[WIP] Immersive Horses

[sevencardz]

EDIT: Beta release can now be found here: Beta Testing - Immersive Horses.

Original post follows:

I put together a horse overhaul mod for myself and I was wondering if anyone else would be interested in it. It uses KrittaKitty's excellent horse textures from her mod: Realistic Primitive Horse Breeds and makes a bunch of nitpicky/functional changes. I am also fully aware of the 800 pound gorilla in the room, Convenient Horses. This mod may or may not end up being compatible with CH.

I know I'm going to get a lot of questions about this, so I'll explain it in more detail here. Due to the basic nature of this mod, it's probably going to be one of those situations where you pick EITHER Convenient Horses OR Immersive Horses, as the philosophy behind the two mods is somewhat different and much of the functionality is redundant. I made this mod to replace half a dozen conflicting or outdated horse mods that I wanted to use together, with some additions of my own thrown in as well. The focus is on simplicity and that buzz word we all love on the Nexus: immersive, and in the context of this mod, 'immersive' is understood to mean what I think makes the most sense for fantasy horses in an Elder Scrolls game where magic and the supernatural are commonplace.

Here's a draft of the description. All of these changes are already done in an unreleased Beta state:

BRAINS

If you've ever stolen a horse in vanilla Skyrim, you've noticed that the moment you dismount the horse, it starts walking right back to where you stole it from in some kind of haughty defiance toward serving your purposes. For some reason, vanilla horses also loved to charge right into battle, blowing any cover you might've had and usually getting themselves killed in the process. Vanilla horses also somehow could use telepathy to report any crimes they see you commit to the local authorities. These issues had to be corrected.

• Horses will now stay in the location where they are dismounted, even if they've been stolen.
• Stolen horses will return to their original location only after you leave the area.
• Horses will no longer report you for crimes and they will not detect you while you are sneaking.
• Horse confidence is now Cowardly so they will always flee from battle.

BRAWN

Horses in vanilla Skyrim were a bit too small, a bit too weak, and they had no mounted attacks. Skyrim's horses are obviously inspired by draught horses, which are typically larger than most other horse breeds anyway. Fully grown, these animals can weigh a solid ton and tower over a fully grown man. Getting kicked or trampled by one would be considerably unpleasant. As such, all horses in Skyrim are now bigger, stronger, and are fully capable of kicking and trampling your enemies to death if you so choose.

• Horses are now 10% larger and 10% taller.
• Horse base damage has been tripled: 10 -> 30.
• Horse base health has been increased: 250 -> 400.
• Horses now have the ability to kick enemies while jumping.
• Horses now have the ability to trample enemies while sprinting.

SPEED

Vanilla horses were too slow and they don't have large stamina reserves like you'd expect a horse to have, but they did have ridiculously high stamina regeneration. This limits you to canter and gallop as the only practical gaits to use while riding, and the gallop is too slow and doesn't last long enough due to the low stamina. To correct this, horses will now be able gallop faster and much farther than they did in vanilla, but they will then need to rest for a reasonable period of time before they can do it again.

• Horses now walk and trot faster: 125 -> 280.
• Horse canter speed slightly increased: 450 -> 500.
• Horses now gallop much faster: 600 -> 900.
• Horse base stamina has been considerably increased: 100 -> 400.
• Horse stamina regeneration has been drastically reduced: 10 -> 0.8.

UTILITY

Horses will now automatically level up with your player character, rather than staying at level 4 the whole game like they do in vanilla. Melee attack range while mounted on a horse has also been increased to help offset the poor control mechanics and limited camera angles that plague mounted combat in Skyrim. The zoom effect and yaw correction that happens when dismounting a horse also annoyed me, so I removed it. Vanilla horses also couldn't carry your burdens because you couldn't access their inventory, so now any horse with a saddle will have a storage area you can use.

• Horses now automatically level up to match the player's level.
• Attack range while mounted on a horse has been increased: 135 -> 170.
• Removed the zoom delay and tweaked the yaw for the horse dismount camera.
• Horses with saddles now have an inventory of 200 carry weight (accessible by crouching/sneaking).

FROST (lvl 25)

Frost is descended from supernatural horses and is of the best breeding stock in Skyrim, but in vanilla all he gets is a health and stamina boost. Come on now, Bethesda. As such, Frost is now completely immune to the stuff he's named after and he can run faster and gallop longer and farther than any other horse in Skyrim. He'll go flat out from Whiterun to Windhelm in one shot. He also has the protected flag and is not too bad at defending himself.

• Frost is now completely immune to Frost damage.
• Frost now has the protected flag so he can only be killed by the player.
• Frost is 10% faster than other horses and he is the fastest horse in the game.
• Frost has triple the base stamina compared to other horses: 400 -> 1200 (1v1 25) = 1248.
• Frost has double the base health compared to other horses: 400 -> 800 (lvl 25) = 1112.
• Frost is Unaggressive and Cautious but he will still assist you in battle (vanilla).

SHADOWMERE (lvl 50)

Shadowmere is a supernatural horse, so he should be an upgrade to a regular horse. Shadowmere now has the protected flag and he's a bit faster and has more stamina than other horses. He's also still quite aggressive and has plenty of health and regeneration to tank effectively.

