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Posted by: ghastley Feb 27 2014, 04:11 PM

I have most of the pieces for adding an Orc Stronghold to the homes the player can build in Hearthfire. It's going to take some time to connect it all up - especially linking all the pieces to the their enable parents, and making the lists of components that drive the scripts, but everything is figured out. The bit that's missing (apart from some of the partial building meshes) is the quest that allows the player to use the plot of land.

In the DLC, the player is granted the right to purchase the land by the Jarl of a hold that has no ready-made home. The only one that doesn't already provide a plot or a house is Winterhold, and that's all heavy snow and ice. The Orc Longhouse comes in regular and light-snow variants, and I didn't feel like adding to the load by making another, so a grant from Winterhold was ruled out. That left me with putting the plot in one of the others, and the need for a different story.

I found a suitable location at the northern side of the central plain, near to Greenspring Hollow. It has iron veins (6) and corundum (2) in reasonable reach, plus 2 clay, and I've found a good spot to add a stone quarry. That puts it in Whiterun's area, and the Jarl there already lets you buy Breezehome. So I need another way for you to get the grant to the Greenspring Longhouse plot.

One idea I have is for the Orc chieftains collectively to reward the player if he/she has done favours for each of the four existing strongholds. The chief of Largashbur gets replaced by the Malacath quest, but that's no different from the Civil War replacing Jarls, and can be accomodated by an appropriate alias. None of them would step down, and let him/her replace them, but letting the player build a new stronghold would advance the Orcish cause in general. This only makes sense for an Orc player character, but I suspect that's what the human playing the game would expect.

The questions remaining are:
Who to pay for the land? It's easier to use the existing scripts if I can keep this part of the process. I'm thinking Whiterun Steward, as it's in their territory.
Adoption? The longhouse is smaller than the other three houses, but you can fit child beds into it. The code allows adopted kids to move to a house that has those, plus their own chest. The counter-argument is that there's no Orc orphans without another mod. On the gripping hand, you don't have to adopt kids of your own race. Since I can control what's put into the house, I can turn adoption on or off by the making of the kids' beds and chest(s).
Should the longhouse recruit other Orcs? DLC houses can add bard and carriage driver, and convert a follower to steward. It may be possible to re-purpose those slots to more Orcish-stronghold "jobs", like shaman or smith.
Multiple marriage? Orc chieftains can have more than one wife. Should building the longhouse give the player the right to extra wives? And what if the PC is female? I'm not sure if this would mean new script, or if "hunts-wife" could just be a replacement for "bard".

Posted by: King Coin Feb 27 2014, 04:32 PM

Depending on how you set this up, I might be interested in using this mod. Would you have to be an Orc to get it? Does it have walls and outbuildings?

Paying for the land, that would make sense to get it from the steward.

I don�t really use the adoption feature so I don�t care about that much.

I�d like to recruit anyone really to work at my longhouse. Not just orcs.

I�d say extra wives for orcs only. Part of their culture, but not really part of anyone else�s.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 27 2014, 05:40 PM

Since the orc strongholds are autonomous, it seems odd to pay the Whiterun Steward to create a new stronghold. Since the orcs themselves respect strength, I would think they would most respect someone who simply took the initiative and created their own stronghold, and of course had the strength to pull it off. So instead of paying for land, I suggest some quest(s) to take and hold the land. Put some giants there you have to slay, or a den of bandits, etc... Then once construction has begun I suggest a few more defend the stronghold quests from bandit raiders and the like.

I think you may as well keep the adoption feature. People who like it can use it. And it won't matter to people who don't bother with kids.

I suppose one question you need to answer is if this is going to be for only Orc characters. If it is it will limit the usefulness of the mod. But it does make the most sense to me. Why would a Bosmer want to build an Orc Stronghold? Unless you just like the way the buildings look (which I have to say I do).

So here is an idea. Let anyone build an Orc-themed house. But only let an Orc player build an actual stronghold. So then what is the difference between the two? The Orc-themed house would be a standard Hearthfire home, just with Orc meshes and textures rather than the Nord-style building. Everything else would be exactly the same as in HF. The Stronghold would be an all Orc affair. Besides the usual steward, wagon driver, bard, you could implement a script that adds other Orc npcs who just live there, work the mine, the smithy, the potion table, and so on, the same as a regular stronghold. That would also give you an armor/weapon vendor and a potion vendor. It might be simplest to just make two separate mods. One an Orc-themed house that you buy from the Whiterun Steward, one the Stronghold that your Orc character carves from the wilderness all on their own.

On wives, the Orcs are polygamous, but only the Chief. As I understand it he is married to every female Orc in the stronghold (except his children). The other Orc men are not allowed to have wives, or sex as far as I can tell. They basically modeled it after RL lion prides. So I think if it is going to be an actual stronghold, every female NPC in it should be married to the player. If that is the case I suggest putting in some random quests where other male Orcs from the Stronghold challenge the player to a fight to the death for Chiefdom. Not being able to have sex is probably going to make most of them ready to kill sooner or later. Likewise new Orcs can come along to challenge the player as well, just like male lions do in the wild.

If the player is female... Traditionally female Orcs don't run strongholds. But RL has plenty of examples of women who did things that traditionally they weren't supposed to do. A female chief might simply do exactly the same things as a male one, and thusly be married to all the women, and just as before no men ever get to get laid. Or she might really buck tradition and completely change how Stronghold society works. But if that is the case, it seems like less an Orc Stronghold, and more just a village with a lot of Orcs in it. So I would suggest it work the same for a female or male player character.

Posted by: ghastley Feb 27 2014, 05:52 PM

I'll take a screenshot or two of the outside tonight and post them. Inside is only half-done, but I may include that. Current plan is for this to be Orc-only, or at least only for players with an Orc spouse. Otherwise, why would the grant be made? And I'm assuming the local Jarl needs paying off in some fashion. In feudal societies, they "own" the hold, and all sub-ownership is at their whim. But the High King "owns" the entire province and grants them their holds in the same way. The Orcs may be semi-autonomous, but they're still in someone else's province, so they need to negotiate terms for expansions.

Construction will go like this (subject to change):
1. Build a small hut - Framing uses Orc full canopy, then add walls, and a door. No foundation, no floor, and result has a dirt floor and does not create an interior space. Completing this puts in bedrolls, and lets you
2. Build the longhouse - in the first cut, this will all go up at once, but I'm putting together meshes for floor, low walls, and roof framing, so it can become a four-stage process, and once the door is added, enable the interior. Unlike the DLC, it's not connected to the first "room", but that appears to be OK.
3. Can now build interior items at workbench inside, and can add outside buildings:
3a. Forge with partial canopies - once this is added, you can add tanning rack, armourer bench, and grindstone
3b. Smelter
3c. Half-canopy for storage
3d. Can also add a cellar to the longhouse - this adds a workbench for cellar content.
4. Complete set of outhouses lets you add a stockade.
5. Stockade lets you add a wooden guard tower.

At some point, the starter hut (which just had a couple of bedrolls in it) will be remodelled as something else - perhaps a smokehouse, with tables and hanging racks for fish/meat. I don't need new script for this as room 1 remodel is already part of the DLC script, with item lists defined separately. The bedrolls would be moved to the cellar, if built.

Most exterior building will need more wood, less clay/stone than regular hearthfire homes. But since the interior is smaller, the total wood usage should balance out. On the interior, you're making items from the Main Hall list only (and probably not all of those). No add-on wings, and the Orc fireplace is there to start with - part of the standard interior mesh. I need to see if I can "build" the spit/pots instead. There are a lot fewer doors, so you won't be making so many locks, and 2 corundum veins are close. I need to make sure there are plenty of chests to use those locks. You won't need as much iron for fittings etc, inside, but nails for the stockade should bring that need back up.

Recruiting arbitrary staff would need new script, but keeping the existing method requires converting a follower to a "steward", so that's not ruled out. Some of the follower mods that allow multiple followers may make it irrelevant, anyway.

Posted by: Grits Feb 27 2014, 08:33 PM

I like the idea of recruiting other orcs for the orc stronghold. Maybe the player could choose two of their own wives as the Hearthfire spouse and steward, then have the steward-wife (called the forge-wife or whatever) recruit the next two wives in place of the bard and carriage driver.

I would make adoption an option and let the player figure out where they are going to get orc kids or if they are going to adopt humans instead. If they don�t like it they can just not adopt kids.

Of course I would love to have the ability to make an orc-style longhouse as a different race. Maybe a longhouse-lite version rather than a full-blown stronghold, or even allowing the player to play and recruit any race or gender and just deal with the lore-unfriendliness of their decisions.

This is very exciting. Also I love the location you picked.


ETA: Lol. I realize I mixed up my recruiting and plural marriage thoughts.

Another thing while I�m babbling incoherently, if there�s a way to leave the Temple of Mara out of the wedding mechanics, that would be great.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 27 2014, 09:36 PM

I like the way the Orc buildings look, and I like the idea of building a fort that looks like an Orc stronghold, but I'm not actually interested in playing an Orc.

However you set it up, you wound need some way to "earn" the land from Whiterun. Why would the Jarl let you take some of his land without paying for it? Unless you are planning on making all of Whiterun hostile...

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 27 2014, 10:19 PM

My thought on that is the Jarl of Whiterun (and every other hold), does not gather their army and try to drive out every group of bandits, necromancers, vampires, and what not who decide to set up shop in their territory. If they are going to just ignore the bandits living in their forts, I don't see why they would bother with someone who is not (presumably!) a lawbreaker building a house. The most they ever do is put out a bounty. Maybe they might do that, and a quest or several quests could revolve around fighting off bounty hunters and then finally squaring things with the Jarl?

Posted by: ghastley Feb 27 2014, 10:29 PM

That's why I'm currently thinking that you'd pay Whiterun for it, and that the Orc chieftains have negotiated it for you because of your helping them. That avoids me having to write extra quests to get there. Each of the Jarls that gives you a direct grant to allow purchase of house or land wants a number of quests done in their hold, and I'd like to substitute checking the Orc quests, as it seems more appropriate, and justifies the building of an Orc longhouse in particular. I looked into having a longhouse option at each of the three existing sites, but the way the scripts are written prevents them being used that way. I'd have to replace the scripts to do so.

