Thanks! Hopefully there won't be much change there, other than possibly a few extra bits in the "functional" type dialogue (if I add features that require dialogue).

Well I haven't looked through it yet (I'll do that this evening probably) but usually rewriting the scripts won't mean huge changes elsewhere. It's just the "back end" so to speak, the front end doesn't necessarily have to change much.

It may interest you to know I've been kinda off-and-on working on a sort of "companion master" mod - the idea is to make companion creation easy, you just make your mod dependent on the master file (which will be an esm) and attach the local script (or a modified version) to your companion and you've got a companion with all the basic features, plus some more (e.g. they can level up by experience, like Emma's Laura, instead of just matching the player if you want). And it's set up so that adding custom dialogue even for the functional stuff should be fairly easy. It's already at a stage where it's usable (though missing some features, e.g. level-up experience for Speechcraft, which I'm still not sure how to manage). I've just been putting off the next bout of dialogue-editing :yuck:

OK I've just started looking at it - as far as I can see atm, the only likely issue is the "romancecounter" - everything else looks OK, though it could definitely be optimised in places. Is that correct??

Hey, thought I'd let you all know that I just played through Agony & Rapture with a new game. Got all the way to the end without using the console, just about to see if it will give me the final journal entry. It's a great mod, nice to see someone working on it again

Another issue I always had with the mod was whenever you 'fall asleep' using dialogue options with Marc like , the game clock resets to 7am on the same day. This made it take even longer to move the romance along. IMO it should advance to 7am the next day instead of using setgamehour to 7.

EDIT: Managed to get to the end of the mod, great finish! Lots of resting involved...

Cool, I guess if I just make the romance dialogues less difficult to get, that should do it?

Lol, I saw that and I was kinda baffled why you'd want to set time backwards! That can be fixed pretty easily anyway.

Really, this mod is very well put together - I haven't seen *any* real bugs, only one syntax error that probably wouldn't even cause a problem unless your game was already unstable (more than is usual for MW, I mean ). Even the dialogue is clean, and that's rare enough now, let alone back then.

I've cleaned up some code in various places - just made it more efficient mostly - but the rest seems to be a deliberate design decision on the author's part. I'll still try to make progress faster (since it seems to be the concensus that it's too slow) but I'm slightly disappointed there's not much for me to do! Hm, did someone mention wanting more features? Maybe I can sneak some in...

If so, that is awesome. I will have to look into that. I played the mod before and LOVED it, but I don't remember if the male breton mage romance was available for same six. I will have to play it again soon and see!




How did you manage it? What did you do? How did you KNOW what to do or where to go, etc?



Sounds very awesome!




It could be the romancecounter, I don't know what else activates events or dialogues in this mod. I know that I personally could never get through it without the console, but that could very well just be because of how slow it is. I remember trying to let the thing go naturally and playing off and on for days real time without anything happening.

And yes it could certainly be optimized in places. Plus I think the mod needs more in-game hints about what you should do to get things to happen.

There is also a strange bug with the that is completely game breaking. Not just mod breaking, but game breaking. That is something that really needs to be fixed, IMHO.





The bug I mentioned above is major and game breaking. And I still think we need more in-game hints. As for extra features, perhaps one where you can ask him to ya know, "get more comfy" so to speak? Kind of take a load off and strip for ya? Maybe make some catty remarks about it before he does so.

Also (SINCE you asked ), a fun added feature would be a flirt pack. I don't know if you are familiar with the flirt pack mods available for BioWare's Baldur's Gate II romances, but the Anomen flirt pack is always a lot of fun. They are fun, added dialogue options where you can "hug" your loved one, "kiss" them, say naughty things to them or sweet nothings, etc, and get their reactions. There is already some basic flirtatiousness, where you can "run into him" and I think bathe in front of him or something, but some more of that kind of stuff would be excellent.

I am currently in a game with him at the moment. I assume once the update is finished, we will need to start a fresh game?

Anyway, thanks for working on this! I am pretty stoked.

Thanks for letting me know! I haven't got to that stage of checking yet (just been looking at the bigger picture, more obvious things, etc while I get a feel for how it's all meant to work). I'll definitely see about fixing that!

I was thinking it could really do with some hints if you get stuck, to give you a nudge in the right direction (maybe with a parallel journal to record them, in case you can't do it for a while and then forget). NovemberRain, if I set that up could you write the text for it?