• Shadowmere now has the protected flag so she can only be killed by the player.
• Shadowmere is 5% faster than other horses.
• Shadowmere has 50% more base stamina compared to other horses: 400 -> 600 (lvl 50) = 698.
• Shadowmere has 750 more base health compared to other horses: 400 -> 1150 (lvl 50) = 1787.
• Shadowmere is Aggressive and Brave and will assist you in battle (vanilla).

ARVAK (lvl 4)

Arvak is an undead horse, so it doesn't make much sense for him to ever get tired, so now he won't. If you have Dawnguard installed, this pile of bones will be like the Energizer Bunny and he'll just keep going and going and going and going...

• Arvak now has practically infinite stamina (100000 to be exact, so not really infinite, but way more than you'll ever use).

 

Other features that I'm planning to incorporate:

 

Add the ability to command horses to follow or stay put. - DONE
Add a rename option to the Horse Options menu. - DONE

Add the ability for followers to ride horses.
MCM option to automatically add the protected flag to any horse you own. - DONE
MCM option to map a key to toggle trot/canter with a keyboard. - DONE

 

Requests:

 

Bethesda botched the horse trotting animation (looks like the horse has two left legs) - Is there an animator out there who is willing to fix this?

I'll also need Beta testers to test out compatibility with other mods - especially Convenient Horses. These good people will get exclusive access to the mod weeks or months before it's actually released and any of their suggestions on how to improve the mod will be considered first.

 

Please post your ideas, suggestions, concerns, wants, needs, desires, complaints, favorite types of media, plans for the holidays, whether you're a cute female who lives near the East Coast of the U.S., etc. and I'll see what I can do about it... :wink:

Edited February 1, 2015 by sevencardz

[Drax8]

Hi sevencardz, this sounds intriguing!

 

Here's an issue I've had with Convenient Horses, that maybe you could look at for your mod.

 

I would always use the option to increase horses speed in the CH MCM menu, and it worked great. However, when I acquire Arvak and ride him, he is not subject that speed increase. Furthermore, riding Arvak would break the speed increase for any other horse I rode, reducing them to the vanilla rate, and no matter what changes I made in the CH MCM menu, I could not get the horses to run faster anymore.

 

So now I only get Arvak as a trophy, and never ride him. That sucks.

 

Anyway, that's all I got for now, will keep an eye on this! Thanks!

[Teabag86]

I like the direction you have taken. Upgrades over time could be increased carrying weight. I also like the idea of crafable saddles. Will followers have horses? Will the horse follower the player when dismounted? Or will you be leaving this functionality to CH?

[sevencardz]

@Drax8 - Immersive Horses will give all horses a significant speed increase by default - especially at gallop. I've tested it with Arvak and it definitely works. I also give him practically infinite stamina, so you can ride him at a full gallop for as long as you want. :smile:

I did quite a bit of testing before I finally settled on the speed changes and I don't plan to make horse speed configurable because TES5Edit exists. However, I might incorporate a feature where you can 'level up' your horse to increase its speed... somehow. The overall idea is you should be able to shove Immersive Horses into your load order and play without a bunch of configuration.

@Teabag86 - Increased carry weight over time sounds like a good bonus and it's easily added. I'm not sure what I'll do about follower horses at the moment. Extensible Follower Framework allows followers to ride horses, so it might be best to leave that type of functionality in the hands of the various follower mods. Horses following the player is something I do want to add, though. I'm thinking it would be something you command the horse to do, similar to commanding your follower to stay put or follow via dialogue options. You'll probably have to crouch and activate the horse, giving you the option to access inventory, set follow or stay put, name the horse, etc. Standing activation would still mount the horse, of course. I'd like to avoid having to map a special key for anything.

Edited November 21, 2014 by sevencardz

[Teabag86]

No special keys please. That pretty much rules out a mod for controller users. Perhaps multi tap. One click to ride. Two clicks to open dialogue. Otherwise sneak is fine.

[nivea]

Will this make it so you can actually trot with a keyboard since you bring it up in the speed section, or is it just how your phrasing it or just for controller kind of thing?

[Mattiewagg]

Looks great. For naming not as tedious as CHH, look at my mod NYH which uses SkyUILib.

[Boombro]

Seems great!

There should be a replacement for CH. It heavily scripted and I only want it for mounted follower summon really.

[postal001]

You should name the mod 'Realistic Horses' instead.

[sevencardz]

@nivea - Yep, I just tried it. Toggle run off with capslock and your horse will trot when using a keyboard. There doesn't seem to be a way to get the horse to walk at that point, though. It works fine with a gamepad - just push the analog stick forward a bit for walk, about half way for trot, and all the way for canter.

 

It's rather tricky to maintain a trot in vanilla even with a gamepad because the max walk speed is set so low (125), so you usually end up going abruptly from walk to canter. Pushing it up to 280 not only allows the horses to walk faster, but also gives them a bigger speed 'range' where the trotting animation can happen, so its much easier to maintain a trot and it moves the horse fast enough to be used practically. It also flows into canter more naturally.

One side-effect of this is that all non-mounted horses will trot rather than walk by default, which screws with the opening sequence in Helgen a bit. The underlying problem is there's no direct way to specify that a horse should walk or trot because the game engine sees both of them as walking - it just plays the walk animation for a slow walk and the trot animation for a fast walk. I'm guessing that's why Bethesda had it set so low to begin with - heck, that might even be the reason for the broken trotting animation. I'm hoping someone out there is willing and able to fix it. I don't have the expertise, myself.

@Matthias - Right on man, I fully intend to use your mod as a learning tool for the naming feature. :)