Hi folks, hope you are having a good week today. If you're in one of the parts of the USA that's affected by the intense heat wave, remember to stay cool and keep hydrated!

 

Last night I decided to try out Prison Alternative for a bit. I came away with a pretty positive first impression; while the mod will need a little bit of fine tuning and I need to investigate some specific items for customization, I'm generally happy with how it worked and the initial conflict checking revealed that the mod seems to have a pretty light touch. During integration testing, I was able to trigger the different scenarios without any major problems - though I encountered a transient animation-related crash in the Riften area which I'm still tracing. I don't believe it's actually related to PA however. 

 

While I was spinning up test characters for the mod, a thought crossed my mind: maybe I should customize the presets that get presented during character creation. I need to do a little further research into the exact limitations of those records, but I can imagine some potential for doing cool stuff with that. That'll have to wait for a bit but it's definitely another thing to put on the "future opportunities" list.

 

I started out my modding time today with a little more testing in PA, mostly making sure the Solitude and Windhelm events are working - especially the latter since it involved navmesh changes - while also verifying that some updates I made to the game are working. And by "some updates" I mean half or more of my mods that ship with DLL files - it seems a lot of things have been updated while I was taking a break! I haven't pulled the trigger on going to 1.6.1170 yet, so I'm still running 1.6.640, but based on this round of updates I'm not seeing a whole lot of reasons to not bring this build up to the latest executable in the near future.

 

 

I started by spinning up a test character and setting up the MCMs before I saved and restarted to ensure OBody was randomizing bodies. On the way down from Helgen I encountered some unusual weather - gusting winds blowing snow down off the mountains. Even though it kind of reveals the degree of scale compression that Bethesda did with Skyrim, it was an interesting little deviation from what I'm used to seeing in this area. I helped the Companions defeat the giant and got the usual recruiting offer, but my plan was a little different - in particular, I was planning on doing some troublemaking at points north. Still, it was nice to see the outfits all working perfectly and also Aela's scars not being covered up too much by her armor.

 

 

Once I got inside the walls, I proceeded to seduce Uthgert. A lot of the Prison Alternative scenes support a follower, so I needed someone along to share in the adventure.

 

 

This test character is quite the social butterfly... very good at making friends 😉 We started out by going to Morthal and causing a bit of a ruckus to get thrown in jail. 

 

 

A couple of things I need to look into further - Prison Alternative by default has prisoners kept naked. This isn't a problem per se, though it would call for some 'consistence' changes for other characters in the different jails if that's a hard and fast rule. The other thing is that the BHUNP female pubic hair meshes have a tendency to "catch" the light in a way that causes the hairs to be a little reflective, causing the pubic hair to look slightly white, regardless of its color. This will require some further examiatioon, as it might be an issue with the mesh, or the color management spell effect, or both. Not a "drop everything" type priority but worth keeping in mind nevertheless.

 

One other little detail - not a huge deal but still might be a sign of other issues - Uthgerd was initially not visible when I was jailed. She should have been located in the shackles you can see on the wall behind me, but she didn't appear until I slept for the first time.

 

 

The beating event worked smoothly - not a big surprise but still good to see. As it progressed I picked up body overlays on my back - this is pretty common on ZAZ based whipping events but its good to know it was implemented on PA as well. Being a first level character, he almost beat me to death, but the mod halted the attacks when I got right to the edge of my hit point bar.

 

 

Jeez, man... at least put her face down. Pressing all her fresh welts and bruises into the stone floor can't be comfortable. But then again, I suppose the jailer looks at that as a feature rather than a bug. 