The dialogue filtering is, well, quite astoundingly restrictive when it comes to the romance dialogue - e.g. there's stuff filtered for weather, health percent, cell, time of day, any number of things *as well as* being filtered for random100, and to top it off you *still* won't get it unless the romance counter variable is high enough! So no wonder it's slow - if you're not in Dagon Fel on a sunny day before lunchtime when random100 < 30 and romancecounter > 3, you're stuck

I was thinking I'd probably just use the counter variable to stop dialogues happening on the same day or too soon for the story, but no waiting a week before you get more dialogue, etc. Because you'll still have filters like cell, time of day etc on a lot of them (when the dialogue itself is a comment on that) so it's not likely to go too fast. Also there's one where it seems (I haven't checked thoroughly yet though) that it won't happen if you keep Marc loaded up with health potions, which I usually do with my companions - not really sure what to do about that, possibly have a rescue script for that one if it's delayed for too long? Anyway, what do you guys think??

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Edit: Could do with something for the thugs to say if you get to talk to them when you aren't supposed to (including if the player resurrects them or something). If nobody gives me a better idea I'm going to go with "Get lost", because I'm unimaginative like that

I had to poke around in the Construction Set to find exactly what conditions were required, but if you know what to do it is possible to complete it all as intended. I'm not sure which part of the romance you're on but in general to advance the plot

Are you familiar with the CS? If so, load it up and look at Marc's dialogue. It takes a bit of searching through the dialogue entries but eventually you'll find the next entry you need to activate the next part of the quest along with the conditions it needs.

I think the whole mod is designed to be played slowly and to be acted out naturally. But some of the triggers require conditions that are just too specific to casually happen, for example I hardly ever go to

So I read. That's also probably for the best; the writer doesn't have to feel constrained by political correctness, things like that. Although I take advantage of it, I'm getting a little sick of NPCs being malleable to the player character's sixual orientation, even if it's been handled well in recent titles such as Dragon Age. Mods with gender neutral dialogue tend to be even worse with this, anyhow, especially if there's no real story attached to the NPC in question.

Which leaves me with Agony and Rapture, which forces words into the PC's mouth, makes the PC weak when the plot demands it, takes forever to advance (I play a very slow game, and I spent most of my time in that mod resting, resting, and resting,) and, to make matters worse, has game crippling bugs. I was never able to finish it; I managed to squeak past the bug in Suran after a few edits to my mod list (mods that effect Suran tend to break that sequence) only to get faced with a bug that froze my entire computer and made it impossible to progress. I reverted to an earlier save and gave up on it. No big loss in my opinion, no offense to the original author. I don't like it when journal entries reflect feelings I may not share, and I especially don't like it when the plot demands that the player be weak for the romantic interest to save him. Very cliche.

That said, some of the dialogue was genuinely sweet and the writing was at least competent enough to keep my interest (no grammatical errors I'm aware of, which is a plus.) If I'd played the PC as a simpering weakling, it would have been perfect.

Anyway, all of that aside, I'd love to see a gay friendly mod in the same vein as Julan Ashlander; long storyline, interesting plot, an NPC with opinions, etcetera. Not purely romance, you see.

Incidentally, which mod is this Arnand from?

Could you tell me where/how that last bug happened?

BTW, I do agree (at least to some extent) with your comments there - this is definitely a mod for a certain type of character, not a general something-for-everyone mod. Kind of like Emma's Laura really (she's your old girlfriend from your past life - so you have to have a character that can accommodate that). I don't mind that myself, as long as I have some warning so I can use it only with characters that fit with it.

It could have merely been a problem with my own system, or a mod conflict, or anything, really.

When he starts actively courting you (after you've patched things up) with gifts and such I ran into an instance where he tries to give you something else in a scripted event (my memory is hazy, though, he could have been trying to kiss you, give you a ring, and so on); which causes my entire computer to freeze and forces a restart. This never fails to happen. I'm perfectly willing to accept that it might have been a problem on my end, since I had a lot of mods running and they'd caused conflicts with A&R before this. Still, if you could confirm that, I'd heartily appreciate it. Are you working on a revamp?

You are very welcome.

Hints would be wonderful.

