Why does everything about Skyrim modding need to be so hard? (and please don't just say Bethesda)

[wokking56]

Most all my points have already been made here, first and foremost being as stated elsewhere is permissions. Secondly is what exactly do you wish to have modded, maybe just a better body and some textures. Ok now do you want bodyslide capabilities or not? While these are seemingly simple modifications it can quickly become overwhelming. This being LL numerous mods deal with sexual behaviors, so now the question becomes what content are you personally comfortable with? Would you like rape, slavery, bestiality, prostitution or perhaps merely basic consensual sex? Then mix in the fact that many mods do basically the same thing (SL Defeat and SL Submit come to mind). Some of these mods work perfectly fine alongside each other while others will cause endless problems.

 

Now assuming some one could somehow get all the needed permissions, just how many packs would they have to make to satisfy the wants and needs of the myriad of players out there. So some poor sucker would need to go through possibly tens of thousands of mod combinations just to make your new modding experience easier. When I started out I screwed up numerous times and had to uninstall and start over from scratch. It sucks but that is the way you learn what you and your system are capable of, trial and error. I have an older mid-ranged system so I have had to pass on a few mods I really want because they are just too script heavy for my machine. You grow slowly and compromise here and there to get close to what you want.

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, Psalam said:

That mod was not designed to be compatible with that other mod.

 

Why not?

1. With more than 100,000 mods out there, nobody can possibly know everything that has been done.  This is especially true when many mods' names reflect only a portion of what they do.
2. Assuming I know of said mod, if I want to make my mod compatible with another mod, I may be inherently taking on anything that mod does -- good or bad.  If I think a mod is doing something poorly, but it is commonly used, I am faced with a conundrum:

• I estimate it will take "X1" hours to work around the mod's issues.
• I estimate it will take "Y1" hours to make something better for my own use and not need that one.
• If Y1 <= X1, then why on earth would I waste time and effort to make it compatible?

This leads to @Nymra's complaint of mods duplicating effects, but what is the real alternative?  Spend X1+Y1 hours on a function or integration that most people (including myself) wouldn't want?

 

A hell of a lot of mods have elements within them that are there because the mod author saw the "alternatives" and thought to themselves "I don't need that other mod, I can do it better/faster/leaner/with less baggage."  (Whether they were right in thinking this or not is irrelevant.)

 

It is often more hassle than it is worth to work with another person's mod, trying to make them gel.  Newsflash: under the hood, there are often many ways to accomplish a task.  Those ways might all serve a single purpose well, but when mixed with another (in an attempt to be compatible), they fail completely or create ludicrous complications.

 

I am dealing with this conundrum right now:

 

I sorely want to integrate my mod fully with an existing, established, commonly used mod.  On the surface, they look like they should gel very well.  (I frankly only use a small fraction of that mod's effects, but they were game-changing for me and I doubt I would be doing my own mod if not for that one.  Much gratitude is owed there.)

 

The problem?  Well, under the hood that other mod is old, uses framework code from many years ago (not the current code), has passed through more than one modder's hands in the course of its development and contains a fair bit of junk code that looks like unfinished side-projects that casual users don't see.  It does not perform the way I would like it to, and ultimately contains only a few effects I need.

 

I have the resources to completely replicate everything the older mod does (in many cases, doing it better I feel), and this removes a soft dependency from my own mod and allows me to deliver something more in-line with what I want.

 

What do I do with that?

[Nymra]

18 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

1. With more than 100,000 mods out there, nobody can possibly know everything that has been done.  This is especially true when many mods' names reflect only a portion of what they do.
2. Assuming I know of said mod, if I want to make my mod compatible with another mod, I may be inherently taking on anything that mod does -- good or bad.  If I think a mod is doing something poorly, but it is commonly used, I am faced with a conundrum:

• I estimate it will take "X1" hours to work around the mod's issues.
• I estimate it will take "Y1" hours to make something better for my own use and not need that one.
• If Y1 <= X1, then why on earth would I waste time and effort to make it compatible?

You massively exaggerate here.

Mostly I am talking about like 5 mods that do the same and that are well known, especially on smaller Loverslab.

 

Take Defeat mods for example. We have plenty, but all have major flaws or lack desired functionality. if you would combine them all they would be perfect, but not as 5 mods but as 1. And since Defeat is a major "connection" between combat and sexual content, it still amazes me that we have no... "better" or more recent mods who solve that.

 

We have mods with Defeat functionality:
- SL Defeat

- Naked Dungeons

- MCG

- DCL

- SL Submit

- Dragonborn in Distress

- in theory SD+

- Daymol

- I bet I forgot at least 2

 

Instead we could have a Defeat mod that works like Simple Slavery/Daymol but actually maintained/working that can be tied in with other mods maybe (like Daymol and Defeat tried). That is all I am talking about. 

 

18 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

This leads to @Nymra's complaint of mods duplicating effects, but what is the real alternative?  Spend X1+Y1 hours on a function or integration that most people (including myself) wouldn't want?

Can you please quote me correctly? Might be you are annoyed by my posts, but you keep quoting me incorrectly.

I do no complain about mods having duplicate effects, I just said it is maybe a waste of time for both modders and mod users and "in a perfect world" could be organised better.

 

18 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

A hell of a lot of mods have elements within them that are there because the mod author saw the "alternatives" and thought to themselves "I don't need that other mod, I can do it better/faster/leaner/with less baggage."  (Whether they were right in thinking this or not is irrelevant.)

 

It is often more hassle than it is worth to work with another person's mod, trying to make them gel.  Newsflash: under the hood, there are often many ways to accomplish a task.  Those ways might all serve a single purpose well, but when mixed with another (in an attempt to be compatible), they fail completely or create ludicrous complications.

 

Usually these mods have more problems than they solve.

