Devious Followers - Continued

[Saviorsrd]

Not sure this was ever brought up.  I couldn't find anything in the thread, but my Search-fu isn't great this late at night and there's no note of it in the compatibility section.  Also not sure if it can be fixed.

 

When you use FNIS Sexy Move, the Level 9 slot is overwritten by the crawling animation from this mod, which is what results in the occasional reports of "This is making me crawl all the time."

[Lupine00]

12 minutes ago, Saviorsrd said:

When you use FNIS Sexy Move, the Level 9 slot is overwritten by the crawling animation from this mod, which is what results in the occasional reports of "This is making me crawl all the time."

I use it, and I never noticed this. Maybe I'm not very observant? Or it might also require some other condition to be true.

I'll see if I can reproduce it.

[Lupine00]

On 5/6/2021 at 10:58 PM, keitsoru said:

I ask what the situation is, and I get the slave dialogue. This is with the update you posted Tuesday, which you claimed should have fixed it, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I'm not sure about your broader problem. @blacksw suggests one explanation. There could be other causes, so this needs a bit more data.

If you need to debug it, I can offer some suggestions, but it will be a process. If you stick with it, we will likely work it out.

 

 

The thing I want to address first is the slave dialog. Why are you seeing it? 

I investigated...

 

The distributed ESP still has the (old) wrong condition!

I don't know how this happened (yet), as the version on my dev box does have the correct condition, and the process that makes the release zips is almost completely automated.

So, probably some mistake I made when updating the release directory for 2-14-2.

 

Update:

The ESP in the distribution is not the updated ESP. It's missing multiple changes, some of which weren't even made in the CK.

I can't see the mistake I could have made to get this result, but haste is the enemy of speed...

 

I will release an update It will still be 2-14-2, but the date will be different.

I've got rid of the circlet change, and I'm going to get rid of the faction edits, as that is actually more annoying when you want to merge.

 

The updated ESP should be significantly less bothersome to properly merge.

 

Update 2:

New ESP is up.

[keitsoru]

25 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

I'm not sure about your broader problem. @blacksw suggests one explanation. There could be other causes, so this needs a bit more data.

If you need to debug it, I can offer some suggestions, but it will be a process. If you stick with it, we will likely work it out.

 

 

The thing I want to address first is the slave dialog. Why are you seeing it? 

I investigated...

 

The distributed ESP still has the (old) wrong condition!

I don't know how this happened (yet), as the version on my dev box does have the correct condition, and the process that makes the release zips is almost completely automated.

So, probably some mistake I made when updating the release directory for 2-14-2.

Blacksw was right in terms of the licenses. I had started in Winterhold with the intent of joining the College. Started in Windhelm instead and worked fine.

Glad this brought the issue with the slave dialogue to your attention, though. :3

[joe_yawiki]

How do I get the voice mod to work? Do I need to patch it or just normally install it on mod manager?

[Lupine00]

On 5/6/2021 at 4:14 PM, finalfrog said:

Here's a full list of all the responses which don't generate a .lip automatically

 

I've spent a while investigating this, and can't find any solid answers...

 

• Some of those dialogs are marked "Force Subtitles".
• Some have missing fragments for scripts, due to CK crashes - though only for scripts that are empty or should be deleted anyway.
• Some are simply not assigned to _DFMaster faction, which is what I guess you exported using.
• Some are from vanilla and it's likely that -GenerateLips:DeviousFollowers.esp skips them because their FormID is not from that ESP even though they're IN the esp.
• Some are for a different voice type or faction and were legitimately skipped.
• ... and some appear to have absolutely nothing strange about them at all. I don't know what to make of that.
  e.g. FormID 0901879D - I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work - the only unusual thing about it is that it's blocking.

 

You can't trust the "In Faction" column, as it will show "In Faction" when the test is actually not in faction.

If there's more than one faction, all bets are off.

 

I didn't have a good set of WAVs to test with, so I extracted a set from your fuz files, but they came out of of the LazyAudio converter as stereo WAVs which are not suitable as .lip sources (this is a sort of bug in LazyAudio, as you'd probably always want mono files from fuz).

 

I only realized this after converting them all, so I have modified the scripts in LazyAudio, and made them into mono, and I tested conversion using them. I can reproduce a lot of missing lip files.

 

I saw no evidence that fixing a single one of the quirks mentioned above caused a lip file that was missing before to appear. 

i.e. no indication that any of those things are the cause.

 

 

Also, the editorWarnings.txt file had nothing of use in it when I checked.

 

 

For some items, the only connection is that they're in a topic together, but some other infos in that topic might still work - so even that doesn't correlate well.

 

I looked at the items in the CK, and also in Tes5Edit. There seems a possible connection between the problem and a strange or empty PNAM - Previous Info field, but probably grasping at straws. Could be though... Maybe the GenerateLips system parses the entire ESP by walking those, and the missing dialogs aren't in that chain. But how to get them added? Maybe moving them to a new topic, then back again? I haven't tried yet.

 

 

One faint hope is that somebody somewhere figured out what's in a lip file and made a standalone lip generator ... or might do so for SE.