 

 

An interesting little outdoor punishment session. I don't believe I've ever seen the out that my character is getting subjected to show up in the game before. I do wish that Sexlab animations aligned slightly differently than the way they do in-game. If penetrating objects - whether SOS parts or animation objects - aligned with the target "hole" rather than the actors aligning spatially with one another, then I think they would be fewer issues with mesh violations in the case of different-sized actors. I know I could get around this by ensuring every actor was the same height, but I really like having variety in actors' heights... enough so that  I can tolerate some minor clipping issues. It's a bigger issue though when it comes to static animation pieces... in the final image, the dildo is supposed to be left lodged in my character's ass, and instead it's kind of protruding out of her back. But I digress - that's a technical issue that won't be solved any time soon other than just by making sure everyone is the same size the animation expects.

 

 

Uthgert, being a Nord, doesn't have the same issues with sizing and her part of the scene lines right up. This is a small consolation since I generally play Nords in Skyrim and therefore in a real playthrough my character at least won't have any big issues with sizing.

 

 

One thing that is working right in this scene is the mod No Overpenetration, which dynamically shortens large penises so they don't explode through the receiving character's body. Of course, the longer term solution is to keep working with SOS to get realistic cock sizes in the game, but having this mod as a fallback has helped quite a bit with that particular little immersion breaker.

 

 

Interestingly, the guards seem to be suffering from the Black Face Bug. I think I know what the underlying problem is, but I'll definitely have to give it some attention sooner or later. That's probably something that can wait until I get around to working on Morthal however, unless I notice it impacting other PA guards.

 

 

Abandoned by the guards in a rather precarious position. I notice that there's a third rope on this tree. I wonder if this scene still works if you have a 2nd follower? I'll have to test it out at some point. 

 

I also need to think a bit about the bondage options here. There's nothing technically wrong with it but I'm just not a huge fan of the wooden bit that PA uses pretty consistently to gag characters with. I think there have got to be some better options out there (see my previous remarks about ball gags a couple blogs back). I'll need to investigate this further and see if that's an option for customization down the road.

 

 

A protracted suffocation sequence follows, where the player can mash the space bar to escape. For testing purposes I just let my character expire. Incidentally, this scene is part of a relatively new mod, the Outdoor Event Pack, and while aspects of it are still clearly under development I'm impressed with it so far. Other than the "large animated object vs. small anus" issue I discussed earlier, the Riften pack was similarly well designed. While I don't regret waiting to make sure it was going to be a good fit for my game, I'm quite happy with Prison Alternative and while some features I liked about Prison Overhaul are absent, overall it's a much cleaner and better-performing mod.

 

 

A little sprinkle of ZAZ fluids at the end, which points to some good attention to detail by the author. While it's not as protracted and fetish-y as in Fallout 4's Bad Ends pack, it does add a little more depth to the scene as the character expires.

 

OK, with our little tourist trip to Morthal completed, let's head to Solitude and check out the law enforcement system over there. I took a little 'naturist walk' down the road and then got myself arrested by the Solitude guards. On the way there I saw some further evidence that I need to fine-tune the SOS distribution globals because while the nif scaled well, the level of endowment we found on a captured bandit in Dragon Bridge was... exceptional. Fun fact, by the way, the guards do not accept surrender if you interrupt the execution scene when you first enter Solitude  

 

 

Fortunately they were perfectly willing to arrest me for pickpocketing. Transition to jail worked correctly, and because I goosed the percentages a bit I'm pretty confident that I'll be sent directly to the Solitude-Specific PA Scene. And indeed, that's just what happens. Let's see how the scene unfolds.

 

 

I see the mod is either directly using or templating the regular NPCs so, for example, my customizations to Sybille are carrying through into the game. Once upon a time, a lot of mods just cloned the vanilla character, which was a bit immersion breaking when someone who you were used to seeing with a different face and outfit showed up in a mod event with their original look.

 

 

I see Uthgert got bound up more thoroughly than I did. 

 

 

Sadly, after this point the scene derped out and even removing geometry and moving actors around with the console didn't help. Let's try it again - maybe this was just a transient glitch.