Whiterun is also different from the other holds in that the Jarl's disposition to you is mainly set by the MQ - and you either killed a dragon, or took the city for him in the Civil War. So when the Orcs approach Balgruuf or Vignar, they already like you. You'll get a courier notification that it's happened, no need for anything complex.

And keeping this simple is important for two reasons: I need to finish it, and if it's too complex, there's more opportunity to dislike parts. Leaving out the "Player is an Orc" test meets the simple requirement, and I'll do that, but that opens it up to requests for non-Orcish content, and more complexity. As it is, I'll be using the furnishing list for room 2 - main hall - as much as possible, to avoid extra work. The items built may be Orcish-style, and not match the workbench image at first, but I can replace the tokens' images later.

@SubRosa: The Jarls don't just ignore the bandits etc. They send the player to wipe them out!

Posted by: Vital Feb 27 2014, 10:36 PM

I love this idea Ghastley! My Orc Shaga would've loved it

One thing to remember that I don't think has been mentioned (sorry if I missed it) is that there is always one elderly female Orc that plays a shaman role in the stronghold. She isn't married to the chief and has quite a lot if influence in the stronghold. Otherwise I think you've got most of it spot on

Posted by: Grits Feb 27 2014, 10:54 PM

Story-wise I wonder about rebuilding an old stronghold rather than establishing an entirely new one. There wouldn�t have to be ruined buildings at the site, just the dialog that there had once been a stronghold there. The other strongholds would naturally want their trading partner back, and it would be no surprise that the Jarl of Whiterun would cooperate. Also if you wanted to put some more orc NPCs hanging around in the world they could be scattered tribe members the player could recruit to rebuild their parents�/ancestors� home. Just a thought.

Posted by: ghastley Feb 27 2014, 11:01 PM

The "wise woman" at three of the four strongholds is the chief's mother. Atub at Largashbur is the exception, and it's just possible that she's Yamarz' mother, but doesn't like to admit it.

The player doesn't have a mother available. He might have a mother-in-law, but ...

Posted by: ghastley Feb 28 2014, 01:18 AM

Images of build progress.

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseBareSIte.jpg - a little bit of local leveling of the ground was done, but not much - some grass removed.

First the http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseHutOnly.jpg gets built - frame, then walls, then a door.

Next the main longhouse - I'll release the beta with it all built at once, but I'm working on floor, walls, framing meshes to do it in stages. Then the externals, such as the smelter and forge to give http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseAllBldgs.jpg.

Finally add a stockade and gate tower http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseStockade.jpg

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseForge.jpg - hidden at the back of the other views

Site from the http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/longhousewest.jpg and http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/longhousenorth.jpg - the latter from on top of a corundum vein. There are four iron ore, one gold, and two clay along the shore of the water. The stone quarry is in the rocks to the left just beyond the gate-tower.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 28 2014, 01:34 AM

Nice spot for it.

Posted by: Grits Feb 28 2014, 02:08 AM

That looks great, ghastley!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 1 2014, 05:21 PM

More teaser images, just to show at least some progress.

The book on housebuilding that's normally on the carpenter's workbench describes the standard house so I had to http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/strongholding.jpg

It contains sketches of the rooms/buildings you can construct, so here's http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Book_small_hut.jpg Making that page from NifSkope screenshots took a whole morning. Progress is slow, if steady. Hopefully, now I know how, the next one will be quicker.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 1 2014, 06:59 PM

Looking very good. A guide to Strongholding!

Posted by: Grits Mar 1 2014, 07:31 PM

Looks great! That�s enough to give a http://i.imgur.com/jMzkC3X.png hope.

Posted by: Vital Mar 1 2014, 10:40 PM

Looking great Ghastley!

I have this image in my mind of a huge, battle-axe wielding, Orc chieftain trying to decipher the cyrodiilic in the guide to strongholding

Posted by: ghastley Mar 3 2014, 04:17 PM

I thought that building the building was slow enough in Hearthfires, what with collecting all the iron ingots or ores and then the multiple stages of crafting ore -> ingot -> building materials -> furniture/house parts, but building the building of a building is even slower. I have to create the misc items that are the tokens for the player inventory, then a recipe to make them, then add the keywords to the workbenches that will create them, then rig up the enable/disable logic to put the corresponding item in place.

And some of the bits I want to make aren't already separate meshes, so I have to convert the .nif's into a form that Blender will import, alter them, export, and convert back. Progress is slow, if steady.

Anyhow, I'm getting there slowly. I can now http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/DraftHut.jpg for an Orc building, and http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/HutFrame.jpg at the workbench.

I thought originally that I'd be able to use the existing scripts for most things, but it turns out that they have too much hard-coded into them, like the total number of sites, and which rooms are bedrooms, so in most cases I have to take a copy of the code and modify it as an Orc version. It's still less effort than creating it from scratch, but the CK has a lot of annoyances that make it a grind.

I also want to do something other than the steward/hiring mechanism - where you can only add staff after you convert a follower to steward, and then can't hire those directly. The stronghold probably wants a smith (weapon/armor merchant) and a wise woman (alchemy merchant) but I haven't yet decided how it gets them. That means completely new script code.

Latest Update: This got badly stalled when I discovered that my test game had old, bad script baked into the saves, and I wasn't testing the updated code. I'm partially replaying Gol gro-Molag from before I added the mod, to get him back a point where this one kicks in, and I can test from a clean save. So I'm exercising my modding muscles back in Oblivion, trying to finish up Evergloam, while I do all my playing in Skyrim.

Posted by: Grits Mar 24 2014, 02:20 PM

This looks really neat. Very fun to see the orc building parts coming together. Thanks for the update, ghastley!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 26 2014, 06:32 PM

I created a new Orc character to do the testing for this, but she's distracting me in a different direction. I grabbed some alternative hair from the Apaachi SkyHair mod for her, and decided she looked a lot like She-Hulk when I finished. Since the game engine supports transformations for werewolves, werebears and vampire lords, I'm now looking at having a petite Breton (Genevieve Walters) hulk out when she gets angry (SetRace to Orc, and SetScale to 1.2, plus outfit change).

I'd post a screenshot, but she has a custom body with extra muscle, and I haven't yet adapted clothing that covers enough for decency. Angles that don't flaunt her assets don't show the muscles either. Building clothing for her has the same problems, of course. It has to be torn in all except just the right places, but still look like it wouldn't just fall off completely. The Breton character is naturally unremarkable.

Plus I need to complete the packaging of the Evergloam mod for Oblivion, and rebuild my mail server, and do my taxes, and ...

Posted by: Acadian Mar 26 2014, 06:43 PM

The She-Hulk transformation idea is brilliant!

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 26 2014, 07:00 PM

I love the idea of hulking out!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 27 2014, 04:51 AM

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/SheHulk.jpgto show some progress. The Riften guard is standing at her level, she's just that much bigger than him. Her alter ego (who can't be in the same shot of course) would be shorter than him by nearly a head.

I didn't go overboard with adding muscles to her, as She-Hulk isn't as exaggerated as her cousin, but she does have larger biceps, triceps, quads, calves and a few others than the regular large orc. Plus the scale-up. I tried out a normal map with extra muscle definition, but decided I preferred it without.

Posted by: Grits Mar 27 2014, 12:10 PM

Oh my gosh, she looks awesome! I love it!

Posted by: Acadian Mar 27 2014, 12:35 PM

Very nicely done, ghastley!

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 27 2014, 04:41 PM

Looking very good!

Posted by: ghastley May 5 2014, 07:43 PM

Well, after the interruption for Hulking, I got back to the Hearthfires this weekend, and discovered what might be a show-stopper. It seems that when a property of a script is defined in a secondary master, the script-engine's gonna crash, because it will mess up adjusting the top byte of the reference.

My BYOHOrcHouseBuilding script contains the line

int logCount = Game.GetPlayer().GetItemCount(BYOHMaterialLog)

This counts the number of (hidden) log tokens the player has, and the script's job is to correct the global variable that shows when you activate a log pile. However, BYOHMaterialLog is defined in Hearthfires.esm, and so it has a first byte that depends on the Load Order. It appears that the Papyrus engine sets anything non-zero in the top byte to the Load Order of the running script, which is in my mod, not in Hearthfires.esm. So it can't find the item to count, and crashes.

I have the same issue, except that there are no scripts involved, with my Log Pile. Because I placed it in my mod, its name - which includes the global variable BYOHHouseLogCount - fails to show the count because it's trying to find a global with a different formID. I may be able to fix this one by editing the RefID of the activator to make it appear to be part of Hearthfires itself - which is possible in Tes5Edit.

But it looks like GetItemCount can't be used. I may be able to write a function to do the same thing, walking the player's inventory and looking for a FormID match, but then I'll probably run into another instance of the same problem trying to update Hearthfires' global that the LogPileActivator can't read.

If anyone has any wild ideas how to get around this, let me know!

Posted by: ghastley Dec 29 2014, 02:58 PM

Revisited this over the holiday and bypassed the log update calls to unblock progress. The log pile is really just a gauge to indicate your log stock, and doesn't actually "hold" the logs for you, so it can be put back later. It's also quite likely that my crashing issues were all due to the model for the pegs of the hut layout.

I still hit some crashes, and Gol has now built the hut and longhouse no less than five times for his lovely Borgakh. He is fated to do so many more times, as most changes to the quest mean reloading the game from before it's started in order to test with the new property values. I may start giving him materials via the console, instead of re-clearing Halted Stream Camp every time! He's also had to fight a random dragon a couple of times during construction, and wolves spawn nearby for extra spice.

My latest gotcha was adding the cellar, and finding that the trapdoor didn't get enabled, so we can't go down there and make the furniture. I also have to add models for the stockade and guard tower for display in the workbench UI, and correct a few of the interior ones, such as the cook-pot.

