ponzipyramid

Fast Tats + Overlay Manager

Hey everyone, Fast Tats (and its dependency Overlay Manager) was just released on LL. This is a high performance patch for SlaveTats that greatly speeds up tattoo syncing, application, and removal. 

It uses a new SKSE plugin called Overlay Manager that will also be used in several other projects including the Sexlab Cum Overlays Extended rewrite, a faster Wet Function Redux and for whip marks in Impact Play (and in turn Devious Followers and Radiant Captivity). 

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/32277-alpha-fast-tats/

With this out of the way, I intend to wrap up Radiant Captivity, Devious Followers, and the new framework that will back both mods this month.

Practical Defeat v0.4.0 + Addons!

Practical Defeat has been updated with support for surrendering, crawling, and various bug fixes: https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/27489-beta-practical-defeat/

And as requested in the last poll, you can now install three semi-new addons for it featuring a range of both human and creature-themed events:

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/31476-creature-comforts-practical-defeat-addon/ https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/31478-bad-endings-practical-defeat-addon/ https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/31475-simple-events-practical-defeat-addon/

Some of these were already released here, but I've since made improvements and refinements to hopefully address some core issues. Up next is Radiant Captivity and Devious Followers.

New Year, New Roadmap

Hope everyone had a great holiday season! I took a little break from modding but I'm back and with a lengthy set of plans for this year. Also a quick reminder about the Discord where a bit of conversation is happening.

Radiant Captivity

I posted a small preview to showcase escape handling, restraint escalation, and the collar system on LL that you can find here. It's not super impressive, but man did it take a while to get some really basic stuff up and running like cell exit detection. Skyrim definitely wasn't designed to support this kind of experience but thankfully anything is possible with power of SKSE. I'm wrapping up the "jobs" system now, which should make for an actually interesting preview so keep an eye for that next (will also be posted in the SOTR thread).

Practical Defeat

I've been working on an update for quite some time now and I think we're getting pretty close to release. Features for this update includes manual surrender, faster and less error-prone robbery, along with robbed item vendor selling (to add a bit of tension to item retrieval),  some more lines, and most notably creature support. Once this update is out and stabliised, PD will finally be ready to exit beta! Looking to the future, I'm planning on adding severity filtering, allowing your enemies to choose harsher outcomes based on your actions. The prior updates to add memory of prior defeats was the first step towards this. And OStim Standalone support. Maybe.

Container Item Distributor (Extended)

I've wanted to dabble in some SFW modding and what better way than adding chance based distribution to ThirdEye's fantastic utility. Pending a couple miscellaneous fixes, this should be going up as my first Nexus release.

While I say this is SFW, I'm planning on using this for TAWOBA and TEWOBA bikini armor distribution. SL Survival supports this out of the box but I've never been a big fan of having to rebuild it every time I start a new game (which is very often). This way the process is completely automated at runtime or on game start.

Overlay Manager

I mentioned this hypothetical project months ago, but I've finally began setting up the basic pieces. OM is intended to provide significant performance and stability improvements to mods like SlaveTats and my own SCOE by handling overlay application and management at the native level. 

Once complete, I will be revisiting SCOE to wrap up the rest of those future plans (multi-set, facials, armor overlays, etc). I'm also planning on creating a bathing mod and some form of a replacement for Wet Function Redux to leverage this plugin. Blood and Dirt is great, but I really want all of these kinds of mods to play well together.

Note that this is still very early and running concurrent to my other projects. 

Devious Followers Redux

I actually got most of the way through the next update before getting burnt out and switching back to RadCap. The bug fixes and enslavement overhaul are mostly complete but given the number of changes, I need to do some serious playtesting before this is ready for release. More details coming soon.

Miscellaneous

SLANG has garnered quite a few bug reports so I'll be looking at that between some of these other updates.