 

 

Sybille's friends almost all have coloration issues. It'll require a little more analysis to see if this is black face overlay or if its Vampire ork face bug, but whichever one it turns out to be it'll be easy enough to fix when it comes time to overhaul Solitude. So far the scene is progressing smoothly. That gives Prison Alternative a much better track record in terms of performance than Prison Overhaul ever had on even the best of my runs.

 

 

For whatever reason, spit-roasting scenes like this have always been technically difficult for Skyrim to handle. In the past I've frequently encountered either positional desynch, jerky or unreliable animations, or both. PA's take on this concept went very smoothly and my character stayed consistently in place on the spit - I didn't see any geometry poking out of her body, nor did she start moving body parts that should have been pinned in place. The only issue, if you can call it that, was that as her body browned her face geometry remained the same color, which gradually resulted in a very noticeable neck seam on her character model. Compared to the other issues and jank I've encountered with others modders' attempts to capture this iconic bad end, I think that's pretty good progress.

 

 

That was a rather sophisticated scene that, notwithstanding the glitch that happened during the first run through, seemed to function smoothly from start to finish. Obviously the vampire faces will need some attention, but worse come to worst I can just slap templates on them to push random vampire faces that I know will work. I do need to look into why my character's face didn't update. I suspect there's something I can do to fix that but it'll require a bit more analysis to understand the underlying problem.

 

So now that we know what awaits criminals in Solitude, what about Windhelm? I headed over there and stabbed the racist guy, then surrendered to the guards. Initially I should get the city's special interrupt event.

 

 

So that's interesting. Zeroing out the other options does not, in and of itself, guarantee the remaining option will happen. There's a fallback event where either nothing happens (while serving time) or where you get unceremoniously released at the end. So let's try this again, this time also setting the Windhelm special events to 100% chance.

 

 

Even at 100%, the scene still didn't run. I'll have to investigate that further, but for now let's manually trigger the scenes to confirm they work.

 

 

Tied up with different devices than the other scenes we've seen so far. I appreciate the variety they're demonstrating. 

 

 

The way the mod places the huge gallows in downtown Windhelm kind of caused a traffic jam with the Hydragorgon hostages. A factor to consider is whether or not this mod substantially increases the value of the Windhelm prison experience, especially if it's going to take up all this space. I wonder, will the outdoor hanging mod pick up prisoners in this one's absence? I think that'll call for some experimentation because I'm not sure this one will make the cut for this build.

 

 

Disabling the hostages and even console-moving the guard around did not get the scene moving again, so this one seems to be fragile in the same way the old Prison Overhaul scenes were... and since it's not even triggering during normal gameplay, I'm going to remove the Windhelm expansion from the lineup for now. Let's do a quick test to see if the outdoor executions trigger for Windhelm and then call it a day. Before we do that we'll roll back the conflict resolution patching I did for the mod so that the navmesh reverts to its normal configuration, and we'll also rebuild the animation registry.

 

 

OK, first we'll commit a crime in Windhelm and see if it sends me to the Outdoor Event. We'll also roll a male character this time to see if there's any issues gender-locked content. 

 

 

Well, let no one say that the guards aren't equal-opportunity abusers.  The "player gets molested by the jailer" scene appears to be working just fine with a male chracter.

 

 

Very minor positional issues, notably some clipping with the wrist equipment, but those are issues with ZAZ (no HIMBO bodyslides that I'm aware of), not with Prison Alternative. Otherwise the beating scene functioned correctly.

 

 

The outdoor release event can indeed trigger from inside one of the city worldspaces, which is good. This also means that if I have issues with the other packs - especially if I localize the animated related crashes I was getting in Riften to PA - then I can fall back on the outdoor events to preserve function.

