TY

Will this play nice with mods that alter Aela's facial appearance?

Mostly. You'll need to load the appearance mod after mine, and because both will edit Aela, some minor bits of my mod's functionality will be overwritten:

- Her maximum level will be limited to 50.
- The perks I added to her (mid-tier stuff in archery, sneaking, and light armor) will be canceled--most notably, she'll lose the Light Foot perk, so she'll set off traps on the ground.

Eventually this mod should be fully compatible with appearance mods when using Wrye Bash's bashed patch feature, but not yet.

Can see be brought into the Blades eventually or does she just remain a follower?

Honestly, I haven't decided yet. This is ultimately a character-driven mod. At the present time, the Companions are in such disarray, Aela's focus is going to be on rebuilding that organization, not on joining another. Especially not an organization associated with the Empire, which Aela isn't a fan of. So I suspect that most paths through the mod's story will block her from joining the Blades. Will all of the paths block it? I don't know yet. Possibly not.

Also, FYI to all, I've just uploaded http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11450. Changes:

- Added uncapped calculation of attributes (Health and Stamina) to go along with uncapped skills when using a player level/skill uncapper.
- Added an unvoiced greeting to Belethor, an unvoiced "Ask about Kodlak" dialogue topic, and a voiced comment on the weather when it's raining.
- Fixed a bug where her combat outfit sometimes wouldn't change until the second, travel outfit had been unlocked. Outfits in general should now update much more quickly and reliably when adding/removing items.
- Fixed a bug where if Aela's mount died, its corpse would continue to teleport to you when you fast traveled, until you assigned her a new mount.
- Fixed a bug with Lydia not "saying" the closing line of an unvoiced banter with Aela when entering Jorrvaskr.
- Fixed a typo in Elrindir's unvoiced greeting.

Cheers!

A small update of http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11450. This fixes a bug introduced in the last release, where Aela's outfits would always take priority over armor placed in her normal inventory. Not something you'd ever notice if you were using the outfit system, but the bug meant that lesser armor placed in her inventory could actually disappear due to some game engine oddness.

After all the help you'd given me working on my own companion mod, I thought I'd give yours a spin and holy crap - now I know how you knew all that stuff. The scope of this mod is just...massive...and what you've done so far is extremely impressive.

I remember using Aela as a follower in the vanilla system. I took her out hunting elk around Whiterun. I downed one with my bow without much effort. We eventually found two more, and we carefully stalked them, getting into range, and then I told Aela that this one was all hers, expecting a masterful shot with her already equipped bow. What I got was Aela taking out her shield and dagger and rushing towards the elk, who quickly and promptly ran away (I use the Faster Woodland Creatures mod). She then tried to chase after it, and got stuck on a rock. The elk got away, she got confused and gave up, and I facepalmed. So, you can imagine my joy when I saw the 'use ranged only' option - no more dagger hunting.

So, thank you and I can't wait to see how this mod evolves!

Thanks! Although I should say, to avoid disappointment, that I'm not sure that even my mod will help in the situation you describe. The "do a favor" AI is handled by the game and is quite idiotic--even if you set Aela to ranged-only mode, if you command her to attack a non-hostile like a deer she'll still go running after it, likely never getting close enough to shoot.

Fortunately that doesn't happen in normal combat. Where I find the "ranged-only" style useful is, as an archer myself, preventing her from rushing ahead to melee with opponents, blocking my bow shots in the process. It should also help her keep her distance to avoid area of effect spells, when playing as a spellcaster.

At some point the SKSE folks will hopefully add a GetCrosshairRef function, and I may be able to use that to get her to more intelligently attack what you command her to.

I wonder, then, what happens if I remove all her melee weapons and tell her to kill an elk or something. Will she use her ranged weapon then, or will she try to punch it to death? That sounds amusing enough to try out.

As it stands, I prefer her to use her bow. It's what she's best at and it's what she's supposed to use story-wise. I want her to have the flexibility to switch to melee if something closes in on her, but if not, I prefer her to stick to ranged.