SL Defeat is complex, but for a reason. Other Defeat mods break more often, because they do not consider all the shit that can happen around a combat situation and a subsequent Rape. At the same time they offer better functionality elsewhere (compareing Defeat and Naked Dungeons Immortality feature for example). See here where I explain how I try to use several Defeat mods parallel by using SM Essential Player (a non related Nexus Mod) to connect all these mods (works like a charm, while daymol just fails completly despite basically beeing designed with something like that in mind).

 

Spoiler

 

 

18 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

I am dealing with this conundrum right now:

 

I sorely want to integrate my mod fully with an existing, established, commonly used mod.  On the surface, they look like they should gel very well.  (I frankly only use a small fraction of that mod's effects, but they were game-changing for me and I doubt I would be doing my own mod if not for that one.  Much gratitude is owed there.)

 

The problem?  Well, under the hood that other mod is old, uses framework code from many years ago (not the current code), has passed through more than one modder's hands in the course of its development and contains a fair bit of junk code that looks like unfinished side-projects that casual users don't see.  It does not perform the way I would like it to, and ultimately contains only a few effects I need.

 

I have the resources to completely replicate everything the older mod does (in many cases, doing it better I feel), and this removes a soft dependency from my own mod and allows me to deliver something more in-line with what I want.

 

What do I do with that?

That is hard to tell because I think this would be solved on a case to case basis. You talk about Estrus Chaurus? 
If you can remove a soft dependency, go for it? I dont think this would mean that you cannot use the older mod and your mod at the same time, no?

And if your newer mod replaces the older one completly, where is the problem? Many mods do it. Slaverun, POP they all replace the originals. 

And if your mod is newer and maintained, modders and mod users might switch using your mod as depencency? 

 

 

 

[Seijin8]

14 minutes ago, Nymra said:

You massively exaggerate here.

Not exaggerating in the least.  The most recently dropped mod on Nexus as of the time I am writing this is number #99172.  Fair to say that there's at least another 828 mods not found on Nexus.

15 minutes ago, Nymra said:

Take Defeat mods for example. We have plenty, but all have major flaws or lack desired functionality

I await your answer of how to resolve these conflicts in actual, useful terms that don't resolve down to: somebody else just do the thing.

16 minutes ago, Nymra said:

Can you please quote me correctly?

In what way is this not a complaint about duplication?

21 minutes ago, Nymra said:

Usually these mods have more problems than they solve.

How should they have done it better?  What elements of the mods are incorrect?  When mods need to use OnHit() events to trigger their effects, how should they work together the avoid race conditions?

23 minutes ago, Nymra said:

That is hard to tell because I think this would be solved on a case to case basis. You talk about Estrus Chaurus? 
If you can remove a soft dependency, go for it? I dont think this would mean that you cannot use the older mod and your mod at the same time, no?

And if your newer mod replaces the older one completly, where is the problem? Many mods do it. Slaverun, POP they all replace the originals. 

And if your mod is newer and maintained, modders and mod users might switch using your mod as depencency?

Yes, EC was the mod I was mentioning.

 

If both are handling birth, then how would they work together?  They can't.  It is one or the other.

 

If I "take over" that function, how do I "cut out" EC without breaking its functionality for other things? (Yes, it can be done, but only by rewriting its scripts.  In doing that, some of EC's MCM options will no longer do what they say and then that mod page starts getting users asking "why isn't it working" through no fault of the author.)  Most everything else it does is of no use to me, but other people like it and use it, so how many hours do I invest in trying to let it run parallel in script-intensive situations that likely cause failures in one or both mods?

 

No matter how I do that, individual users will have to take the time to understand why one thing works (or doesn't) and what the trade-offs are.

 

And to bring this back to the "mod pack" discussion, how would you fit both mods into a single mod pack?  If I go my own way with it, they will be inherently incompatible.  The user would have to know that and plan accordingly, turning some MCM options on or off depending on their desired result.

 

Please reconcile your quote above (case by case, maybe use both together, maybe completely replace) with the idea of developing simple frameworks and mod packs.

 

It just doesn't work.  Not a single concrete example has been put forth of how any of this would actually work.

 

Nymra, I'm sorry if you are feeling attacked, I am sure you are a perfectly wonderful person to know.  But in this instance, you have come to exemplify the exact opposite side of this issue for me.

 

One view: Mod-users are asking for "simple" things that help "everyone"

The other view: Mod users asking the very few people actually doing the work to do it "differently" and "better" while having no grasp of what they are actually asking, and no willingness to do the work themselves.

I hesitate to ask who you think should do the "enforcing" over another person's hard work.

[Nymra]

39 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

Not exaggerating in the least.  The most recently dropped mod on Nexus as of the time I am writing this is number #99172.  Fair to say that there's at least another 828 mods not found on Nexus.

I mean you cant just take the total number of mods. As I said, I was talking about special cases of mods. Usually when you have one issue, there is only a small number of mods connected to it. And it would not be hard for a modder to have those mods in mind when making his new one.

 

Incompatibilies happen, no problem. But especially on loverslab there seem to be more incompatibilities then necessary, while some are even placed to seemingly make other mods redundant or attack them in a way (like "do not use this mod together with mine. I now made them incompatible by design anyway"). Yes, those instances might be rare and also solved, but I find it hillarious that they even occur. Its like a mod war o_O 

 

 

Quote

I await your answer of how to resolve these conflicts in actual, useful terms that don't resolve down to: somebody else just do the thing.

 

Well, concept work is... hard work. That is what I know from my own projects. So diving into that without having the slightest chance of anything of it ever beeing picked up is... more waste of time.

I admit that I know too little of the background of modding and of how things could be achieved. But I know that what one mod can do, another should also be able to.

