Ashe 1.4 Dev Spotlight - Her Dwemer Horse
Hey fam!
Here’s a first look at one of Ashe 1.4’s most distinctive features: her Dwemer-themed mechanical horse! The attached video takes you from the conversation that introduces it through Ashe mounting up, riding alongside the player, and dismounting. You can even talk to her while she’s riding.
To use the feature, you’ll first need to complete Ashe’s Chapter 1 quest, A Borrowed Soul. After that, you can head out together on a mount that feels like it belongs in Ashe’s world. If you’ve ridden with Serana in SDA, the basic behavior should feel familiar.
I’m especially happy with the steam vents and the sound design. The horse has its own mechanical character instead of sounding like a regular horse. Huge thanks to the modder who helped with the steam vents; I’ll make sure they’re credited by name in the release notes.
The riding feature is working, and I’m doing more testing before the Ashe 1.4 beta. The more involved quest built around her horse is planned for a later update.
Paid Patreon members are getting this first look. I’ll make the post public later so everyone can see the video. In the meantime, let me know what you think of Ashe’s new ride!
Thanks for following the work and supporting Ashe. I can’t wait to show you more!
Stay awesome,
Marty
Comments (7)
It's not really distinct, nor unique tho, considering this exists. Maybe if it had been released like 6 months ago https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/183092
I see the resemblance. Ashe’s horse started with Charlie’s Steampunk Horse from Daz, which I purchased and adapted with collaborators for Ashe. The linked mod also credits that base asset, so some shared shapes are expected. I’m not claiming the original horse model as my own sculpt, and I’ll credit the source and contributors in Ashe 1.4.
Who was the horse model made by? I would love to make a PBR conversion for it once it's released if I could get the permissions. I would also like to make one for Ashe's clothes but I think I'll wait for the vanilla-like outfit to be released first.
I bought the base model from Daz but both me and two other collaborators heavily modified it for the NIF format. Currently, the horse how it looks now isn't in PBR, though I imagine it can be converted. Same thing I assume with Ashe's outfit.
Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!
I absolutely love the design. Something I will probably suggest for the future is maybe add a reduced volume setting for the horse. I can see the constant loop of loud steam hissing getting annoying after a few hours.
Gotcha! Gonna make it actually softer by default, maybe 15%? Something like this would benefit from an MCM - but that's still being worked on. Ashe currently has a dialogue menu like Serana but the issue with Serana was dialogue menu bloat a bit hahaha