And yeah, I know what you mean with the SKSE thing. OBSE was a godsend when I made a vampire mod back then. I could do so much more with it than without it, once I saw a list of the possible functions.

Oh, you've probably considered this already, but would it be possible to define a variable in one of your scripts to check to see whether the player has set her to be essential and then write a function to reset her status to essential if a quest flips it off (I did something similar in my vampire mod in Oblivion by having an invisible activator teleport to the player and cast a scripted AoE spell every second or so)? I found out about the flipping essential status yesterday when a werewolf hunter (Tales of Lycanthropy mod) one-shotted her while I was staring down a giant. I avenged her, then I had to reload my last save. Then I read your readme. The order in which I did all these things probably could've used some adjusting.

Actually I hadn't thought of that, but it is a good idea, and should be easy enough to implement. Thanks! I will aim to get that into the next update, which I'm hoping to release sometime around this weekend.

Yup, you were exactly right. Aela charged a horker (I figured at least a horker couldn't get away if she decided to be idiotic again) with bow in hand until she got to melee range. She then backed up a few steps and fired. So, she'll use her ranged weapon in ranged only mode even for a favor, but she still closes to melee range regardless. Oh well.

For the horse mounting thing - she didn't seem to want to ride hers. I bought a horse, cast the spell on it (I had to do it twice on this last attempt cause the first cast didn't fully take, but I have done it before in one cast with the same result) until it said it was Aela's Mount. I then got on my horse, but Aela wouldn't mount hers. Instead, she ran behind me, trying to keep up. I have the Ultimate Follower Overhaul mod, but yours is set lower in my load order. Any idea what's causing this? Also, if I give Aela a mount and then try to load a savegame from before she had a mount, the game crashes (this has happened three times now). Once I restart the game, I can load the save just fine.

Hmm, I just did a quick test with UFO 1.0f and it worked correctly. I started with a clean save and just UFO and ESFAela checked, my mod below UFO. I went to the Whiterun stables and bought myself a horse, then cast the ownership spell on the UFO-added horse out in front of the Whiterun stable. I mounted my horse and walked a few strides, and Aela mounted hers and followed. I then dismounted and fast-traveled to the Riften stables. Aela's horse followed mine, as it should. I then bought a vanilla horse from the Riften stablemaster, and cast the ownership spell at it. The spell worked, and Aela's old horse started to wander off, making the long journey back to Whiterun. I mounted my old horse and took a few steps away from the stable, and Aela mounted her new horse and joined me.

You do generally need to take a few steps once you've mounted before Aela will mount her horse.

Note that the "Aela's Mount" label won't always show up because of the way Bethesda coded the player horse functionality. Once a horse has been labeled "'s Horse," that label can never be removed, so "Aela's Mount" only appears for some mod-added horses and other mounts. You'll know the spell worked because "Ownership transferred" will appear in the upper left. It can take a second or two to appear.

If this isn't working for you, can you let me know what horse you're trying to assign to Aela? And do you have another follower with you, or any other factors I should test with?

Okay, I've tried it with two different horses. The first was a horse that UFO added in front of Whiterun. The spell gave all the correct messages and the name changed. I got on my horse, moved a little, but Aela did not get on hers. After I tried to reload (and crashed), I started the game again and tried the vanilla mount at Solitude after purchasing it. Same thing. I restarted the game and tried the same mount again and that's when I cast the spell twice as I described above. All three times, she wouldn't get on the mount even after I walked a little bit.

My character doesn't have any other followers. He's only ever had Farkas as a follower for a brief moment to put some wolf armor on him before I dismissed him again (I never liked the fact that he had steel armor). I do run with many other mods, but the only follower mods on this savegame are yours and UFO (and as I already mentioned, yours is lower in the load order), and the only other mods I have that affect horses are Cowardly Essential Horses and Realistic Running Speed (and again, yours is lower than either of them). The only other factor I can think of is that at the time, I was running a quest for Aela - to get the first werewolf totem. I've since completed the quest.