 

I will make a more complex example without hopefully digging too deep:

 

UNIFIED DEFEAT 0.1 

1. if player is defeated in combat it is send into player essential (on knees) and receives a wound (basically like SM Player Essential mod)., Player can wiggle free (Strafing) and if he does fast enough he can continue fight. If not he is send to rape 

2. OPTIONAL IN MCM: Dialogue options like Defeat offers (bribe/talk your way out or offer to play nice)

3. RAPE Starts. Like with DEFEAT: works for humans and creatures alike. Options to enable 3some 4some 5some for humans/creatures.

4. NEW OPTION: set max number of rape scenes (independent of number of rapers) like with NDUN can do. 

5. AFTERMATH: like with Defeat. You can choose several outcomes. Simple Slavery, Robbery. But you can also choose Local Slavery for SD+ or to trigger a Slavery event of Dragonborn in Distress. Or Trigger Quests from Daymol (when installed). 

6. NEW AFTERMATH: Can choose Naked Dungeons like local captivity. A ZAP Furniture is spawned and wiggling out takes time and stamina and has a detection chance (that would be more than NDUN does now). 

7. Possible NEW AFTERMATH: tie in with SD Cages mod. When cage is detected, bandits will lock player inside. Cages should idealy also be able to be "wiggled out" like with furnitures. Mabye better to just tie in with SD+. But SD+ has no escape working mechanism, so this all is in vain anyway. 

8. Integration of Devious Decives like Defeat does. 

9. Integrate Follower Support like Defeat does

10. integrate Deviously Helpless functionality. So if player has devices after rape he must escape without beeing raped again

Also if he has certain devices, the combat wont start maybe and the rape scene direcntly (auto submit). 

 

Basically this would just be DEFEAT plus a little bit of extras from all the other mods.

Bcause of the options you could make this a simple -> defeated, no talking, 1 rape scene -> finish mod for people who want this to be short.

Or it could be turned into a massive rape scenario with some small escaping chance, a vast post-rape variation and tie in with other slavery mods.

 

In Theory (this is where I know too little), everything needed should already be there in the form of existing mod funtionalities (Scritps?) but would require to be merged into Defeat basically. 

 

As for the shortcommings of the mentioned mods (NOTE: This is the focus only on the major negative stuff and all of these mods have of course a lot of very good features) 

 

- SL Defeat 

Too Long, Too many scenes often, too little options, too much talking, seems also buggy even with recent fix attempts

 

- Naked Dungeons

Breaks when rapers are attacked, no creature group scenes, draws all kinds of NPCs and critters which breaks immersion, post-rape scenarios too unsophisitaced and partially broken

 

- MCG

From the last time I checked it has no options and offers too little

 

- DCL

From the last time I checked it has no options and offers too little

 

- SL Submit

Havent tested Player defeat yet

 

- Dragonborn in Distress

Takes too long. Is basically no Defeat mod but a Post-Rape mod. Too hard to escape, too much gameplay impact because of the debuffs applied and the timers. too little options

 

- in theory SD+

Enslavement often bugs out, no real Defeat Scenerio (no rape), no working escpaing mechanism, boring master behaviour

 

- Daymol

bleedout is too buggy to work well and (from my eyes) completly unnecessary. Very buggy, could not get it to trigger most of the stuff it does reliably. 

Ties in only with Defeat. Great potential, but too complex and not nearly enough MCM options

 

 

 

Quote

Yes, EC was the mod I was mentioning.

 

If both are handling birth, then how would they work together?  They can't.  It is one or the other.

 

If I "take over" that function, how do I "cut out" EC without breaking its functionality for other things? (Yes, it can be done, but only by rewriting its scripts.  In doing that, some of EC's MCM options will no longer do what they say and then that mod page starts getting users asking "why isn't it working" through no fault of the author.)  Most everything else it does is of no use to me, but other people like it and use it, so how many hours do I invest in trying to let it run parallel in script-intensive situations that likely cause failures in one or both mods?

I dont understand. You replace EC+ with your mod completly. So there is a new Mod that does the same but better and also more.

The world will gladly adapt to that (even I am interested, but I only use EC+ for spit attacks -> tentacle rape, but that part is often bugging with defeat mods (when u are attacked during tentacle rape ->bad) 

 

Quote

 

No matter how I do that, individual users will have to take the time to understand why one thing works (or doesn't) and what the trade-offs are.

That is what users fate is all the time. 

 

Quote

 

And to bring this back to the "mod pack" discussion, how would you fit both mods into a single mod pack?  If I go my own way with it, they will be inherently incompatible.  The user would have to know that and plan accordingly, turning some MCM options on or off depending on their desired result.

Just daydreaming again:

Pack all Estrus, EC Spider, EC Chaurus, Pregnancy and whatnot.... in short all spider and chaurus mods with pregnagny into one pack.

This would be your product. 

YOu would point out what else is needed and that this pack only adds "X Y Z to your game". 

A "mini" mod Pack.

 

I for exmaple could pack and configure 3 defeat mods together with SM Essential Player and offer them combined with a description on how to use.

Basically I am doing that over in my thread, but the user still has to install all the stuff himself. 

 

There could be different mod packs,. basically a whole world of mod packs that point out compatibilities and incimpatibilities with each other like mods do today.

 

For example a "Basic Maintenance Pack" with Crash Fixes, FNIS, Animation Load CTD Fix, SkyHUD, XPMSE, AdditemMenu,FuzRoDo, PapyrusUtil, SkyUI and many more.

Apart from beeing able to save alot of ESPs (in theory?!) 

, basically a Pack with ALL The fixes lol

Basically mods could merge into addons for Skyrim. Yeah, utopian fantasy over

 

I would not mind fantasizing about this more because I think that we are, in part, talking about different things or have different ideas on how that is meant or could be implemented. And that it is maybe possible to meet somewhere in the mid. 

[Seijin8]

7 minutes ago, Nymra said:

And that it is maybe possible to meet somewhere in the mid.

On this topic, highly doubtful, but I appreciate the effort you are putting in to try.  Someday we will find something we fully agree on.

