Devious Followers - Continued

[Vaccinated Alligator]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Framerate can drop from 120 or so to 4. Quite a difference. All without moving from the same spot in the Bannered Mare (for example).

If I bring up the console, the framerate instantly jumps up to 140. Makes me think it's something like SMP?

 

When slowdown occurs, suddenly 14 threads start showing max load, so it's a CPU issue.

Then, one NPC can leave the room, and framerate returns to normal.

It's some sort of bug that causes CPU load to jump to 100% for absolutely no reason. I've had this issue in two situations:

- First: Using Fill Her Up: Whenever my PC deflated automatically, CPU usage jumped to 100% and some body parts (breasts,butt,etc) became invisible. It persisted even if reloading a previous save, so I had to close the game and then restart to fix this. This issue was fixed in Baka's edition of FHU.

- Second: Using Amputator Framework: The default morph script causes your CPU usage to go to 100% after you get a body part amputated (size of the body part go to 0 through script). There's a "fixed" script that changes that value from 0 to 0.01 somewhere in the formus, thus getting rid of the problem.

It can be related to SMP, and seems to be "fixable" by the modders through script edits. I don't have idea of the potential "source" of the bug within SMP, though.

[Lupine00]

34 minutes ago, Vaccinated Alligator said:

CPU load to jump to 100% for absolutely no reason

Likely a reason, but if it's impossible to find it, that's not much help.

 

It's absolutely horrific when you (say) approach Whiterun from Riverwood, and the game just decides to drop to 3 fps, and you have no idea what NPC or NPCs is the cause, as it's dark, and they're miles away anyway. Awful. And people say SE is more stable? Maybe it is if you just don't put any physics in ... or use that ultra basic CBA, which is ... just some springs I think.

[user9120975435]

What are the two bars above stamina bar in the first two screenshots on download page?

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, user9120975435 said:

What are the two bars above stamina bar in the first two screenshots on download page?

Frostfall.

[Corsec]

1 hour ago, user9120975435 said:

What are the two bars above stamina bar in the first two screenshots on download page?

 

Those look like the bars from Frostfall. They tell you the exposure level and the heat level. More explanation here-

https://skyrimsurvival.com/home/frostfall/how-to-play/

 

EDIT: Fuck, beaten lol.

[Lupine00]

Noticed this in the changelist - poorly worded:

• Change "sold" mechanic only applies in endless mode.

This is gibberish... The "sold" mechanic is now part of the alternate punishment options which can be enabled regardless of regular punishments.

It's not impacted by endless mode (which no longer exists exactly) but by whether that additional/alternate option set is enabled.

 

I've fixed the "complete" change list, but won't update the main page as it's not worth the spam just to fix one bad change note.

[stas2503]

@Lupine00 Ru translation Patch

Devious Followers 2.14.0 Ru Patch.7z

[nomkaz]

I really, really liked the name change option in submissive lola, but not necessarily the name "Lola", nor the game mechanics of that mod. Would it be possible to incorporate a name change mechanic into Devious Followers?

[beerman778]

8 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Been trying to get my SE game looking not horrible.

Mostly SE seems to perform better than LE, and I have better framerates.

Sometimes though, the framerate suffers some horrible periodic catastrophe, that seems to be related to NPCs walking around.

Maybe specific NPCs, maybe not.

Framerate can drop from 120 or so to 4. Quite a difference. All without moving from the same spot in the Bannered Mare (for example).

If I bring up the console, the framerate instantly jumps up to 140. Makes me think it's something like SMP?

 

When slowdown occurs, suddenly 14 threads start showing max load, so it's a CPU issue.

Then, one NPC can leave the room, and framerate returns to normal.

 

Caused by a bad physics config on some outfits perhaps? I can't even correlate that. If the NPCs leave the BM, frame rate goes up, but if I go out and follow them, frame rate outside, with the same NPCs is fine.

 

Is this a common SE thing? How do people deal with it?

Not a common thing, never experienced it and never heard of it. My first guess would be SMP too, through I don't know much about the internals of SMP regarding the 14 threads. There is an issue in SE (and I guess LE?) with a max number of actors per cell, here is the fix: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32349. Maybe this is releated.

[ShalaxiHelbane]

Hi, I've had the Jarl event trigger a few times and each time I end up locked without control.
Initial binding occurs.
I talk to follower, follower says to go to jarl.
I go to Baalgruf.
Baalgruf says something to the effect of that it seems like she's ready to be bred
Nothing starts and I'm just left without control in front of the throne.

As an addendum I'm using the SE version but it seemed worth asking here in case I'm doing something wrong rather than it being a direct technical issue.

