Yes, it's probably a good idea to have a separate thread.
The idea is for a Khajiit merchant to be able to get a mobile home, i.e. a horse-drawn carriage/cart that will carry his wares, and be suitable for sleeping in, with a bit of re-configuration in-game.
It would add a canopy (Conestoga-like) and a removable board to fill the gap between the seats/containers when used for sleeping. The seats would theoretically hinge up for storage, but could be activated as containers without the need to add that animation, if it proves too difficult.
The game has animations for driver and passenger to enter/exit/use the carriage, so as long as it's the base model, they should work.
Unknowns: Can I add sleeping furniture to the cart? Will animations to show/hide elements in the nif be playable by script, so the re-configuration works?
I'm also considering having the player do some of the building work. Make pieces from iron ingots and lumber, at wainwright's forge only.
Player can already buy a horse, no need to add that. Lumber purchase at mills only starts with Hearthfires quests, but this will be one. The log pile will be at the wainwright's home, in this case.
OOOHHH!! Sudden idea. Wainwright is dead, house derelict. Journal contains plans for wagon-making, notes about loss of tools. Player tracks down tools, and makes own wagon. This avoids the need for dialog and minor town site. There are a couple of derelict houses near the roads that could be converted by adding a forge. Might need a derelict forge that can be repaired as step one. Hmmm....
I need to check out the house ruin between the Western Watchtower and Fort Greymoor. That might be just right for this, if it has room for forge, logpile, and a carriage being built. I can flatten terrain a bit, remove rocks if needed, so it has promise.
Oh my gosh, that’s an excellent idea! Quests plus built it yourself is lots of fun, and a dead wainwright needs no voice acting. Brilliant idea to possibly give a purpose to that location.
Current thoughts (assuming site is suitable):
Player reads journal, fetches tools. This enables a carpenter workbench. He can now repair the forge, as step one to begin wagon-making. That should just be a disable broken / enable fixed swap. He needs to buy lumber as usual, and buy ingots or mine iron and smelt it. There are half a dozen iron veins near the site.
Wagon-making depends on my being able to break down the mesh into parts, but that was needed to animate it, so most is already done for me. I'm not sure if body is separate from frame, but wheels, front axle/tree are jointed. I can control build order, so wagon can be built on top of a trestle with wheels added last. When final wheel is made, trestle disabled again. Then canopy, and any other optional parts can be added ad hoc.
The game has a saw, a hammer as clutter items. Nails, locks, hinges and iron fittings are HF standard, made from iron ingots. Dawnguard has a drawknife, but making a spokeshave isn't hard. I want one specialized tool like that as justification for making carts at this location only. Giving the forge a unique keyword does the job, like the Skyforge, but it needs an in-game reason.
Does forge repair need materials? It can't use nails/fittings as it makes them, but could use lumber/stone. House building has an extra anvil for making nails/fittings/hinges/locks but I don't want that here.
Should a smelter be an option? Local ores, so some might want to do that, especially if they're RP'ing that a Khajiit isn't allowed into cities.
A smelter would be a good idea, and that made me realize that once the caravan is finished and on the road maybe the character could use the derelict house site for their future blacksmithing needs.
I’d say in a quest update or somewhere that you could salvage some of the old fittings and just need iron ingots, stone, and sawn logs to repair the forge. That way you don’t need a starter anvil and you don’t create a situation for Khajiit characters having to borrow Alvor’s forge in Riverwood.
Also the game has tongs, if you're looking for another tool to lose.
That site will work nicely.
I had to flatten a little, and remove grass (first attempt had grass growing in the lit forge!) but it looks great now.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightForgeDerelict.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightForgeRestored.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightForgeSmelter.jpg
And as a bonus, I found there's a chest under the floorboards where I can add the journal!
Wow, it's looking good already!
Fantastic thoughts, all! I like the idea of using that old house by the Western Watchtower as the location - I remember when I first came across it, just having started playing the game on the laptop. Alise went in there out of curiosity - would we find a story? A quest? Something to occupy us? A mystery? We were so disappointed to find that there apparently was nothing there.
So your idea to use it as the location for building a wagon/cart is excellent! That was all that place needed - a mystery and a purpose!
Watching this space now!
I'm spending most of my modding time trying to slice up the wagon model so it can be constructed.
The wheels have to turn for the intro scene, so they are individual parts already. However, the majority of the body is divided up by texture material, rather than function. That means that all the nail heads are part of the chassis, together with various bits of leather that they found space for on the same texture map. The wooden parts are divided into lighter and darker, rather than functionally.
I'm not sure if I'll have the wagon built as a series of models that get disabled and the next stage enabled, or if I'll try to fade the pieces in as animation groups on a single model. I need to learn how to do that for the moving version, as I want a canopy and bed-platform that you can turn on and off.
It looks like I need to learn the havok tools even for things as simple as visible/invisible toggles on a nif.
I've started de-constructing the carriage, so that it can be built in stages. It occurs to me that a couple of them would be useful in the game as they are.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Carriage.jpg - for carrying people.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Wagon.jpg - suitable for merchants.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Flatbed.jpg - I could see this with a stack of straw bales going to the stables.
These look great, wow! I think they would be very useful for stables and merchants. I stuck a regular carriage outside my South Shore Trader loading dock because that’s all I had. Minus Seats looks particularly cool without that rolled-up rug hanging from the side. Yay!
Ever since you've announced this latest project here, I've been keeping a weather eye out for the carts in Skyrim. As I use no mods that add carriages or carts, what I see are the vanilla assets. I see both the covered types that you've mentioned, and they're very similar to the old Conestoga wagons of US Pioneer Days, only on a much smaller scale. But it would be worth going to a nearby farm/pioneer museum to see these Prairie Schooners up close, as they could be worthy models for what you are going for. Scaled down to Skyrim size, of course.
The big Conestoga wagons were designed to be pulled by teams, rather than singles. I think the smallest team that could pull one of those things all day would be a pair - oxen, horses or mules. Mules were favored because they were "easy keepers" and could go all day on very little, could outrun most dangerous situations, and still be smart enough to avoid potholes, quicksand and rattlesnakes. Oxen are very hardy and strong, but they are very slow moving and can be difficult to maintain if they don't get time for cud-chewing (an essential part of bovine digestion). Horses are fast and strong, but can be quite stupid about getting into dangerous situations that mules would avoid, and require more feed than the other two.
I imagine that you are going for a smaller wagon that could be drawn by a single horse (getting two horses to move side by side in the CK can be an animation nightmare, I would imagine), so the pics you showed (more like the buckboard wagons used by many farmers in the US) would work just fine. If you are going to make one without sides (the flatbed), remember that those used for hauling straw often had poles stuck in the sides to keep the bales in place- these poles are removable to facilitate loading and unloading).
I continue to follow your progress with interest. While I have no modding experience when it comes to making new things in the CK, I think I understand your difficulties in making a wagon that would work with your concept. My hat's off to you in making such a detailed undertaking!
I have to be careful if I look to the Conestoga for inspiration, as those were surprisingly high-tech - with roller bearings in the axles, for example. And "prairie schooner" was more appropriate than you'd think. They were designed to float like a boat for river crossing, and had a curved floor to keep goods central. Most of the pictures found by googling show a team of six horses for a proper Conestoga!
The existing model is a bit of a problem as it appears to be unsprung, and has torsional stability issues. It's less of a problem as a complete model, but since I'm building it up gradually, the part-built stages have to look reasonable.
Yes, the Conestoga wagon was the height of freight wagon technology.
In the game, is the vanilla carriage body perhaps suspended from the frame by leather straps? I seem to recall something about old-fashioned carriages being built that way, obviously before someone figured out how to make springs. Hmmm . . .
No, if you look underneath the model, it's supported by pillars from the central "metal" spine to a parallel wooden one. There's probably room to introduce the usual three elliptical springs - the rear two longitudinal, the front one transverse - and remove the pillars. The rear axle is weird and looks like it's supposed to be a multi-link modern car one.
However, there won't be much left of the original by the time I've finished. I want the result to look like the existing carriages as much as possible, given there's currently only one design in the entire province!
In the Conestoga design, and several others of the period, the body sat in a pair of cradles that were sprung somehow from the chassis. So you could lift off the top and put it on another base (or go sailing). The cradles themselves may have incorporated transverse leaf springs, but they're hard to see in most pictures.
I was looking at these trying to imagine what you would come up with:
http://www.bruceongames.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/gypsy-caravan.jpg
(interior):
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/07/20/40/d3/blackberry-wood.jpg
Or this:
http://www.ranchwillowwagons.com/wagonphotos/gypsy-wagon-465cb.jpg
(interior):
http://awhimsicalbohemian.typepad.com/.a/6a00e5538b84f38833010535bc5093970b-800wi
(The interiors with the storage under the beds and storage under bench chairs; shelves with rails to hold items in, etc)
Here was another interior shot, but they didn't have a rail on the shelf:
http://www.huntstileorganicfarm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/inside-Killis-wb1-425x281.jpg
Will the interior have a bit of a TARDIS effect?