Spoiler

 

 

Quickly (because I am in a hurry):

 

Many of the issues with Defeat and DAYMOYL are related to their attempts to be compatible with things.  The events they have to process and intercept leave very little time to do anything, so they struggle badly.  Add any combat mod that uses OnHit() events into the mix and the problems magnify tenfold.  That is the nature of any mod(s) that need to respond to characters being hit and potentially-but-probably-not-killed.  That is an immovable technical limitation, and makes any such mods near impossible to use together reliably (unless like DAYMOYL and SL Defeat they explicitly try to work it out).

 

In theory you could create a single robust defeat mod with all the options you are looking for, but the amount of work needed would be substantial.  On the order of around 250 hours (and I might be underestimating).  That is more than a solid month of full-time work.  If the person doing the work is a competent coder, that is at least $12,000 worth of effort, and likely more.

 

Regarding the EC/Modpack: Even if I could do that, I wouldn't.  Of the mods you listed, EC+ is the only one I use, and its on the chopping block.  But even if I replace the birth side of things, that doesn't replicate all the other things those mods do.  And even were I to want to make a mod pack like that (just in case it isn't abundantly clear by now: I don't  ), I would need permissions from many people to do so.

 

I hold to what I said in the 2nd post of this thread: the biggest issue is always going to be permissions.

[Guest]

On 8/30/2019 at 1:45 AM, Nymra said:

blablabla

 

Komotor when he ragequit LL (is he back btw?) wrote something like "I will sell Mod Packs on Patreon with all the mods of all you people" and well, I really dont see why Loverslab modders could not do the same. 

 

blablabla..



 

I'm still around to enjoy the end of the modding scene and enjoy more drama, but about the others, because personnaly I'm out, I do not give a fuck for such communities lol..

When I have say that, you need to put it in the context.
People around here are going to be happy if I do that?

Probably not, however it do not prevent that some "final users" do it, make more money in a month that most of the original authors make over a year or even more..
And we where some to put dmca etc... No success, they make even more money today... 
For me it's simple I do not want to collaborate in any way to the "success" of guys who have no skills, but just make "compilations"
(If I make a CD or bluray with compilation of music or movies, I'm not the author of what I compile.. But it's what some assholes are doing and there is thousands of assholes out of community such nexus, loverslab etc who support shit like that.
 

What's became the more interesting for someone who want to make a bit of money around modding on skyrim.
Break our asses on some large projects maybe for years trying to get a bit of money from the community?
Or as final dumb users, make modpacks for thousands of other dumb users who have a dick rather than a brain???

In my case when I need assets to put in my work, I buy them, I get the permissions from the authors, I talk with the authors and I'm fine and fair with them.
In skyrim modding community, sorry but most have not a bit of self esteem or a little bit of honor.. It's just a fucking joke/comedy...

And I can tell you with the shit who happen on nexus etc with these modpack, most of the creators, having true skills, good hands, and a little bit of self esteem are leaving and moving away..
It will remain the less talented, the teenager, the hater, and maybe still some sheep but after some time anybody became tired to be a sheep..

[t.ara]

I´d likewise like to laugh but what we are talking here about is simply a crime of copyright. Software-stealing-it´s not more and not less.

 

After I send my mail to patreon (concerning the appeared ZAP 8 inside of a MOD PACK which is behind a paywall)  for about 4 weeks, there is no answer. It´s maybe the common way, they are ignoring people-there are other interests much more important than to check author´s rights. I knew that from the first moment. Anyway,...there´ll never come a reply.

 

Sadly I can also detect some developing around the "rest of the scene-modders" like KOMOTOR is here talking about. The overall mood is not like some years ago. If I would depend on any form of "moneytizing" a mod, I´d be willed to go a totally different way and start with a job into a serious and fully different project with the full control over my author´s rights, means to work inside of a team for example into a NEW game, which is 100% protect-able.

It must not be, that mod-packs are money-emules for people, which simply ignore the mod´s authors. If I use material from others, I pay for the license to bring it up also into skyrim. I´m doing this because I have my fun with it and I like to bring  (in my case it´s ZAP´s contence) to another level and to keep the game interesting. On the other hand is it such a primitive marketing-strategy to have to see your mod broadcasted behind a paywall, it´s  OF COURSE a KICK INTO MY ASS.

It´s now the question, if one can life with such a dilemma (that KICK into the ASS, or not live with such a KICK). Modder´s discision: -if you mod for free, you become FOOLED, sooner or later!

 

At the moment is my STUFF a mix of different licenses, the work of uncountable modders and my very own artwork. Those authors all are becoming FOOLED if ZAP is suddenly grabbed off.

 

The community of LL is not responsible for this overall developement. I do not see a connection between those mentioned crimes and the community.

The protection-question is (as long as I work here on LoversLab) the question, what the platform LL  is able to do against the abuse of the mod-author´s contence. I can of course give the exactly answer: Nothing. The criminals are sitting anonymous behind their paywall under a mostly different law of their country and mostly inside of the grey-zone of patreon´s AGB and their market-strategy.

The fatal problem of this theme is the fact, that some "money-hungry-criminals" create their patreon-account and by this infiltrate the official rules of international copyright and also ignore the licensing. Patreon is the most worse enterprise concerning the question of author´s right ever. They can not see or don´t like to see the difference of a "sponsored" primary-author from those ones, who are collecting mods and make their money with the PACKS: the (6?)%-win is for them much more important.

 

Mod is not the same like "mod"....it´s a different thing, if you create a location-mod with existing clutter of skyrim, in comparison to mods, which bring up new assets or the assets of others and combine them in a new way. The user is mostly not understanding how much or less work a mod contains. Those authors, who are putting a lot of time into their work should at least be protected by a couraged community and do something against those people, who are are making moneys for nothing with the work of others while sitting inside of their chair and creating mod packs and try to explain how to install mods without getting CTDs...on their "serious" partreon-pages and their links.

