Devious Devices - Laura's Bondage Shop (16-aug-2025) v3.55 LE & SE

[aurreth]

4 hours ago, 1337DragonWolf said:

Alright, thanks for trying...

 

Sorry I can't do more, but we're starting to get way off topic (LBS) here, and you'll have better luck getting answers from the DD folk.  Hopefully it's something simple they can help you fix quickly.

[1337DragonWolf]

3 hours ago, aurreth said:

 

Sorry I can't do more, but we're starting to get way off topic (LBS) here, and you'll have better luck getting answers from the DD folk.  Hopefully it's something simple they can help you fix quickly.

Nope. I ended up finding the solution myself after digging deep.

 

As for LBS, I think the delivery time should be extended a bit. Apparently, even when you run there with occasional sessions of sprinting, being attacked a few times (I have the Populated Lands Roads Paths Legendary mod) in combination with following the roads (so I don't get lost, which I still tend to do even after over 5000 hours of playing Skyrim) - well, let's just say there's not enough wiggle room, at least for my pathetic ass, and I ended up being late to delivering to Agni up the the mountains south of Falkreath.

[knots1353]

On 1/2/2022 at 10:45 AM, Laura said:

To everyone who uses SE and has an issue with Origin. Install this version, load a save before the quest and let me know if it works. Fingers crossed.

Huge thanks to aurreth for the hard work.

 

Laura's Bondage Shop v3.32 SSE Alpha Test Version - fixes by aurreth.7z 8.66 MB · 16 downloads

 

FYI, I've just tried running through Origin for the first time here in my LE setup, and am having similar issues:

 

- First run-through - got all the way to the point where Doran(? Not sure - the person she knew from the inn) talks to you in the cell and tells you to claim you don't recognize him... and then after he leaves, nothing happens.  No quest target, no instructions, can't get into the wardrobe to get dressed (as suggested by Darius), nothing.  Can wander all over the house with Doran, Darius and Sloane are standing just outside the bedroom door and not doing anything.  Realized the quest was borked, reloaded from before returning the sword, and tried again.

 

- All remaining runthroughs - got to the point where I'm supposed to follow the guard, and he stops at the top of the first set of stairs, and after behaving indecisively for a bit, he goes back downstairs.   Can't seem to get past this point now.   I am able to run all the way up and into the cell in the bedroom, which locks and the quest stage for follow the guard is marked complete... but nothing happens after that.

 

Since this is LE and not SE, if the fix works for SE, I suspect it might also work for LE.   Or maybe not.

 

 

[CaptainJ03]

4 hours ago, 1337DragonWolf said:

As for LBS, I think the delivery time should be extended a bit. Apparently, even when you run there with occasional sessions of sprinting, being attacked a few times (I have the Populated Lands Roads Paths Legendary mod) in combination with following the roads (so I don't get lost, which I still tend to do even after over 5000 hours of playing Skyrim) - well, let's just say there's not enough wiggle room, at least for my pathetic ass, and I ended up being late to delivering to Agni up the the mountains south of Falkreath.

Can't blame LBS when you're making your own game difficult on purpose.

Agni is prone to failure in her remote location, and the tight timeframe is deliberate, so you don't go astray. Dodge fighting an Run, Lola, Run!

[1337DragonWolf]

25 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

Can't blame LBS when you're making your own game difficult on purpose.

Agni is prone to failure in her remote location, and the tight timeframe is deliberate, so you don't go astray. Dodge fighting an Run, Lola, Run!

Fiiine...

[aurreth]

11 hours ago, 1337DragonWolf said:

Nope. I ended up finding the solution myself after digging deep.

 

As for LBS, I think the delivery time should be extended a bit. Apparently, even when you run there with occasional sessions of sprinting, being attacked a few times (I have the Populated Lands Roads Paths Legendary mod) in combination with following the roads (so I don't get lost, which I still tend to do even after over 5000 hours of playing Skyrim) - well, let's just say there's not enough wiggle room, at least for my pathetic ass, and I ended up being late to delivering to Agni up the the mountains south of Falkreath.

 

Time is supposed to be tight, and you are supposed to fail occasionally.  This is a call-back to Captured Dreams, which had a more complicated system that tracked successes and failures on various missions, and was much more punishing if you failed.

