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Mindbreak Framework: Purpose and Goals

DayTri

Entry posted by DayTri in Dev Blog

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Why is something like this needed

 

Main problems in roleplaying w/ LL mods are:

1. Mods are disconnected

2. Some mods are so free-form or sandbox that it doesn't feel "like a game"

 

There are lots of great Skyrim story mods that involve NPCs "corrupting", "breaking", "training" the PC, either through some subtle manipulation or force:

  • - Troubles of Heroine
  • - Sanguine's Debauchery
  • - Angrim's Apprentice
  • - Submissive Lola
  • - Devious Followers
  • - Trappings of Fate
  • - ... more

 

These sometimes have their own mechanics, for example Devious Followers willpower stat. Or they have no mechanics and the player is either free to choose any outcome or forced to choose outcomes, for example Troubles of Heroine, which often just describes the PC being tortured without any stat or mechanic to represent it.

 

Overall trying to roleplay with many of these mods leaves a disconnected experience. If Bruiser from ToH punches the PC, it does not change the devious followers willpower stat.

 

Also, with some mods it doesn't feel like a game. In trappings of fate, the end of the mod has an option to submit to the captor. But it is totally up to the player's choice. As a player, I want to think "I need to finish the puzzles quickly, because if I'm not fast enough the character will break and submit to the bad guy".

 

Overall goals that a framework mod should accomplish

 

  1. It should allow events from one mod to inform how the character interacts with other mods
  2. It should allow a mechanism to restrict player choice
  3. It should allow a mechanism for a PC to be "broken", "trained", "corrupted", etc, providing a game-like component to sandbox type mods.

 

 

Design principles

 

 

  1. We will never get widespread, or maybe any, adoption. The game is too old and there are too many mods to patch them all. So the mod should provide a way for players to quickly "let it know" that something from another mod has happened. It should also provide a way for the player to "ask" the framework about the kind of choices they should make. For example, a hotkey should be available to quickly check whether the player is too corrupted to refuse a request from their Submissive Lola follower, rather than relying on the mod to be updated to restrict dialogue based on the framework.
  2. The framework should allow for global and local changes in personality. Whether the PC agrees to a sex request from an approach mod should change depending on if they are drunk, horny, tired, etc. But a very well trained slave might never refuse a request.
  3. The framework should allow for "bad-end" scenarios which don't totally end the game. I want to be able to play through a long campaign in-character and still have the game be playable. That means if the character gets "broken" by a submissive lola follower, it shouldn't mean she's going to want to have sex with every bandit she sees. Whatever mechanics or stats exist should allow for a wide variety of outcomes.
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Darkwing241

Darkwing241

Posted

Is the goal to play all of these mods at the same time? Modders tend to to have a kitchen sink approach to mod selection, but what you are proposing sounds like a ton of work for very very little gain.  The vast majority of the content of these mods is narrative so multi installing usually just gets you one moment of improved play experience, ya it's immersive when at the slave auction there are many possible futures, but after that the multi install provides more bugs then content value.

 

I do however think there is a need for a mod like you describe to build other non-narrative mods into the stories of others.  For example Devious follower willpower could and should be impacted by tons of non-narrative non-kink content.  Everything from quest progression to YPS fashion status could be giving boosts or multipliers. Defeats, other question interactions, or bathing status could be handing out penalties.

 

If the goal is to improve the play experience of these types of mods why not just create an extension of one mod tying in non-narrative mods or even non-kink mods to the story?

 

 

 

DayTri

DayTri

Posted

23 minutes ago, Darkwing241 said:

Is the goal to play all of these mods at the same time? Modders tend to to have a kitchen sink approach to mod selection, but what you are proposing sounds like a ton of work for very very little gain.  The vast majority of the content of these mods is narrative so multi installing usually just gets you one moment of improved play experience, ya it's immersive when at the slave auction there are many possible futures, but after that the multi install provides more bugs then content value.