 

If this developement like this is keeping on, the mod-community of SKYRIM will soon or later bleed out. Mods will be still there available, simple made as possible-but that´s it.

 

[Huckleberry]

23 hours ago, Nymra said:

For example a "Basic Maintenance Pack" with Crash Fixes, FNIS, Animation Load CTD Fix, SkyHUD, XPMSE, AdditemMenu,FuzRoDo, PapyrusUtil, SkyUI and many more.

Apart from beeing able to save alot of ESPs (in theory?!) 

, basically a Pack with ALL The fixes lol

Basically mods could merge into addons for Skyrim. Yeah, utopian fantasy over

 

I would not mind fantasizing about this more because I think that we are, in part, talking about different things or have different ideas on how that is meant or could be implemented. And that it is maybe possible to meet somewhere in the mid. 

Just wanted to weigh in here as I am currently building a mod so a lot of the comments are germane to my efforts. 

 

@Nymra, as a mod user, I appreciate what you are saying and trying to accomplish but there are just too many obstacles to overcome for there to be downloadable FOMOD install 'packs' that tie a bunch of these mods together.  As per @Seijin8 and @wokking56comments: permissions is the biggest issue. 

 

At the time of the release of paid mods, there was a massive discussion about permissions and the rights of mod authors.  Every mod author has specific permissions that they will or will not grant.  For example, it would be impossible - ethically - to create and upload the basic maintenance pack you suggest:

 

FNIS: cannot be uploaded to another site, cannot be incorporated into another mod (i.e. pack), etc without express permission https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11811

Crash Fixes: same https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72725

SkyHUD: same https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/463

AddItemMenu: same https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64905/

SkyUI: same https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3863

 

Oh ... and as for the 'defeat pack' you mentioned SM Essential Player has the same restrictions ... just an FYI: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16311/

 

It's all there in the permissions tab on Nexus.  Now we may not have a fancy permissions tab on LL, but, modders do have the right to expressly limit distribution of their work and mod authors have been quite successful at making Bethesda, nexus, et al, bend to their intentions.  You will notice that a lot of the modders on LL will make clear their intentions in the descriptions ... can use code and link would be nice, can use anim with attribution, don't touch my stuff, etc ... a lot of them expressly ask for the resource or framework to be a dependency and not incorporated into a mod so that they can update as necessary.  Packs are basically a no-fly zone.

 

As @t.ara mentioned, there are mod authors who are using assets that belong to other authors and then hiding the mods behind pay walls ... responsible mod authors will ALWAYS check and abide by permissions, but those permissions are becoming more restrictive BECAUSE of sniping, unauthorized redistribution (including packs), and pay walls (I'm making the distinction b/w pay walls and sponsorship).  If authors pay for the asset and get permission to redist it behind a pay wall- perfect.  If not, then they are just stealing -> and stealing makes modders mad and makes them not want to play with others. 

 

Approaching something like a s.t.e.p. build for LL like you are experimenting with on your other post isn't a bad idea but it will require endless testing (s.t.e.p has a whole group of modders constantly tweaking the list) and there would have to be exclusions - pick this or pick that.  For example, on Nexus there are 280 mods that redecorate Breezehome. You have to pick which one you want.  Same for overhauls or gameplay.  Same for enb. Same for LL.  I think its a cool idea though and encourage anyone who wants to tackle it.

 

But why should we have to pick?  Would you ask a mod author of a Breezehome reno to make their mod compatible with another Breezehome reno because you like the other mod's exterior better?  And do you know what the answer would likely be if you did?  Or what about basic needs mods?  Do you have 4+ running mods checking your hunger levels at the same time?  I hope not.  That would be silly.  And no one asks the mod authors of basic needs mods to go out of their way to make their mods compatible with other basic needs mods.  Why?  Because they do the same thing in a different way.  So why would anyone be surprised that 4+ mods checking hit or combat events (in addition to all the checks that vanilla or other mods are running) don't always play well together?  Sometimes we just have to pick.  Frankly, I am amazed at how well some of the mods do play with each other.

 

LL has an incredible group of mod authors.  Each and every person I have asked for permission or help from has offered it up without hesitation.  Getting mod authors to work together isn't the problem.  Getting different interpretations of similar functionalities to work together is a different issue and one that ultimately will come down to personal preference ... users and mod authors will just have to pick.

 

just my two cents worth

 

 

 

TL/DR: 1) you can't use people's stuff without their permission, and 2) just like you can't install every Breezehome mod, you also can't install every LL mod

 

[t.ara]

Huckleberry, I´m really also waiting for your mod;-) ..I´ll linstall it during the time, when I´m done with ZAP (9).

if you like, I can offer you an overhauled ship-resource-I REMADE them for ZAP. The texture-files could easily being changed for your mod:-))

[Psalam]

I am appreciative of all the feedback that I've gotten on this thread, I really am. However, mod packs was never my primary purpose in posting this thread and I believe that this thread has been hijacked by that topic. I understand that this is the topic du jour but, unless I am mistaken, there is an entirely different thread just for this in existence now, here:

 

and it is designed specifically for that topic.

[Huckleberry]

8 minutes ago, Psalam said:

I am appreciative of all the feedback that I've gotten on this thread, I really am. However, mod packs was never my primary purpose in posting this thread and I believe that this thread has been hijacked by that topic. I understand that this is the topic du jour but, unless I am mistaken, there is an entirely different thread just for this in existence now, here:

 

of course.  I apologize @Psalam.  These threads can often take on a life of their own. ?

 

 

20 minutes ago, t.ara said:

Huckleberry, I´m really also waiting for your mod;-) ..I´ll linstall it during the time, when I´m done with ZAP (9).

if you like, I can offer you an overhauled ship-resource-I REMADE them for ZAP. The texture-files could easily being changed for your mod:-))

Thanks @t.ara ... I'll pm you.  I do love those ship resources ? and can't wait for Zap 9. 