 

You think Agni is bad?  Wait until you are told to make a delivery to a corpse deep in a Dwemer ruin!

 

(The choice of customer is random, and will occasionally pick a named corpse, or an NPC that is only accessible in the middle of some other quest; always quicksave before requesting a delivery mission.)

[aurreth]

10 hours ago, knots1353 said:

 

FYI, I've just tried running through Origin for the first time here in my LE setup, and am having similar issues:

 

- First run-through - got all the way to the point where Doran(? Not sure - the person she knew from the inn) talks to you in the cell and tells you to claim you don't recognize him... and then after he leaves, nothing happens.  No quest target, no instructions, can't get into the wardrobe to get dressed (as suggested by Darius), nothing.  Can wander all over the house with Doran, Darius and Sloane are standing just outside the bedroom door and not doing anything.  Realized the quest was borked, reloaded from before returning the sword, and tried again.

 

- All remaining runthroughs - got to the point where I'm supposed to follow the guard, and he stops at the top of the first set of stairs, and after behaving indecisively for a bit, he goes back downstairs.   Can't seem to get past this point now.   I am able to run all the way up and into the cell in the bedroom, which locks and the quest stage for follow the guard is marked complete... but nothing happens after that.

 

Since this is LE and not SE, if the fix works for SE, I suspect it might also work for LE.   Or maybe not.

 

I can't do anything about LE, I only have access to SE.  However, Laura is waiting for feedback on my SE fix:  if it solves the problems for SE she'll go ahead and incorporate the same fix into LE for the next release, and then they'll be automatically carried over to SE when it is converted.

 

You aren't supposed to get clothes out of the wardrobe.  It's likely that you were going to, and then attend dinner, when Laura wrote that dialogue, but that scene never made it into production.  There are a couple of cut scenes in the code, and we should all be glad of that because they were not nice.  What's supposed to happen is Doran, Darius and Sloane come back into the room and have a conversation.  So one of them is stuck, probably Doran.

 

The first guard and steps   What's happening there is he has trouble getting up steps for some reason, so he get stuck.  The quest then stalls, because that guard is supposed to say something when you get to the bedroom cell, and things won't continue properly until he does.  If he can't get up the stairs he'll return to his starting position and either stand there, or try again.  Try targeting him in the console, then running up to the bedroom and using the console to move him to you.  You can also try quicksaving in the cell downstairs before you sleep and reloading to that.  Sometimes that helps.

 

Edit:  I suspect the guard's step problem can be fixed by upping his movement speed.  If you want to test this, when he starts leading you upstairs target him in the console and type in "setav speedmult 110".  That gives him a 10% boost in speed, which probably makes his walking pace the same as your normal movement speed.  If that's too fast try 105.  If speeding him up helps I can make a permanent change to the NPC record.

Edited January 4, 2022 by aurreth

[Laura]

12 hours ago, 1337DragonWolf said:

Nope. I ended up finding the solution myself after digging deep.

 

As for LBS, I think the delivery time should be extended a bit. Apparently, even when you run there with occasional sessions of sprinting, being attacked a few times (I have the Populated Lands Roads Paths Legendary mod) in combination with following the roads (so I don't get lost, which I still tend to do even after over 5000 hours of playing Skyrim) - well, let's just say there's not enough wiggle room, at least for my pathetic ass, and I ended up being late to delivering to Agni up the the mountains south of Falkreath.

The delivery timer is a tricky one. I can't make a different timer for every possible customer so I have one for every hold. So it can be extra difficult when the customer is at the furthest point of that hold. Sorry, can't do much about that without making the rest too easy.

 

 

 

 

10 hours ago, knots1353 said:

 

FYI, I've just tried running through Origin for the first time here in my LE setup, and am having similar issues:

 

- First run-through - got all the way to the point where Doran(? Not sure - the person she knew from the inn) talks to you in the cell and tells you to claim you don't recognize him... and then after he leaves, nothing happens.  No quest target, no instructions, can't get into the wardrobe to get dressed (as suggested by Darius), nothing.  Can wander all over the house with Doran, Darius and Sloane are standing just outside the bedroom door and not doing anything.  Realized the quest was borked, reloaded from before returning the sword, and tried again.