[keitsoru]

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Likely a reason, but if it's impossible to find it, that's not much help.

 

It's absolutely horrific when you (say) approach Whiterun from Riverwood, and the game just decides to drop to 3 fps, and you have no idea what NPC or NPCs is the cause, as it's dark, and they're miles away anyway. Awful. And people say SE is more stable? Maybe it is if you just don't put any physics in ... or use that ultra basic CBA, which is ... just some springs I think.

In fairness, as someone who plays SE exclusively, and assists with troubleshooting mods in an official capacity elsewhere, this is not an SE problem. This is a user problem.

 

If you have a moderately recent PC, SMP's impact should be negligible, unless you have a good 5-10 things on screen that use it. In fact I run Artesian Cloaks for Cloaks of Skyrim, meaning pretty much every single guard has a physics-enabled cloak, and I usually keep a constant 30-40 frames with ENB, DynDOLOD, and other visual mods active.

 

Whatever is leading to such massive FPS drops, it's something unique to your current setup. That said, I'd need to know load order for a better idea.

[keitsoru]

One thing I can think of, if you're using SMP for body physics, see if you can use CBPC instead. I know 3BA has an option for that. I don't know about BHUNP. CBBE SMP on the other hand... Well, you can figure that one out.

[ShalaxiHelbane]

2 minutes ago, keitsoru said:

One thing I can think of, if you're using SMP for body physics, see if you can use CBPC instead. I know 3BA has an option for that. I don't know about BHUNP. CBBE SMP on the other hand... Well, you can figure that one out.

BHUNP has an ingame toggle NP3 by default and an option to use varying degrees of SMP at install time.

[HexBolt8]

2 hours ago, nomkaz said:

I really, really liked the name change option in submissive lola, but not necessarily the name "Lola", nor the game mechanics of that mod. Would it be possible to incorporate a name change mechanic into Devious Followers?

It depends on which part of the name change that you want.  Simply changing the PC's name is a simple script command.  A mod could read the player's preferred changed name from a json file, or the MCM could read it from a pop-up text field.  But that only changes the PC's name, which you don't see much except for the character info screen and save file names.

 

If you want the follower to address you by the changed name, that doesn't work because text replacement in Skyrim does not apply to NPC speech (presumably because all NPC speech in vanilla Skyrim is voiced, but player speech is not).  Hence, in vanilla Skyrim you're called "Dragonborn", a fixed name.  If a mod only has a few lines that would use the new name, it could hard-wire a set of name choices and let the player choose from a drop-down list.  However, that's a fair amount of work for the mod author, and a fixed list is likely to disappoint many players.  So this kind of name change generally isn't practical unless players are okay with a single fixed name.

[Herowynne]

39 minutes ago, keitsoru said:

if you're using SMP for body physics, see if you can use CBPC instead.

 

I use CBPC for body physics, and HDT-SMP for hair and apparel physics.

 

8 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Maybe it is if you just don't put any physics in ... or use that ultra basic CBA, which is ... just some springs I think.

 

It is a matter of preference.

 

I tried HDT-SMP for body physics, but I didn't like the way it jiggled. I preferred my old tweaked CBPC settings, so I went back to CBPC for body physics.

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, keitsoru said:

If you have a moderately recent PC, SMP's impact should be negligible, unless you have a good 5-10 things on screen that use it. In fact I run Artesian Cloaks for Cloaks of Skyrim, meaning pretty much every single guard has a physics-enabled cloak, and I usually keep a constant 30-40 frames with ENB, DynDOLOD, and other visual mods active.

If you look back at what I was saying, I'm normally getting a framerate between 180 and 110. Even in the most heavily loaded spots it's not dropping below 90.

SMP when working "normally" is creating very manageable load on the CPU.

 

And yet ... in certain locations ... after a while, the framerate will observably steadily decline, and I can see that load is increasing across all CPU cores that have scope to increase.

As the issue peaks, framerate is down into single digits - may in extreme cases become seconds per-frame - and outside, it will simply stay there, until I leave the cell, or if it's an interior, an NPC leaving the cell may suddenly reset it, and framerate pops back to normal instantly.

 

While it's encouraging to hear that not all users are blighted by this, I'm reasonably convinced it's caused by a problematic SMP setup on an outfit, or multiple outfits.

 

The problem outfits (if that is even the problem) don't necessarily cause an immediate issue. If I isolate NPCs that left an area causing it to reset, I won't suddenly see the issue reappear - but I haven't put a lot of time into trying to isolate a problem outfit.