I'll try again and see if the results are any different, and I'll also try the Riften stables this time.

EDIT: I just tried it again. It worked perfectly now on the UFO added horse in Riverwood. I didn't even have to move once I mounted and she went straight for hers. The only thing that should be different is now I wasn't running a quest for Aela.

I bet that's it--the Hircine quest. I'll give that a try. Hopefully something I can fix just by bumping up the priority of my scripts. Thanks for your help testing!

No problem; happy to help - one more thing I meant to mention before is that if you use the Fuz Ro Doh SKSE plugin, it can cause some of Aela's voiced lines in your mod to not play. In case you haven't heard of Fuz Ro Doh before (I hadn't till a couple days ago), it comes with prerecorded silence and the plugin plays that silence for all unvoiced dialogue so that subtitles don't go by too quickly. I don't know if there's anything you can do to make it compatible or not (or if you should even bother with it), but I do know that if you take the plugin out of the SKSE folder, the voiced lines will work fine again. It's hardly a critical mod anyway; I only used it cause it was taking too long to record all that silence for my own mod's dialogue and I wanted to test actual functionality. I just mention this in case someone complains in the future that Aela isn't voiced at all.

Yeah, I've been watching Fuz Ro D'oh, since there are a number of silent voice files in this mod, and more coming. I think Fuz Ro D'oh still has some bugs, though. What I believe is happening is, I use compressed .xwm files for audio. FRD looks for a .wav file and if it doesn't find one, does its thing. So it is wrongly assuming here that it needs to step in. I saw other people having problems using it with other mods that use .xwm, like Interesting NPCs.

Edit: yes, in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1365775-rel-fuz-ro-doh/page__view__findpost__p__20623453 shadeMe says he forgot to account for xwm files. Hopefully an update will be forthcoming.

The Hircine's quest priority was the issue with riding--it has a higher priority than my follower quest. Should be easy to fix, I just need to account for the force-greets when you pick up each totem.

And I did add the looping essential check tonight, so that will be in the next update.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11450 has been uploaded to the Nexus. This is purely a bugfix release, to correct the various small problems and annoyances people have found in the past two weeks. If no major bugs are found in this release that need immediate attention, the next version of the mod will be 0.4 and will incorporate several new quest- and location-based conversations with Aela ("Ill Met by Moonlight" and "Elisif's Tribute" are two quests you may want to wait until 0.4 before starting, if you haven't completed them already).

0.3.3 makes the following changes:

- Added a fixed version of the outfit system changes attempted in version 0.3.1--swapping outfits should now be faster and more reliable.

- Added a tweak so that Aela will no longer dismount to attack foes unless the player does first.

- Added a tweak so that Aela's mount will now automatically match the speed of the player's mount when using mods that increase the speed of mounts.

- Added the Savior's Hide to the list of armors that Aela will refuse to wear.

- Fixed an issue with other quests removing Aela's essential status when the player has set her to be essential.

- Fixed a bug where Aela would not be properly dismissed if left waiting/relaxing for longer than 24 hours.

- Fixed issues where an active Totems of Hircine quest would override the mod's following/riding AI due to its higher quest priority, and finishing a Totems quest would remove Aela as a teammate (but read "Known Issues" on the main screen).

Enjoy!

I've just uploaded http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11450 to the Nexus. This update adds a mix of both new story content and new functionality. The main additions are:

1) A handful of short unvoiced conversations that Aela will initiate. Several of these will take place during the "Ill Met by Moonlight" quest in Falkreath; one takes place at the start of the "Elisif's Tribute" quest in Solitude; and one will trigger the first time you approach a Nord ruin with Aela following you. All told these cover about 170 lines of writing, although you won't see all of that in one playthrough.