It could be, if people know how to make a fuz, something is known about lips? Or maybe the fuz just has the lip file embedded in it verbatim, and nobody knows what is in it?

They are probably just a list of phoneme indexes and times with a minimal header.

Open source code that gets phonemes out of audio already exists.

Update ... I looked in the .lip files, and they are a bit like I expected, with a recurring floating point duration that seems to be in seconds, followed by what look suspiciously like a small integer with some flags that are usually zero. Research says this format dates back a long way. I suspect there is a break down of it somewhere.

 

Update 2 ... Yes ... already solved - https://sourceforge.net/projects/silent-voice-generator/files/Silent Voice Generator 1.0.0.0/

With source and everything.

The phonemes it uses are pre-wired garbage, though you could fix that if you even cared - I doubt anyone really does - it just needs to get the target duration from the audio file, not guess it from the text - or it may already support proper length - it's hard to tell from just the readme.

If this works, I think it wouldn't be rocket science to wire this up to the XML files that come out of ESPTranslator, and translate a whole mod that way.

 

 

This was useful in some ways. I cleaned up some slightly wonky stuff in the jacket game for example. That should work more dependably now.

(I suspect it is not removing the jacket at the moment, and there were other unreliable things).

I found some things that should be fixed in the editor warnings.

Also, I should definitely go through the list of dialogs in manualLips and check them all for oddities, but I'm not doing that now; I should be working on SLAX and I've got distracted with this.

 

 

A final question about convert time ... did you have CUDA conversion working for the conversions? It can be a little awkward to set up, depending on what card you have, but it's potentially much faster.

[Lupine00]

4 hours ago, joe_yawiki said:

just normally install it on mod manager?

The latter.

[Sgt. Marge]

Small issue with "Can you help me out of these devices"

 

I'm on LE, DFC 2.14.2 (fixed version), DDi/DDe 4.3

 

I'm running a new character, level 2 in Whiterun.  I got put into a Black Leather Harness (DDi, xx031C74) via dd enchanted chests while snooping around the catacombs.  The item has a built in collar.  I have a new follower (day 2, No deals yet, high willpower), so I tried asking her to help me out.  I chose "I'm not a slave.  Please can you remove this collar? [260]".  The money does not get removed, I still owe her only 2 gold, and the Black Leather Harness stays on.  Not sure if this is an existing issue, I never really used this option before.

 

 

[Lupine00]

40 minutes ago, Marg597 said:

I'm not a slave.  Please can you remove this collar? [260]"

DFC failed to remove the collar for some mysterious reason.

It fails, so - to be fair to you - it doesn't take your money.

 

It's removed two different ways, one via LDC, then as a backup, via DD directly.

It might be that these two methods interact with each other... but one is in the dialog start and the other in the dialog end, so there's a gap and it seems unlikely they are messing each other up.

 

That DFC failed to remove the collar twice suggests it was added strangely, and may be in an invalid state.

Try removing via the DFC Debug MCM.

 

If that doesn't remove it, it's gone bad - likely the DD StorageUtil data doesn't match the item.

If that does remove it, delete some of your money and pretend everything worked fine  

 

You could also console yourself a key, and try that.

 

You gave the ID of the harness, but not the collar. Maybe the collar is special somehow and not the matching collar for the harness?

[Sgt. Marge]

25 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

DFC failed to remove the collar for some mysterious reason.

It fails, so - to be fair to you - it doesn't take your money.

 

It's removed two different ways, one via LDC, then as a backup, via DD directly.

It might be that these two methods interact with each other... but one is in the dialog start and the other in the dialog end, so there's a gap and it seems unlikely they are messing each other up.

 

That DFC failed to remove the collar twice suggests it was added strangely, and may be in an invalid state.

Try removing via the DFC Debug MCM.

 

If that doesn't remove it, it's gone bad - likely the DD StorageUtil data doesn't match the item.

If that does remove it, delete some of your money and pretend everything worked fine  

 

You could also console yourself a key, and try that.

 

You gave the ID of the harness, but not the collar. Maybe the collar is special somehow and not the matching collar for the harness?

 

I looked again just to make sure that was the only thing I have left on (besides the plug) and I found something interesting.  The "Black Leather Harness" does indeed include its own collar as part of the same item, there isn't a separate collar involved.  So I tried consoling in a Restraint Key and then went to unlock it.  But No!  The game said, you don't have the right key!  So I looked again, and low and behold this item is considered "chastity" gear.  I found this to be amusing but it does make sense.  Check the description from DD in the screen shot. 

 

So I guess DFC sees it as a collar, because it does have a collar, but since it can't be unlocked with a restraint key it fails, because it needs a chastity key (which I tested, and a single chastity key worked to unlock it).  Interesting.

 

Edit: placed picture in spoiler for more compact viewing

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Lupine00]

25 minutes ago, Marg597 said:

So I guess DFC sees it as a collar, because it does have a collar, but since it can't be unlocked with a restraint key it fails, because it needs a chastity key (which I tested, and a single chastity key worked to unlock it).  Interesting.