As for the health potion thing, I think I might know which one you are talking about. If it is what I am thinking about, I THINK its ok as is, because as far as I know, he only takes the health potions if you tell him to. I have never seen him do otherwise.



Yes, thanks for the tip. I am familiar with the CS, its how I found out what journal entry codes I needed to advance the story further the one time I did complete the mod. Its been awhile since I have searched through that though, so I will have to re familiarize myself with it. Thanks again.



I take it you mean bisixual NPCs who will date either gender? I only know of two unmodded males of that stripe, and I liked them both. Zevran of Dragon Age: Origins and Sky of Jade Empire That just isn't enough for me personally to be sick of them. I don't know if I can count the females and monogendered she-aliens that I know about, since it seems they have been created more for the enjoyment of straight male gamers than for lisbian or bisixual female gamers. I will have to think about that.



As you might have gathered from previous posts other forum members and of mine, the crippling bugs and lengthy waiting of Agony and the Rapture are being worked on by
Melian, who is very kindly donating some of his time and talent to this project.

I myself really liked the strength and masculinity of Marc Antony and that he comes running to the rescue. I don't always want to be the big tough adventuring Marlbaro Man who does all the rescuing and possesses ALL of the strength. I like being able to be a guy who gets rescued by another guy. Being a male "damsel in distress" is a nice change, if you ask me. But we all have different tastes, I guess.



I hear ya, but I still and always will like Marc Antony, dammit. lol



Dance of the Three Legged Guar by Princess Stomper. Though its one of those gender neutral dialogued type mods when it comes to the romance aspect, you might still enjoy yourself as Arnand's romance with the PC is only a part of the mod. There is a whole lot else involved there.

I think if A&R is to be updated, perhaps we should take the opportunity to weave it more tightly into the storyline? or into other major world changing mods (RoHT?, TR?) Make Marc react to certain quests, places etc, perhaps using them rather than it being a sunny morning in Dagon Fel to progress the storyline? Julan etc tend to work well because they have well developed backstories, and stories that evolve as the player character progresses, while Marc Anthony can seem a little too donkey-like outside of the sweet and cute romance dialogue Another thing that slightly bothered me when using BB and A&R was the fact that 2 second after id met him, i could have Marc running around in his birthday suit! Any way of not having companion share available until later? Kinda fits in with having a developed character as a companion.

Melian, as and when you need / want dialogue doing send me a PM or something

I'd love to see a more developed Marc, although we don't have permission from the author... who has conveniently fallen off the face of the Earth.

I can tell that you are very devoted to the role playing aspect of the mods that you play. I myself like being able to strip Marc down right off the bat. He was the first character I ever tried out AlienSlof's clothes on. lol

As for the weaving him more tightly into the storyline, that might be interesting, except that I always liked the fact that I could be the Nerevarine and still go get Marc for the first time and progress with his story if I wanted to. I must admit though that I always did wish that he would react to the fact that you were the Nereverine.

All of his protectiveness seems a little odd when you are an all powerful god slaying warrior / mage, and possibly a higher rank than him in the Imperial Legion....

Perhaps use the imperial Knights faction already present?

The Imperial Knights thing might be a good idea, however, in my opinion, it doesn't seem odd for someone who is in love, even if he doesn't realize it right away. Besides, no one, including yourself (), is supposed to know that you are an "all powerful god slaying warrior / mage and possibly a higher rank than him.." when you first get off the boat, nor are you all powerful without a cheat mod, at this point. Your stats are low as can be and you can be defeated by creatures tinier than yourself if you aren't careful. But I think by this point he doesn't WANT to leave your side anyway. I love all of this about him.

Edit: Unless you were commenting on what I said about loving that you can go get him even when you are the Nerevarine. In that case, you have a point, but that is more of a choice I think, for those who don't mind a little unbelievability or suspension of disbelief for the sake of convenience, like myself. Those who are really into the role playing aspect of the game to the point where everything has to be perfect can pick him up at the start of a fresh game before it becomes necessary to suspend disbelief, IMHO. It might be cool if some dialogue could be added though where he may suggest that he is no longer needed by the player and should be on his way, and you somehow talk him into staying anyway. One of my characters would probably feign a continued need for protection or something.