Before release, I have to cut up the longhouse model into sections (layout, floor, knee-walls, framing and roof) so that it can be constructed in stages, rather than all at once like a stable. That will mean Gol building it again, probably multiple times. I hope Borgakh shows some appreciation for all his work!

I haven't tested yet to see if Uzi will move in there once adopted. I'm only including one WIP in any game, to avoid confusion.

The quest to get the plot of land will be similar to the Thane quests in the major holds. I.e. the player will do a qualifying quest (Malacath's) and also "help" a number of Orcs, via the favour quests, such as mining ore, Fight! Fight! or those for the non-stronghold Orcs, such as fetching a book for Urag. These latter are the same quests that can make you Blood-kin. Doing it this way, with a courier-delivered note announcing the grant, avoids needing any new dialogue and voice files.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 1 2015, 01:05 AM

I started a new Orc to test this as a first Hearthfires house, and discovered another major annoyance. The sale of logs is conditioned on tests on any of the existing plots being purchased, but this was done as three tests OR'ed together, rather than a single test on a global, so I can't just set the same flag in my mod.

I can't just duplicate the dialog, or it will appear twice in the list if the player owns Greenspring Stronghold as well as one of the others. So I have to make dirty overrides to the existing quests whether I want to or not. I think I'll change them to use a global in case anyone else makes a new house.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 5 2015, 04:36 AM

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. I found a way around the lumber vendor issue that lets me use my mod's dialog only when the Hearthfires one isn't used. And my problems with adoption are solved by another mod - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29249 which also allows properly configured mod homes to be used for the kids. I tested it with the Orc Stronghold and the Elf kids, and it works!

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/MamaAndUzi.jpg

Now back to trying to make partial meshes for the longhouse. And there are still a couple of pieces of furniture that don't enable when they should, and glitches with the Drafting Table.

Posted by: Grits Jan 6 2015, 04:32 PM

Very exciting news, ghastley! There�s little Uzi sitting at the dining table.

I like the way you�re using orc quests to qualify for getting the land. A new stronghold is a pretty big deal, and multiple quests reflect that.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 12 2015, 12:58 AM

Quest-testing is under way. I had to adjust the criteria for the "helping the Orc people" part a bit as the original only counted the quests for the stronghold inhabitants, but that's working now. Yarob has reached four by mining at two of the strongholds, doing Ghorza's quest for a book for Tacitus, and clearing Kolskeggr for Pavo and Gat. I want her to do The Cursed Tribe before the fifth, as I'm not sure if that quest will complete the total, or she'll need another. I may have to help her kill the giant via the console, as she's only the minimum level (9) needed to start the quest.

I've made the partial meshes for the longhouse, but need to add collision to them before adding them to the game. I may also need to nav-mesh the floor, as you can walk inside the half-built structure. You'll build layout (pegs and string), then walls, then floor, then framing, and finally the roof will include adding the door, as it gets enclosed at that point. Gol and Borgakh will have to do it all again a few times when I get that far, but since I can test the quest part with a one-step longhouse, they get to rest for a while.

I plan to include Uzi in a separate esp, so you can use any other child mod, such as Urshug, but you'll have a default one.

Edit: Yarob completing The Cursed Tribe did kick off the Stronghold quest as intended, but perhaps because she also hit the five "Help the Orcs" count at the same time, it didn't trigger the courier properly. After console help, the courier delivered nothing. I have another problem with creating the letter to deal with. But when she went to the site, the workbenches and chest were enabled, and she was able to build a home and adopt Uzi.

However, I'm a bit worried about her. I mean, she doesn't just tidy her room, http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/UziReally.jpg. The kid's not normal, especially for an Orc!

Posted by: ghastley Jan 13 2015, 04:04 PM

Of course, the changes I had to make to the quests prevent me testing in Yarob's game where it's already running, so I have another character (a small archer this time) running around the strongholds and helping the other Orcs. That's helping me refine the counting mechanism, or at least documenting it. For example, doing two favours for the same character doesn't count as two. You need to make new friends for it to count. So mining ore for Gharol and delivering the blade to Lash don't add up to two.

I looked up what it takes to make a new collision mesh for Skyrim, and it looks laborious. Most "tutorials" just cover copying a collision mesh that's near enough from another model, or do it all in 3DS MAX (I use Blender). However, the current "build the whole longhouse in one step" process works, so I'm concentrating on getting the quest logic right first. The house-building logic is already tested with the hut and outbuildings, and the interior, so making the longhouse build multi-step is only dependent on the meshes. (Only!!)

The lack of nav-mesh cuts when the stronghold is built has caused issues. The site is on the route of at least one Imperial courier, and he got stuck inside the stockade, running against the wall. Again, stuff I know how to do, but laborious because of the number of collision boxes that need to be added, and parented to the enable markers. There aren't any creature spawns on the site, but a few nearby (which will give the guard on the watchtower some target practice later). The mammoths walk up and down the next valley, but the nearby one leads to Drelas' Cabin, and doesn't get them. There's a dragon mound not far away, but I haven't yet played a character who's seen that being used.

Posted by: Grits Jan 13 2015, 04:19 PM

Yay!! Good idea to nav mesh the unfinished floor if you can walk inside. I�ve had a few characters camp in their partially built Hearthfire homes for a time while they collected ingredients.

Uzi looks adorable sweeping her room. So that�s what it looks like when a child actually cleans!

Would it help to have a test character ready who has already completed the quest requirements to see what happens when your mod is added to an old save? I�m going to start a new orc so that the Hearthfire Adoptions mod has the best chance of working (also to test the Bless Home spell with my own very basic house mods), and I could get him or her started on the appropriate quests in their free time. Keeping old saves, of course. Oh, and when you�re ready I can try the Alternate Start mod�s orc start to see how that works with your quest requirements if that would help.

Pretty excited, ghastley!!


Edit: It takes me so long to post that you updated while I was posting. Good luck with your next steps. I only know enough about this stuff that the word �nav-mesh� makes my stomach turn over, lol.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 13 2015, 04:52 PM

The problem you'll have with an existing game is that there aren't many Orcs you can do a "Favor Quest" for. The mechanism is triggered by Story Manager when the there's a Relationship change, and the Favor Quests usually end with a SetRelationshipRank(1) to make you a friend of the other character. If you already did one for them, it's not a change, so it doesn't start the count tracker quest. I haven't yet scanned through to make a list of all the Orc-related quests that qualify, but it may be quite a short one.

I'm using SM's ChangeLocation event to detect when the player leaves Largashbur with DA06 completed, so it doesn't matter if they did that before installing. A revisit to Largashbur provides another chance to fire it off, once you leave again. The quest ends before you take Volendrung, while it's still on the altar, so it doesn't matter if you took it or not.

If you're already friends with too many Orcs, it's probably possible to console-set the global, but I may just add a "manual" stage to the quest, so you can do it that way. I'd prefer not to, as too many people will want to use the "cheat" and complain if it has bugs.

Edit: I'm having worries about the navmesh for the floor of the incomplete building. It has to be there only when the building is part-built, and it has to connect to the world, so that followers can follow. The first part should just be a matter of a nav-cut box that wraps the floor and enables/disables opposite to it, but I can't find anything out there about how to join navmeshes in game. Regular Hearthfires must do it, but I haven't yet found where. I do know that unconnected navmeshes don't allow an NPC to pass between them.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 17 2015, 02:41 PM

Another small but significant step. My latest Orc, Dhul, has finally received http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/OrcLetter.jpgtelling him he has land. It took ages to track down all the niggling little details that prevented some of the aliases from filling, that were needed to construct the text, the courier origin, and all the other little pieces for the delivery quest. It's complicated by the fact that the Civil War can replace the Jarl and his steward, so there has to be provision for the new ones' names to be used. I should have built nearer to Solitude!

Posted by: Grits Jan 19 2015, 04:01 PM

Yay!! That approaching courier must have been a welcome sight!

Posted by: ghastley Jan 27 2015, 03:05 PM

Houston http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Slope.jpg!

I just started placing the meshes for the longhouse under construction, and realized that I can't remove the slope where the longhouse gets built. It looks like it will have to be released with the one-step build for the longhouse, as some of the ground will be above floor level. The only remaining decision is whether to modify the pegs to follow the slope, and mark the location, or just build without them (the current situation).

I still have some detail stuff to do, such as inventory models, and the navmesh tweaks as things get made, so there's time to decide. But the scripts are working, the quests fire off when they're supposed to, so it's getting there.

Posted by: Grits Jan 28 2015, 04:01 PM

Yikes. Can you adjust the slope down just a little so that the rope barely shows? That way it would look like the ropes indicate building something level. Of course skipping the ropes entirely is not a big deal.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 28 2015, 04:24 PM

I looked at sculpting the slope, but the result looked artificial, so I scrapped it. I'd already flattened a small area for the hut, which didn't look unrealistic, but the longhouse would need too much work. I can't change the level at the front, or it affects the hut, and lowering the back would need a new cliff/rock outcrop to justify the step. The final longhouse now looks like it was dug in, which is similar to at least one of the others, but I don't know how to replicate that during the build. I don't think it's possible to disable a piece of landscape.

Since the current process works, it stays for now.

I've adjusted the interior lighting a bit, adding lights that get enabled with the chandeliers and the dining table (which has candles on it). The major part that's holding up release is the lumber purchase dialog. The script to add the mill owners to the lumber vendor faction is not being fired off, so they won't sell logs unless you started a regular Hearthfires home. When I manually add a mill owner, it still doesn't show, sometimes.

And the log pile has reverted to showing "Log pile (" instead of giving the current count. I probably have to purge some empty scripts that were unintentionally compiled from the base DLC. The CK sometimes does that, and since it doesn't have the source in the right folder, they become empty. Doing that may fix my startup issues, as well.