I'm also working with krzp on a new injury and locational damage framework. This started as an attempt to create a cleaner version of Amputator Framework and very quickly grew in scope. I think there's some exciting combat improvements that can be gleaned but this is also one of those backburner projects.

We're close to v0.3 for Devious Devices NG with the new native device hider thanks to IHMK. I've begun work on the native SL filtering system along with some necessary interfacing in Scrab's P+ DLL. Still quite early, but at least from some early testing, it is considerably faster than the original 5.0 implementation.

Radiant Captivity

From the last poll, It looks like most folks are interested in brand new PD outcomes. This works out pretty well, since some of the SOTR framework development can be repurposed for a dynamic post-defeat captivity and quest system. Right now, the working title for this project is Radiant Captivity. I'm still thinking about what this is going to look like, but an initial radiant quest could be the player being put into a collar and forced to retrieve some item or in the vein of Quick As You Like, forced to "race" to some location (another bandit fort, etc.). I'm also curious to see if anyone has suggestions or ideas for what they'd like to see. 

Slaves of Tamriel: Intro and Planning

As mentioned, the next mainline project is Slaves of Tamriel Redux (SOTR); my attempt to create a new player slavery mod in the vein of Slaverun and continue where the original left off. This will be a lengthy effort and as promised, I will be working on shorter term stuff in parallel. As always suggestions and feedback is very welcome.

I tried out a couple other player slavery projects with a more analytical lens to get a feel for what kinds of common problems and design issues plague this category. Accordingly, here are some design principles I'll be following for this project:

• Gameplay-Oriented: Most existing mods try to fight or override vanilla mechanics. This leads to significant stability problems and usually shortens the engagement the mod provides. SOTR must offer a varied, diverse set of experiences that leverage and recontextualise existing mechanics instead of trying to replace them. Survival horror provides an excellent blueprint for this sort of experience since games in this genre are predicated on dis-empowering the player while still presenting them with engaging gameplay options like combat, stealth, exploration, and looting. For instance, fighting can still be immersive in this context when you're forced to do it against impossible odds, forced to wear something humiliating while doing it, and forced to hand your items back and step into a cell when its done. You're stripping the player of their ability to decide what to do but still giving them challenging, interesting decisions to make within that experience.
• Repeatable: there are some truly great mods in this category but most are one-time experiences that offer little permutation on subsequent playthroughs. For a mod like this to be effective over multiple games, its quest design needs to be sufficiently radiant. The jobs you're given, the order they're given in, and the locations they take place at are all things that can and should change from game to game. If the systems are effectively interlocked, this should ideally lead to all sorts of emergent role playing scenarios.
• Stable: the mod should start simple with a super solid foundation that works 99% of the time (or whatever the best we can do in the Creation Engine is) and then gradually add more complexity over time in small updates allowing easy rollbacks and fixes when things go bad. On one hand, this results in a less impressive first impression but on the other hand its an effective way to build stronger, stabler experiences. Given the number of mods that have tried before, I'm erring on the side of caution.
• Compatible: the mod should aim to provide 3rd party integrations over homebrew systems. If a player wants whipping debuffs the first approach should be leveraging Punishing Lashes  instead of attempting to build a custom system. However, it should still provide simple fallbacks when these mods aren't installed. See Public Whore's fallback reputation system when SLSF isn't available. This reduces conflicts between different mods and makes it easier for users to drop SOTR into their existing LO instead of needing to build something around SOTR.
• Modular: instead of attempting to shove every new quest into a single ESP, content should instead be split into separate submods that can be independently installed and maintained. This ensures the core systems remain intact and stable and any new experimental stuff can be easily swapped in and out until stabliised. With light plugins, the impact to load orders is minimal.

So what does that actually mean to the player?

When enslaved by SOTR through something like Simple Slavery, a player can be sent to one of a multitude of locations. Locations are intelligently selected. For example, if you're Thane of Whiterun it stands to reason that you won't be enslaved there. On the other hand, if you're a Stormcloak, the Imperials may be more likely to make an example out of you.