 

- All remaining runthroughs - got to the point where I'm supposed to follow the guard, and he stops at the top of the first set of stairs, and after behaving indecisively for a bit, he goes back downstairs.   Can't seem to get past this point now.   I am able to run all the way up and into the cell in the bedroom, which locks and the quest stage for follow the guard is marked complete... but nothing happens after that.

 

Since this is LE and not SE, if the fix works for SE, I suspect it might also work for LE.   Or maybe not.

I haven't heard of it happening in LE yet. This sounds a bit like pathing is borked in your game. Not sure if it's related to the issue people have with SE.

Do you have mods that randomly take control is npcs?

Does this happen everytime?

If so, does this also happen with a new game?

[1337DragonWolf]

3 hours ago, Laura said:

The delivery timer is a tricky one. I can't make a different timer for every possible customer so I have one for every hold. So it can be extra difficult when the customer is at the furthest point of that hold. Sorry, can't do much about that without making the rest too easy.

Poo. Should have been an Altmer. Taller = faster.

[Quoozey]

33 minutes ago, 1337DragonWolf said:

Poo. Should have been an Altmer. Taller = faster.

If you haven't avoided Helgen, rank 3 Whirlwind Sprint. Make sure to be the biggest Talos fan boy/girl possible by wearing his amulets and praying at his shrines.

Edited January 4, 2022 by rainbowgasm

[1337DragonWolf]

6 hours ago, rainbowgasm said:

If you haven't avoided Helgen, rank 3 Whirlwind Sprint. Make sure to be the biggest Talos fan boy/girl possible by wearing his amulets and praying at his shrines.

But... the Thalmor!

[knots1353]

12 hours ago, aurreth said:

 

I can't do anything about LE, I only have access to SE.  However, Laura is waiting for feedback on my SE fix:  if it solves the problems for SE she'll go ahead and incorporate the same fix into LE for the next release, and then they'll be automatically carried over to SE when it is converted.

 

You aren't supposed to get clothes out of the wardrobe.  It's likely that you were going to, and then attend dinner, when Laura wrote that dialogue, but that scene never made it into production.  There are a couple of cut scenes in the code, and we should all be glad of that because they were not nice.  What's supposed to happen is Doran, Darius and Sloane come back into the room and have a conversation.  So one of them is stuck, probably Doran.

 

The first guard and steps   What's happening there is he has trouble getting up steps for some reason, so he get stuck.  The quest then stalls, because that guard is supposed to say something when you get to the bedroom cell, and things won't continue properly until he does.  If he can't get up the stairs he'll return to his starting position and either stand there, or try again.  Try targeting him in the console, then running up to the bedroom and using the console to move him to you.  You can also try quicksaving in the cell downstairs before you sleep and reloading to that.  Sometimes that helps.

 

Edit:  I suspect the guard's step problem can be fixed by upping his movement speed.  If you want to test this, when he starts leading you upstairs target him in the console and type in "setav speedmult 110".  That gives him a 10% boost in speed, which probably makes his walking pace the same as your normal movement speed.  If that's too fast try 105.  If speeding him up helps I can make a permanent change to the NPC record.

 

I *did* try quicksaving in the cell downstairs before sleeping and tried several times to get the guard to continue, but it failed each time - I think I tried this 5 or 6 times in a row before giving up and looking here to see if there was a workaround.  (I was actually trying to quicksave at each stage before sleeping just in case the original problem happened again, but then I kept getting stuck at the guard spot, which didn't happen the first time through.)  That said, I just tried your speedmult suggestion and got past that point, so either it worked or I accidentally got through the guard section like I did the first time.  I did notice the guard movement stuttering twice going up each stairway, and a slight pause at the top of the second stair in particular.

 

 

12 hours ago, Laura said:

The delivery timer is a tricky one. I can't make a different timer for every possible customer so I have one for every hold. So it can be extra difficult when the customer is at the furthest point of that hold. Sorry, can't do much about that without making the rest too easy.

 

 

 

 

I haven't heard of it happening in LE yet. This sounds a bit like pathing is borked in your game. Not sure if it's related to the issue people have with SE.

Do you have mods that randomly take control is npcs?

Does this happen everytime?

If so, does this also happen with a new game?