I'm intending a covered-wagon style cloth top with support bows, rather than a wooden box. It's more flexible in providing options for the player. (Think convertible versus sedan).
These are the sites I'm finding useful,
http://www.hansenwheel.com/
http://www.oxbowwagonsandcoaches.com/index.html
for the pictures of naked chassis, especially.
More naked pictures! This time in-game.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WagonStart.jpg when you start building the wagon. Just a pair of trestles to put it all on.
First you have to build http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon0.jpg. Note the springs the original didn't have.
Now you can http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon1.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon2.jpg - as you complete a pair, the trestle is removed.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon3.jpg and http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon4.jpg. Now the wagon needs no support.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon5.jpg to start the superstructure.
Then you can http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon6.jpg
And then the http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon7.jpg
At this point it can be loaded and driven, so http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon8.jpg
And finally http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/wagon9.jpg
This is the basic configuration for the merchant wagon. I'll make the canopy part of the final wagon that you can put up or take down in use. Without seats, there's room for a bedroll in the back, though using it there may mean unloading the wagon.
Fantastic work! I really like the addition of the springs in the construction phase. I agree with mALX, you've made tremendous progress in such a short time.
I'm looking forward to springing a Khajiit character when this mod is finished!
ghastley, this looks fantastic. I love the structural details that you added. It makes me want to put a partially-built wagon somewhere to show off your work!
A little more progress. I spent nearly a whole day trying to make the collision mesh for the cart spring. It has to have one, as it's a "material" like the iron fittings and hinges, so you can drop it from your inventory or store it in a chest. I ended up pasting the mesh into a helmet's nif.
But there's other stuff going on, too.
I havehttp://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WilfCover.jpgfor the player to find.
And http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WilfPage1.jpg, forhttp://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WilfPage2.jpg.
And then http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WilfQuest.jpg starts - as groan-worthy a title as anything of Bethesda's!
I love the groan-worthy puns, and yours is right up there!
I'm getting excited about this mod! It looks like it is really coming together!
More little steps forward.
The game doesn't have http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Spokeshave01.jpg -
So I had to http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WilfSpokeshave.jpg
Yippee!
Umm, maybe I'm getting a little too excited?
Wow, that spokeshave looks beautiful! You made a tool that will look good in a display!!
Love the journal, and The Wronged Wright is a title that won’t be forgotten. Yay!
I spent most of yesterday on the tedious parts. Filling in lists of references in the quest properties, setting aliases, objectives. The worst part was the endless conditions to make sure the four tools can be found in any order, and don't get assigned to the same dungeon. I expect that I'll find that quest can't be started because all those conditions can't be met.
Reading the book starts the quest, which makes the game select four bandit hideouts with boss chests to put the tools in. They have to be selected all at one time to avoid using the same location twice. The player is initially given the objective to find the saw, but could visit one of the other dungeons and find the hammer, tongs or spokeshave first. So when he finds the saw, the next objective has to be for a tool he hasn't found yet. Getting that logic straight is twisting my brain.
Fortunately, the game already provides a way to use a regular item and label it as "Wilf's item" when it's used as an alias, so I don't have to duplicate all the pieces just to make quest items.
I haven't started on the process of driving the wagon, but there are enough other mods that do it, so I can look at those and pick the best method.
I'm also looking at re-building the house as an add-on quest, and making it a wainwright's workshop. There's a corresponding complete house for each of the destroyed ones in the game, so replacing the structure is easy. Furniture is a known process too. The only question is when would be an appropriate point to do that? When player has a spouse to stay there and be shop-keeper? Since the whole idea is that the Khajiit is nomadic, does he want a static home?
I think the add-on quest to restore the ruined house is a great idea. I have a Redguard and an Argonian in mind to use your Khajiiti caravan, and I suspect that there will be others who will want to build it not just for Khajiit. Both of mine (Alesan and Dar-Ma) have other housing, but both would build it for someone else to live in. I use My Home Is Your Home to park NPCs all over the place, so it would be easy to move one or a few in as the new wainwright and give them schedules working outdoors. Even with a purely nomadic Khajiit character I would do the quest to restore the workshop so that my nomad would have a place to swing by and do the maintenance on his wagon, or so we would pretend.
So I guess I wouldn’t wait for the player to marry, since the restored home and workshop would be useful in all kinds of situations. Even if the nomadic player wanted to adopt kids without a spouse, your wainwright workshop would give them a way to do it if you included the children’s stuff.
Maybe the add-on quest could start after completing the wagon? How were you thinking of doing it? If there was a way that would not put an unfinished quest in the journals of the true nomads who would not build a house, I think that would be best.
Wow, a functional house there would be the icing on the cake!
One idea I'd had was that the quest to restore the house would start after the player visits each of the walled cities and talks to the carriage drivers. They'd convince him of the need for a repair shop, and central is good. However, I can't think of a way to do so without dialogue, which needs voice acting, unless it's a lot of couriers with letters!
One of the motives was to provide a need for the partial wagons after the build part is done. A workshop might have several part-built wagons in progress of "repair". There's a fair amount of open space at the site for that.
But it won't happen unless I get the first part finished. There's still a few bits to link up before Jo'bashi goes testing.
Jo'Bashi has been busy clearing bandit dungeons around most of Skyrim. Every time I find a problem with the quest, he has to start again, as most things I need to change are baked into the save game. So he's cleared Faldar's Tooth twice, Orotheim twice, White River Watch once, Stoney Creek Cave once, Robbers' Gorge, Uttering Hills, Bilegulch Mine, and probably more that we've forgotten.
He's built at least four wagons, and mined a lot of ores, too.
He still has a http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/Dots.jpg to connect...
All he has to do is tell Dot to baaaack up, eaaaasy . . .!
Love hearing about the progress you're making!
Very exciting to hear the progress and see the wagon with horse almost in the right place! I love the horse's look. That’s a lot of bandit camps, wow. Jo’Bashi is a good sport.
The hired thugs from the Cyrodiil Wainwrights Guild is a great touch. I missed that before. And it will be neat to have some partially built wagons around once the player is on the road. Your wagons look cool with their underparts showing.
I downloaded http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25493 to check out, as it appeared to contain all the pieces I needed. Of course, it has way too many features, so now I need to figure out what's essential. Most of the extra stuff is related to camping equipment (taken to extremes, as you can create a smithy or alchemy lab on the road). I won't be doing that, as the Wainwright's house can provide the base station needs.
Activating the wagon should let you get on or off the driver's seat, harness or release the horse, and open the wagon as a container (cargo), but what else?
Dragonkiller Cart has a "Battle" option as well, which appears to be a combo of get off and release the horse as one fast choice. It also has multiple containers, partly because some of them relate to the extra features (tent and other equipment, especially). I'm not sure I need more than one.
If the player sleeps in the wagon, then I need a sleep option. Get off option should work whether the player is in the back, or on the driver's seat, so that only adds one. I'd like it all to fit on one menu, if possible. Showing only available options will keep it simple. I.e. harness / release won't both be there, and get on + sleep will swap with get off + combat.
Sleeping on the wagon avoids the need for a tent, with its attendant problems of finding level ground, enough space, orientation etc.
Since the player can separate from horse and wagon, and the horse can die leaving the wagon stranded, I need a method to locate each of them. Does anyone know a mod that does that for horses?
Those horse-calling features are rather the opposite of what I'm looking for. The Dragonkiller Cart mod gives you a power to summon your cart from wherever you left it, but I'd rather leave a marker on the map and make the player go fetch it. Ditto for the horse, so I'd use two different icons, or arrow colours. If your horse dies, the wagon marker should drop automatically, so you can come back with another.
Being compatible with camping mods will be a plus, so I don't want to duplicate their features. It's enough to allow the kit to be carried on the cart, so the cargo container should suffice.
Then take a look at the Convenient Horse Herding mod - it adds a marker to the horse camp that allows all horses to return to it.
If you just want to know where the horse and the cart are (assuming they've separated, such as after combat), then maybe there is something in the depths of the CHH mod that you can use?
The problem I've had with Dragonkiller Cart is that there's too much stuff to strip away before I can understand how the wagon part works. I spent a lot of the weekend asking myself "why did they do it this way?" and not getting any answers. There's a lot of code duplicated in multiple scripts, and global variables that look like they should been properties instead. Not to mention a few cases of "do something, then disable and re-enable the target and do it again" that look like empirical coding - i.e. they don't why it worked that way, but it did.
So I had to put down the mod and do something else for a while. Like actually play the game.
I'm so sorry that mod was giving you so much trouble. Yes, by all means, go play the game. Sometimes just stepping away from a problem allows your subconscious to percolate on it and bubble a solution to the surface. I've been there, done that; I'm sure everyone else, yourself included, has experienced this before.
So as disappointed as I am, I'll keep an eye on this thread for the future.