Each location implements a bespoke slavery gameplay loop consisting of four major elements: jobs, punishments, events, and releases. The first location is of course, Dremir Mine. [This is partially adapted from an earlier post.]

• Jobs are your day to day quests which will have a direct impact on your compliance score. At Dremir, the primary job is mining with cleaning, pest control, being a maid at the Thalmor embassy, or "entertainment" for the guards down the line all being added over time.
• Punishments occur when your compliance falls below certain thresholds and generally make escaping tougher by applying debuffs. Right now, this is simple furniture whipping.
• Events are random occurrences that should spice things up. For example, nightly "visits" from a guard or if you're unlucky a group of them.
• Releases trigger on certain thresholds like # of jobs completed, amount of money earned for your captors, etc. Similar to events, this gives players a guaranteed "out" to keep SOTR from taking too long to complete. Releases are crucial in allowing for greater variety. Not only do they give you an out to other mods, they can be used as transitions to different SOTR locations. Solitude could be another spot that you might be sent to as part of "release" which implements its own gameplay loop.

This frees up each location to have its own narrative, background, and flavor while giving the player a consistent set of mechanics to interact with.

Next Release?

Slaves of Tamriel is the next mainline project but given its scope, it's a ways off. In parallel, what are folks interested in seeing next? I may put up another poll depending on what people select here to narrow things down further.

If you're confused about one of the options, please comment.

Devious Followers Redux v0.1.7

After much delay, Devious Followers Redux is finally up: https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/30125-alpha-devious-followers-redux/.

Additionally, Dealer's Choice has been updated with three new fitness themed rules: https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/27788-beta-dealers-choice-devious-followers-addon/

With this release finally complete, it's time to get back to Slaves of Tamriel and the Prison Alternative addon. I'll likely put up a poll to determine what folks are interested in being completed in parallel i.e. new rules for DFR, more PD consequences/events, or if you just want me to stop procrastinating and finish SoT. 

Have fun!

Bad Endings - Practical Defeat Addon v0.1.0

Finished up the first version of the bad endings system for Practical Defeat. It's currently a pretty basic event involving the chopping block everyone who's played through Skyrim's vanilla opening is very familiar with :). Sample screenshots will be posted in the Discord and likely the LL thread.

This should also provide an immersive compatibility bridge for downstream mods like Ashes and Shadow of Skyrim that rely on vanilla death handling. This does require additional testing.

If there aren't any major issues with this release it should be straightforward to continue adding similar outcomes. Big props to Pamatronic for such a clean and straightforward API.

You may encounter CTDs if using Racemenu head overlays. You can fix this by selecting the fake Decap option in the Pama Furniture MCM. 

Requirements:

- Pama's Furniture (and its requirements)

Devious Devices NG v0.2.7

Hey everyone, super excited to finally share (unless you've already seen it on the Discord) the first-ish release of Devious Devices NG, a patch that aims to provide animation, performance, and usabliity improvements to Devious Devices on SE, AE, and VR.

This was a massively collaborative effort including but not limited to krzp, IHateMyKite, Taki17, naaitsab, Audhol and a whole bunch of talented animators (a full list is on the development page).

Enjoy!

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/29779-devious-devices-ng/

Assorted Announcements #2

Since we're mid-month, I thought it'd be good to put up a quick update of some in-progress items.

Discord

I've been taking some troubleshooting and feature requests over Scrab's discord and in my experience, it's a lot more efficient than LL threads and Patreon comments. Given the number of concurrent projects, I thought it'd be worth creating a server to centralize discussion and bug reports: https://discord.gg/7T2Cb5EqHD. Don't feel obligated to join if you're already inundated with servers; I'll still post regular updates here and on LL but dev builds will go up there first for feedback. This will be open to the public but I've set up a Patron-exclusive support channel.