The only thing I have which could can take control of an NPC is Deviously Cursed Loot, but after the initial problem, I went into that and turned off pretty much everything before retrying and getting the guard issue repeatedly.  But after getting past the guard section as noted above, I was able to go through the entire quest successfully this time.

As I did, I noticed something I didn't mention the first time because it seemed irrelevant, but perhaps it wasn't -- in each of the sleep scenes before I got stuck in the bedroom the first time, it simply faded to black when you used the bed and then faded up again.   With that last sleep before the issue, it instead forces you to lay down on the bed and doesn't fade out.   During the first pass, I waited, and waited, and didn't seem to be getting up through the scene with Darius and Sloane, and then when Donal came in and talked to me, I was worried I hadn't gotten dressed first, so as he was finishing his talk and walking out, I hit E to get out of bed, which I did, and then I was able to wander around as I reported.

 

This time through I tried hitting E right at the start, thinking maybe that caused the problem, but it immediately forced me to lay down on the bed again.  I realized that the laying on the bed was actually part of both the Darius/Sloane scene and the Donal scene although it would have made more sense for me to have her stand up when she saw Donal arrive.  So I stayed laying in the bed until Donal was done, and walked out of the room, and then it forced me to stand up and walk out of the cage for the next bit.   Everything seemed to go okay from that point onwards.

 

Well... sort of, anyway.   During the escape scene, when I fell to the floor and it started in on the following scene with me still on the floor and the camera tilted crazily, I thought perhaps it had broken again, because Hilde had no head throughout the scene with the Stranger.   But it seemed to finish fine and got through the rest of the quest just fine.   

[aurreth]

8 hours ago, knots1353 said:

Spoilers

 

Glad it worked.  The guard's AI is somewhat fragile, no idea why.  He has a fascination with Hinde that shouldn't be there and that bugs him out.  If you look, during those pauses at the top of the stairs his head turns to track Hinde, even though she's in the basement one or two floors below him.  Discovering that Hinde was causing the guard to bug out took a lot of observations by a lot of people, and I went through a number of different solutions before finding one that worked.  I may look at the guard's actual AI sometime out of curiosity, but there's a big difference between adding two lines to the master script and messing with an AI package or scene   

 

No, it doesn't fade out during that last sleep.  Part of that is so you can listen in on the conversation between Sloane and Darius, part is because there are cut scenes that Laura chose not to include because they are either too brutal or go against the mod's rule of "no non-consensual sex".  This results in some scene transitions that aren't as smooth as they could be, or pauses that feel a bit too long.

 

There's also a bug where the Stranger may appear with Katarina during her initial scene instead of the Warden.  Most people are focused on Kat so they don't notice.  Again this is a problem with the scene, not the code, so I'm not trying to fix it.  Laura is focused on completing the story, she's not worried about minor bugs or inconsistencies right now, so it's not likely to get fixed any time soon.

 

 

 

[Laura]

14 hours ago, knots1353 said:

 

I *did* try quicksaving in the cell downstairs before sleeping and tried several times to get the guard to continue, but it failed each time - I think I tried this 5 or 6 times in a row before giving up and looking here to see if there was a workaround.  (I was actually trying to quicksave at each stage before sleeping just in case the original problem happened again, but then I kept getting stuck at the guard spot, which didn't happen the first time through.)  That said, I just tried your speedmult suggestion and got past that point, so either it worked or I accidentally got through the guard section like I did the first time.  I did notice the guard movement stuttering twice going up each stairway, and a slight pause at the top of the second stair in particular.

 

 

The only thing I have which could can take control of an NPC is Deviously Cursed Loot, but after the initial problem, I went into that and turned off pretty much everything before retrying and getting the guard issue repeatedly.  But after getting past the guard section as noted above, I was able to go through the entire quest successfully this time.

Good to hear it worked.

 

14 hours ago, knots1353 said:

As I did, I noticed something I didn't mention the first time because it seemed irrelevant, but perhaps it wasn't -- in each of the sleep scenes before I got stuck in the bedroom the first time, it simply faded to black when you used the bed and then faded up again.   With that last sleep before the issue, it instead forces you to lay down on the bed and doesn't fade out.   During the first pass, I waited, and waited, and didn't seem to be getting up through the scene with Darius and Sloane, and then when Donal came in and talked to me, I was worried I hadn't gotten dressed first, so as he was finishing his talk and walking out, I hit E to get out of bed, which I did, and then I was able to wander around as I reported.