Progress is slow, as each time I change the properties of the main quest, I have to roll a new character, as they're fixed once the quest starts (at beginning of game for that one). Largashbur requires level 9. I really need to run a character up to that level without the mod, and make a save I can reuse, but they'd still have to do the making friends quests, so it wouldn't save much time.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 2 2015, 12:43 AM

Well, it looks like it may actually be close to usable.

My latest Orc (Thudd) has a log-pile that shows how many logs she has, and Hert is selling her lumber, even though the Greenspring Stronghold is her only home. She's built the longhouse and all the outbuildings, and furnished most of the place. Just a few more ingots, and she can complete the basement.

I still have a few little things to tweak, like getting the bedrolls in the hut to appear and disappear at the right times, but I may have something for you to try really soon. That's if I can figure out what needs to be included.

I want to provide a piece of the Elf Kids as an optional esp/bsa, so you can have Uzi if you want a matching child, but that can wait for a later beta release. It won't be easy extracting her from the others.

Posted by: Grits Mar 2 2015, 01:45 AM

Yay!!!!!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 2 2015, 04:23 AM

Well, if you're brave enough to try an 0.1 release - http://ghastley.org/skyrim/download/OrcHearthfires_01.7z.

Because of the way Bethesda wrote the scripts which I cloned, much of the variation is in the properties, which get baked into the save game. That means that when I fix anything in that area, it can't affect an existing game, and you'd have to start over. I'd strongly recommend a new game to try this.

I've found that if you run round the Orc Strongholds, and do Ghorza or Moth's quests at Markarth, then by the time you reach Largashbur at the end of the cycle, you're just reaching the right level (9) for The Cursed Tribe.

Of course, killing the giant at that level isn't easy. I've managed to find a location where I can use a bow, but not get hit, but the giant isn't dumb and retreats out of range. It's then a cat-and-mouse game of following, sniping and running back to safety.

When you leave Largashbur with Volendrung then the game will start showing you how many Orc friends you've made. It's been counting since installing the mod, but you don't see the count before. If you're lucky, you already have five, and a courier is on his way. If not, mine some ore, beat up the chief, or seduce Borgakh.

Happy building!

Posted by: mALX Mar 2 2015, 07:03 AM

Awesome Ghastley! Downloaded, and Thanks!

Posted by: Grits Mar 2 2015, 06:55 PM

Whee, thank you! Malacath's next champion emerged from under Helgen this morning. (An Altmer named Mithilion the Hammer.) He's about to release the dragons and then go make friends with some orcs.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 3 2015, 03:03 PM

Added the documentation to my web site, http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/Docs/OrcHearthfires.html in case anybody needs it there. The missing images on some pages aren't broken links, they're just not created yet,

Feedback on that will be useful, too.

Posted by: Grits Mar 4 2015, 12:48 AM

The documentation looks great! I had some questions in the back of my mind about how the construction would work and if I would have to make choices like the Nord Hearthfire houses such as building the wings, and you�ve already answered them here. I suggest a section about NPCs and how that will work, such as who is the Wise Woman that will live in the hut, do you recruit her from a follower you bring to the site or does she show up on her own (or however it happens), and are there other roles for NPCs that can be recruited to live in the stronghold.

The Quest section was perfectly clear to me. My character (The Hammer) is level 6 and about to start the favor quests, so I needed a fresher on that part!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 4 2015, 02:16 AM

NPC recruitment is not yet included, so that's not described.

Although I have several potential NPC's in mind, I don't want to add any dialog, other than pieces I can copy from existing quests. I don't want any voice variation, and I can't hire the original voice actors. So I'm hunting through the text, looking for stuff I can cobble together.

Posted by: Grits Mar 4 2015, 11:39 AM

Oops. Give me an 0.1 to play with, and I�ll put the last stage before the log pile. I am perhaps a little excited about this mod. Good luck in your dialog hunt!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 7 2015, 03:43 PM

Thanks to feedback from Lardrumph, we have some more progress.

1) The storehouse was empty, so I've added some more http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/StorehouseStuff.jpg to it. There's now an empty chest, two empty barrels, an empty weapon rack, and an empty crate for minerals and ingots.

2) There was an empty corner in the basement where I'd originally decided to put mannequins, but thought I'd have wandering issues, and changed my mind. Well, I changed it back again after reading more about the problem, so http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/BasementCorner.jpg You can see that the test character didn't have time to collect anything after leaving Helgen!

3) No garden outside. I thought it would be nice to have a goat or two, as well, and they don't mix. So I've moved the stockade back a little from http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Cornerbefore.jpg, to http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/CornerAfter.jpg, and that can be http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/CornerAfterPen.jpg. I still haven't decided if the plantings or the goats go inside the fence.

I eliminated a couple of corner shelves in the basement that never appeared, and would have blocked access to a bed.

I'll have another install built soon. The basic testing went OK, but that's with a COC to the site and adding all materials via console. If you add the changes to an existing game, you can't create the mannequins, but the other changes should happen. The fence won't appear, as that will be tied to acquiring the goat, which is still TBD.

There's some minor stuff, such as a light in the Wise Woman's hut, that enables with the Enchanter. I already had a lamp appear, but it didn't light the place up before. She also gets some empty shelves with the Alchemy station.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 7 2015, 08:48 PM

Bump for 0.2. http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/OrcHearthfires_02.7z

It has the extra stuff in the storeroom, and hut, and the adjusted stockade. All that should appear if you replace in an existing game. The mannequins have to be made, and that will only be possible if you start a new game.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 8 2015, 11:12 PM

Working on the NPCs as a separate esp for now, just in case...

My current idea is that the Wise Woman (tentatively named Yarob) will be found in a cave/ruin, where she's defeated a Dragon Priest. Unfortunately for her, the priest's mask was cursed, and when she put it on, he took control of her. The player must now defeat her before she'll be freed from the curse. At that point she'll destroy the mask, and thank the player.

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Yarobmask.jpg - except that she'll be a bit more aggressive when the player finds her. I'm not intending to explain whether the tusks on the mask have anything to do with her, or the priest. They're just there.

Posted by: Grits Mar 9 2015, 12:39 AM

The mask has tusks! I love the idea of saving her from a curse. She looks great! It�s exciting to see the new developments.

Mithilion got the new furniture and a surprise mannequin with 0.2, and I�ll report back when I get Greenspring built in a new game. I�ve added Hulk Out to his game (I can�t believe I didn�t think of that before!) so now I�ll have my eye out for the Old Orc when he�s wandering. Also he wants to build a shrine above Greenspring Hollow, which I�ll do in Lardrumph�s mod. This guy was supposed to just be a one-time tester!!

My (Lardrumph�s, really) 2 Septims on the garden, having the plants inside the fenced area would let the goats move around more and keep the weeds down inside the stronghold.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 9 2015, 01:41 AM

I think the tusks on the mask are a great touch too! What a brilliant idea for an NPC!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 9 2015, 03:55 AM

The mannequin (and a couple of other items) didn't get their "initially disabled" set correctly, or they got the wrong enable parent due to clicking on the wrong thing in the window. So there will be at least an 0.3 to fix those things, before I start to add the NPC's.

I'm leaning the same way on the goat(s) being outside the fence. Not sure if I can put "plant your own" on the sloping ground, but I might be able to enable a patch of veggies if they won't work.

The problem with Yarob will be that she needs unique dialog, so she'd have to have a unique voice, or silent dialog. So far the mod has avoided having any dialog at all. On the other hand, once I make that decision, I can do a lot more with her at the stronghold - e.g. she can build a shrine to Malacath and use it.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 11 2015, 07:26 PM

The BYOH plantable soil patches are circular, and have to be placed level, so that makes them impossible to use on the sloping patch of ground available. However, the cabbage and leek plants' dirt patches are rectangular, so I could fit them into crates sunk into the dirt as credible planters. I'll post some pictures of the WIP later.

The other thing I've done is re-texture a version of the Dibella statue (Edilhild's remake with bigger boobies) to make it look like orichalcum and gold instead of all-gold - i.e. an Orcish version. I'm trying to decide if Yarob worships both Malacath and Dibella because she's hedging her bets, or if she believes that combining strength and beauty is what female Orcs are all about. I'll enable a statuette of each either side of her bed once she's moved in a while. There's a barrel near the enchanter for Dibella, and shelves by the Alchemy lab where Malacath can go.

Posted by: Grits Mar 11 2015, 07:42 PM

Sounds great! With all of the deities available I think most people would hedge their bets a little. I�ve been landscaping a Rorikstead cliff today, so I sympathize with the gardening pains!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 12 2015, 01:42 AM

Here's a shot of http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/OrcVeggies.jpg, indicating the slope situation. There's more space around each plant than I'd like, but moving them closer to the sides makes the dirt poke through the wood.

This is the http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/OrcDibella.jpg. A slightly more robust representation than the Breton one seen in Markarth.

Posted by: haute ecole rider Mar 12 2015, 04:15 AM

Hey, that screenie of the veggies looks awesome! Reminds me of my landscaping efforts back at the old Homestead - '50's ranch set on top of a steep-sided rock pile. In order to get plants to grow, I had to terrace the slopes, remove the pebbles and rocks, and add in good soil (amended with peat moss). Speaking from personal experience, you do not want to plant anything too close to the edges of containers unless you want them to either a) grow out of the container or break the sides of the container. So the plant placement in this looks perfect for this former hobby landscaper!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 16 2015, 02:18 AM

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/OrcHearthfires_03.7z

It adds the veggie patch (sorry you can't plant your own) and domestic goat, and now the layout pegs for the longhouse will be placed before you build.

I've fixed a few enable parents (mannequins, shelves), and found out where the hut pegs went to. There still are no NPC's, but not since not everyone will want any, they'll be a separate esp/bsa when I do add them.

The building book was missing its pictures, so they're now included in the bsa. If anything else didn't get packaged, let me know. I haven't found an equivalent of TES4Files, so I'm relying on naming conventions too much.

Posted by: Grits Mar 16 2015, 04:43 PM

Yay, thank you! New character in progress, it will probably be tomorrow before she gets far enough for a report.