Practical Defeat - Bad End

Since this is clearly the most requested feature after the reactivity system, I ended up moving this up in the pipeline ahead of robbery enhancements. I think I've come up with a spec to make the most out of Pama's excellent work while facilitating some immersion:

The smaller furniture like the chopping block and deadly tree stump can be spawned near the player with minimal chances for objects clipping or causing weird enemy behaviour. I can also justify this in-world since a bandit can reasonably move these objects. We'll call these dynamic executions (since they can happen anywhere).

However, furniture like guillotines, gallows, garottes are quite large. Not only would it not make much sense for these objects to randomly spawn out of thin air, they would likely cause all sorts of nasty clipping and stuck enemies. Instead, I can try to distribute these manually throughout the game world. If the bad end gets selected and one of these pieces of furniture is near by, fade to black, and teleport the player + some hostiles to the closest large furniture and play out the scene using it. Since I can deliberately place objects to minimize clipping/maximize immersion, this should provide a far better user experience. We'll call these static executions (since they can only occur in set locations).

As you can imagine, manually placing furniture across the entire worldspace is a very time-consuming endeavour so I'll be starting with dynamic for the first version. I'm planning on rolling out the statics incrementally through holds e.g. place furniture in Whiterun Hold, then Eastmarch, and so on. I'm concerned about compatibility since worldspace edits can get messy but I think some good planning can let us bypass most of these issues.

Devious Followers Redux

For those who haven't used Devious Followers Continued (feel free to skip down if you have), DFC turns your vanilla followers into tricky hirelings that will charge you every day you're in their service. You can pay them or failing that agree to certain "deals" which can range from wearing piercings to drinking skooma.

Lupine's work on the mod has made it a personal favorite but it's unfortunately been untouched since they left early last year. I've been working on a rewrite to make it easier to add new stuff and to finish implementing some of the stuff Lupine had planned on their roadmap. This includes a maid-themed deal. I'm getting close to releasing the next version along with a brand new "fitness" themed deal. Hoping to drop this some time next weekend. You can check out the development thread if you're interested or if you want to contribute some of your own ideas.

I'll likely put up another post/poll with new deals for those who are interested. Hopefully, that's at least one of you :)

Slaves of Tamriel Redux

Unfortunately, I identified some significant issues (surrounding scene AI) during playtesting that kept me from release. As soon as Devious Followers is wrapped up, I'll get back to this. The original plan is still intact but it just needs some more time to cook.

Practical Defeat v0.3.0

Practical Defeat v0.3.0 is now available with a number of Patron-requested features including Devious Devices Equip integration and enemy reactivity to prior defeats. There's more dialogue variation and awareness of previous defeats at their hands. There's still plenty more to be added including thaneship and faction-specific dialogue. If there's something you want enemies to be aware of, comment below (along with any other PD requests you might have).

I've also introduced a new quick defeat system that can skip certain phases of defeat (robbery and the event loop) when you're defeated by the same group of enemies in quick succession. This is primarily intended to prevent infinite defeat loops and reduce the frustration of failing to escape during releases like Devious Devices. Quick defeat will by default trigger remote release outcomes like SS++, Kidnapped by Rieklings, etc. both to prevent additional defeats from triggering and to add higher stakes to losing multiple times.

I'll likely put up an execution release event here soon. But after that I'm going to take a small break to work on some other projects including Devious Followers Framework and Slaves of Tamriel.

And after that will likely be some robbery improvements, specifically adapting the vendor selling system from Battlefuck. This enables enemies to gradually sell and consume the items they steal from you. Vendors from the Hold you're defeated in can start selling your items. This adds some time pressure to getting revenge since you may need to spend many septims to get your items back from shopkeeps. This should hopefully work well with Hexbolt's Sexual Persuasion wherein you can trade sexual favors for discounts.

Other News:

I finished up a basic implementation of native equipping for Devious Devices and am waiting for feedback/permission to continue.