I think both Sofia and Inigo have convenient quest markers. If I recall they have a 'locator quest' - whenever you have that quest active, it puts a marker on the map of their location. Not sure how much help that is for finding a missing caravan horse though.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/NotExactly.jpg
I guess that depends on whether you want the Argonian to drive the carriage or be hitched up to pull it.
The picture of Jo'Bashi wasn't actually far from what was intended. If you push the Panic! button when you're on the cart, the horse is moved safely behind it, and the player in front to face the enemy. It's just that he was stuck in his driving pose, and still at that height. Now it's fixed, and he moves to a standing position.
The cart is buildable, drivable, you can store things in it, but I haven't got the sleep option working yet. According to the CK wiki, there's no known way to do that.
I still have to detect the completion of the wagon, and close off the Wronged Wright quest. I should add the canopy option, and put the bedroll in the back, before release, too. And there's a glitch where the horse starts off on its own when you get off the wagon. I think its AI is turned on too soon.
I made quite a few changes from the way things are done in Dragonkiller Cart. There's only the one menu, and the options depend on the current state. Initially you can only sleep in the cart (in theory) or store something in it. When you have a horse, and it's close enough, the "hitch" option is added. Hitching the horse removes the sleep option, and adds "get on", and "unhitch". You can still access the cargo when you're on the wagon, but you can't unhitch until you get off. You have the choice of "get off" which leaves the horse hitched, or "Panic!" which detaches both driver and horse, so you're ready to fight.
A decent amount of progress, and I should have something to try soon.
Sounds awesome, ghastley! I am in the midst of rebuilding my mod load order, so may be ready to start a Khajiit character and try out this mod! Keep us posted!
My intent was to have the player sleep on a bedroll in the back of the wagon. I may try just having the "sleep" button put the bedroll in place, and see if it can be activated there.
I started on the http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/Docs/KhajiitHearthfires.html, and took this http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/HoverDriver.jpg of another minor problem. I don't think I can lower the player onto the seat, as the position is baked into the animation/pose.
I've been letting my latest Orc (the one in the hovering pose) drive the wagon around Skyrim, to try and get the niggling glitches out, and get a few screenshots for the mod documentation. So far, it seems that all the roads, and many of the larger trails, are passable, even the back route from Helgen down to Riverwood.
I need to start a new character to test the bedroll code I added, as it needs a save before the mod is loaded. It's a good thing there's god mode to get through the fetch quests, and COC to go to the bandit dens.
There's really only one situation that's still a problem. When the player gets off the wagon, and leaves the horse hitched, the cart will sometimes take off on its own, and drift slowly off towards the skies, leaving the horse behind. Turning the horse's AI on or off doesn't seem to affect it.
I'm starting to think I need a Power to settle the cart - i.e. restore it to a stable, usable, parked position - for the times when the player has lost control, either by glitch, or just bad driving. I need to figure out how that will work, but initial thoughts are to move the wagon to a fixed position relative to the player. So you'd move to a place where there's room for it, and cast. The horse moves to the wagon when you hitch, so it's implicitly also fixed by that mechanism, as long as it's close enough to hitch. In most cases you can just ride it back to the wagon. The wagon would return with brakes on, unhitched, of course.
I've also console-enabled the restored house for a photo-shoot, and I'll post pictures soon. I keep re-thinking how the quest for that will work. My initial thought was to check the map markers for all the stables where there are hire carriages, but the player can go to all those without the wagon. I need to make sure that at least one of those visits has the wagon present, before the drivers will know about it, and sponsor the rebuild. Probably the "wagon present" test will be part of the conditions for the Story Manager event that triggers it, and the kicker quest will then check the set of map markers.
Any thoughts on the "hired thugs" situation? Should that be a one-off that can happen anywhere, triggered by elapsed time after the house is rebuilt, or more like the bandits at the Hearthfires homes, where they're randomly waiting when you come home? Or something in between, with no fixed location, and random intervals?
Not a lot of progress this weekend. I do have a wagon reset spell that the player can use when it's needed (such as overturning the wagon due to driving too fast). It's given to you when you complete building the wagon.
I created the Story Manager nodes and hooked up a kicker quest to start the house rebuild. That requires the the player to have visited all the stables - checking that the map markers show does that part - and the kicker quest checks that the player has the wagon with him when he arrives at one of the stables. If all conditions are met, then the building quest starts. That's empty right now, but will send a courier to say that the carriage drivers have rebuilt the house in the hope it will become a repair shop.
The workbench was in the demolished house, so it's inaccessible when the rebuilt one takes its place. That avoids the temptation to build more complete wagons, but the forge, smelter, tanning rack and grindstone are still out the back, for normal use. The interior has a work-table that's not a crafting station. I'll post screenshots of the rebuilt house as soon as I stop adding clutter.
The thing that's still eluding me is the bedroll in the back of the wagon. I tried moving one there from a holding cell, and found that you can't move furniture. So I tried creating one with PlaceAtMe, but that didn't work either. Since there are camping mods that spawn bedrolls, (including Dragonkiller Cart), I'll just have to poke around in those and extract the relevant parts. I may even have it working, but be suffering from save-bake. It's hard to tell if I went back far enough in the saves each time I re-tested.
I'll probably add quest markers to one of the quests for the wagon, and the player's horse. Keeping that quest active will let you select it when you need the directions.
You can overturn the wagon?? Cool! Does it do wheelies too?
Sounds like you're in the boring part of the mod process. Tweaking all the nuts and bolts to get the desired result. Laying the framework for the quest/story. Sounds like quite a bit of work.
Still, I'm looking forward to the finished product!
I somehow picture Maxical being seen in an overturned state in various locations throughout Skyrim from here on out,
Major breakthroughs today!
I'd been having a problem with starting the quest that rebuilds the wainwright's house. The Story Manager log said that it passed on the event, but the kicker quest that checks all the conditions wasn't running. It had a debug.trace statement at the start, so I could confirm it got there.
Today I discovered that was the cause of the problem. Removing the trace attempt lets it work as intended!
So now Jo'Bashi has a workshop to go back to.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightHouseExterior.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightHouseCentre.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightHouseLeft.jpg
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightHouseRight.jpg
The other big one was placing the bedroll in the back of the wagon. A bedroll can't be moved, so I ended up moving an X-Marker to the right place and creating a bedroll at the same location each time. The marker gets recycled in and out of a holding cell, but the bedroll is deleted when you hitch the horse.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WagonBedroll.jpg
I still have to add the canopy option, and create the hired thugs quest, but what's there is http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/KhajiitHF_01.7z.
One known gotcha: If you read the letter that rebuilds the house before you made all the crafting stations, you can't reach the workbench to do so. Make the smelter, grindstone and tanning rack before you read it!
Woo, got it! I have a Khajiit hanging around Whiterun ready and willing to play.
The house looks great (screenshot, I haven’t gotten there yet), and I love the sign! Yay for the bedroll in the wagon. I did not really get the problem until you explained that you’d solved it.
Thank you, ghastley! This is exciting!
One thing I noticed yesterday that probably belongs in the readme or wiki notes: if you reload a save with the player driving the wagon, the horse will walk away (or run away) having become untethered. I need to review the logic in the OnLoad process to see if I missed something.
Fast travel moves the player and horse only. The reset spell will fetch the wagon. However, if I'm in that kind of a hurry, I leave the wagon behind, anyway.
Otherwise, what's there appears to work, and what's not there isn't reminding you it's missing. You can't make the non-existant canopy yet, and the thugs aren't being threatened, except for the hint in the journal.
I use the Panic! button whenever I want to stop and exit, so it might get renamed.
Feedback on whether the house needs anything added would help. I'm conflicted about making it a viable "only fixed residence". The wagon-owner has no private alchemy, armorer or enchanting stations.
OK, great to know. Thank you, ghastley!
My Whiterun Khajiit had already made a bit of a mess in his game, so I started over. http://i.imgur.com/T9gcRXS.png has found a ruined house with a great view and business potential. In the morning he’s off to the Wreck of the Winter War!
Biggest decision: which color horse to buy?
That’s a good question about the crafting stations in the house. I’ll think about it as I get to know Mojo. I’ve already realized that driving a wagon and collecting alchemy ingredients are not going to happen in the same trip.
I would definitely include an armorer workbench to round out the Smithing set, though. Enough critters will attack on the road and provide hides to haul back and use at the workshop to make a bit of crafting worthwhile. In looking at the pictures I liked that the house was very simple, but the tabletop alchemy and enchanting stations might still fit in.
I suppose that “Oh [censored]!” is not an appropriate substitute for “Panic!”
I moved the spare wheels out to the front deck, and added a small table and chair out there, too.
The space against the back wall now has a table with the tabletop versions of the enchanter and alchemy stations, as they take up less space. The chest on the left is now under that table, so there's room for the character to use the labs.