The veggie patch looks great. Raised beds for the rocky soil and the slope make perfect sense. Love the robust, green Dibella!

Posted by: Grits Mar 17 2015, 02:37 AM

Jytte the Grey's stronghold 0.3 went up without any trouble with both sets of pegs, mannequins, garden, and all. I love how you did the garden. It looks great in game and has a nice homestead feel. The goat is awesome because now we have goat noises.

One small thing to check, the outside weapon racks seem to eat weapons. I can place weapons on there and see them, but then I just get the Activate prompt again and can�t get them back off. The rest of the racks work great in all of my various rebuilds, but I�m afraid I never went back and checked removing things from the outside ones until now. Sorry about missing that.


Mammoth watching is my new favorite hobby. They are really neat, and there�s enough going on down on the plains to keep them busy. The next time the Greenspring Hollow bear respawns I�m going to sneak around him and see what happens when a patrol comes through. Someone left the back gate open once while everyone was away. I suspect Imperials. It would be pretty funny to see them stroll through into a bear ambush.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 17 2015, 03:49 AM

Ouch! Figuring out what was going on there has hurt my brain!

It appears that the trigger zone for the weapon rack can't have an enable parent, or the weapon rack can't disable it to give you access to the weapon you placed. The enabling and disabling is all done in the script, and somehow they've arranged it so the trigger zone is disabled when the cell loads if the rack itself is disabled.

So all I had to do is remove the enable parents from the triggers, and it's all working. At least, it will be working in 0.4. I'd better wait until you find out what else is broken.

Posted by: mALX Mar 17 2015, 06:38 AM

Downloaded !!!!! Thank you, Ghastley!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 17 2015, 02:54 PM

I just updated the page at the Creation Kit Wiki with my finding about the enable parent. It might help someone else not to make the same mistake.

While I was there, I re-read the page about bookshelves, and noted the discussion about using the same mechanism for other items. The blocks of shelves in the basement may get scripts for placing loot in a future release. I'd have to determine what can be placed, and allocate slots of an appropriate size, so a helmet would take up the same amount of space as a suit of armor, or a pelt, or a dragon claw ... Or else shelves would have to be pre-designated for large or small objects. There's a lot to think about before I leap in.

Posted by: mALX Mar 17 2015, 08:39 PM

Oh dear, I have been wondering if regular storage does or doesn't work like it did in Oblivion. Your talking about the size/amount of space of helmets being a suit of armor makes me nervous; are you talking about those auto shelves where you have to put a dummy item in and script it for armor instead of books?

Posted by: ghastley Mar 17 2015, 10:05 PM

Closed containers like cupboards, chests and wardrobes are no issue, as you can't see what you put in them.

The bookcases and weapon racks let you see what's there, but need a whole lot of scripting to make it work. The idea here is to use the bookshelf scripts on regular open shelves for things like armor, so I don't have to write new code. But the bookshelves use a standard-sized dummy book to make it work, and things like armor items would need equal-sized dummies to determine placement.

It's not something I'm in a hurry to try, as the game has mannequins for armor, and weapon racks, already. Other people have made claw displays, and adapted the Dragon Priest Mask pedestal, for the special cases. It's just that I put a lot of blank shelves in the basement, without an easy way to use them. There are mods that help you put things on shelves, so I may not bother.

Posted by: Grits Mar 19 2015, 01:46 AM

Mithilion has found one treasure for the shelves downstairs, the Killer Tree jar from BadGremlin�s Great Jar Hunt! I�ve read that bottom part of the bookshelf page pretty regularly since I�ve been fixing my own bookshelves, and the idea of a stack of books appeals to me. I�ve also seen a small shelf that held journals in some Breezehome mod or another, and that was neat. As for what you�re contemplating with all of those different items on the shelves, Grits backs slooowly away in terror.

I�ve had a lot of fun with Jaxonz Positioner for decorating, so empty shelves are my favorite. Of course what I want is rarely what most people want, and those custom displays for claws and things are very popular. Still, if you�re counting votes put me down as Not Bother.

I�ll spend some time with Jytte�s stronghold tomorrow, since she is in 0.4. I want to torture test the rest of the activatable things and then be gone long enough for the area to respawn in case anything weird happens. Also she would benefit from Hulking Out, so she kind of has a mission to pass as many random encounter points as possible.

Also she�s traveling with the NPC of one of my favorite characters, Duralek gro-Bulsakh. Here http://i.imgur.com/oleiXXj.png who interrupted their (well, mostly my) enjoyment of the longhouse peg layout.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 19 2015, 02:54 PM

Jytte had better be in 0.3, or you have an unlicensed time machine!

That dead wolf reminds me about one small adjustment I've been considering: you need a single leather strip as a bootstrap for the tanning process. The vanilla Hearthfires DLC does this by including a tanning rack (which normally needs a leather strip) in the build of the animal pen (which doesn't), so you can start making leather and strips from pelts, which you don't have to "make". At the Stronghold you need to make a strip before you can make a Tanning Rack, which you need to make a strip.

The other bootstrap item is the smelter. It takes ingots to make it, you need one to make ingots. DLC lets you make a smelter after the small house goes up, and I may change the recipe to let you build that before the longhouse. I also need to make sure the other dependencies make sense. Stockade should require forge, as there would be a gap without it. Garden already requires stockade. Should armorer bench, grindstone and storehouse require forge? Should guard tower require stockade?

I may just include one leather strip in the starter kit chest in 0.4 this weekend. I've changed the content of that a couple of times already, so you'd need to mine clay and stone for the longhouse. Standard DLC content was enough for small house, and enough clay for the hall, but not the wings. I reduced the clay, so you get only a couple of units left after the cut. That was supposed to allow you to make a smelter, and then need more for the longhouse, but I made them build in the wrong order.

---

The only other thing I know of, that needs work, is the inability to cut your own lumber. I still haven't found a way around the DLC coding that ties it to the three standard sites. The BYOS dialog provides identical topic alternatives for the lumber vendors, so they'll sell to you, but the "Can I cut my own" part doesn't work. If you chop firewood and become their friend, they'll let you use the mill, but you won't get any lumber unless you're building DLC homes. I might be able to suppress that option if it won't work, but I'd prefer to get cut-it-yourself working, if I can.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 19 2015, 03:00 PM

I think not being able to build the tower until after the stockade makes sense. So too does not being able to build the armor bench and grindstone until after the forge, since presumably you would be using those on something you first made at the forge. The storehouse seems like something you ought to be make at any time however, unless like the forge, it leaves a hole in the stockade or somewhere else.

Posted by: Grits Mar 19 2015, 04:39 PM

Unlicensed! You�re right of course, 0.4 is the hours of sleep I�ve been getting.

I think that allowing the smelter and tanning rack to be built before the longhouse is a great idea. That way you could come straight back to the site after raiding the nearby bandits for ore (and loot to melt down for those who are using a mod that allows it) rather than hauling it all back to Whiterun. Putting a leather strip in the chest for the tanning rack to be built is another good idea. I think I used the tanning rack at Greenspring Hollow at least once, and luckily I have a mod-added smelter in Riverwood where I went to buy lumber. With the crafting options available before the longhouse a person could live in the small hut for a time while gathering supplies and saving up for a filled grand soul gem.

The tanning rack would look a little isolated without the other smithing stations, so I�d say it would be best to allow the outside stuff to be built as soon as the hut goes up. The guard tower, stockade, and garden would be the exception since they need the longhouse and outbuildings for part of the wall. I�ve considered having some characters not build the guard tower and stockade at all (which would mean no garden) to keep the open view across the plains.

Another thing that I�ve been pondering is a horse marker, maybe with a hay bale and a trough nearby. The only place I could see to put it is up where the big rock is by the smithing area. And I don�t know if there�s something ugly under that rock. Argh, but then that stuff would just be sitting there if you didn�t have a horse.

One tiny thing I noticed, I�d rotate the fast travel spot so that you land facing the stronghold as if you�d come in the gate.

A dragon flew over while I was paying attention to the fast travel situation, but there was no fight. Good thing Jytte doesn�t need its bones for anything!

I never tried to cut lumber, since it has never worked for me in the regular Hearthfire sites. Or maybe I just gave up on cutting my own so long ago I didn�t realize it had been fixed.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 19 2015, 04:58 PM

The current setting faces the home-building benches, which seemed appropriate for that stage. Maybe the compromise is just inside the south-east gate, so you face both benches and longhouse.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 20 2015, 10:11 PM

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/OrcHearthfires_04.7z

I reworked the recipes for the outside stuff, so you can build after the hut is complete, and http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/LonghouseLast.jpg The starter chest now has enough in it to make the hut, the tanning rack, and you have enough ingots for the smelter.

The weapon racks now work properly, and the outside containers are set to not respawn. The inside ones have been reviewed, too, but some of them are supposed to respawn to provide food, e.g. the fish barrel. All the sacks respawn, but the initially empty barrels don't. Chests are all empty and non-respawning ones.

The map marker has been moved to just inside the gate. You should be facing the longhouse and the building benches will be in view.

Posted by: Grits Mar 20 2015, 10:25 PM

Yay, thank you! Good to know about the food sacks. Now, which character should build their stronghold next�

Posted by: mALX Mar 21 2015, 06:31 AM

Do non-standard containers not work in Skyrim? If not, I may have to redo some things. I used them all the time in Oblivion so didn't even think about them not working in Skyrim.

I made these shelves for looks, but uploaded the items as st-conts :

Posted by: ghastley Mar 21 2015, 02:42 PM

Anything can still be a container, but it has to be the "can't see the contents" variety. So the items on your shelves can be part of the shelves, or separate from the shelves, but not contents of the shelves.

The bookshelf scripts are supposed to be able to track if you open the container to take a book, or just pick it up off the shelf. In practice, it doesn't really work, as the books fall over and get out of their individual triggers. The weapon racks work better, as each item is fixed in place.