 

 

The guards were very... enthusiastic. I couldn't quite pause the animation in time, but the final facial correctly triggered Cumshot's projectile feature, which confirms that mod is working properly. I was getting somewhat ambiguous results with it earlier, possibly related to inadequate tagging of the animation files. I did notice that this event picked a female-victim animation, but I think that was just because I forgot to set my Sexlab filters when I rolled this character. Still, I'm going to have to verify that I have at least a minimal number of animations to cover these interactions. Usually I rely on the M2M Animation Pack for gay sex stuff, but I've temporarily removed that mod because there seem to be tagging issues on that one and it tends to force itselvf into non-gay scenarios to the exclusion of other options, which in turn causes issues related to the Sexlab strap-on functionality where strap-ons appear on entirely submissive female chracters because the animation is expecting a male character in that position. But I digress. Let's see how the hanging goes.

 

 

There's a little bit of positional desynch where the noose is too far down, but it seems mostly hidden by the actor's body and hair. The struggle animations look fine and the feet are positioned properly on the log. The face graph is properly deforming around the wooden bit. So the baseline Zaz stuff is all operating more or less as expected. I'm not sure I'm a big fan of the blood splats that appear late in the whipping scene though. They just feel kind of "off" and I'd expect like bruises or skin inflammation rather than being completely splattered in blood. 

 

 

That appears to be the blood texture. The console doesn't trace it to any specific mod but MO2 should help me with that once this scene is complete.

 

 

I can't confirm if the erection is part of the hanging sequence or not - it might just be from me going into Racemenu while I was investigating the blood splats; I'll need to trigger another one of these hanging scenes to investigate that. But I can confirm that as my character struggles his scrotum displays physics behavior while his erect cock stays... rigid. So when a male character is disposed of by Pamas furniture their native physics still works, whichi s a nice contribution to the immersion of the scene. While it's likely that my next character will be female, if she gets in trouble with a male follower in tow, I'd want for the scene to have maximum realism within the constraints of the system.

 

If any Zaz fluids emitted, they were the female variety and hidden by the test character's thighs. So that's another factor to look into - seeing if we can get this mod (or the underlying deadly furniture mod) to substitute in the male fluids when a male character is being executed. I might just want to talk to the author though before I try a DIY solution.

 

Meanwhile, to test for erection behavior, I went to Rorikstead and punched a guard. Let's see how things go for my poor test character. Before the inevitable abuse of my dude started, I went into Sexlab and activated the filters, so if it still picks female-victim aggressive animations then it probably means I don't have adequate options and need to find some more animations to add to my registry.

 

 

I know that some people really dislike the NSFW Skyrim modding scene and hold it up as a sign of deep seated mysogyny in the gamer community... and given the prevalence of female player characters and the subsequent presumption of a default female protagonist/victim in the content I can understand where that comes from. I mean, who am I kidding - a lot of the fantasies that drive this site do have an aspect of victimizing women. No big surprise there, either, since power exchange scenarios (civilized man acts out role of uncivilized man and/or woman in a relatively safe and secure society acts out the role of a woman in an unsafe and often cartoonishly hostile society) are a recurring top fantasy whenever psychologists study these sorts of things. But one thing about Skyrim, at least on the Sexlab platform, is that unless the author actively takes the time to code in gender locks, the world can be just as cartoonishly hostile to male characters. I do wonder if it would behoove people who enjoy the whole "victimizing women" part to play through the same content as a male player character and see how their perception of the scenario changes. Might make for a consciousness-raising experience.

 

But I digress. While I was waxing philosophical about the benefits of experiencing non-traditional gender roles in porn, the Whiterun guards were showing my character their famous hospitality. I'll have to look at how the actors for these scenes are generated. I know they're procedurally generated because they have FF form IDs, so it might not be too hard to include some female guards in the leveled list (or just peg them to the normal leveled list for the region's guards) to get some good femdom stuff going from time to time. It should also fix the blackface bug that the executioners were demonstrating by ensuring they pull their appearance data from valid templates.