While adding the Armorer Workbench at the back, I found a problem I hadn't noticed before. The rebuilt house has lost the chimney! The space where I had thought to put the workbench is where the chimney should have been, so it's going between the forge and the smelter (just enough space) and I'll try to add the missing chimney to a modified FarmHouse05 mesh.
Awesome, that big tundra sky begs for outdoor seating. Or perhaps that’s my Nord I hear planning to laze about on the front deck when he passes by the wainwright’s.
It’s good to have those stations available. I’m glad you found a spot for them.
No chimney, oops. Perhaps that's why there's so much fog inside some of Skyrim's buildings!
The chimney turned out to be trivial to fix, because the third variant of the mesh (another destroyed one with a bit of roof) had an almost intact chimney that I could copy across in NifSkope. So now the rebuild one is http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightChimney.jpg
The http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/WainwrightNewLeft.jpg inside are looking good too. The table fits that space well,
Oh very nice. I imagine that the wainwright’s repaired place could become an informal rest stop for the caravans, much like the little country store/service stations that we have around here.
This morning Mojo informed me that Khajiit is no “test character” and that it was high time I gave a form to Shuvesse’s lonely face file, so now she’s waiting for him in Rorikstead. Evidently Khajiit has access to my hard drive. This one could be trouble.
Edit: misplaced modifier.
Note that adding the Armorer Workbench meant updating the properties of the Wagon Building quest. When I upload the next version, Mojo won't be able to build it without restarting from before the journal was read. In Jo'Bashi's game I enabled it via console.
At least it wasn't a change to the wagon (as the canopy will be) because that's present but disabled as soon as the mod is added. The canopy will need a property variable to track whether it's visible. I will be adding it to the mesh with an "animation" to make it show/hide, assuming I can work out the logic of "making" it at the workbench. It will be an exception, in the sense that there's no item in the world to enable when you make it.
A thought: when the house is rebuilt, you lose access to the workbench and can't add the crafting stations outside. Should the missing ones come with the house? If that's a known effect, some players will just take the easy way out and get the free ones.
Edit: I didn't know the Wreck of the Winter War was a candidate site for the quest. I cloned the conditions from Karjho's Amulet quest, so I could steal the table for it, and UESP doesn't list that one.
Thanks for letting me know. I figure I’ll restart as many times as it takes. I think I’ll know what you’re talking about with the house a little better once I go all the way through what’s already done. I have a save from right before the journal reading, but please remind me to start brand new when there’s a change that needs a save from before the mod is installed. Otherwise I will not think of that and end up harassing you with non-problems that would work perfectly if only I did it right.
Mojo and Shuvesse have retrieved Wilf’s Saw and are headed next to Robber’s Gorge. I love a treasure hunt!
One unforeseen benefit of the "treasure hunt" phase, is that you are likely to use the carriages to get closer, or at least pass the stables on the way. Then the rebuild part is already partly done.
I've had one run that used Orotheim, Rift Watchtower, Broken Oar Grotto, and Knifepoint Ridge. Saw a lot of the map going to all those, as none of them are near the stables.
I don't have Dragonborn active when I'm testing this, so I haven't been sent to Solstheim, but I believe it would be possible.
Find the tongs in Treva’s Watch. Holy smoke!! Mojo is level 4 now, he’ll probably be level 20 when he gets out the other side of that place! This is a lot of fun. You’re right, he’ll have visited a bunch of stables already when that time comes. Plus this way he can make an informed choice about his horse. So far he's been a short stroll from a stable each time, unlike your Orotheim shoe leather run.
I have Dragonborn active, so there may be a boat trip in Mojo's future.
Mojo is now a proud unlicensed driver! Wilf’s Spokeshave was in Redoran’s Retreat, very handy. He used the clay pit and quarry up by the Honningbrew Meadery. All of the build steps looked great. The in-progress wagon floated a tiny bit in his game, but it dropped into place once it was complete. The first driving lesson went well, as did the second nap.
My first boneheaded move: Mojo was so delighted with his new wagon that he decided to take a nap in it before he walked back to Whiterun to buy a horse. That was nap number one. While I was pondering how to put the bedroll away afterward (I thought that Activate Wagon -> Sleep might turn into Activate Wagon -> Pack Up once the bedroll was out), Mojo’s follower knocked the wagon sideways leaving the bedroll in the air. I probably should not have let him take a nap before getting the horse-hitching figured out. That was a reload in case I had really broken something.
I love the quick access to cargo space. Mojo had quite a bit of junk to load into his wagon. I imagine that the tools will not be quest objects after the house rebuild, and Mojo is pretty thrilled with having the only spokeshave in Skyrim!
Tales of the first roadtrip coming soon. He has not been anywhere near Markarth, which is the last stable to visit. I expect he will make frequent use of his Panic! Button due to wildlife. I do not have Convenient Horses active in his game, so post-skirmish horse wrangling will surely be a big part of the learning process!
Thank you for this, ghastley! Driving the wagon is even more fun than I thought it would be.
As soon as Mojo’s follower (Shuvesse in her new NPC life) kicked the wagon I realized that there must be something about the horse and brakes and the bedroll that I had screwed up. I’m guessing that’s the only time that the wagon will be unhitched with the brakes off simply because it hasn’t ever been hitched up yet? I hope my driving record improves once on the road!
I got 0.2 installed and Mojo has his first travel day behind him. He clipped a farmer and only ran over one fox, and he didn’t overturn the wagon at all. He had a little trouble getting up one steep hill (I took a screenshot of where), but on the way back down after realizing that he went the wrong way it was super smooth in that spot. He was able to ride through the whole trouble spot without dismounting or resetting. It just stretched and bounced the wagon and then recovered.
Lots of fun. It has been raining since about two minutes after Mojo hitched up, so now Jo’Bashi has another wet cat with whom to commiserate as long as they have their tops down.
I'll be working on the canopy this weekend. One thing that was holding it up was that it needs to be made at the workbench, but isn't a world item that can be enabled, just a part of the wagon itself, and I couldn't figure out how to use the same script. But then I realised that I can use an X-marker as a proxy. That's invisible even when it's enabled, and I can test its enable state to determine of the wagon has a canopy or not.
This change adds properties to the wagon and the building quest, so you'll need a save from before the mod was added, not just before reading the book.
Has Mojo done the circuit and started a courier yet? I've tested building the wagon and doing the rounds in both orders, as well as building the wagon before and after buying a horse. And of course Jo'Bashi's replacement horse tested that scenario.
Fenomena de Fault, the brazen Breton with the bare boobie, has had a couple of thug encounters, so that part seems to be working as intended in her game, too. For someone who was created just to check out an outfit, she's persisted to level 26!
One additional change I'll be making is to restrict using the Reset Wagon power, so you can't park indoors, or inside walled cities. I think that will all be covered by "in Tamriel worldspace" as that excludes interiors, cities, and places like Sovnguard, Fort Dawnguard, and the Vale. You'll still be able to drop it in many unsuitable locations, but this should cut down the opportunity a bit.
OK, great! Once Mojo gets thugged I’ll start him all the way over and this time make a save in Whiterun before installing the mod. I was wondering if there was a way to get the wagon to Solstheim, which would be a really bad idea. It sounds like the worldspace check will also prevent Solstheim mishaps and the resulting headaches.
Mojo has reached Markarth and now has five stable markers on his map, though he visited only Markarth in the wagon. He should level up quickly with all of the shenanigans available locally. Then I’ll check his thug status and proceed accordingly.
Funny thing. He parked rather carelessly in the middle of the road to sleep for the night, and when he woke up he was surrounded by a Khajiit caravan! So he http://i.imgur.com/5r95EOS.png but passed as soon as he found a wide spot in the road. The horse walks faster than the cats.
He flipped the wagon once and was able to get going again by getting off and unhitching then re-hitching. Then he was facing the wrong way so we learned that the wagon can easily ford the river right by the bridge at Left Hand Mine. Still hasn’t needed the Reset button.
He’s also tried dismounting normally to fight a wolf, and while he was getting off the wagon his horse killed the wolf while still hitched to the wagon. The Panic! function has worked well so far to keep the horse out of the fight. Later he tried to run over a roadside thief, but didn’t quite kill him. Good fun!
Also we learned that he can ride the horse and pull the wagon instead of driving the wagon. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing to do, but it made jumping off and on to fight wolves through a densely populated road section much easier.
Once when he dismounted the wagon normally (not panic) he wound up inside it, but getting back on and off solved it. Also he lost Shuvesse for a time and I thought he’d silently killed her, but she turned up again. Whew!
Yay for the bare-boobed brazen Breton! Sounds like she has taken charge. That’s awesome!
Just http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/CanopyTeaser.jpg in case things start going backwards. The model was the hard part, so it should get done soon.
This has a temporary texture with no normal map, but it shows the basic shape and lets me check a few things in-game, like whether I can still activate the bedroll when it's there. It looks like you'd want it off to drive, as it blocks the third-person view you're forced to use, so I'll keep the option active at all times.