 

[Psalam]

9 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

of course.  I apologize @Psalam.  These threads can often take on a life of their own. ?

 

 

Thanks @t.ara ... I'll pm you.  I do love those ship resources ? and can't wait for Zap 9. 

 

No worries. Without that this might become a very quiet thread. If it does, so be it.

[t.ara]

We do have a NEW ships resources with very much perfect sitting normals. The textures will look more better without editing the original oblivion normal-textures.

 

The problem of MODDing is leading simply into such a way, that on LL is being modded in a different, more deeper way LOL:-)) There´s stuff being modded, which has never meant to be modded.

This begins from creating new meshes and ends at the animations-that all was not really the "plan" of bethesda. 

Anyway is that all quite interesting, you can take influence on the contence of the game:-))

It´s FUN;-)

 

It´s also fun to get nice feedbacks:-)

[GenioMaestro]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:06 PM, Psalam said:

First and foremost, thanks for getting the thread back on track.

 

Next, it isn't JUST mod using that's difficult, even if that is the difficulty all of us have faced. Making mods results in much of the same difficulty. Even uploading mods to a site can be difficult. Making patches (a good point you made there) isn't easy and obvious.

 

Finally, to quote you:

 

That mod was not designed to be compatible with that other mod.

 

Why not? I understand that not everything can be done that way but much more could be. Look at Inte and Kimy. If their public statements are to be believed they don't even like each other very much BUT they managed (with the rest of the DD team) to put together a framework that is much appreciated and used by a LOT of mod authors who had nothing to do with it's creation. I know you think I'm naive for saying so but why can't we cooperate to make Skyrim modding easier for others?

First, modifying Skyrim is not difficult. We make it difficult because we want to have special mod.
If we only put normal mods and select them well we just have to download, activate and play.
But if we want Requiem, Frostfall or SexLab with PAHE prepare to have problems.
If you start adding mods like crazy, the problems will multiply.

Likewise, the complication of making a mod is directly proportional to what the mod does. If you only make a simple patch you only need an ESP. But if you put a quest with dialogs you need the SEQ file. And if you have NPCs with special faces you have to add FaceGen.
Because that's the structure of the game, that's how the company that created the game did it and that's how we have to do it. There is no other way.

 

Of course, the first time you modify Skyrim is tremendously complicated. But as you get experience and learning it is easier and easier for you. Until you are able to solve your own problems. And you end up solving other people's problems.

And the first time you do a mod you are in the same situation. You have no idea what you have to do, or how to do it, or why until someone explains it to you and you learn.

The first time we do something is always complicated. The way of doing things, normally, is defined by those who came before us. It was they who set the standards and those who said "this is done like this" in all aspects of life. From eating with a knife and fork to driving on the right or on the left. Similarly, the creator of the game decided to do it that way.

 

 

Additionally, compatibility is one of the most difficult and complex things. Because the first thing you need to make a compatibility patch is stability.
You need both components to be stable because you are going to patch one of them and you do it on the version it has now.
When the version changes it is most likely that the patch is not worth it and you have to change it or update it.
A very clear example is in RDO that, in addition to having patches for 10 different mods, has 3 patches for 3 different versions of EFF.

That is an additional job for the creator because in addition to maintaining their mod and fixing their problems they have to address the problems that OTHERS mods create in their mod. You have to attend to bug reports, check them, see why it happens, create a new patch and publish it. And you have to do that for each mod with which it is compatible. And it will only end when all mods are stable.

[faky]

1. it is not difficult, at worst it is just arduous. you dont even need to flex your brain to get things working, you just have to read. read the requirements, read how to install the requirements and read how to use the requirements. yes, reading is atrocious. being forced to read things is just torture. but that's what you have to go through to get that modded skyrim everyone keeps talking about

 

why are requirements there? because bethesda. because their vision for skyrim is at odds with potential that modders saw in it and implemented themselves. so you want this monkey to do more tricks = you have to give it the tools

 

why are some mods not designed to be compatible with other mods? because that mod author does not wish to put extra work to implement compatibility, or doing so would break something, or the two mods do a similar thing...

 

On 8/30/2019 at 6:31 PM, Nymra said:

UNIFIED DEFEAT 0.1 

1. if player is defeated in combat it is send into player essential (on knees) and receives a wound (basically like SM Player Essential mod)., Player can wiggle free (Strafing) and if he does fast enough he can continue fight. If not he is send to rape 

2. OPTIONAL IN MCM: Dialogue options like Defeat offers (bribe/talk your way out or offer to play nice)

3. RAPE Starts. Like with DEFEAT: works for humans and creatures alike. Options to enable 3some 4some 5some for humans/creatures.

4. NEW OPTION: set max number of rape scenes (independent of number of rapers) like with NDUN can do. 

5. AFTERMATH: like with Defeat. You can choose several outcomes. Simple Slavery, Robbery. But you can also choose Local Slavery for SD+ or to trigger a Slavery event of Dragonborn in Distress. Or Trigger Quests from Daymol (when installed). 

6. NEW AFTERMATH: Can choose Naked Dungeons like local captivity. A ZAP Furniture is spawned and wiggling out takes time and stamina and has a detection chance (that would be more than NDUN does now). 

7. Possible NEW AFTERMATH: tie in with SD Cages mod. When cage is detected, bandits will lock player inside. Cages should idealy also be able to be "wiggled out" like with furnitures. Mabye better to just tie in with SD+. But SD+ has no escape working mechanism, so this all is in vain anyway. 

8. Integration of Devious Decives like Defeat does. 

9. Integrate Follower Support like Defeat does

10. integrate Deviously Helpless functionality. So if player has devices after rape he must escape without beeing raped again

Also if he has certain devices, the combat wont start maybe and the rape scene direcntly (auto submit). 