 

 

That's an interesting and somewhat unexpected actor alignment issue there. The guard's cock is just kind of thrusting into the top of my cheeks and into my lower back rather than slipping into the back passage. I wonder if this animation is still in a "foreplay" type stage, or if there's actually an alignment issue in the animation. I'd understand this if I was shorter than the guard, but we're both Nords without (as far as I know) any adjustments to our heights. This animation is from Anubs, which is a slightly older pack, so its possible the level of precision wasn't as high as we're accustomed to - might have been no or at least less developed orifice collision physics at the time it was created.

 

 

Ah, I see the problem now. The guard's cock is a bit too rampant. Since Loverslab struggles a bit with video you'll just have to imagine the visual but the guard's hips are moving almost horizontal with very little upward thrust. In other words, his cock is angled about 30 degrees higher than it should be if it's entering my character's anus, creating the illusion that he's hotdog-bunning my cheeks instead. Sexlab has always been a little dicey about cock angles (and that's not even starting to get into the insanity that is most implementations of SL Aroused... that however is a topic for a different day, and I'm told SLA has a new version in development that's supposed to behave itself better). 

 

The physics package "captured" the guard's cock in the final stage (but it was quick and I wasn't able to get a screen shot) so there's some functionality in that vein at least... it was just those intermediate stages where the angle was wrong. I wish I knew a bit more about hkx animations, but that's one of my blind spots and I'm kind of helpless to DIY animation related stuff.

 

Meanwhile, I have a hunch that the blood splats are coming from Dirt and Blood, and I disabled the "blood on player" function after reading how it works. It seems kind of backwards - I'd expect it to trigger when I score an unblocked hit on an enemy - especially one who isn't wearing heavy armor - but instead those splats... which look like splats from an exterior source... get populated when the player fails to block a hit. I'm not sure I'll get a beating this time, but if I do we can assess if that fixes the blood overlays issue.

 

 

Looks like we're going straight to the execution scene this time, so I'll have to wait for a future chance to test the blood splat hypothesis.

 

 

These scenes, incidentally, run much more cleanly than their XPO equivalents. Once or twice my character has gotten a little "lost" and needed to be goosed in the console, but most of the time he or she makes it to the punishment spot with no special help required. The only issues I've observed are cosmetic: the player's walking pace is slightly faster than the guards, which makes the player stop and start a lot, and you lose lateral camera control during the scene so you can't spin the character to watch from the front of the procession. Neither of those are game breakers and if the scene drags on too much the game offers you a chance to skip the walking part entirely.

 

 

I realize now that the guards not only have blackface but they aren't using the regional outfits. That's not too bad - I didn't really even notice it until now - but it's something to look into further for opportunities to fine-tune.

 

 

Some odd positioning here. I wonder if the actors are misaligned or if it's related to the guard's OBody preset - he's a pretty chonky boy. I have a suspicion however that it's the latter and the whole "rubbing sticks together" action going on downstairs is entirely coincidental and unintended. 

 

 

Ah yes and in fact here we are again with the whole "enthusiastic rimming" scene that popped up last time. This may be a sign that I don't have any MMM aggressive animations in my current (rather slim) animation load and the game is overriding the filter in order to find an appropriate scene to play.

 

 

The guards proceeded to have their fun, including some teabagging action, before making a mess in the Dragonborn's hair.

 

 

 

Looks like the erection we saw last time was indeed from Racemenu. No Zaz fluids observed this time... might need to investigate what the conditions are for them appearing. I almost wonder if it was actually drippage from the earlier sex scene rather than a true fluids event. Either way though, I think we can officially say that other than the issues we had with Windhelm - which I did not troubleshoot thoroughly enough to say for sure it wasn't a mod interaction problem of some sort - Prison Alternative is looking pretty solid. I'm looking forward to watching the further development of this mod, since scanning the title lines in the author's Subscribestar suggests there are a lot of features under development which aren't in the public release just yet. Anyway, that's it for today - with that distraction more or less squared away, it'll be time to get back to work on Whiterun (unless I find some other new distraction!)

 

See you then!