Still in progress: node fading animation and hook-up to wagon menu, improved texture with normal map.
Edit: So when I added the controller nodes for the hide/reveal of the canopy, the CK crashes when the mesh is loaded. It may take a little longer than I'd hoped.
Quick question. Mojo has Repair the Forge in his quest log with the marker pointing to the wainwright’s bench, and on the bench the Armorer’s Bench option has appeared (since I updated to 0.2) Is there any chance this would interfere with the thug quest?
Sorry to hear about the CK crashes. I hope the canopy cooperates. I love the look of it.
I think 0.2 was missing conditions in the recipe for the Armorer bench, so it appeared too soon. I just had the same issue with the canopy and fixed both for the next one.
It didn't affect the thugs for Ma'Lishus (Jo'Bashi's sister). She got lucky, and had a number of local quests for the tools - White River Watch, Valtheim, and Halted Stream, and KnifePoint Ridge was the farthest she had to go. She took a carriage to Solitude to buy a horse, and did the tour on that, including recruiting Kharjo on the way. The thugs arrived in the middle of another battle somewhere, and she didn't have to deal with them herself, just collect their coin.
The scripts are all in place, just waiting for a mesh that does what they ask. I've been told it's possible, but I can't see what I got wrong.
Ma'Lishus! Awesome.
Mojo is on the road to Solitude with Shuvesse, Vigilance, and The Horse With No Name. He's going to do a grand tour until the thugs find him.
I'm beginning to think that the problem with the canopy is combining Havok and Gamebryo animation in one mesh. The wagon already has the swivel for the front axle and horse linkage done with Havok, so maybe I can't use a Gamebryo visibility mechanism at all.
The Havok tools documentation doesn't seem to mention alpha or visibility, so I don't know if that can be incorporated into anything but a static.
I don't see a way to make the canopy a separate mesh that can be enabled and disabled, as then I can't fix it to the wagon. Edit: Or maybe I do. If the canopy were an Actor, I could use SetVehicle to fix it in place, like a passenger. I'll see if I can turn everything silly off, e.g. letting you talk to it. and give it a go this weekend.
Meanwhile, found a small silly error and corrected it. If you reset the wagon while the bedroll is in it, the bedroll stays floating where the wagon used to be.
I hope this weekend is a big success!
Mojo has leveled up again and is checking for thugs. I’m using getstage BYOWKill and getting 0.00 back. What am I looking for? Anything but 0.00?
Mojo parked the wagon and rode the carriages to the five stables after leveling up to 7 just to be sure he did that part right.
It's more the Started vs Stopped indication. It only changes from 0 to 200 when you kill them all.
I found that the IncreaseLevel event is triggered by accepting the level, rather than getting the notification that you can. So when you get told you can level up, you can save, take the level and check, and if it didn't start the quest, re-load and repeat. Or wait for the next level. Jo'Bashi checked, as he was responsible for the debugging process. Ma'Lishus didn't, and got thugs the first time!
The first time I tried it, I discovered that although BYOWKill was triggered, it left the thugs disabled at their spawn point. There's another WEBYOWKill quest that fires off the World Encounters script event that enables them, and sets their AI to hunt the player down. I set it up this way to match the Theft/Revenge thugs, so I could re-use the actors, with their AI packages etc. The WE event essentially is "player entered WE zone", via a whole chain of other scripts, but the script event it creates is pretty indiscriminate, and shared by a lot of things already. Bottom line is that the enabling is going to happen, but the spawning is subject to the 1 in 3 chance.
I think the whole WE thing is there to make sure it happens in sensible locations, i.e. exterior locations, not too near cities, etc. I opted to spawn the thugs at the Pale Pass entrance, but they may "fast travel" from there.
Edit: In other news, I've done a bit of NifSkope work and produced meshes for wagon and carriage with one wheel removed for repair, and a trestle supporting the body. Together with the wheel mesh, I can put a "work in progress" near the house later. I may also make a part-built wheel, with a hub and all the spokes, but no tire, and an incomplete ring of fellies, just as clutter.
OK, thanks, I’ll just let Mojo wander and see what happens.
Excellent news on the unfinished wagon clutter. During the building process I kept going outside to stare at the wagon between each step. It looks really neat and hits that mod sweet spot where it fits perfectly into the world but is something fresh and new to look at. I especially loved seeing the springs go on. That made me think about what it would feel like to actually drive the wagon.
I recently noticed the game’s loading screen that talks about horses and carriages being common methods of transportation in Skyrim, even though you only see abandoned wagons and rarely see another horse along the road. The restored wainwright’s workshop will breathe life into that mostly imagined aspect of Skyrim. I’m just delighted by this project, ghastley!
Well, be patient, because plan B was a bust.
To make the canopy an actor, it needs a skeleton, and a behavior graph. And the latter needs Havok tools, which require 3DS MAX, or Maya. I use Blender.
So it was back to plan A, which started to look a lot better when I went to Nightcaller Temple and noticed that the Vermina Statue door uses controlled transparency. There's already an animation behavior set up for that, so it's just a matter of getting the controllers defined properly for the mesh.
Of course the controller/interpolater/manager linkage in nif's is not exactly simple, and it's still crashing the CK when it gets loaded. But at least I have a working example that does what I'm trying to do.
I took a break in the middle of it all to make http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/MissingFelly.jpg. It was a bit tedious adding the wood back where I ripped the iron tire off, but at least I knew it would work. Next time I get stuck, I'll make a spider - i.e. just the hub and spokes.
Edit: Found it!! I had a bad NiBlendFloatInterpolater with everything zeroed out. That's not to say it's working exactly the way I wanted yet, but it's a lot closer. I still have to adjust the fade timings, but the canopy does now appear and disappear on demand. The texture needs work, and the mesh needs a few vertices moved, and seams creased, and a few strings added, and ...
Mojo just got his letter from the grateful carriage drivers of Skyrim. He can’t wait to go check out the restored workshop. Great foreshadowing of the future thug encounter in the letter!
He’ll have to finish some urgent business first. Though he is very close to the workshop, the courier caught him at kind of http://i.imgur.com/0Cp128G.png.
Great news about the return of Plan A! Your break produced an awesome looking wheel-in-progress. I love the detail at the end of the spokes. Also, new vocab word: Felly.
I believe I have a functionally complete version now.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/KhajiitHF_03.7z
The texture for the canopy is in need of replacement, but that can be done without restarting a game, so this one should be the last that needs that. Unless it's broken somewhere I haven't noticed. You should be able to make a canopy, and it should toggle on and off via the menu. You can do that at any time, even when you're driving, as you may need the extra visibility.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/spider.jpg
Things to think about:
Currently, the wagon is considered complete when you've added the sides - I'd originally considered letting you drive it without them, so they were added last. Now the canopy is last, and that's optional. However, if you don't make it before the house is rebuilt, you never can. Should the harness trees be the last part, as they're required to hitch the horse?
Should the thugs be on a tapering schedule, where they get less likely over time? The current setting is a fixed 1/3 chance each level-up. That could be a more complex calculation based on level, so it would be 1/3 at level 10 or below, and decrease above that until they stop at some point.
The wagon is always empty, to make room for the bedroll when needed. It might be possible to have "general goods" in there when the bedroll isn't. Not having seats avoids any scripting for the follower to ride, so that stays the way it is. Do you prefer the wagon empty, or does it need something in it?
Oh wow, that work table looks awesome with the wheels on it. Woo! Got 0.3 and will start Mojo fresh as soon as I figure out where I put Shuvesse.
I think the harness trees going on last would be a good cue that the wagon is finished. Otherwise if I’m reading correctly a player could hitch up and ride off without building the canopy, only to find upon return to the restored house that the option is gone? As excited as I was to drive the wagon, I can see that mistake happening.
I think a tapering thug schedule would be good. That would keep them unpredictable and prevent them from becoming a nuisance. I can see some non-combatant merchant/crafter types having a struggle with them, which is good as long as it’s not too often. I’m thinking of the times I level up in bursts while using up a big ingredient stash.
I’m glad you mentioned the general goods idea. I was saving that for after you got the canopy working. Yes, I think it’s an excellent idea to have some crates or things in the wagon bed so that it looks like you’re unloading for the bedroll and then packing up again to resume the journey. I love being able to store things in the wagon with the Cargo menu option, and the visual would bring that to life.
I really enjoy finding a spot to camp near the road. I kept using the two step get down and then unhitch rather than Panic! just to give ceremony to parking for the night. I’m already curious where those Cyrodiil people have hidden Wilf’s tools this time.
The changed build order is done. It will be in the 0.4, which at present, won't need a restart. All that changed are: the recipes, the last three of which now have different conditions to determine which requires which other piece first; and the part-built statics, (which just needed parts deleted from the full mesh).
The thug quest change is just the Story Manager conditions, which aren't in the save. That's just a question of getting the math right for a suitable decline in the chance of sending them. I don't want it to go away completely, so something level-inverse should work. Zero chance at infinite level, but not before.