 

Basically this would just be DEFEAT plus a little bit of extras from all the other mods.

Bcause of the options you could make this a simple -> defeated, no talking, 1 rape scene -> finish mod for people who want this to be short.

Or it could be turned into a massive rape scenario with some small escaping chance, a vast post-rape variation and tie in with other slavery mods.

 

In Theory (this is where I know too little), everything needed should already be there in the form of existing mod funtionalities (Scritps?) but would require to be merged into Defeat basically.

why dont you just pick up scripting and do it then? nothing is stopping you if you want those things. apparently noone skilled enough wanted them bad enough so we make do with what we have and that's all there is to it

[t.ara]

Genio is much more talking about details here-I can not do it such way...anyway, when I began with creation kit (it´s the KEY-to add contence to the skyrim-engine), I have been shocked how much I could do NOTHING...LOL....I could do NOTHING. It was like the wish to walk but being not able to do that. I felt, that this stuff is something professional, which I had there on my computer, but it was so endless complex. When I looked thru the windows, I exactly thought "you´ll NEVER be able to create something"...that has been my start-I shut dow the software and I was very much frustrated (I knew how to mod GTA and SIMS - but that had nothing to do with this stuff).

But when I played with ZAP 6.11, combined with an old "cool" mod, I remember it has been a mod which put you onto the CRUX and onto other different furnitures randomly, I wanted to have the furnitures not randomly, instead I wanted to have them statically standing around and use them-mostly I got banned by the torture poles of zazChris´s archieve-but exactly those poles were only made to appear ONLY by spawning and then they DISAPPEARED after use-always.

Then I sat into my chair and I tried to understand, how the zap-mod is working. I tried to find out, how furnitures have to be created-it seemed to me, that the animations and the furnitures are inside of the pack, but they can not be added to a cell like the other 26 furnitures, who came by default with the pack. Same attention, I had for the gibbets-during that time I thought that all this assets are made by CHRIS himself. I could not imagine, that the MARKATH-CAGE (it´s only one in skyrim) and the torture-pole have been CLUTTER of skyrim itself. So I was not able to combine an animation with a suiting clutter or item. You can not imagine how much hours I spend for an analysis so to get finally the whole workaround for a furniture, which is fully set-up inside of that framework so to be able to be called correctly also for other mods. You can say it was a whole week with creating handwritten documents of opened windows inside of CK and first impression of the script of the framework itself. And then, one day I had those 5 torture-poles inside of my customized 6.11 and I was very proud, it was working perfect....I felt like this framework is so much perfect to handle such furnitures and so I first continued my work so to add all of the furnitures, which CHRIS did not add as a real furniture, but as a spawn-able furniture....it was a great job and all those furnitures worked together with the framework. I was really very carefull, because I was afraid to loose somehow the compatibility of the mod. But nothing into that direction happened. The mod was working as stable as from the beginning and I added maybe about 30-60 furnitures, which now could be used in the same way, like those 26 furnitures could be used. During that period of work, I also wanted to understand and learn, to add new meshes to the game because I felt the ENDLESS potential power of the framework. I began with very EASY stuff like to take existing animations of CHRIS and add a thin pole to it...the difficulty was here to trim the pole to the overall standing-pose of the actor....I added a little later my first rope to that pole and exported it from 3dsmax into skyrim-that was a great step forward. 3dsmax was such a DEEP HOLE for me, but that software was quickly becoming LOGICAL and very handy to me (I had luck with it somehow)....And after this pole I wanted to have the WALL shackle-the vanilla wall-shackle for the PLAYER. Some pages in the WWW mentioned, that this is not possible and others meant, it´s not working without scripting.....so I had to look myself, how BETHESDA implemented those furniture and I compared it with the ones of ZAP...After I was "well-sorted" with the FNIS-and ZAP, method, the step to pick up the correct info out of the vanilla set-up of furnitures was not difficult anymore. Little later I got the shackle-wall work without a script and without any problems "out of the box":-))

 

 

And all of this work was steady going on like little parts of a mosaic. It´s maybe the way lot of modders go so far they have no professional examination concerning this "job". I began also to create custom new meshes (before that, I began to edit existing meshes, which did not work for my mods because they had not the correct size or they had unwanted clutter around) like very much later, the tangled-tower, which was unique and PERFECT for skyrim, btw. After your first visit there inside, you´ll feel like in a "DISNEY-deja-vue":-))...I found out some things aside this central-work and I could begin to watch parallels with the work of professionals. I use for example same way dummy-npc´s so to get the correct scaling or collision for objects or doors, there are tricks for/with stairs and so on. The longer you create something, the more you´re going into it,  to become a "mod-fox". On LL we have a lot of those FOXES:-)

 

The problem is maybe, where you want to begin, so that you have a chance to start with your first steps. I can only ask you to check what you like to have in skyrim and then to START. From the beginning, you´ll creep on all fours and later you can "go" upright and work very much detailed like GENIOMAESTRO explained it.

 

 

 

 

 

The both pic show my first stuff inside the zap-pack with the 5 poles and all of them WORKED!!-that has been the start for all the following stuff!!

