[WIP] Immersive Horses

[sevencardz]

Horse breeds with unique strengths and weaknesses eh? I'm on board with that. I jotted down some notes on each breed from KrittaKitty's primitive horse breeds mod, then I matched them up as best I could with the various metrics for horses. Here's what I came up with:

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Horse Breed     | Location | Size   | Strength | Speed  | Stamina | Health  | Carry |
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Fjord Horse     | Solitude | Medium | Strong   | Medium | Average | Average | 300   |
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Black Fell Pony | Whiterun | Small  | Medium   | Medium | Low     | High    | 600   |
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Grey Fell Pony  | Riften   | Small  | Medium   | Medium | Low     | High    | 600   |
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Haflinger Horse | Markarth | Medium | Weak     | Fast   | High    | Low     | 200   |
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Exmoor Pony     | Windhelm | Small  | Strong   | Slow   | High    | High    | 300   |
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Some of the reasoning here is that horses are a bit larger than the ponies. The Exmoor and Fjord are strong to reflect the Stormcloak and Imperial factions. The Black and Grey Fell ponies are more well-rounded, with higher carry weight limits. The Haflinger is the fastest, but suffers in other areas.

Let me know if any of that seems imbalanced or needs further adjustment. None of that is set in stone, it's just whatever felt right to me at the time.

[Mattiewagg]

That all sounds awesome to me. Will there be actual saddlebags on the horses? So you need to buy a saddlebag first? There was a mod in Oblivion for this.

 

Anyway really looking forward to this.

[KrittaKitty]

I just noticed your post on my page..... PLEASE TAKE MY HORSIES!! I'll let you have allllll of the other 18 different colours and the slimmer (think more of a Barb or quater horse type shape) asymmetrical meshes as well as the asymmetrical vanilla horses too (in 10 or so solid colours). I'm still going to make a 'horse market' mod when I can get CK to load exterior cells, but I'd really just like the damn things out there already.

[sevencardz]

@Matthias - I don't have actual saddle bags, just the ability to access horse inventory. I just called the command 'Open Saddle Bags' for immersion. But I'll certainly consider adding it if there are modders resources out there already or if there's a mod that already does such a thing. I also want the ability to add/remove horse saddles, so I plan to look into that as well.

@Kitty - Oh happy day! :) Yes, I want ALL OF THEM please. I'm thinking I could replace the four unsaddled horses at the stables in the major holds with different horse breeds, and of course edit the quest so you can buy them as well. I am guessing that Whiterun doesn't have an unsaddled horse because the slot was meant for Karinda, but never got used. If I use all of those slots, then players can choose from 10 different horse breeds (2 at each major hold's stable).

[KrittaKitty]

Awesome, PM me when you're ready for them and I'll send you a dropbox link with the meshes and textures :D

[macrads]

Hi

just found this thread.

 

Reading your description about speed increase on horses I came up with a similar idea but using a different approach. unfortunately for RL issues and my low modding skills I've abbandoned my project for the moment.

 

This was my idea if you're interested:

Speed is increased by different horseshoes (Iron 5% increase, steel 10%, dwarven 15% and ebony 20% approx.). these horse shoes are craftable and depend on player smithing skill by using the appropriate ingot.

To shoe your horse, you must have in inventory 4 horseshoes of the same type, then standing next to your horse, enter sneaking mode and dropping horseshoe from your inventory will shoe your horse. Only problem with this method is if you want to remove horseshoes to restore vanilla values, haven't figured out a method for this.

On nexus there is a modder resource with textures and meshes for horse shoes, I'll give you the link if you're interested.

 

[sevencardz]

This was my idea if you're interested:

Speed is increased by different horseshoes (Iron 5% increase, steel 10%, dwarven 15% and ebony 20% approx.). these horse shoes are craftable and depend on player smithing skill by using the appropriate ingot.

 

Sounds interesting. I like the concept and I'd like to take a look at the resources. I'm hoping it also includes textures for the inventory screens and when the items are dropped in the world.

[sevencardz]

MOD UPDATE

Added:

Multi-horse management menu with lots of options including renaming, armors, inventory, stats, etc.
When and how the menu displays can be controlled via the MCM.
Group commands for all horses: Whistle, Follow, Stay
Ability to whistle for any horse you own (currently depends on the Whistle mod).
Ability to have mounted conversations with NPCs.
Ability to add/remove saddle from any horse (currently, only the 3 vanilla saddles + bareback).
Ability to add/remove armor from any horse (12 different sets of armor from various mods).

I gave all of the horse armors weights and armor ratings slightly higher than a full set of armor and shield for a humanoid of the same material type (or just came up with arbitrary values for the more exotic armors). Interestingly, the heavier the armor, the more stamina it takes out of the horse to gallop, so there's a real advantage to going unarmored if you're trying to get somewhere fast. I think I'll also set the horse's armor skill to the armor skill of the rider. That way your character's skill with armor effects how well your horse is protected, which sorta makes sense.

The issues with the horse armors are as follows:

1. There aren't any inventory or worldspace textures for the horse armors, so I'm discouraged from bothering to make them craftable (if some exist, please point me to them). Obviously, you can't upgrade them either.
2. The horse armors were made for vanilla horses, so there are a few clipping issues with KrittaKitty's horse textures (which we already knew). Unfortunately, it's out of my realm of expertise to fix that type of stuff. :(
3. The package of horse armors is a whopping 500MB. Not really a big deal, but worth noting. I'll probably include them as an optional file just so you don't have to download them if you don't want them.

[macrads]

Hi sevencardz.

No the resources are a simple texture/mesh package. When I started my project, it was simply to learn how to use blender, but anyhow here is the link http://nmm.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/45540. Textures with horse "wearing" horseshoes don't exist. There is also a lot of scripting involved to make the horse wear it's horseshoe's, if the method I described in earlier post is to be used. In short, it's a lot of work!!.

 

To make it a little easier, another approach is to vary horse speed depending on what type of horseshoe is in horses inventory. In this case you don't need to modify horse textures, the cons is you lose immersion since horse doesn't wear horseshoes, but at least you need to make a horseshoe to change horse speed which is more immersive than what is currently present in skyrim, and to my knowledge there is no mod that currently does this.

Cheers and happy new year.

[sevencardz]

@macrads - I just remembered that nivea's working on a horse tack overhaul and she says it will incorporate shoes:

 

Shoes: 1 (Just iron so far, will add more types. They work as in add a speed bonus to the horse you put them on.)

Compatibility/integration with that mod is on my list. :)