The goods in the back will depend on my finding an existing behavior graph for four "plays" - the Vaermina statue gave me the two, as well as the secret name of the transparency parameter ("12"). But that only had two settings to switch between. If there are going to be two parts of the wagon to turn on and off, I need two pairs of animations in one mesh to clone from. This could remain on the wish list after release.
It's possible that the Behavior Graph named GenericBehavors\IdleStartIdleBack.hkx already does what I need, and the Vaermina statue door I stole it from just doesn't use two of the animations available. If that's really true, than I have the other two I need.
I can't provide goods that represent the content, it will just have to be a fixed quantity of clutter, (barrels, crates, sacks, maybe a chest - all containers that hide their content) that implies "stuff". I won't use anything that could be an inventory item, so folks won't try to "take" it. Players are used to empty containers, so a logically empty wagon full of empty containers should make sense.
So I just need a bit of feedback on when the goods in the wagon should show and hide. The "Sleep" option should hide them, so "Hitch" would re-show, but I'm thinking that it should also depend on the contents/empty state of the container. That way the wagon starts without any, and gets it as soon as you deposit something, (assuming I can catch that event).
Whoa, that sounds promising!
A fixed quantity of containers that look the same empty or full was exactly what I was hoping for. Sort of the stuff that holds your stuff.
I’d be perfectly happy with an empty Cargo still showing the containers, since I would need them to be there before I started loading them up with loose items. If the containers don’t show up until the first thing is added to Cargo that would be great, too. Either way works equally for me. I can’t think of a reason to want a permanently empty wagon bed, but I’m sure someone will.
This is exciting!
There are two reasons I was thinking about empty cargo = empty wagon. One is that it's the initial state when you build it, and I don't want an extra build item of "containers" (and that would mean property changes and a full restart for you as well).
The other is that it provides a simple indication of empty. Regular containers have an "empty" label, so you don't bother opening them, and this would do the same for the wagon. Nothing in the back = nothing in the cargo. Swapping goods for bedroll doesn't hurt that, I think.
Aha. Yep, those are two very good reasons.
Mojo is about to release the dragons and then start his wagon. He's getting the groundwork done before activating KH. In case of re-start he'll be completely wagon-ready this time.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/CargoStatic.jpg
This is what the cargo will look like, if I can get the show/hide to work.
Edit: Well the bad news is that I can't, at least not the way I wanted. I'm limited to the one pair of visibility settings, although I can switch any number of pieces at the same time.
What I'll have to do is make the goods and canopy alternates, so showing one hides the other. That in turn means that the canopy needs to be up when the bedroll is in place, to get the goods out of the way. That's the sensible configuration anyway, so no big deal.
Also, since the canopy is installed during the build sequence, the wagon starts empty because it has the canopy showing, and you can't use the menu until it's complete.
So the "Sleep" option will be made conditional on the canopy showing. The emptiness of the cargo container will have no effect, but that just implies you're carrying an empty barrel, crate, sack and pouch.
Making all the edits in NifSkope is a laborious grind, but I should have a new release at the weekend. One other thing I want to fix is making sure the horse remains hitched if you reload from a save. I need to add a script to the player alias in a quest to do that, and I don't want that to mean restarting the character to test it.
Second Edit:Combining the opposite-direction fades has worked, and after a small change to get the on/off settings of the canopy the right way round, the bedroll can now only be deployed when the canopy is up.
Cat Man Dhou will be giving it all a test, including the new build order, as soon as he's rounded up the tools, then I'll post a new beta.
Cargo looks great! Having the canopy plus bedroll swap with it makes sense. Very exciting to see this come together.Quick check on what should have happened in 0.3. Mojo has built his wagon but didn’t get the canopy option. I can’t remember if that’s new for 0.4, sorry. He went to Broken Oar Grotto and Orotheim for the last two tools. Broken Oar would have been nasty, but Khajiit just sneaked in and got what he wanted.
I have a gazillion saves of the process including before I installed KH 0.3 in case I need to check anything.
EDIT: I am an idiot. Did not actually install 0.3. Be back soon.
Cat Man Dhou, nice!
Cat Man Dhou remarked that there were none of the "things only a wainwright would find useful" in the chest. Just the journal. Any idea what to add? Apart from the spokeshave, only the springs are new. The canopy takes Linen Wraps, but other mods have used those (including my Alik'r Heavy).
Hmm, chassis lube, axle grease, cotter pins? Could that stuff look like troll fat and lockpicks? The grease could be in a bucket. I’d definitely add the first leather strip to make the tanning rack, and putting one spring in the chest would be neat without providing too much stuff. Also a corundum ore or two would help the budding wainwright who forgot to bring enough corundum and steel ingots.
Here’s a last minute idea for the wainwright’s bench. How about adding a wood chopping block with the tanning rack? You don’t specifically need it to build the wagon, but once the shop becomes a crafting base it would be great to be able to chop wood for arrows right on the site. Having it appear early sort of says “Here’s where I split some wood to make stuff.” Utility and atmosphere!
Hold that axle grease idea. Perhaps a recipe for it, and you can make it at the alchemy lab once the house is made?
Spring, linen wrap and leather strip added so far. Recipe when I figure out the ingredients.
I agree about the chopping block, and linking it to the tanning rack works for me. You'd have used it to make the rack, perhaps.
Edit: My latest test character found the tongs at Valtheim on the way to get the saw from Treva's Watch and I found that the out-of-sequence logic is broken. I also forgot to disable the wagon with canopy but no harness trees at the end of the build sequence. More work to do.
I just took a re-rolled Cat Man Dhou through a deliberately out-of-order collection of the tools, and it worked as intended. I placed another wood-chopping block and it worked as expected. I have no idea what borked the first one.
I'm going to package up 0.4 without an enhanced canopy texture, as it will probably take less time if it's not rushed.
The main thing I need to do for the canopy is the creases and folds where it ties down, and a seamed edge. That takes another layer over the base canvas, and also goes into the normal map. Neither are something I can get from the 'net. I just have to paint it all in.
Edit: Here it is http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/KhajiitHF_04.7z. This will need a restart if the wagon wasn't completed under 0.3, as the property array for the build did need changing. I'll be sending a few more characters through deliberate out-of-order tool gathering to make sure all the stages are set up correctly. I have most of the location codes mapped to names now, so I can use SQV to see where the unprompted tools are hidden.
I'll be adding to the notes in the doc to explain how the search works and why you may not get all the objectives shown. I opted not to add, and complete immediately, if you found one prematurely. The doc will updated on my web site before it's copied into the download.
Awesome, got it. Thank you! Mojo 0.4 is about to find out where the first tool is hiding.
I love the idea of a wainwright’s recipe in the chest. It gives meaning to the alchemy bench that will appear in the finished shop without requiring that the prospective wainwright actually take up alchemy.
edit: Winter War --> Stoney Creek Cave
Two unrelated things:
It can't be a recipe for Alchemy, as the built-in mechanisms allow any such ingredient to be eaten, and it has to have an effect on the player. Lubricating the player may be beneficial in some instances, but that's not what this mod is about. However, the generic crafting mechanism could be applied to a wainwright-specific device, much like the Dragonborn DLC added the imbuing chamber to make spider scrolls. All components and result can be misc items.
There may be a problem with the thugs. My dark elf's third wave were non-hostile, and just followed her like sheep. Two of them were killed by bears and bandits along the road, and the third finally attacked her, although I didn't determine what woke her up. Their packages are Bethesda-supplied ones, and the only change my clones of the quests make are the references to each other, the contract, and the starting conditions. Since they got enabled, they should have been made aggressive at the same time.
I have had many occasions where bandits, necromancers, and the like have just stood by and done nothing even though my character was just a few feet away. But clicking on them to initiate dialogue would snap them out of it, and turn them hostile.
Another touch. I'm turning the top shelf of the cupboard in the house into a bookshelf, as there isn't one there yet.
However, I'm getting the activate prompt, but the container's not opening. This isn't the click trigger facing the wrong way, as that suppresses the prompt. Checked all the links, and they look good. I'd have expected that I'm activating the click trigger, but it's not passing it on to the container. Anyone had this, and remember the cure?
For me it was that my test save loaded in the same cell as the new bookshelf. Going outside and coming back in cured it. I tore my shelf apart several times before I realized what was happening. Sorry I don’t have any better ideas.
I’ve had a non-hostile Hired Thug from the vanilla game follow my character around until she was led to her death by a group of spiders. Talking to her didn’t turn her hostile. She was the last of the three to show up and missed the fight. Maybe your dark elf’s third thug wave was just one of the many weird occurrences brought on by the vanilla game?
Mojo needs a fresh start in the cart to Helgen. I think I have been screwed by Wrye Bash. It’s been adding and removing the newest mod installed to the first profile that’s loaded afterward all by itself. I suspect that Mojo’s clean game was nuked from the beginning without me noticing.