The animation for the bed has been the X-spread-animation from the X-cross: I edited the animation´s ANGLE manually so to get it to work horizontally (which was very hard to FIND inside that kf-file by using NIFSCOPE-ggg. The next problem was, to understand how animated objects worked-so one nonsence came after the next one....) -I did not know how to create an animation during that time...! (I called that ZAP-PACK "version 2")-I made a version 6.22 which came out under FNIS 6. That pack worked perfectly well. With the introduce to FNIS ´s update to version 7, my work on the pack ran into troubles. FNIS´s structure got a change, so that older versions could not stay by default any longer compatible. With zap 9 is coming an optimized version, which has the advantages of the older version 6.11 , combined with the compatibility of version 7. This is a little of the created history of ZAP of the past 3 years:-)

 

And between your work, it is more and more possible, to break out of those "standards", which GENIO has mentioned: I work pretty much different on animations, I can handle them quite easy in between and I use a different output-format, which works on SKYRIM and SKYRIM SE at once. Some workarounds are not necessary and so I could optimize my work in comparison to the existing guides. In between I also think, that I can spare out mostly a huge amount of BONES while I add new HDT-items and bone-body-related items. It´s not necessary to export a whole skeleton to have it working with the ingame-character´s skeleton and this spares time and it spares resources of the game. This way you can begin to go, if you had success by a try and then you´re free in your next steps: Workarounds can become more optimized and the items become more handy for the engine of skyrm. You begin to think about, what is useful, working well and what is not ideal or simply not worth to be created. Some stuff could be made, but never will be working how the gamer likes to have it. Or the stuff will look like CRAP....can happen. If you work with ready-to go-meshes, you wonder, how much of it you have to edit and correct , so that in the time you investigated for those corrections like low-poly-working and error-corrections, you still could have used instead same time to create it from ZERO. 

 

[yatol]

On 8/28/2019 at 4:42 PM, Psalam said:

Why can we not find way(s) to make things easier than they are? Are we like the old men who insist that the young go through the hazing process that attended their own youth because that was how it was done?

 

there are ways to make things easier, but that will never be done, since everyone would have to stick to what got decided (and that will never happen)

 

skyrim launcher suck because when you move defeat above sexlab, nothing happen

the same with mo, you get a ! near defeat, you move the mouse on it, blabla sexlab master isn't above, you are doing bullshit, fix your mess

it's easier to fix your mess, when something tell you there's mess to fix (but you have to check your mess for that, many still ctd before main menu because plugin is above master, even if running loot put all plugins under their masters)

 

Quote

The Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) is a free and open source piece of software that allows you to download, install, update and manage your files through an easy to use interface

nmm it's just a tool to download mods from nexus, it's not a tool to fix your mess

 

nothing is put in data folder with mo (and nmm now that it copy it?), each mod mess have his own folder, even if you are doing bullshit, you aren't breaking everything, untick the bullshit and your mess disappear

you can see what files are overwrite by what, it's better to take care of that before starting your save, than waiting to see in game there's a problem, if you see there's a problem

you can add tesedit, crap kit, savegamecleaner, bsaopt and whatever you want shortcut to load it using your virtual data folder

 

some use what he did for nexus? vortex?

Quote

Lead by Tannin, the creator of Mod Organizer, Vortex takes the lessons learnt during the development of MO and Nexus Mod Manager to provide the most powerful and intuitive modding experience available.

what did they learnt during nmm development?

vortex is more than mo with another name?

you click on nexus nmm link, nmm download the file, bet it's the same with vortex

if you add the mod requirement to that link, mod manager can check if they are in your mod list, to also download them, or put the mod in red with some blabla "you forgot to install x, fix your mess", vortex do that?

 

there's a lot of textures replacer on nexus, there's some tools to compare them, but it suck to have to compare x folder to y folder, then x folder to z folder, then.... how about a tool for the mod manager, to compare the new mod folder to virtual data folder?

 

there's a lot of npc replacer too, why not the same to compare npc heads?

 

texture optimiser ignore interface folder and actors\character (for _msn), options you can mess with

why not some options for the files conflicts? and a special icon when the mod overwrite some of those files (civil war scripts, races skeleton, the files that can be bigger problem than overwriting replaced nif texture with a 4k texture for vanilla uv map)

 

etc etc, if you want modding to become easier, add stuff to that list, and send that to the ones that make mods managers

 

[27X]

On 8/30/2019 at 8:54 AM, Nymra said:

You massively exaggerate here.

Not even kinda. A very large chunk of mods here (and there) are badly BADLY written, and conversely some of the best scripters available are sociopathic donknozzles who will, not when, cause issues with any team or any project they'd be working on cause evangelism.

[Inte]

On 8/31/2019 at 10:01 PM, 27X said:

Not even kinda. A very large chunk of mods here (and there) are badly BADLY written, and conversely some of the best scripters available are sociopathic donknozzles who will, not when, cause issues with any team or any project they'd be working on cause evangelism.

Hey now!

[wokking56]

On 8/31/2019 at 12:20 PM, Psalam said:

I am appreciative of all the feedback that I've gotten on this thread, I really am. However, mod packs was never my primary purpose in posting this thread and I believe that this thread has been hijacked by that topic.

Yeah sorry about that, but concerning your original question it depends on a number of variables. As I touched on in my earlier post it's not always difficult depending on what you want. So some fresh textures or maybe some awesome armor, easy peasy un-zip and place in data folder and you are good to go. Then however it does get a little trickier; I want mod X but it depends on mod A. Usually not too bad that is until Mod X depends on mods A, B and C this is a little more hairy. Then we get into the even more confusing scenario, mod X depends on mods A, B and C but mod B depends on mods F and G. So now for one mod I have had to download a total of 6 mods. This is where the problems start because if you have downloaded several mods like this you increase your chance that the dependency on a couple will clash. Heaven forbid you have not been in the modding scene for very long because then you run the risk that one of the dependencies is no longer available. Then we have the issue of updates, sure they are great in most respects (they fix things or add new functionality) but if it depends on another mods updating this may well screw up something else. So now mod X has new features that you really want but X depends on C, if X's update goes well fantastic if not and C has not been touched in 3 or 4 years what now or vice versa (C updates but X does not).

 

These are the issues; do I pass on something I want because it conflicts with something I already have and do I pass on this update because of the potential problems it might cause. Problem being we aren't always aware of these conflicts until they occur then we are uninstalling things, cleaning saves, looking for fixes or work arounds or a long list of other ways to get back to the game. No ones fault even just the nature of the beast. Chicken Pot Pie great, Banana Cream Pie also great, but together not so much.