They were both originally just the first one. Just a fade to black. But then I added the part with Darius and the player had to be on the bed for that.

 

14 hours ago, knots1353 said:

This time through I tried hitting E right at the start, thinking maybe that caused the problem, but it immediately forced me to lay down on the bed again.  I realized that the laying on the bed was actually part of both the Darius/Sloane scene and the Donal scene although it would have made more sense for me to have her stand up when she saw Donal arrive.  So I stayed laying in the bed until Donal was done, and walked out of the room, and then it forced me to stand up and walk out of the cage for the next bit.   Everything seemed to go okay from that point onwards.

The idea is that Glemme (the player) wasn't looking and only noticed it was Doran when he came closer. But when he gets close and I think before he starts talking, you should get up automatically.

 

14 hours ago, knots1353 said:

Well... sort of, anyway.   During the escape scene, when I fell to the floor and it started in on the following scene with me still on the floor and the camera tilted crazily, I thought perhaps it had broken again, because Hilde had no head throughout the scene with the Stranger.   But it seemed to finish fine and got through the rest of the quest just fine.   

The pov is supposed to be low, but Hinde should have a head and the player shouldn't have fallen through the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, aurreth said:

The guard's AI is somewhat fragile, no idea why.  He has a fascination with Hinde that shouldn't be there and that bugs him out.  If you look, during those pauses at the top of the stairs his head turns to track Hinde, even though she's in the basement one or two floors below him.  Discovering that Hinde was causing the guard to bug out took a lot of observations by a lot of people, and I went through a number of different solutions before finding one that worked.  I may look at the guard's actual AI sometime out of curiosity, but there's a big difference between adding two lines to the master script and messing with an AI package or scene   

The pathing is Skyrim is buggy by default. If I find a way to fix it I'll fix it, but I'm not sure if I can do anything about this. I played some Skyrim a while ago and it's just as buggy in the vanilla quests.

 

4 hours ago, aurreth said:

No, it doesn't fade out during that last sleep.  Part of that is so you can listen in on the conversation between Sloane and Darius, part is because there are cut scenes that Laura chose not to include because they are either too brutal or go against the mod's rule of "no non-consensual sex".  This results in some scene transitions that aren't as smooth as they could be, or pauses that feel a bit too long.

It was never planned to add non-consensual sex anywhere. But origin's development was really tricky. It went through a lot of changes after it was already playable. I changed and rewrote stuff and even swapped and moved certain parts.

 

4 hours ago, aurreth said:

There's also a bug where the Stranger may appear with Katarina during her initial scene instead of the Warden.  Most people are focused on Kat so they don't notice.  Again this is a problem with the scene, not the code, so I'm not trying to fix it.  Laura is focused on completing the story, she's not worried about minor bugs or inconsistencies right now, so it's not likely to get fixed any time soon.

Nerver heard of that one. I don't know how that would go wrong. But I am still looking to fix errors and stuff. Just no big overhauls or additions. So keep the feedback coming.

[aurreth]

21 minutes ago, Laura said:

It was never planned to add non-consensual sex anywhere. But origin's development was really tricky. It went through a lot of changes after it was already playable. I changed and rewrote stuff and even swapped and moved certain parts.

 

Yup, I can see that in the code.  I do kinda wish you'd left the temple scene in at the end, if only to provide more background for Sona, but I can see why you went the other way.

 

24 minutes ago, Laura said:

The pathing is Skyrim is buggy by default. If I find a way to fix it I'll fix it, but I'm not sure if I can do anything about this. I played some Skyrim a while ago and it's just as buggy in the vanilla quests.

 

I noticed a conditional on the Laura Guard AI package that ties it to SQ07, and then you reuse those guards in SQ09, which means your AI package won't be used for Origin?  I'm not sure how AI packages work, or if that would cause an issue.

 

27 minutes ago, Laura said:

Nerver heard of that one. I don't know how that would go wrong. But I am still looking to fix errors and stuff. Just no big overhauls or additions. So keep the feedback coming.