 

It certainly has a bearing on whether I decide to make LE or SE the primary platform for development. Still, LE is way out ahead. The quality of appearance is so superior in LE, and the reliability and consistency is ahead too - and that's despite spending most of a day trying to tune my SE ENB (Silent Horizons for now). There are great textures and models for SE, but the clouds/mist, atmospherics, lighting, and shaders are just not as good - or I haven't achieved it yet.

 

SMP in SE has been referred to as an "open garbage fire" and the individual that said that - I don't entirely agree with them - has considerable technical expertise, and hasn't visibly changed their position. I haven't put in the effort to properly understand the technical issues, but it's clear many are happy with SMP results and stability - though it's possible they are only using it on a narrow range of tried-and-tested outfits, and not picking up a huge pack like TAWOBAE and mixing it with Legendary Armors. That is obviously more likely to introduce the odd armor with a buggy setup, than using it for just one or two new outfits by popular creators, and even then, really only for making short video clips. Running a real game, with an extensive armor setup introduces challenges in terms of "data quality"; the odds of a problem are just much higher.
https://www.loverslab.com/topic/141156-tweaking-the-hdt-smp-config-to-properly-utilize-opencl-for-big-gains-in-performance-and-accuracy/?do=findComment&comment=2968494

[keitsoru]

19 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

If you look back at what I was saying, I'm normally getting a framerate between 180 and 110. Even in the most heavily loaded spots it's not dropping below 90.

SMP when working "normally" is creating very manageable load on the CPU.

 

And yet ... in certain locations ... after a while, the framerate will observably steadily decline, and I can see that load is increasing across all CPU cores that have scope to increase.

As the issue peaks, framerate is down into single digits - may in extreme cases become seconds per-frame - and outside, it will simply stay there, until I leave the cell, or if it's an interior, an NPC leaving the cell may suddenly reset it, and framerate pops back to normal instantly.

 

While it's encouraging to hear that not all users are blighted by this, I'm reasonably convinced it's caused by a problematic SMP setup on an outfit, or multiple outfits.

 

The problem outfits (if that is even the problem) don't necessarily cause an immediate issue. If I isolate NPCs that left an area causing it to reset, I won't suddenly see the issue reappear - but I haven't put a lot of time into trying to isolate a problem outfit.

 

It certainly has a bearing on whether I decide to make LE or SE the primary platform for development. Still, LE is way out ahead. The quality of appearance is so superior in LE, and the reliability and consistency is ahead too - and that's despite spending most of a day trying to tune my SE ENB (Silent Horizons for now). There are great textures and models for SE, but the lighting and shaders are just not as good - or I haven't achieved it yet.

It could very well be an outfit you have is poorly tuned for SMP, yeah. That's entirely possible. And yeah, that definitely is hard to narrow down when you don't even have a solid idea of where it's coming from.

In terms of appearance... that's debatable. LE ENBs can still do a couple of things that SE ENBs can't, but on the other hand, SE has worldspace volumetric lighting, which you can't really replicate on LE.

It's a give and take, and ultimately, it's subjective opinion, so no use really debating about it. I'd hope though that you have the willpower, not to give up on moving to what is proven to be a more stable platform with little lost, because one innocuous mod somewhere is deciding to be a shit. xD

 

EDIT: I say this in good faith, of course. No intent to insult or belittle. ?

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, keitsoru said:

it's subjective opinion

Maybe so. Some people like the look of SE. Apparently.

When I move around the world in my existing LE setup, it brings joy.

When I move around in SE, it sets my teeth on edge. It feels simultaneously flat, oversharp in the foreground, over blurred in the distance (all too often) and yet, the DOF looks exactly like it does in LE.

I was certainly much, much happier with SE after adding Mari's Flora; that was the single most important mod for unifying my plants and trees in LE - though it previously required you to install an individual texture mod for each plant - so good it's all in one now. And yet, it's still underwhelming. Just fixing issues like embers not looking like embers - with the exact same particle and texture packs I have in LE. If I tune the gamma right for one thing, something else goes off. Maybe switching to SE Rudy would help, as it might be more like LE Rudy - which I used - but I prefer my current LE ENB SURE  to Rudy. Or maybe to NLA, as perhaps Obsidian weathers are what I really don't like? It's just so much time investment to get ... well it's clearly not improved stability at all ... maybe a potential better stability, one day in the future, all things permitting. Maybe better frame-rates, but my LE frame-rates are fine anyway.

A lot of the SE weather or ENB stuff, I look at their supposed best screenshots, and I think "erm ... no". If that was the best image they could get for their graphics mod, I'm happy where I am. I know a screenshot doesn't capture everything, especially the dynamics, and the curves will be slightly off, but usually the static images betray that flat look I see in SE over and over - I can't quite quantify it, but it feels like somebody just turned up the ambient on some objects, while others are underlit and dark.