Posted by: mALX Mar 22 2015, 03:08 AM

I wanted to go completely without scripts, that is why I used the non-standards. They are separate from the shelf, so each stands as its own cont; and all were uploaded new as statics (so hopefully won't havoc).

Posted by: Grits Mar 23 2015, 03:11 AM

Magshakh gra-Dushnikh has nearly completed her 0.4 stronghold. I used the Alternate Start orc start and set the Malacath quest level requirement to level 5 with Timing Is Everything to see what would happen. Mags didn�t get the quest to help orcs after she completed the Cursed Tribe quest, but the courier found her very quickly in Riften while she was smithing to level up some more and everything worked out fine. She had already helped 5 or 6 orcs before she did Cursed Tribe. I can�t think of any other weird things that people might try. Screwing with the Cursed Tribe quest was the messiest thing I could come up with.

I like the new way that the outbuildings can be built very much. That was a great idea! And it worked perfectly. Mags just needs a few odds and ends (pelts, antlers, quicksilver ingot) but her stronghold is mostly finished and looks great. I used My Home Is Your Home to move some NPCs in and give them schedules, and it is a lot of fun to see them going about their business at the stronghold and sleeping in the extra beds. There is plenty of room for them all to move around in the longhouse and in the cellar. This is a great mod, ghastley!!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 23 2015, 02:41 PM

It may be time to call it 1.0.

I made the missing icons for the documentation over the weekend, but the only tweak I'm considering for the mod itself is the goat. I'm unsure whether to make it essential, or create a mechanism for replacing it it gets killed. At the other locations, the cow and chickens can be replaced by paying the steward again, but the stronghold has no steward, and the goat comes free with the garden.

I may just punt, and make replacing the goat something the Wise Woman can do when I make the add-on. There are two add-ons planned for later. One to add Uzgash (as an orphan in Markarth selling flowers by the Temple), using Sofie's voice files. The other is for staff - Wise woman + hunters/guards. Making them separate options lets users just have the house if that's all they want. I reckon I'd get complaints about lack of choice in about the same numbers as about excess esp's, so it's a wash.

Grits, do you think the wiki pages should tell you what containers are safe? UESP doesn't appear to do that for the DLC homes.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 23 2015, 04:04 PM

More thoughts for the future:

Glass and Straw cannot be found/made by the player, but must be purchased from merchants in towns (or Khajiit traders apparently - never tried that) so would it be useful for an Orc to have another source?

Two choices I can think of immediately are to have smiths at the strongholds sell them, or to create a recipe for making them - glass at a smelter, straw somewhere else. Straw could also be sold at farms that grow wheat, or at stables.

It's not something I need to do anything about short-term, as the Khajiit caravans provide an out for the Orc who won't go into towns. But I like the idea of using some of the zero-value clutter, such as empty wine bottles, in a recipe.

Posted by: Grits Mar 24 2015, 12:06 AM

I would definitely note the respawning food containers in the description and/or the wiki, since the regular Hearthfire home containers do not respawn even though the surfaces in the house do. That way players will know that they�re getting a food source and won�t put their stuff in the sacks.

The only relevant comment I found in the UESP was the last entry in the Hearthfire Notes section:

• All areas of the player-built homes will reset to their original furnishings; only the storage containers and any items you drop from your inventory will be left as is. This allows storage in containers to be safe while respawning resources (e.g., the greenhouse) can replenish their stocks.

So it may be that people will just assume all indoor containers are safe.

For the goat, can it just respawn by itself if it dies? I�d be happy with any goat replacing scheme, but I�ll admit that all domestic animals that die in Grits guardianship get resurrected with the console. An immortal goat would also work, and anyone who doesn�t want it can use disable instead of putting it to the sword. :0

Very exciting to hear that NPCs and especially Uzgash are in the works!

I love the idea of smelting empty bottles into glass! I guess straw could be a byproduct at the mill where you make flour, but then you�d end up with a bunch of straw every time you made flour. I�ve always gotten enough straw from the merchants or even random loot, though, since you don�t need much. It�s the goat horns and glass that I end up hunting. Buying straw from stable guys or farmers makes sense, and they�re already people who do business with the player. I had the idea to make some hay bales into containers that you could gather straw from, but that sounds like a huge pain and subject to conflict by any mod that moves the hay bales.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 24 2015, 01:14 AM

Well I went and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64038. It needs me to add a few more interior shots, which will need editing for brightness, and one of its map location, but there's enough there now to give an overall impression.

If I can persuade any of my Orcs to put some clothes on, that is.

The reference to "respawning resources" includes the food sacks, fish barrel, and is supposed to include the butter churn, but I think you need the Unofficial Patch for that one. That's one reason I left it out.

Posted by: Grits Mar 24 2015, 12:20 PM

Yay, congratulations! This is a mod that I will continue to use not just for orc characters. I love having a stronghold at this location, and I can see a lot of characters building it so they can visit the NPCs who live there. Thank you for this awesome addition to Skyrim!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 24 2015, 02:28 PM

You can't win, can you? I put hints about future expansion to indicate this won't just be posted and forgotten, and already people are not downloading "because it's not complete", and assuming that Uzi will make it incompatible with RSChildren.

Posted by: Grits Mar 25 2015, 01:54 AM

Not complete?! Ugh.

I have a dining table picture that didn't upload before, and I might have gotten a decent one with adopted kids. Spring break hit here so it's been noisy. I'm not really sure what I've just thought about or have actually done.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 28 2015, 09:36 PM

Well if you want to adopt an Orc, you can http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/OrcChild_10.7z

I built this to be independent of Orc Hearthfires, but it's obviously meant to go with it. Uzgash will happily live in any home that's set up for adoption. I believe I made it so that RS Children, TK children, or Skyrim Children Overhaul won't affect it, or vice versa.

I'm not sure whether to upload this to the Nexus as a separate mod, or an optional file for OH. Any opinions? My thoughts are that as a separate mod, I'd just get people whining that they wanted a Dunmer, Altmer, Bosmer, Argonian or Khajiit. As an optional file, it will only get used with OH, even though folks might want to use it alone.

Posted by: Grits Mar 29 2015, 03:40 AM

Yay, thank you! I�m delighted to get to meet little Uzi.

I think definitely put her up as an optional file on the Orc Hearthfire page so that those who are tracking will see her.

There will be a huge amount of demanding and complaining as a new mod, but also I think you will reach more people who will genuinely enjoy having an orc child, so it would be great as a separate file too. Of course I am not the one who will have to deal with the endless aggravation. Yikes!

Thank you so much for sharing this, ghastley! I am going to get up early tomorrow so I can get a little time to myself and bring Uzi home to Greenspring Stronghold.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 29 2015, 01:53 PM

Last night, the latest of the De Fault sisters, who habitually runs around wearing only boots and gloves, was given a present by her newly adopted daughter - a green robe!

This is the same girl I keep finding sweeping her room. Is she really an Orc?

Posted by: Acadian Mar 29 2015, 03:30 PM

Well at least she got the color of the robe right.

Posted by: Grits Mar 30 2015, 03:08 PM

Uzi has a copy of 16 Accords of Madness, v. XII in her chest in Mags�s game. I thought that was very appropriate!

Posted by: ghastley Mar 30 2015, 03:34 PM

I'm getting quite tempted to put a copy of that in the kids' room now I've read it again. Mindless slaughter is just what an Orc child needs as bedtime reading.

Posted by: ghastley Apr 3 2015, 06:57 PM

I have a new issue with Uzi. If I give her a new dress, she can't wear it (wrong race) but she takes off what she's wearing, including the shoes!

I need to find out how to add a script to her to control what she wears. There are multiple possible uses for a script that confines a character to outfits/items from a form list, so I'll try to make a generic one.

I tried adding Skyrim Children Overhaul to a game that had Uzi, and it messed up her body skin, so I need to copy a few more vanilla texture files over to her own folder, so they can't be replaced. Her face still has lighting issues, too.

Posted by: Grits Apr 3 2015, 09:03 PM

Yikes, I never considered giving her a dress! I haven�t given her any gifts or played any games with her yet. Or returned to Skyrim since Mags got her moved in. I�ve seen the dialog prompts, though. Just haven�t tried them yet.

Posted by: ghastley Apr 24 2015, 08:23 PM

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65003

It's a good sign when someone wants to do that extra work for your mod.

Posted by: mALX Apr 24 2015, 08:35 PM

Very cool, Ghastley!

Posted by: haute ecole rider Apr 24 2015, 08:52 PM

I saw that too, ghastley! Congrats! Seems you have arrived now!

Posted by: Grits Apr 24 2015, 09:28 PM

Yay, that's great!

Posted by: Acadian Apr 24 2015, 09:41 PM

Like Rider, I noticed that translation of your work on Nexus. Congrats, and well-deserved!

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 24 2015, 09:56 PM

Very cool news! It shows what the community thinks of your work.

Posted by: mALX Apr 25 2015, 03:55 AM

Arrived? No way, Ghastley has been an extremely highly respected modder on Nexus for a looooong time.

Posted by: ghastley Jun 15 2015, 05:31 PM

I may have to put out an update to this, as it might conflict with the Argonian one. It appears that both mods can't make the same change to the story manager node for the Making Friends event, and I need to do it a different way. I'm not sure if I can do that only in one of the two, or if they'll both have to do it the same way.

Orc Hearthfires updates the number of quests to start on a ChangeRelationshipRank event to two, so that the quest that counts Hold favours can update, as well as the one for my Orc favours. When I did the same for the Argonian mod, I discovered that both mods set the value to two, but I'd need three! So I may have to set the Shared Event flag instead, as that doesn't imply a specific number of quests. The game will just keep going down the list until it find a non-shared one. My concern is that someone else's mod could add a non-shared node in between, and break the chain.

Posted by: mALX Jun 16 2015, 10:04 AM

I was wondering how you avoid conflicts if you want to achieve the same results as a game quest (like developing friendship or getting a note or a random re-occurring quests like the book retrievals in the college) - and then not conflict with other mods too ... Gaaaaah!