Assorted Announcements #1

Just wanted to put together a little roadmap to let y'all know what's coming up. 

First off, thanks for all the support. I wanted to check in to see if anyone is interested in having a Discord server. That seems to be standard for the Patreons I've looked at but I've also read some feedback complaining about there being too many. If that's something that will make support requests and discussion easier I'm open to it.

Practical Defeat

The update that went up yesterday was mostly bug fixes but should address the core issue of the the flow being interrupted or frozen. I'll try to put up some micro-updates to tackle some of the smaller Patron requests like DDe integration but creature defeat will take a while since its an entirely separate flow.

Devious Devices NG

For those unfamiliar with this project, the idea is to expand DD's SKSE plugin in order to significantly improve its performance and consistency. ihatemykite has already done some excellent work moving expression changes (for gags) and the player's item hider to native code which reduces Papyrus overhead and log spam. I'm in the process of moving equip/unequip logic to the engine. This should yield more consistent equipping, especially from the inventory and specifically lower overhead when equipping many devices on many NPCs. You can find our roadmap on Github here.

Slaves of Tamriel Redux

This project aims to provide a challenging and immersive player slavery experience. Right now the mod is mostly structured to support a single location, Dremir Mine, where the player is forced to mine ore for the Imperials. I'm closing in on a refactor that creates an overarching framework for player slavery experiences throughout the game world.

The idea is simple, when the player is enslaved by SOTR usually through something like Simple Slavery, they can be sent to one of a multitude of locations. Each location implements a slavery gameplay loop consisting of four major elements: jobs, punishments, events, and releases.

• Jobs are your day to day quests which will have a direct impact on your compliance score.
• Punishments occur when your compliance falls below certain thresholds and generally make escaping tougher by applying debuffs.
• Events are random occurrences that should spice things up since doing the same things for multiple real world hours is likely going to be very boring
• Releases trigger on certain thresholds like # of jobs completed, amount of money earned for your captors, etc. These can range from being sent to another SoT location to getting sent back to Simple Slavery to simply being let go. Similar to events, this gives players a guaranteed "out" to keep SOTR from taking too long to complete.

For example, Dremir Mine is a location with jobs that can range from mining to being a maid in the nearby Thalmor embassy and events can include nightly visits from the guards.

Most of this logic is implemented - I'm just playtesting right now.

Prison Alternative POP Addon v0.4.0

This update adds a redesigned parade system which eliminates forced player control, increasing compatibility with mods that change city layouts like JK's Skyrim, Cities of the North, etc. You'll be marched to the center of town and the guards will announce a game for the townsfolk: if the crowd can get you on the ground, they get to have their way with you. This leverages the shock collar system from Practical Restraints to ensure you go where the guards want you to. Running into a store will aggro the guards and trying to run out the main gate will cause the guards to kill you with the collar.

This version is pretty basic, taking place exclusively within Whiterun city limits but if the core logic works, I should be able to expand it to the entire hold including Riverwood. There are a lot of (IMO) interesting variations that can be added i.e. heels and tripping, skooma to make escaping possible, rewards for staying up for a certain period of time, an actual opportunity to make a run for it. Feedback is highly appreciated.

Requirements:

You'll need all the base requirements of Prison Alternative and the POP Addon as well as Practical Restraints v0.2.0 or greater.

Practical Defeat Development Priority

Vote on what should be prioritized for Practical Defeat's next few updates. You can choose multiple if you'd like. If something you're interested in isn't available in the list, feel free to comment!

Simple Events - Practical Defeat Addon v0.1.0

An extension for Practical Defeat that adds new regular events.

Welcome

I maybe should have chosen a more trustworthy moniker, but hindsight's 20/20 right?

First of all, thanks for clicking the link.

All of my projects get released on LL for free. Becoming a Patron gives me justification/motivation for the inordinate amount of time I spend in front of my computer and gives you early access to some of the stuff I make as well as say over what I should prioritize. 

Enjoy!