[keitsoru]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Maybe so. Some people like the look of SE. Apparently.

When I move around the world in my existing LE setup, it brings joy.

When I move around in SE, it sets my teeth on edge. It feels simultaneously flat, oversharp in the foreground, over blurred in the distance (all too often) and yet, the DOF looks exactly like it does in LE.

I was certainly much, much happier with SE after adding Mari's Flora; that was the single most important mod for unifying my plants and trees in LE - though it previously required you to install an individual texture mod for each plant - so good it's all in one now. And yet, it's still underwhelming. Just fixing issues like embers not looking like embers - with the exact same particle and texture packs I have in LE. If I tune the gamma right for one thing, something else goes off. Maybe switching to SE Rudy would help, as it might be more like LE Rudy - which I used - but I prefer my current LE ENB SURE  to Rudy. Or maybe to NLA, as perhaps Obsidian weathers are what I really don't like? It's just so much time investment to get ... well it's clearly not improved stability at all ... maybe a potential better stability, one day in the future, all things permitting. Maybe better frame-rates, but my LE frame-rates are fine anyway.

A lot of the SE weather or ENB stuff, I look at their supposed best screenshots, and I think "erm ... no". If that was the best image they could get for their graphics mod, I'm happy where I am. I know a screenshot doesn't capture everything, especially the dynamics, and the curves will be slightly off, but usually the static images betray that flat look I see in SE over and over - I can't quite quantify it, but it feels like somebody just turned up the ambient on some objects, while others are underlit and dark.

And hey, that's fine! That's the amazing thing about opinions, is that they're subjective. I will give you that depending on what you're aiming for, SE can take a bit more work to get it looking how you want it, because as I said, there are certain things that SE lost in the transition to 64-bit. It completely fucked with some small things LE ENBs could do, and you know, good luck getting Boris to really dive in and try to figure it out for SE at this point. Pretty sure the man can't be arsed to try that hard.

SE on its own, as a base, is definitely more stable. How it operates after you've loaded it up with mods... well, that depends. You know as well as I do that the Creation Engine is a touchy little thing, and the smallest issue can cause it to have an absolute stroke. The tweaks might be different, you still need some stability mods, but the overall potential for most mods, and the overall stability provided by the base foundation versus its predecessor I think is a marked improvement.

[NoppaiKohai]

  

18 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Sometimes though, the framerate suffers some horrible periodic catastrophe, that seems to be related to NPCs walking around.

Maybe specific NPCs, maybe not.

Framerate can drop from 120 or so to 4. Quite a difference. All without moving from the same spot in the Bannered Mare (for example).

 

I'm pretty positive this is related to a Sexlab mod of some kind. This definitely doesn't happen in vanilla, and for me it happens when there are a lot of people who are trying to equip devious devices like the Bound Girls from Cursed Loot or something. I assumed it was just a train load of scripts all trying to run so they would equip all their devices and the game was spazzing out when they were trying to equip a collar while they already had a harness on or something, but I haven't been able to narrow down the issue. 

 

Very annoying though, definitely would love a fix

 

 

I say it's not in vanilla . . . but it actually kind of is. Riften has notorious lag no matter what even on a beast computer and always has. Literally just walking into vanilla riften will often cause MASSIVE frame drops because that area is such a cluster, so perhaps it's not devious device related at all

 

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

When I move around the world in my existing LE setup, it brings joy.

When I move around in SE, it sets my teeth on edge. It feels simultaneously flat, oversharp in the foreground, over blurred in the distance (all too often) and yet, the DOF looks exactly like it does in LE.

 

 

The bigger issue for me with LE is that it's unstable AF even in the freaking base game. LE gets so bad that you end up quick saving before each door you try to enter or before each load screen etc because there's such a high chance to crash. 

 

I'll play SE for 6+ hours with no crashes at all most of the time 

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, keitsoru said:

Pretty sure the man can't be arsed to try that hard.

I don't think he has much care factor for it, that's true.

I'm fairly sure that identifying the object type being rendered could be achieved by some means, and I can think of one myself, which wouldn't be perfect but would get 90% or more, most likely.

 

Some people seem to have improved it a bit with ReShade, but that's yet another layer of kludge layered on top.

 

It doesn't solve the basic issues with SE.

1) it's a whole new world and you have to invest massive time - maybe more time than in LE - to get to a good point.

2) unfinished CPU physics. In 2021.