Posted by: ghastley Jul 7 2015, 03:41 AM

The conflict between Orc and Argonian Hearthfires may be a false one that shows in TesVEdit, but isn't a real one, but I still have a potential problem with duplicate dialog at the Lumber Mills if both are installed.

However, on the positive side, I've almost cured Uzi of taking her clothes off if you give her a dress she can't wear. All that's left to clear up is an unused pair of human shoes in her inventory, which might just get ignored.

Posted by: mALX Jul 8 2015, 05:42 PM

I'd have ignored the stripping issue too, how funny! (and fun!)

Posted by: Grits Jul 10 2015, 12:09 PM

I don�t think I�d know if Uzi had unused shoes in her inventory. I�m glad she�s cooperating and keeping her orc clothes on!

Good luck with the dialog issue. As ever I�m following your reports with great interest but without a clue.

Posted by: ghastley Jul 11 2015, 01:04 AM

The released version of Uzi is now an optional file for http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64038

There's code in the script that reverts her outfit that should ensure the regular child shoes don't build up in her inventory, so I won't worry about catching each pair.

Posted by: mALX Jul 11 2015, 01:18 AM

Oh, she is a child! No wonder you wanted her to keep her clothes on! But that really is just like a child, if you give them some thing they don't want to wear they will refuse to wear anything,

Posted by: Grits Jul 11 2015, 01:27 AM

Yay, thank you, ghastley!

Posted by: ghastley Apr 5 2016, 03:02 PM

Coming back to this one to resume work on the Wise Woman.

The original location for the cave entrance to her temple ruin was not a good one, as the rocks weren't really tall enough to cover the back of the entrance mesh. I found a better one on an obscure pass NE of High Hrothgar, on the Throat of the World mountain. You can get there on a trail past the Stormcloak camp, and the other end of the trail joins the one that zig-zags up past Lost Knife Hideout towards Iverstead. There's nothing along that trail at all in the un-modded game. It's a bit hard to follow in the usual blizzard, unless you're going NE.

I'm currently expanding the interior cells to provide a bit of opposition on the way to find her. Lots of cluttering still to do, and minor loot to place. She'll still need voice acting, but I think I can keep it down to one unique voice, which may make it viable. If I add a smith later, I believe he can use existing dialog only.

Posted by: ghastley Jun 8 2016, 03:19 PM

I've added some more clutter to the Nordic ruin, called Hervik's Lair, where you'll find the Wise Woman. I still need a lot more.

After that, I have to wire up the traps to their triggers, add all the draugr spawns, put in the room bounds, nav-mesh the entire dungeon,and create the scene where she destroys the mask. Not much, really.

I'm having problems, too, making this esp dependent on the main one. Esmifying doesn't seem to do all I expected in the CK, and I want to determine why before I waste time building something broken. So I'm concentrating on the stand-alone stuff, and leaving the connections to last. Those include things like providing AI packages for sleeping in the hut, enabling statues of Malacath and Dibella in there, and making the quest to find her depend on the stronghold build.

Posted by: ghastley Jun 16 2016, 05:59 PM

More clutter added, more still to go. Added a temporary auto-generated nav-mesh in case I run through with a follower. I'll replace that with a hand-generated one later. There are levelled draugr in place to obstruct you from getting the key to the final chamber.

Next job is putting the Yarob encounter part together. She needs to start hostile, and then yield and destroy the mask on bleedout. I should be able to clone a lot from the Moth Priest in Dawnguard for that (apart from the mask bit).

As usual, my test character is developing a taste for adventuring, and has already become Arch-mage.

Posted by: Grits Jun 16 2016, 06:06 PM

Great progress, ghastley! Too funny about your �test� character. I�m trying to picture a diagram of how a test character from one of your mods leads to another mod with a new test character, who decides she needs a different thing that can only come from a mod, which needs to be tested�

Posted by: ghastley Jun 16 2016, 06:20 PM

The one who revived Orc Hearthfires was started to check out UUNP bodyslide stuff. Then she wanted to build a stronghold, and nudged me to get back to the wise woman.

Meanwhile, I have a pair of Bosmers waiting for me to be inspired for their home. I'm still looking for no-wood furnishings that they'd like.

(And I have to avoid Argonians in case they think of anything new for Illinalta Den.)

Posted by: ghastley Jun 20 2016, 02:53 PM

Work has started on the quests for the mod add-on.

The kicker quest will be triggered by the player levelling up after building the complete WW hut, including bed, and both crafting stations, AND the double bed in the long-house. That should ensure the player doesn't need to use the bed in the hut as their own. A courier will deliver a letter from Atub at Largashbur, who will ask the player character to search for her niece Yarob, who went looking for Hervik's tomb.

Reading the letter will start the main quest to find her. The two-cell lair is just about built and cluttered, and just needs spider webs, mist effects etc. added. It has various traps, and functions as a regular dungeon before the quest is started. There's a locked door to the room containing Yarob, whose key will only exist (held by the dungeon boss) when it's running. Encounter zone, boss marker and all the required keywords are in place to make this radiant-friendly. The location will reset if you cleared it before the quest was started.

I still need to script the fight with Yarob, which is mainly just faction-switching and enable/disable player controls when needed, and the destruction of the mask. I'm looking for a good existing effect for that. She'll use flames and sparks together (one in each hand) to do so.

I'm debating whether to make her a follower who offers to become WW when taken to the Stronghold (as in the steward dialogue in Hearthfires, or to have her become WW right away. The hut gets extra clutter (statuettes, ingredients, personal items) when she moves in. Malacath statuette doubles as cure shrine. Dibella is just ornamental. Still trying to decide on an appropriate "blessing" from Malacath.

Posted by: ghastley Jun 24 2016, 04:52 PM

More progress:

Levelling up with all required furniture in place starts the courier. Reading the letter from Atub starts the quest to find Yarob, and marks your map.

I need to build a leveled list of masks to buff Yarob appropriately so she's a challenging opponent, but not an overpowered NPC once she destroys the mask. I figure putting all the buffs on the mask will do that best.

Letting her be a follower complicates the decor changes back at the stronghold, so I'm abandoning that idea.

I've adapted the script for the Dexion fight for her, and just have to sync it up with the overall quest. Still need to create the mask-destruction scene.

Posted by: Grits Jul 17 2016, 05:19 PM

Sounds like great progress. For the blessing, something with Stamina and/or disease resistance maybe? Or a boost to damage or magicka resistance? I think of orcs as being hardy.

Posted by: SubRosa Jul 17 2016, 08:06 PM

For the blessing, how about something that boosts the Orc's Berserker Rage ability? Either granting an extra use for day, or extending its duration, or increasing it to doing triple damage, etc... Granted, it would be no use to non-orcs. But this is Orc Hearthfire after all.

Or grant a new version of the Rage ability, separate from the Orc Racial one. That way non-Orcs would get it too, and it would allow Orcs to use it as well as their natural Berserker Rage. That would give them two Rages in one day.

Posted by: ghastley Aug 5 2016, 06:23 PM

SubRosa, I like that idea, but I don't think it's possible to grant a single-use ability. That's what scrolls are for.

All the other blessings increase something, typically a skill, from the moment you get it, for an extended period (mostly 8 hours, but a couple of them last for 12), so I'm really looking for an appropriate skill. Boethia's gives one-handed, so maybe Malacath's should be two-handed. That would mesh nicely with Hulking out, so I think I may go with that, and using both mods together would be enhanced.

Posted by: Grits Aug 5 2016, 07:41 PM

If you’re thinking of a single-use blessing, the All-Maker Stones in Solstheim grant powers that can be used once and then need to be reacquired at a stone to use again. There might be a clue in the CK in their records or in the Summon Karstaag power you gain from defeating him (which could be three different single-use powers all given at the same time).

A Two-Handed boost would also be most welcome!

Posted by: ghastley Sep 6 2016, 07:02 PM

Well, before Yarob can start putting statues in her hut, we have to get her out of Hervik's Lair. So I went back into the CK over the long weekend and worked on the mask destruction scene. Each piece is working, but without a voice for the dialogue, it seems that I have to activate her at each step, or the scene won't progress. I'll probably have to record some place-holder dialogue files, so the voice actor can replace them later.

I've figured out how to provide a custom colour for her hair, but it's a tedious process, as I have to fire up the game to review the shade on the hair. The render window doesn't look the same as the in-game version.

TJ, the test character who's rescuing her, is already 50 hours into the game, and has completed Dawnguard and Dragonborn and half the MQ. She's never been to Winterhold in all that time. She has dual Dragonbone Maces, and light armor (she needs a little so she can enchant something ) She was a test-builder of the Stronghold, and I re-opened her game to continue with Yarob.

Hervik's Lair needs a manual re-build of its nav-mesh. Yarob gets stuck too easily on the generated one. I tweaked a small area to get through the scene development, but it all needs work. That will get tedious, too.

Posted by: Grits Sep 6 2016, 10:16 PM

I wondered what you were working on this weekend! Sounds great, but not fun for you. Just reading “nav-mesh” puts me in a sweat.

Posted by: ghastley Oct 31 2016, 04:12 PM

Already had a PM at the Nexus asking when the SSE version will be available!

Edit: CK was released late Oct 31st, so I'll download tonight and get to work. Expect it on Nexus for PC, and Bethesda.net (for XB1 only). Does anyone her have an XB1?

Downloaded, and the SE version is currently being tested in my game. I'm still reading up on how to build the bsa files, as apparently there are multiple methods, and most don't work. Plus the XBox ones are different from the PC ones.

I thought I'd taken some screen-shots, but I didn't have Fraps running, and nothing happened.

Posted by: ghastley Nov 4 2016, 02:18 PM

I've put out the base Orc Hearthfires for the Special Edition, and started on the add-on for the adoptable Orc Child. I've run into a problem with that, because they've changed the .nif format, and her modified head isn't working any more. I thought I had it, but when she started talking, her mouth exploded out of her head, because there were conflicts between the mesh and the speech morphs. I have a buncch of work to do, and I'm not sure the tools have caught up yet.