Good luck with your uncooperative shelf. I’ve had dreams about making collision boxes. *shiver*
OK bookshelf had its clickTrigger deleted and re-added and now it works.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/KhajiitHF_05.7z also has its esp and scripts in sync in the bsa, unlike 0.4 where the scripts were a month older!
The cupboard also got replaced by plain shelves, as the collision for the cupboard was getting in the way of the activation of the shelf. You had to be at exactly the right distance to operate the shelf before, now it's a lot easier. There are enough containers without the drawers at the bottom.
Cat Man Dhou got a wave of thugs who might have been non-hostile, but they turned up in Fort Greymoor while he was fighting identically-clad bandits, and got mixed in to that battle. Later on, he found a group of Imperial soldiers (with prisoner) fighting a frostbite spider, and as he went to join in, a pair of wolves and a conjurer also turned up. He ended up with a bounty after hitting one of the soldiers, and now he's paranoid about who'll come to his next battle.
However, in the process of clearing the bounty, he's discovered that although a Khajiit isn't welcome in a city, a criminal is, and he was released inside the walls!
Mojo loves his new house. It’s exciting to have a spawn point right across the road. M’aiq hangs out there because Mojo never talked to him, plus he’s had a Nord charge over and attack him out of the blue. Pre-owned armor delivery! Tiny nit: the interior is called Wainwright’s shop with a lower case ‘S.’
I love the interior. It looks cozy and not overdone with room for the player to decorate. The wainwright clutter on the table looks great, and merchant clothes on the shelf are an excellent touch! I have not checked the bookshelf yet because Mojo sold all of his books.
Mojo tested his storage this morning while I wrote some checks. He was inside the Drunken Huntsman. At about day 24 I heard Elrindir say in that slightly exasperated tone, “If you’d like to purchase something, I’d be happy to assist.” I noticed that the interior barrel respawns, which if that’s intended might be good to mention in the ReadMe so that people don’t store their food supply in there. I was about to ask for a chest outside near the smithing area, and then I looked over and saw the wagon. Portable storage!
One thing I would add is a second chair on the porch, mostly for atmosphere. I like that this is clearly not a family home, but there will be visitors. I love the wagon wheels and spider stacked around. The shop looks just right. I love it!
Funny about the Cat Man's free trip into Whiterun once he was confirmed as a criminal. That's some Nord thinking at work!
ADDED: Oh my gosh, the sign! I love the sign!
It's amazing what entertainment that spawn point provides. Last night we watched a Frost Dragon fight the guards at the watchtower. It wasn't player-hostile, so it was a case of sitting on the porch until it died, and then meandering over to claim its soul, passing a giant moon-walking because he was stuck behind a rock.
I'll unspawn the barrel. That wasn't intended. And there's room for a second chair on the porch, so why not? I'm not sure if I can move the table and chair to put one the other side of the table, or if you wouldn't have room to pass the table to reach the second chair. If that's the case, another chair can go the other side of the door, near the wheels. There may also be a smaller table I could use.
The logic with the house is that a Khajiit would have built the wagon as home, and its storage is what he'd use. The house was a gift from Nords who don't think like a nomad, but it serves to supply the rest of the crafting stations he won't take with him. That's why I didn't make it family-friendly, like the other homes. I must remember to point that out in the readme, or I'll get a lot of whining.
Some of that carries over to the wagon. It has no seats because it's for freight, not passengers, and a follower should have their own horse to ride.
How are the Wagon menu options working out? I wasn't entirely happy when the canopy and goods had to be alternates, so the wagon is empty when the canopy is up, but that was all the behaviour graph allows.
I've tested with an existing game to which I added KHF long after visiting all the stables. Courier was sent soon after completing the wagon and levelling, as expected.
Whoops, I completely forgot to play with the canopy. I love how the cargo looks! It’s great to be able to drive with the canopy up or down depending on the weather. The cargo not showing while driving with the canopy up is better than not having it show ever. It’s amazing how much cool that stack of cargo adds.
I tried to goof up and drive away with the bedroll out but your menu is Grits-proof. I’ve added in all of the town and city mods that I usually use to see how the wagon handles in the tight spots. Those mod authors tend to anticipate the touring carriage mods so I haven’t gotten stuck yet. I admit the fear of starting a war by running over a townie’s chicken.
At the house maybe the second chair could go http://i.imgur.com/qLJGJnq.png since that table is more for viewing than for dining? (And I forgot to mention the grass under the porch. That stuff crops up everywhere.) I am grinning over the image of CMD calmly sitting there waiting for the guards to finish off the frost dragon. Mojo and Shuvesse are headed into BFB next to release the lizards. Maximum roadside mayhem.
The courier found Mojo right away. He is level 9 so he should still level up pretty quickly. I’ll keep an eye out for those thugs.
Here’s a http://i.imgur.com/L0HOsWM.png (or a Whiterun guard traffic stop?) and http://i.imgur.com/CRUBzlQ.png. I haven’t added AFT or Convenient Horses yet, so she’s still on foot. (The canopy has shadows on it due to my game settings. They clear up when the camera is a little closer.)
Thanks for checking out that chair location. It does look appropriate, and avoids moving anything.
The dragon incident wasn't in Cat Man Dhou's game. Fluffie and her sister Fuzz had that one. It's hard to get a screenshot in their game without pervasive boobies, or I would have taken lots.
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The only places where the wagon gets hard to drive are up in the north where there are snowdrifts across the road which I keep forgetting are hard as rocks. You can steer around them once you remember that you have to. I've taken it cross-country to get to the Greenspring Stronghold, although that did take a bit of route-planning on foot first. Once there, it got parked for a while, as it's just as hard to drive back out.
I confess to using the Reset power to tidy up my parking in a few locations. I wish you could back the wagon into parking spots, but you can't.
http://i.imgur.com/7M5uTNa.png It happened as he approached the Western Watchtower on the way to the shop from Whiterun. They didn’t have a chance to confront him. He saw a commotion ahead and arrived to find the Whiterun guards fighting with the three thugs. They all had their contracts and payments of 100 gold in their inventories. Woo!
Do I detect non-standard equipment in use? And who's the arrow victim? Perhaps a potential recruit to the guards?
The Whiterun guards at the watchtower get a lot more work with this mod keeping the player nearby. There's an Encounter Zone there, but nothing happens without the player, and now you have a reason to visit more than the one time for Murmulnir.
Mojo killed their new recruit! Immersive Armors and Immersive Weapons are both in evidence on the thugs. The red-headed thug in the back gave up a beautiful shield, and Mojo melted down the thug with the arrowed knee’s armor into a stack of steel ingots. That location is a real winner.
All that reminded me that I didn't adjust the thug percentage yet. It's still at 33% each level-up. What I'm thinking of doing is reducing that value (it's held as a Global) each time you kill off a set. If I multiply the current value by 0.9, it will never hit zero, but keep reducing. If you get unlucky, and get them on each level-up, then the chance reduces more quickly and should stop that effect.
I'll do that this weekend, when I work on the canopy texture.
Edit:Version 0.6 has thug chance tapering off, and an improved (slightly) texture for the canopy. I gave up trying to make the texture better. I think I hit my skill limit. I also found an error in the recipe for the forge repair. It's checking stage 50, not 150, of the tools quest, (plus the spokeshave). Those conditions are only met if you find the tools in order, so it didn't show up in most test runs.
http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/download/KhajiitHF_07.7z should be better.
I found a couple more (cosmetic) things I want to change, so we're not done yet! The part-built wagon uses an earlier version of the canopy, and the initial state of the canopy-tracking variable doesn't match its (revealed) state, so it takes two attempts to take it down at first.
I'm also running more tests on out-of-sequence tools, so it could break gain.
0.7 is now properly installed in Mojo’s game andhttp://i.imgur.com/D3qTxW3.png! Thank you, ghastley!
For Phaerwen's run-through, the saw was in Treva's watch, so she (sensibly) left that to last. The spokeshave was in Lost Knife, the tongs in Fort Fellhammer, and the hammer in Knifepoint Ridge, so she picked the last first, and did spokeshave, hammer, tongs, saw. All the right objective messages were displayed, and the forge was repairable at the end. I checked the state of the wagon at each point of the build to make sure that it all looked right, and we're looking good.
Minor tweaks made for this run: interior renamed as House to match everything else. Wagon movement set to keyframed as soon as it's completed, so it can't move until you have a horse hitched.
Unless you find some problem in the next day or so, I'll probably release 1.0 in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.
I considered adding the map marker earlier - e.g. when you find the book, or find the last tool - as it would be useful when returning to the workbench. But I decided it doesn't get its place on the map until the house is rebuilt, so it's staying as it is. I will, however, add a note in the documentation that you'll want to visit Fort Greymoor to have a fast travel point nearby. The watchtower doesn't get one until the dragon finds it.
Edit: The fair Phaerwen just got her first wave of thugs, and dispatched them, only to be killed by a sabre cat who had come up behind her while she was busy.