 

I do however think there is a need for a mod like you describe to build other non-narrative mods into the stories of others.  For example Devious follower willpower could and should be impacted by tons of non-narrative non-kink content.  Everything from quest progression to YPS fashion status could be giving boosts or multipliers. Defeats, other question interactions, or bathing status could be handing out penalties.

 

If the goal is to improve the play experience of these types of mods why not just create an extension of one mod tying in non-narrative mods or even non-kink mods to the story?

 

 

 

 

Yes my goal is to play all of them in one big playthrough, that is why I don't want to write an extension of a single mod.

Bound

Bound

Posted

I love the idea of this mod.  The whole mind-break fantasy keeps getting teased in sexlab mods but never really fleshed out and certainly never in any way integrated with the rest of the sexlab/skyrim experience. Sadly, lacking that integration in some form means the mod may be doomed to always just be a dead-end branch rather than something that can stay interesting (and stay in the load order) indefinitely, even when it is not the current focus of play.  But getting that integration is the hardest part.  Have you looked at Sexlab Disparity https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/7589-sexlab-disparity/?  Yes, it is intimidating and complicated, but it does provide an existing framework that already integrates with Sexlab, various versions of Sexlab Aroused, particularly Redux, Sexlab Separate Orgasms, and a couple of user-mods like Devious Followers and Sexlab Survival. And it already has hooks for integrating both inputs and outputs with any other mod willing to talk to it.  Might it be possible to configure it to support this specific scenario (ideally behind the scenes without the player having to poke values into its MCM! LOL) and use it to handle the tracking and interfacing with other mods while you work on the more interesting tasks of adding ways to affect those stats and handling the results of those stat changes?  I do think the key to this idea being successful is its integration with other related stuff happening as you play skyrim, and thereby enabling emergent behavior in the existing skyrim sandbox that feeds back into all that other stuff.

 

Another fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with is bad ends.  I just found this mod so haven't had a chance to play with it yet, so excuse my ignorance if you've already handled it!  Some people like the hard-core possibility of an inescapable bad end.  Many hate it though, and some of those who claim to like it end up pulling their hair out while desperately save-cleaning and hacking global variables and quest stages as they try to back out those irreversible changes once they get there so they can keep playing the save/character they have invested hundreds of hours into.  I think the key to this is to provide a built-in mechanism for recovery.  The easiest approach is to just have all stats slowly recover back to normal over time.  The amount and update frequency of recovery for each stat could be easily (by the player anyway, LOL) adjusted in the MCM to individual tastes, or switched off for those who really want the hard core bad end experience.  This allows each player to tune the effects to their playstyle and preferences, and even change them over time. If they decide they are tired of being stuck in an unrecoverable loop and want to just go back to playing the rest of skyrim, they could adjust the recovery amount/frequency to whatever rate they desire, even 100% per day and walk out (or at least start over) the next day if that is what they want.

 

Which brings us back around to my biggest concern.  How to avoid this becoming just another "framework" (see https://xkcd.com/927/ for a full explanation ?)?  I'm not sure if that is a solvable problem though, since all previous attempts in this problem space seem to have failed. The risks for every developer of using someone else's framework are that it doesn't quite do everything you need, somebody else will use that shared resource in a way that breaks your use (I'm looking at you Sexlab Aroused with your infinite maxed arousal state! ?), and eventually it is doomed to die when the author loses interest unless it is open source, builds up an active group of users, and can be maintained, updated and extended by more than just the original author.  Do you have any real plans for breaking out of this trap, or are you satisfied with creating something for yourself that will probably not be used by anyone else?  That's not a horrible choice, it can certainly seem like a simpler and safer approach, up front at least, but it might then be a critical factor in limiting just how well what you produce can tie in with anything else out there, now or to come.  And it is a lot of grunt work to take on the burden of integrating with (or replacing/duplicating) everything else on your own, while failure to do so will limit the usefulness of your efforts.

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