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/11450-1-1338423635.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/11450-1-1339261382.jpg

In the "Ill Met by Moonlight" conversations in particular I've tried hard to use Aela's association with werewolves, and Hircine, to draw out some nuances and possibilities from the quest that the vanilla game ignored. And in general I'm trying to write conversations with a greater awareness of Elder Scrolls lore as well as the player's gender, race, morality, etc., in order to create some new roleplaying choices (there are two new points where, via conversation with Aela, the player can bring "Ill Met by Moonlight" to a premature halt, for example). These conversations in the update are just the start: there are going to be many more based around the game's quests, locations, and situations.

2) You can now ask Aela to transform into her beast form, once per 24 hours, as long as you are away from habitation. This can be done both in combat, as a matter of tactics, and out of combat, for roleplay purposes.

There are a number of smaller enhancements in the update as well: new post-combat commentary ("Good job, Shield-Brother/Sister!" and the like), auto-dousing of torches when sneaking or riding a horse, an optional map marker, etc.

Enjoy the new content, and let me know if you experience any problems with it.

Since I wasn't able to work on the mod the past few days while the 1.6 update problems were resolved, I thought I'd at least type up a progress report and show some screenshots of what I had been working on.

I have several goals with this mod, several annoyances with the vanilla game that I'm trying to use the mod to fill in. Most directly, of course, is how dull the followers are--they lack personality, and don't ever respond to the player's actions and situations. I hope to fix that for Aela, at least. But more than that, the vanilla game itself often doesn't respond to player actions. And the game never really does anything with some of its more interesting situations; it doesn't even give voice to them.

To pick one small example, it seemed odd to me that if you help the Imperials win the Civil War, nothing happens with the Temple of Talos in Windhelm. It's still there, open for worshippers. So I'm adding a conversation with Aela where, if you go into the Temple after the Civil War is over and the Imperials have won:

1) She will comment that she is surprised but pleased that the Temple is still open for worship.
2) She will speculate with you on why.
3) There are some roleplay options for the player to indicate how they feel about the Temple still being open, with some different options depending on the player's race.
4) You can question Aela on her own beliefs: how she and other Nords balance Talos/Ysmir and Ysgramor, and how she personally fits Hircine into the mix.
5) You can flirt with her a bit.
6) You can ask her the thorny question of how the Stormcloaks could feel justified saying that "Skyrim is for the Nords" when the Mer were there first.

Here are a few screenshots from early in that conversation:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/596973544040418420/4911714BB7C2D06ED4C7501EB015F12C758AA6CB/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596973544040423126/992CEB2565A72B32D020B84A888008F1963A27A2/
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/596973544040571412/A3A40A6D0D038EB62364E3C951CA08E09E630A53/

(In the screenshots my character is a Nord: an elven character would have an additional dialogue choice raising more of a fuss about the Temple still being open.)

If the Stormcloaks have won the Civil War then some of the above will be the same--Aela's discussion of Nord beliefs, and her own--but there will also be some different dialogue:

1) Aela will open by talking about how nice it is to visit this symbol of what you fought for, and you can talk with Aela about being able to worship Talos openly.
2) You'll be able to ask her the thorny question of whether breaking away from the Empire, as the Stormcloaks did, doesn't dishonor Talos--who founded the Empire and was deified for doing so.

The answers Aela gives to some of these questions aren't necessarily "the" answers, but they're answers consistent with her character. And I find that just being given the opportunity to ask the questions in-game, as a result of the player's choices, adds a lot more depth and resonance to the quests and locations.

So I guess in Oblivion terms, Aela is becoming something of a cross between Vilja (lots of custom, character-driven functionality) and Ruined Tail (philosophical musing, although more connected to the vanilla game than Ruin seemed). Something for...well, not everyone, but it's a mix that I am enjoying, at least.

Now back to work...

It's been a month since I last updated this thread, but I've just released an update--version 0.4.2--of my http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/11450 to the Nexus, so it's time to talk about what's new.

First, I put together http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXvND3udigM. This was the first video I've made, so in a dorky way I am almost prouder of it than the mod.