So I'll probably move to the other Hearthfires mods first.

Edit: Uzi's head has stopped exploding! However, you can't move her into the stronghold, until the Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions mod gets ported over, and I suspect that may require SKSE64. I know my Hulk Out! mod needs it to do the colour changes, so I can't touch that one for a while, either.

Posted by: mALX Nov 6 2016, 02:18 PM

Can you make the changes needed for your own mod and make it standalone and not dependent on the SKSE or that other mod? Or have you talked to the author of the Multiple Adoptions to see if they are even working on porting their mod over? (because I'm sure there will be a ton of demand for it).

Posted by: ghastley Nov 12 2016, 08:55 PM

Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions has an SSE beta, and I've checked it out with the Stronghold and Uzi.

http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/SE/HMA_SSE_Orc.jpg

That's also Lucie over on the right, I wanted two kids to check out the name-calling scene, for which I have the markers.

Posted by: ghastley Nov 14 2017, 07:45 PM

I'm fairly amazed how much this one still gets downloaded. Most mods taper off, but this seems to be steadily getting more downloads over time as more folk find it. Now over 30,000 across all the platforms.

Posted by: Acadian Nov 14 2017, 08:51 PM

Wow, that's impressive, ghastley! Testimony to your skill and reputation as a modder.

Posted by: ghastley Sep 15 2019, 01:40 AM

I started to do some more cluttering in the Diablo mod, so I'm not sure what made me open this one up in the CK. I was probably going to copy something I'd done before.

After all this time, I just noticed what was causing the scene to break when you defeat Yarob. It was just a bad nav-mesh preventing her from reaching all the locations. So now it's fixed, and I have another project back in progress.

Assuming I can remember what I was going to do next!

Posted by: ghastley Sep 16 2019, 02:41 PM

It may be possible to gather all the references I need using SKSE functions GetModByName, and GetFormFromFile. The first to check if the base Orc Hearthfires mod is present, and then multiple calls to the other can get the quest stages, disabled objects, marker id's, AI packages, etc. that Yarob will use. That avoids making it depend on the other one as a master, and gives me a few options as a stand-alone mod.

I find that I stopped development just before writing the conversation that recruits her, after she's destroyed the mask. That needs alternative dialog depending on whether the player is male or female, an Orc or not, and maybe also on the construction of the Stronghold. Which would explain why I haven't done it already. The last one needs the same linkage to the original mod that I'd be putting off.

Posted by: ghastley Sep 20 2019, 02:34 PM

I found I needed to make changes to the original mod, whatever I did with the Wise Woman supplement, so I spent the evening merging it into the base, which is a tedious process of changing all the form id's, and resolving any conflicts. But now I can load it all up in the CK at once, and that makes everything a lot simpler.

I'll be attempting to allow for several requirements at once: The players that want a conventional Orc Stronghold, where their male Orc player is the chief. The opposite extreme, where the player character is a female non-Orc. Several intermediates, that will share aspects of the end-cases.

That will probably require alternate NPCs for Smith, hunters, etc. The only constant is Yarob, and she may need to be conventional or not to match the overall vibe. Since she has her own hut, I'm not making her marriageable, but with Orc polygamy, that's not a big deal. It just leaves the primary bed for the "conventional spouse" role, and "lover's comfort". I have dialog code for outfit choice, that I used in Conina's case, that can be re-used for Yarob.

There are beds for four "staff", plus the double and two child beds for the player spouse and adopted kids. So I'll limit the staff to four, one of which is Yarob, of course. Smith can be Yarob's squeeze, or player's forge-wife. Hunters could be a couple, or two females, hunts-wife and other.

Since it's easiest to steal from the steward set-up in Heartfire, I'll do the hiring through the Wise Woman, even if it's "wives".

Posted by: ghastley Sep 23 2019, 03:07 PM

I ran a fresh character through the existing stuff this weekend, and found a problem very quickly. It was probably a result of the merge process, but the quest for the Wise Woman rescue was triggered by the kicker on the first level-up, without any of the pre-requisites met. You're only supposed to get the quest once the main bed, the bed in the hut, and the Alchemy and Enchanting stations are in place.

I had to re-force all the Aliases to fix that, but the quest is already in the journal, so I can't re-test without another new character. I was using the current one to check out face-gen and equipment for the staff characters, (including a sex-change), and I could use another for the gender-specific dialog anyway.

Current plan is to enable recruitment one role at a time, maybe on subsequent level-ups, for Smith/Forge-wife, Hunter/Hunts-wife and Guard. Player will get gender choice each time. All by dialog with Yarob, who should be the only one needing custom Voice Acting. She's already marked as having a unique voice.

I tried to do the rescue, but the masked Yarob is effectively a Dragon Priest, and not fodder for low-level characters. I need a way to scale her damage. However, since the one at the Stronghold is a separate formid, who gets enabled after the rescue, I could just do that via console for now.

Yarob now has at least six costumes. The rescue has three - masked, hood without mask, no hood. The one at the Stronghold has variants of robe, and a forsworn-like Wild Woman option. The staff may also get outfit choices.

The female recruits are likely to get outfit options. I have not decided if that will be via dialog with each, as I did with Conina, (except that there may be more than two choices), or making the choice when negotiating with Yarob. Much may depend on what existing dialog can be re-used.

Now my memory is returning, it was going to be the Dibella statue that controlled the outfits. The Malacath shrine is a regular blessing/cure one, but Dibella's would prompt for outfit styles.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 1 2021, 04:09 AM

Fiddled around with this one a bit more.

The Dibella statue now controls the outfits, and dialog with Yarob recruits the staff, giving a male/female choice for each job. Smith is giving me issues, as the female's bump map is not working. It's OK in Nifskope, but she's too soft in the game.

I'm still working on a (currently separate) piece that adds a nearby small mine and a few miners. If i get it all to work then I'll merge that in, too. The mine door is blocked by rocks, and a variant of the rubble-clearing script from the Argonian Hearthfires mod will clear them. The added part is that you can't clear the rocks until the activator is enabled, and the enable/disable is breaking things right now. Then Yarob will get more recruit dialog for miners. The Dibella statue setting will apply there also.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 15 2021, 01:57 PM

The mine is now merged in, and I'm replacing the "instant" recruitment of the staff with quests to get them. The Hunter/Hunts-wife is now rescued from capture by the Forsworn, using the existing mechanisms provided for teh Companions' rescue quests, including the dialogue for "thanks for rescuing me".

I need to do the same for the Smith/Forge-wife, and the Guard/Shield-wife. I don't want to repeat the rescue thing again, and I need to avoid the need for new dialogue. Yarob the Wise Woman will have a unique voice, so she's not an issue, but the other staff have to get by on what's already in the game. She can write a letter to one of them, and just have him/her turn up a few days later, without the player needing to do anything, but again, I don't want to do that twice, so either Smith or Guard needs a quest. Any ideas?

The documentation has been updated a bit too. http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/Docs/OrcHearthfires.html, but beware of the boobies on the staff page, if you follow all the links. I added pages for the Wise Woman's quest, Hervik's lair, and the staff, with more to come as I add more quests.

Posted by: ghastley Aug 29 2022, 07:31 PM

Now my site is in action, I am working on packaging up a 2.0 beta for Orc HF. It is still lacking a recruitment quest for the guard, and voice for Yarob, but it is workable without those. You just get the guard instantly, and need to turn on subtitles.

The hard part is ensuring that fixes for problems I find in one version of the game get copied over to the other. I usually build on LE, convert to SE, and then test there. But sometimes it’s a problem in LE original, and sometimes it turns out to be a conversion problem. Building the bsa is a different process, too, and will doubtless introduce new issues.

Stay tuned! Links to beta at bottom of downloads tab here. http://ghastley.org/TESMods//OrcHFMod.html

Posted by: ghastley Sep 12 2022, 01:03 PM

Voice for Yarob is in progress, maybe.

I downloaded xVASynth and started playing with it. It looks like I can use Lynda Carter’s voice from Oblivion for adding lines for Azura in the Diablo mod, and I may use the same voice for Yarob. If it worked for Mazoga, then it should work for her. Nocturnal also needs some extra lines, but her VA’s voice is already a Skyrim option, as she did Dunmer.

The synthesis produces a rather flat, expressionless reading of the text by default, but the pitch, emphasis etc. are all adjustable, and you can get a realistic result with some work. It supports a phonetic alphabet for words that have no pre-defined pronunciation, like names of NPCs, and the games’ character names are mostly supplied already. This has promise.

Posted by: Lena Wolf Sep 12 2022, 01:44 PM

They've done complete voicing of Morroblivion with it. That's a lot of lines, there's no way they could have fine tuned them all. Like you say, it is a bit flat here and there, but very acceptable, and I'm playing with it as I prefer it to silent. This has promise, indeed! Especially if you don't have thousands of lines and can fine tune it manually. I plan to try it out at some point for my own mods. May be.

Posted by: ghastley Sep 21 2022, 02:37 PM

Of course, xVASynth adds a whole new level of “just need to tweak this a bit” to the mod-making process. I shall now spend another lifetime mastering another tool.

The few lines for Bothela for the Forsworn mod seemed to come out right the first time, but Yarob just sounds bored. Keep trying!

This is probably because I wanted her to have Mazoga’s voice from Oblivion. Lynda Carter’s voice is available from the older game, but the extra file for fully expressive AI has not been trained from that game. She only voiced Azura and Gormlaith in Skyrim, so there is not enough source material there. Still, it sounds like a very bored version of her, so the potential exists.

Posted by: ghastley Jan 30 2023, 04:10 AM

I created a 2.1 release that gives Yarob the standard Orc voice, but she may get an alternate set later. Using a separate bsa for voices should make that easier.

Posted by: ghastley Dec 16 2023, 07:31 PM

I tried using Uzi (the Orc child) in my AE game, and she crashed it, as soon as she tried to speak. The mouth issues may have returned.