

OK, great to know. Thank you, ghastley!

My Whiterun Khajiit had already made a bit of a mess in his game, so I started over. Mojo has found a ruined house with a great view and business potential. In the morning he’s off to the Wreck of the Winter War!

Biggest decision: which color horse to buy?

That’s a good question about the crafting stations in the house. I’ll think about it as I get to know Mojo. I’ve already realized that driving a wagon and collecting alchemy ingredients are not going to happen in the same trip.

I would definitely include an armorer workbench to round out the Smithing set, though. Enough critters will attack on the road and provide hides to haul back and use at the workshop to make a bit of crafting worthwhile. In looking at the pictures I liked that the house was very simple, but the tabletop alchemy and enchanting stations might still fit in.

I suppose that “Oh [censored]!” is not an appropriate substitute for “Panic!”

[ghastley]

Biggest decision: which color horse to buy?

The carriage drivers all think that the Windhelm Horses are best in harness. Do they know something we don't?

The nearest stables sell the black ones, and Jo'Bashi is himself quite dark, so he currently has one of those.

But most of my characters bought a horse a soon as they could afford one, from the nearest stables, so I think I used them all at one time or other.

There's nothing outside on the front deck, so there's room to add things there.


This post has been edited by ghastley: Oct 19 2015, 09:16 PM

[ghastley]

I moved the spare wheels out to the front deck, and added a small table and chair out there, too.

The space against the back wall now has a table with the tabletop versions of the enchanter and alchemy stations, as they take up less space. The chest on the left is now under that table, so there's room for the character to use the labs.

While adding the Armorer Workbench at the back, I found a problem I hadn't noticed before. The rebuilt house has lost the chimney! The space where I had thought to put the workbench is where the chimney should have been, so it's going between the forge and the smelter (just enough space) and I'll try to add the missing chimney to a modified FarmHouse05 mesh.

[Grits]

Awesome, that big tundra sky begs for outdoor seating. Or perhaps that’s my Nord I hear planning to laze about on the front deck when he passes by the wainwright’s.

It’s good to have those stations available. I’m glad you found a spot for them.

No chimney, oops. Perhaps that's why there's so much fog inside some of Skyrim's buildings!

[ghastley]

The chimney turned out to be trivial to fix, because the third variant of the mesh (another destroyed one with a bit of roof) had an almost intact chimney that I could copy across in NifSkope. So now the rebuild one is complete.

The crafting stations inside are looking good too. The table fits that space well,

[Grits]

Oh very nice. I imagine that the wainwright’s repaired place could become an informal rest stop for the caravans, much like the little country store/service stations that we have around here.

This morning Mojo informed me that Khajiit is no “test character” and that it was high time I gave a form to Shuvesse’s lonely face file, so now she’s waiting for him in Rorikstead. Evidently Khajiit has access to my hard drive. This one could be trouble.


Edit: misplaced modifier.

This post has been edited by Grits: Oct 20 2015, 01:11 PM