Yikes, poor Phaerwen!
Mojo stopped by the house, love the grass-free porch with two chairs. One thing I keep forgetting to mention, the two hides by the bed overlap slightly which makes the edge flicker. Book shelf looks great. (He finally got some books.) Mojo placed a carriage hinge spring on the work table because it looks cool. He will stack some ingots and some treasures on his empty shelves as soon as he gets some. It’s fun to have just enough space to put a few personal things around that make the house his, but not so much that he would want to move out of his wagon.
Quick question, what happens to the original chest when the house gets rebuilt? I moved everything onto Mojo’s wagon because I knew the rebuild was coming, but other people might leave some smithing things in there and then not be able to get to them since the rebuild happens while the player is away. Sorry if you mentioned this already and I just missed it.
I think you made a good decision about the map marker. Mojo fast traveled to the Whiterun stable during his tests, and it is just a quick dash to the house from there. I like the sense of completion when the marker shows up with the rebuilt house.
The chest remains where it was, but since you can't get to it any more, that's no consolation. It may be possible to move all its contents to one inside the house, so you don't lose anything. Maybe the one under the table.
FWIW I’ve been testing Mojo’s wagon with follower and horse mods. So far Amazing Follower Tweaks and Convenient Horses are cooperating. I have follower horses controlled by Convenient Horses with AFT’s follower horse options turned off. To get followers to ride while Mojo is driving I have them set to Prefer Riding in their CH options. If they are not set to Prefer Riding they will follow the wagon on foot and ride when Mojo is mounted on his horse.
Next is trying out some combat with Mojo on the wagon. I have Mojo’s horse set to Cowardly in CH so that it won’t try to fight. The goal is to keep Mojo in the seat or use Panic, because if he gets off normally the horse tends to run away with the wagon. Sometimes they end up in a tree. Yay for the Reset button!
Mojo is traveling with Vigilance and two followers with their CH mounts. The spacing on the road is working out well this way. It is so neat to have a real Khajiiti caravan!
That's good to know! I should try out CH myself. The other mod I know I'll get questions about is Frostfall. The wagon needs to be a tent-equivalent, but it's not clear how that happens.
I've been mulling over the axle grease idea, and while there are problems with alchemy - which always produces results that affect actors, rather than wagons - there could be possibilities for an extra crafting station for it. A Dwemer-styled item with a wheel valve on top could look like an oil press. However, I have no idea how to use the product in-game, so that's on hold until I come up with something. It needs a benefit to the wagon, and a way to apply it, neither of which is obvious.
But a Recipe for a Fortify Smithing potion is a possible addition to the chest at the beginning. Maybe Glowing Mushroom and Spriggan Sap. One easy to get, one less so.
I'll probably upload a 1.0 to the Nexus tonight.
I adjusted the interior navmesh, which I hadn't changed since putting in the crafting table. It didn't change much, as there was clutter in that location before. The recipe for Fortify Smithing is added to the starter chest, whose contents get moved to the interior chest under the table when the house is built.
I'm still not happy with the texture on the canopy, but I'm sure someone will make a 4k one, just because.
Also I noticed that there's a Daggerfall section for mods now, so I'll upload the Orc one.
You did release the Wobbly Goblet for TES 4, and updated it to Lucky Mudcrab because you had to fiddle with it...
And it's there now
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71553 on the Nexus
I'll probably add to the description, so don't be surprised if it changes each time you look!
Congratulations! I am having so much fun with this mod.
Dar-Ma is next up for her wagon. She is not buying my “this feast will not cook itself” excuses.
Thank you, ghastley!
I may have to revisit this one once I release the Dremora Hearthfires mod. Mignonette, who's running with all of my Hearthfires mods active, just got a group of non-aggressive thugs. That's happening too often, and I need to track down why they don't switch.
I copied the setup from the base game's two kinds of revenge thugs, the theft and killing varieties, and both spawn them from the causal event in one quest as non-aggressive, and then switch them in another, when the player enters an encounter zone. I think that was done to keep the thug incidents separate from regular quests. What I don't yet understand is that why show up at the right place, but don't attack. Those two things should be connected.
This may get revisited for a couple of things:
1) Re-use of the partially built statics. It's a pity they may not even get seen, if the player just builds in a single session.
2) Npc's driving wagons. It would be nice to be able to sell wagons to the caravans.
This could work.
At some appropriate time (maybe after first set of hired thugs) enable second workbench outside house (left side of door on porch). This is a new workbench/trigger setup with its own holding chest, so more stuff can be made. Same recipes enable same partial wagons as before, but not complete one. You'll only get an X-marker.
Final wagon is created by a PlaceAtMe, so it's separate from the player-owned one. It will not be the same form, so it can't be player-activated, You can't sleep in it, hitch a horse to it, or anything.
It can only be sold via title, a playable note added to player's inventory on completion. Sell to any general store, or direct to Khajiit. Once sold, Ri'saad, (and then the other two when you make more), will get a wagon. The idea is that if you sold the title to Belethor, for example, he'd sell it on to Ri'saad, as the latter needs one. Since the two other caravans are subsidiaries of Ri'saad, he gets the first, even if you sell to another.
The sale will empty the holding chest for the outside workbench, making it possible to build another. Repeat up to twice more, and all caravans have a wagon. Allow a fourth wagon to be built, but market is now saturated, and price drops.
Wagon is "collected" by Khajiit owner when player is absent (no like-of-sight to wagon) which includes inside house.
I need to be able to assign driver duty to the caravan head, which means adding AI package(s). Plus check that they don't take short-cuts on their routes that would not allow the wagon to pass. These two are the current unknowns, so I need to test those before doing too much.
Have a screen-shot. Cat Man Dhou has started making a http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/images/SecondWagon.jpg using the workbench outside.
I'm in progress on constructing a pure-goods wagon with more cargo for the Khajiit caravans to use. That's just a matter of adding some copies of chest, barrel, rug and similar meshes to the basic complete wagon, so it shouldn't take long. That one doesn't need the canopy and script work, as they'll camp as usual. Cargo can stay in place all the time.
The build process only needs a couple of adjustments. The instance has a different list of items to enable, most of which are the same part-built wagon as before, but the final result is an empty wagon, with no canopy. That gets disabled when the caravan buys it, and they get a filled one.
Haven't tested letting Ri'saad drive yet. Stay off the roads when he does!
This might be trickier than I thought.
In the opening scene, the horses have the AI package that takes them into Helgen, and the driver is just along for the ride. So that means it won't be as simple as giving Ri'saad a new package. I have to put the horse on patrol, and Ri'saad gets sat on the driving seat. Whether that allows the others to "follow" him isn't clear. The rest of the caravan may now have to follow the horse, which means changing their AI packages, too.
Throw in the fact that the Khajiit aren't essential, so if one dies, another has to be promoted into the line of succession, meaning a new driver, and it gets complex.
To further confuse things, instead of a caravan quest that runs one caravan, and three instances of it, it's a single quest running all three. So there's lots of if's to determine which is which in the scripts.
I love the idea of having in-progress wagons at the workshop to use those awesome wagon statics you made.
I wonder about adding a new Khajiiti caravan to use a wagon rather than altering the existing ones? Then you could control their route. I’ve seen them take some dubious shortcuts, particularly near Dawnstar.
That was one reason for wanting to try with Ri'saad. The Whiterun/Markarth route doesn't need dubious shortcuts. I may scrap the idea of the others having one, and just add a few farmers using them for short-haul.
The other thing that needs some work is the divergence of the construction process. Once you get to the stage of a wagon with sides, but no harness trees, the player wagon progresses to the canopy, but the "for sale" one will add the trees and no canopy. I already have that model, (and I've created one with a fuller load, too) but need to figure out how to adjust the building script.
I'll probably need a separate quest for the extra wagon(s) that uses the existing script, but has a different property array for the other models, and a corresponding master list of tokens, which is another property. That quest can then be run multiple times for multiple wagons.
And I'm toying with being able to stop without sides, and selling flat-bed wagons for hauling hay/straw between farms and stables. Those would be short paths and so easier to add, plus the wagon would spend most of its time parked at the farm. Again, I have the unloaded model, and a loaded one is easy to make.
I've ported this over to Special Edition, (without any extensions) for http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3192 and https://mods.bethesda.net/#en/workshop/skyrim/mod-detail/3050582
I did fix one small issue with the rumble, that's not worth republishing the original for.
And I just had a report on Xbox1, that my mod sent the player to a bandit lair added by someone else's mod. Radiant rules!
Ive played some months with Hearthfire installed, and like the houses in other respects, but theres one thing which bugs me. Namely, both the interior and the exterior are too light a colour. It makes the house look a bit sterile, and thats not how I want my characters homes be.
So my question is: Does anyone know of a mod preferably not higher res than vanilla that changes the colour scheme to something a bit darker? Im not after making the house look like the Batcave, but something like chestnut or oak would be perfect.
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