 

My fix might have introduced this bug.  I'm not sure how, since the script only enables the Stranger (in the storage room) and then immediately moves him to his starting position outside Glemme's cell, but who knows?  It might be something in the scene itself, and I haven't gotten brave enough to start looking at those yet.    Maybe moving him outside the cell to the storage room is causing some confusion.  Anyway it doesn't affect the game play, and most people are probably too busy looking at Katarina to notice.  

[Taki17]

46 minutes ago, aurreth said:

I noticed a conditional on the Laura Guard AI package that ties it to SQ07, and then you reuse those guards in SQ09, which means your AI package won't be used for Origin?  I'm not sure how AI packages work, or if that would cause an issue.

The process would be evaluating the packages by their conditions starting from the top of the stack, and the first package to have any or all conditions to be met will be executed. Meaning if the guard in question has an AI package that's only supposed to play when SQ07 is active, you place it at the top of the stack, and it gets checked with every tick the NPC packages are evaluated. And it only should fire when the quest is active.

[aurreth]

28 minutes ago, Taki17 said:

The process would be evaluating the packages by their conditions starting from the top of the stack, and the first package to have any or all conditions to be met will be executed. Meaning if the guard in question has an AI package that's only supposed to play when SQ07 is active, you place it at the top of the stack, and it gets checked with every tick the NPC packages are evaluated. And it only should fire when the quest is active.

 

It's the only AI package the guard has.  I assume that if that one doesn't fire it reverts to the base NPC package.  What I don't know is if this would cause some of the behavioral issues in SQ09, such as a tendency at various points to try and return to his starting location before the scene forces him to continue (he's been known to stop at the top of the first flight of steps and then go back down if the scene or script lags too much.)

 

[Tetras66]

1 hour ago, aurreth said:

 

It's the only AI package the guard has.  I assume that if that one doesn't fire it reverts to the base NPC package.  What I don't know is if this would cause some of the behavioral issues in SQ09, such as a tendency at various points to try and return to his starting location before the scene forces him to continue (he's been known to stop at the top of the first flight of steps and then go back down if the scene or script lags too much.)

 

 

My experience so far is that unless a package is active, then an NPC will always return to their starting position, unless they have something to do in a scene (force greets will also hold them in position, since they're an AI package). If there's unexpected lag, this can cause NPCs to leave an area before a scene progresses. In my scenes, I tell them to stay put while another actor is doing something. There's probably a better way to do it, I never checked how the vanilla scenes deal with that.

[Laura]

25 minutes ago, Tetras66 said:

My experience so far is that unless a package is active, then an NPC will always return to their starting position, unless they have something to do in a scene (force greets will also hold them in position, since they're an AI package). If there's unexpected lag, this can cause NPCs to leave an area before a scene progresses. In my scenes, I tell them to stay put while another actor is doing something. There's probably a better way to do it, I never checked how the vanilla scenes deal with that.

All actors have a default package that's used when they have no set AI package. They'll do the basic sandbox package in that area. During a sandbox them randomly walk towards markers that are enabled for sandboxing. If there is only one marker there they'll just stand there like an idiot.

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, aurreth said:

It's the only AI package the guard has.  I assume that if that one doesn't fire it reverts to the base NPC package.  What I don't know is if this would cause some of the behavioral issues in SQ09, such as a tendency at various points to try and return to his starting location before the scene forces him to continue (he's been known to stop at the top of the first flight of steps and then go back down if the scene or script lags too much.)

 

In that scene, the guard follows a path of multiple markers in sequence. It's more reliable than one big walk. There is one of those markers on the top of the stairs. Him stopping could mean that the scene stopped, something else took control of him somehow or that he couldn't find the way to the next marker. My guess is the last one. Skyrim and pathing don't get along that well.

[aurreth]

23 minutes ago, Tetras66 said:

 

My experience so far is that unless a package is active, then an NPC will always return to their starting position, unless they have something to do in a scene (force greets will also hold them in position, since they're an AI package). If there's unexpected lag, this can cause NPCs to leave an area before a scene progresses. In my scenes, I tell them to stay put while another actor is doing something. There's probably a better way to do it, I never checked how the vanilla scenes deal with that.