If the Imperial Knights faction is used instead of the Imperial Legion, however, a lot about how the mod starts would have to be reworked, instead of just smoothed over or fixed. We probably wouldn't be finding him in Ebonheart anymore and that would be the start of rewriting EvilFluffyBunny's mod rather than just polishing his work.

Yeah, I don't want to really change too much without the author's permission. I'm mostly OK with changing stuff the player won't see (like scripts) and fixing bugs, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of changing the author's vision more than necessary.

Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know I'm still working on it, only the dialogue filters and their tie-in with the script is rather heavy going (trying to figure out what has to happen in a particular order etc and how this should be achieved). I think I'm going to just introduce a global variable to track stuff - it's easier for me to manage than journals, I can introduce new states as needed and it can also be used for mod interaction if anyone wants their companion to be aware of this one (of course journals can be used for that too, but a global is easier and more likely to be used that way).

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Edit: Found some important (journal-updating) dialogues that can only happen between gamehour 5-7, and some more that can only happen between gamehour 20-22. I'll make it easier to get these but I just thought if anyone's trying to get through the mod before the update is done you might want to know that.

Thanks for keeping us informed, I am very much looking forward to this and super grateful to you for your hard work and the donating of your time!



Thanks for that! I had forgotten all about that, actually, and have come to a stand-still with the mod, so that might explain it.

Well now, I don't think that's quite what I remember saying... I mean, it's possible to be raised in a conservative environment and still have homosixual desires, correct? I mean, what would the religious right have to get worked up about otherwise? Anyway, I'm not sure that we know enough about Ashlanders to say one way or another what their attitude to homosixuality is.

The reasons why Julan didn't end up bisixual are slightly more complicated, and something I'm still ambivalent about, because I think it svcks that gay male PCs have so few options with companions, and I never wanted to add to that imbalance. Early on in development, when I was still figuring out how to write him, I wanted to make him bi. But if I was gonna write a m/m romance path, then I wanted to do it well, and realistically. I have always been suspicious about how successful women are at writing m/m romances, just 'cause of all the really terrible slash out there (OR SO I AM TOLD!). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it can be done, but I was worried about making it right, so I started out just writing what I knew, i.e. the m/f path, figuring I could work the rest out later.

Trouble is, by the time "later" rolled around, his character had become much more established, and I just couldn't really make it work. He turned out way straighter than I expected, and trying to write him into any other scenario met with resistance! This is not to say I see him as totally 100% straight (is anyone? pretty few, I'd suspect) but the percentage is pretty high. I COULD still have writen him a gay romance line, but even if it ended happily in the end, I could predict it would involve a lot of angst, confusion and resistance, and he would probably freak out and get really defensive... and I just started to think, do I really wanna heap that sort of crap on gay players, who have enough idiocy of that nature to deal with in real life? Romances are supposed to make you feel better, not worse!

I thought it would be nice to write a m/m romance that, while it might have other areas for angst and general dramatic interest, wasn't all about fighting someone else's prejudices, who could take the sixuality issue as a natural thing, not something to angst over. Also, a companion that was actually gay, as opposed to someone who had been written as straight, and then had a m/m romance tacked on in a way that never quite worked. I really wanted to do that... but by this point it had become clear that Julan was never gonna be that companion!

For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Maybe I should've written an m/m romance line anyway, even if it meant risking getting it wrong, as the current result is yet another heteronormative experience for gay players. I honestly don't know, but it still bothers me.



That is a really nice idea, and something I would definitely like to add, if and when I make v. 2.0. Honestly, he's not homophobic so much as just really sheltered, so it's all kinda "outside his box".

I dunno, I've been reading recently where they're getting worked up about penguins. If they didn't have so much political influence it'd be hilarious. :rolleyes:

On topic: I'm going to add that tracking global for Marc's quests, so it should be relatively easy to make other companions aware of him and the progress of the romance. Would be nice to see that used with Julan

Now that I think about it, a follow global would be an idea too. I'll do a simple one though, this mod doesn't have a global startscript and I don't want to add one just for that.

Huh? He already has one. Doesn't he? I forget what I called it (KS_Jul_Romstate?) but it gets set to a different number based on the relationship stage you're at.

edit - oh, or did you mean, would be nice to see Julan react to that in Marc's quest? in which case ignore me!
K.