 

HDT PE frequently fails to stabilize during resolution, and the configurations are hard to make (the cause of many issues). But it's extremely low load on the game engine.

SMP is also (clearly) hard to set up well, maybe easier, but the only tool support is Outfit Studio.

 

3 hours ago, keitsoru said:

That's the amazing thing about opinions, is that they're subjective.

They are, but that's also a convenient way around not analyzing why one image is better or worse than another.

We need some objective criteria for judging what is more likely to be better for the majority of people.

 

There are features in DFC that some people don't like, and everyone has their top ten wish-list of improvements, but it doesn't mean discussion of the biggest problems or best opportunities isn't worth discussing.

 

Step one is identifying why my SE is unstable. Will that mean I can't have bikini armors? Will that mean I can't have vanilla replacers? Will that mean I need to remove physics entirely? If not, how can I get them without these not-random-at-all slowdowns?

 

Step two is identifying why me SE looks simultaneously washed out and over-contrasty. Maybe I can solve with a LUT or curve that expands the mid-tones of the image? Maybe it can't be solved like that and needs modification of all my trees.

 

 

  

57 minutes ago, NoppaiKohai said:

I'm pretty positive this is related to a Sexlab mod of some kind.

I don't have any installed yet, so I think I can rule that out.

 

  

57 minutes ago, NoppaiKohai said:

I say it's not in vanilla . . . but it actually kind of is. Riften has notorious lag no matter what even on a beast computer and always has.

I'd say I have a counterpoint to that too. My Riften is fine. Really. Maybe if you add one billion trees to it, it's going to slug, just as Whiterun will.

 

All the slowdowns I've had (recently) in LE have been down to RLO, but if you get a mod that goes nuts with the wrong sort of light, ELFX can slow down too. There certainly are some LL mods that will slow things up, but I don't have them now. I think regular "Nexus" mods slow stuff up more often. If the amount of log vomit some of them produce is anything to go by, they aren't well tested - and I don't mean debug output, I mean constant warnings about returning None from functions that should return a non-nullable type, mis-use of GetFormFromFile, unfilled properties, etc.

 

I've never seen anything in LE like the SE slowdown. This isn't script lag - which almost always arises from previously suspended stacks slugging the script engine. LE can render-lag, and that's what you see with RLO. Certain interiors will be incredibly slow. Number of NPCs doesn't matter, it's caused by lights.

 

The SE slowdown comes and goes in interiors, comes and stays in exteriors, and usually fades in gradually over time, though sometimes it can start suddenly on a cell transition. Papyrus is generally too constrained to eat enough CPU to max out all cores. The engine just won't let Papyrus do that.

 

 

Look in spoiler for a comparison of some images from popular ENB mods that I picked to at least be sort-of comparable.

Which ones are SE? Can you tell? What is different about the LE vs SE images? Why? (Zoom in to see full size).

Spoiler

 

I guess I've probably gone on too much about this now, but it's not like the forum is full of other important discussions  

For now, my SE goal is to have my own SE port and to be able to test on SE. I guess I'll have to start ripping out armors and see if I can fix the slowdowns. Making it look tolerable will have to wait.

 

Nobody has anything to say about 2.14.0, so I guess it's super-bug-free? ?

[keitsoru]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Nobody has anything to say about 2.14.0, so I guess it's super-bug-free? ?

Tbh, I haven't had the chance to try it yet. Been no-lifing Nier:Replicant the past couple of days. Once I'm done with that, I'll try out the new upload. :3

[user9120975435]

20 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Frostfall.

 

20 hours ago, Corsec said:

 

Those look like the bars from Frostfall. They tell you the exposure level and the heat level. More explanation here-

https://skyrimsurvival.com/home/frostfall/how-to-play/

 

EDIT: Fuck, beaten lol.

 

Thanks!

[Fulgrim_]

I have a question about the deals (sorry if it has been asked before): is it possible to have only the 3rd stage without the previous 2 (e.g. I'd like to have the "be a whore deal", but am not a fan of plugs or the whore outfit), or would it break something? If yes, can deals be added with the console or some other way? Is that what the max rank setting is for?

[Lupine00]

37 minutes ago, Fulgrim_ said:

I have a question about the deals (sorry if it has been asked before): is it possible to have only the 3rd stage without the previous 2 (e.g. I'd like to have the "be a whore deal", but am not a fan of plugs or the whore outfit), or would it break something? If yes, can deals be added with the console or some other way? Is that what the max rank setting is for?

Alas, no. Classic deals store a single value, which is the deal stage. So, any classic deal at level 3 always includes 1 and 2.

Max rank is a way of capping a classic deal to a lower stage, including zero, which disables the deal completely.