Next, the main thing I've added to version 0.4.2 are two lore-centric conversations that player can have with Aela, one in Jorrvaskr and one in the Temple of Talos in Windhelm. Both conversations tie up some loose ends from the vanilla game, http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/11450-1-1340197475.jpg options, and do some foreshadowing about the quests I intend to add in the future. All told, there are about 200 new lines of (mostly silent) dialogue.

Here is the full list of changes that you'll find in version 0.4.2 of the mod:

• Added an unvoiced conversation when entering the Temple of Talos in Windhelm with Aela after the Civil War is over.
• Added a random chance for an unvoiced conversation when entering Jorrvaskr with Aela.
• Added a "What do you think about me?" dialogue option which gives a summary of the mod features you've unlocked.
• Added some new voiced comments in and around dungeons, and a new voiced greeting.
• Added a tactics choice to control whether she stays on her horse and doesn't fight, or dismounts to fight, when the player fights while mounted (in the "aggressiveness" topic).
• Added a tactics choice to automatically teleport her to the player if she gets too far away (in the "follow distance" topic). This is now on by default; it may be advisable to turn it off for some quests.
• Added a tactics choice to control whether she unequips her weapons while in town (in the "manage outfits" topic). She now does not by default. Requires respect to unlock.
• Added a fix so that if Aela takes beast form after you've told her to use ranged weapons only, she'll melee while transformed instead of not being able to attack.
• Added a fix to a bug that could result in fast travel remaining disabled after Aela shifted back from werewolf form.
• Added a fix to--I think--remove her cowardly comments during combat (e.g., no more "I'm getting out of here!")
• Miscellaneous script optimizations to take advantage of changes in Skyrim 1.6. Mod features such as Aela dousing a torch when sneaking or catching up after using a cart for travel should now happen more quickly.

I just wanted to note that I've put out a casting call for a voice actress for Aela, re-voicing the vanilla dialogue and voicing my additions. See the posts at http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/5259-seeking-female-va-for-skyrimaela-the-huntress-mod/ or the http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/showthread.php?80333-Seeking-Female-VA-for-Skyrim-Aela-the-Huntress-Mod if you're interested.

This looks great. Can't wait to try it.

You should try some if the voice actresses from Interesting NPCs they are really good
On a side note, guess there is not another choice but to finish the Companion′s quest before having her as a follower...the bad thing is that that would limit all the mages, assassins and thieves who might not be inclined to join....perhaps you could do a "clone" version of her that can be picked up straight away without doing the Companion′s quests

I agree. I've posted my casting call in some of the same places that were used to recruit VAs for Interesting NPCs. Now I'm just waiting to see what auditions I am sent.


Aela isn't a follower for everyone, to be sure, but in my mind that just enhances the game's replayability. It's not a "bad thing." You'll be able to do one playthrough with a follower like Aela, and then another with a thief follower like Atvir Dres, and have game experiences that feel completely different. I consider that a good thing.

A few updates:

- Here's http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/11450-1-1344459517.jpg I'm working on: what Aela says during a "purity" quest, when you approach the Glenmoril Coven looking to cut off a witch head or two as a lycanthropy cure. Naturally, Aela would like to dissuade you from doing so. The screenshot shows an example of how some dialogue choices in the mod depend on the player: the "I am a woman, too" choice is of course not available if the player character is male.

- I've been slowly playing through Dawnguard, and so far, I haven't seen any compatibility problems with ESF: Aela. I did have one person report that Aela would turn hostile when the player assumes vampire lord form, but that hasn't happened to me.

- A reminder that I'm looking for a voice actress for Aela, and the deadline for auditions is end-of-day August 15th, one week from today. I have casting calls posted to both the http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/5259-seeking-female-va-for-skyrimaela-the-huntress-mod/ and the http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/showthread.php?80333-Seeking-Female-VA-for-Skyrim-Aela-the-Huntress-Mod board, but you need not be a member of either to audition for the role.