Since they've got a tightly knit culture with a lot of attention paid to etiquette and relationships, I'd imagine they'd take a rather dim view to homosixuality. I like to think the Imperial/Great House culture in the rest of Vvardenfell is more akin to Rome/the Ottoman Empire, both of whom had fairly lax rules about homosixuality in society (most emperors in Ancient Rome took on male lovers, for example, and in the Ottoman Empire you had women as people to make children with and as dowry prizes and men as people to enjoy having six with. If you were a man, that is.) Granted, the anology isn't perfect and women have far more rights in TES than they have historically in the real world.

This would make the Ashlanders the tribal groups that splintered from Muslim society, and their ways were never very refined (if you want to use such a word.) Most people who lack explicit heterosixual desires would probably be closeted, I would think. You're right to be worried about Julan being overly up-front with his sixuality in such a case.

Also, hi again. You helped me out with a bunch of game breaking errors a few months ago (most of which were my fault!) so thanks again.



I imagine it can be much how men view lisbian relationships, yes. I've seen women authors do great things with gay male relationships in fiction, though, so don't be too discouraged. If it makes you feel better, I think, given your previous writing, you would handle such a thing just fine.



If you can believe it, this is something I actually *want* to see more in games. It's a pretty well-explored cliche in the movie/literature world but in video games there's almost no such thing as a "coming out" story. It makes me think the characters are always living in a world where no one cares who you are or what you think, but in TES that's clearly not true, is it?

It would certainly be realistic for a character such as Julan, to boot. However, as you said, he's pretty much straight and I wouldn't want to strain realism overly much for the sake of appeasing gay players. I'd rather we had our own mod (that's not Agony and Rapture, no offense.)



You wouldn't have, but I understand completely. Better not to compromise the integrity of the character; writing well and realistically is more important than playing for political correctness.



An off-hand comment or maybe a few instances of dialogue would suffice as far as that goes. I suppose it would have to be initiated by the player character taking an interest in him and, subsequently, Julan noticing.

That's what I meant... I am so bad at saying what I mean! :banghead:

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Progress report:
- Got notes on all journal entries (where they're given, conditions for dialogue etc) and I've pretty much got the hang of how things are supposed to go.
- Started reordering and refiltering dialogue. This is taking a while but by doing it I can get rid of a lot of filters (by making them redundant) as well as making it clearer what's supposed to happen when. Here's hoping I haven't broken anything in the process...
- Added that global follow variable (lets other mods know if Marc is in follow mode, plus makes a few scripting things slightly easier/more efficient).
- Redone local companion script (mine is easier for me to work with, plus I wanted to ) - Marc still has Grumpy's warping, but uses TheOtherFelix's z-axis follow fix (levitation/swimming/slowfall) plus he's got some more features. Nothing major though. Probably most important is the fix for levitation & slowfall through teleport doors (should be safe to do now). Oh, and disease cures (no dialogue, it's all in the script, but he'll use cure potions if you give him some via companion share). Also added a rescue if he's too far away but can't warp normally (he'll warp straight to you if that happens - doesn't look good but it works).

I think that's about it for now...

I really would like to see a journal/dialogue revamp, but I guess there's no chance of it happening without author permission. Ah well.

While your kindness and empathy is worth its weight in gold, you don't need to apologize and please don't feel bad about it. Your mod rocks. You wrote a character that really came alive for a lot of people, including myself. The only reason some of us want that patch is because Julan is so awesome that we greedily want our gay characters to enjoy his romance too, a testament to your amazing skills as a writer and modder. Its a compliment to you and I feel bad because I didn't intend to lay a guilt trip on ya. I do appreciate your sweet attitude towards gay players though, and your empathy for us. But PLEASE don't feel like you are "part of the problem", so to speak, because you are nowhere close to being that. You are actually a talented artist who has very generously donated her time, energy and creative effort to create something that has enhanced our Morrowind experience, for free. Metroid has it right, you shouldn't feel compelled to tack something onto your creation just to appease gay players, or feel guilty because you didn't. That is not what creativity is about, and you don't need to compromise your art and creativity just to make others happy, nor should you feel miserable because you didn't.

By the way, I also agree with Metroid in that you would probably do fine writing a gay M/M romance. Some of my favorite M/M gay romance novels and stories were written by women.



That would be fun, but again, please don't feel any pressure or guilt. Julan is perfect the way he is!



This all sounds great! Lookin' forwared to it!