 

So that's likely at least part of the problem.  If someone is running a script heavy layout there's not enough fine control in the scene to stop the guard from phoning home if things lag.  The scene is probably set up in phases, cell to stairs, up the stairs, top to 2nd set of stairs, up those stairs, into bedroom.  Because the stairs slow him down things are lagging a bit at the top of them during the handoff to the next phase, and the guard tried to break free.

 

Part of this is that stairs are poorly implemented by Bethesda, causing the guard to slow down and not hit is marks on time.  Laura's (the author) pathing tends to be very time dependent, as I found out when I put Laura (the character) in a hobble dress and she couldn't move from the counter to her chair because her movement would time out.  So we need to ask Laura (author) to allow some extra time for movement during scenes.

[aurreth]

2 minutes ago, Laura said:

In that scene, the guard follows a path of multiple markers in sequence. It's more reliable than one big walk. There is one of those markers on the top of the stairs. Him stopping could mean that the scene stopped, something else took control of him somehow or that he couldn't find the way to the next marker. My guess is the last one. Skyrim and pathing don't get along that well.

 

In the AI package you can set the default walk speed for the actor.  By default it's that slow, annoying walk that has you running over them every time you have to follow someone.  Maybe bumping that up to "fast walk" would help the timing, so they'd hit the markers a bit sooner and have more processing time to find the next one.

 

[aurreth]

I would also like to say that chili is much better the second day   

[knots1353]

6 hours ago, Laura said:

Good to hear it worked.

 

Me too.  Entertaining questline, even if it did kind of kill my favorite theory from going through these quests many moons ago before this quest was added:

 

Spoiler

I was more or less convinced that the "perfect girl" was actually the PC, and the rumors had all come from that brief stint pretending to be a slave to get the ledger...    OTOH, maybe that's still true and this is all a misdirection...

 

[Laura]

12 hours ago, aurreth said:

So that's likely at least part of the problem.  If someone is running a script heavy layout there's not enough fine control in the scene to stop the guard from phoning home if things lag.  The scene is probably set up in phases, cell to stairs, up the stairs, top to 2nd set of stairs, up those stairs, into bedroom.  Because the stairs slow him down things are lagging a bit at the top of them during the handoff to the next phase, and the guard tried to break free.

From what I understand, everything including scenes and packages are basically scripts. So someone with an overloaded script engine will also have issues with scenes and stuff. Then again, Skyrim also sometimes randomly mucks it up in stable games.

 

12 hours ago, aurreth said:

Part of this is that stairs are poorly implemented by Bethesda, causing the guard to slow down and not hit is marks on time.  Laura's (the author) pathing tends to be very time dependent, as I found out when I put Laura (the character) in a hobble dress and she couldn't move from the counter to her chair because her movement would time out.  So we need to ask Laura (author) to allow some extra time for movement during scenes.

I don't know of any package timers. The only procedure in the travel package is just traveling. And there are no flags or options for a timer. I just use the vanilla travel package. There's also a quest where a guy walks from city to city and that works fine. But maybe I'm missing something.

 

12 hours ago, aurreth said:

In the AI package you can set the default walk speed for the actor.  By default it's that slow, annoying walk that has you running over them every time you have to follow someone.  Maybe bumping that up to "fast walk" would help the timing, so they'd hit the markers a bit sooner and have more processing time to find the next one.

Don't know about the timing, but I agree that following a slow person is annoying.

 

12 hours ago, aurreth said:

I would also like to say that chili is much better the second day   

That's because chili is always amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, knots1353 said:

Me too.  Entertaining questline, even if it did kind of kill my favorite theory from going through these quests many moons ago before this quest was added:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I was more or less convinced that the "perfect girl" was actually the PC, and the rumors had all come from that brief stint pretending to be a slave to get the ledger...    OTOH, maybe that's still true and this is all a misdirection...

 

Your theory isn't completely off the table. Things could've changed or people were maybe lying. No one knows.

[RequiemNoi]

Currently have an issue where, upon talking to Laura or Katarina, I have the generic dialogue options for my other "devious" mods. Usually, they have their normal dialogue along with those. I'm not sure what changed - it literally worked on my last save (which I had to delete... some jazz with accidentally breaking the game by giving myself some story-related keys, haha). Anyone else have the same issue?