That was my first thought, but when I looked at the item in DD in the CK, it's cleanly broken down into two parts.

Which is why I asked about the ID of the collar.

 

The collar is "clean" but the harness also has a collar in it.

 

The problem here is there is no keyword to indicate that the two are linked.

I think though, most harnesses have a built-in collar, so if you're wearing a harness, attempting to remove the collar shouldn't be offered.

 

I recall a harness that kept the collar apart, but it may be that I made that one myself and it's never been part of DFC.

[CaptainJ03]

2 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I recall a harness that kept the collar apart, but it may be that I made that one myself and it's never been part of DFC.

Yes there is (or at least was in DD4.x) a single Harness Collar, and a harness without a collar, I think that's the one HexBolt8 uses for the Pony Express Event in SLtR, because Lola wouldn't be able to equip a harness with anattached collar.

DCL had (or still has, I haven't installed that mod ATM) a high security variant of the collarless harness, that only a blacksmith can remove for high cost.

[finalfrog]

6 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

A final question about convert time ... did you have CUDA conversion working for the conversions? It can be a little awkward to set up, depending on what card you have, but it's potentially much faster.

 

I did have CUDA checked and I have a pretty high end card, but I just noticed I didn't have "Fast Mode for Batch" enabled. Things might go a bit faster now.

 

Yeah, I don't think lip sync accuracy is too important, so for this run I should be able to just run that tool you linked. Didn't realize it did that, thanks!

 

Edit: Looks like the Silent Voice Generator tool doesn't have a function for generating .lip files with the same length as existing audio files, it just takes in text and generates blank audio files. It can generate .lip files to go with those silent .wav files, but there's no guarantee they'd be the same length.

[Lupine00]

7 hours ago, finalfrog said:

It can generate .lip files to go with those silent .wav files, but there's no guarantee they'd be the same length.

It seemed like it might be able to from the README, but it wasn't 100%. My guess was that silent voice files were generated like Fuz does, just not realtime, so the length was determined from text, not audio because no audio existed.

 

And yet it says:

Spoiler

Lip-synch
Silent Voice Generator allows optional lip-synch files (.LIP) to be generated alongside audio files with the same duration. All games – except for Fallout 4 – share the same LIP files which were originally generated in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Creation Kit. There are some points to take into consideration when using these LIP files:
* The LIP files have been generated using a 1 second repetition of "a-e-i-o-u" as a template.
* There is a variance in mouth movements across the different games using a specific LIP file.
* LIP files above 10 seconds tend to taper off with NPCs not moving their mouths for the rest of the audio file duration. This becomes more common the less text is present in a given dialogue line. Due to the character limit for dialogue lines in the SDKs, this means durations that approach the maximum 30 second limit will almost never have fully functioning LIP files, but they are provided nonetheless to prevent runtime issues when they are missing.

 

But as there is source, it should be reasonable to update. The GUI and all that stuff are not needed either, just in the way. A simple .Net tool that gets the audio file length and makes a matching LIP is all that's needed. Pass a WAV file name on the command line, make a batch file, that's it.

 

 

Just need to isolate the LIP generation logic in the source and port it. A bit of a distraction just now though. Need to come back to this.

 

I guess for now, there is a hybrid approach: do as much via the CK as you can, then use a script to find WAV files that lack a LIP and feed that list into the silentvoice tool to generate hacky LIP files. If you really want to make a certain line right, do it by hand in the CK.

 

 

Also, I'm not quite done trying to see if there's a way to fix the non-exporting lines by looking at the PNAM - Previous issue.

 

Another thing that would be useful, is if I added NPCs of the different follower-complete voice types hard-wired into the _DFMaster faction; there are only a few. Those NPCs would have to be kept away from the PC, as they should never be interacted with. Maybe placed but not enabled will be fine.

I need to focus on SLAX though, so I better not do that now.

[Lupine00]

I have, for now, blocked collar removal if you're wearing a harness.

 

Collars were never removed by DFC historically, as they didn't impede money-making.

However, with SLS, they can impede money-making, due to removing all your magicka, so I thought it reasonable to allow the follower to remove them.

Having it fail with harnesses was acceptable, as you weren't charged, but it seems to cause too much confusion.

Having the follower simply not offer the option is slightly less confusing.

Gives you more reason to be wary of harnesses, which are otherwise a bit easy-mode.

[MrMagoo]

@Lupine00

 

Is there a list anywhere of all the follower games and their triggers / conditions? If you have such a list, any chance you could share it?

 

I can't find anything along these lines in this thread or your mod description / blog posts etc. The closest I can find is from the original mod description;

 

Quote

Games/events are mini events when your follower catchs you off guard it is based on what you are wearing device wise/willpower/debt.
List of em.
w/ low will or over half enslavement debt. 

Inn- sleep in a inn with a gag no heavy bondage/collar/corset/harness
Jacket - in a dungeon with a blindfold
Stables- Bondage boots in the wilderness (maybe dungeon)
Enslaved (babe2) - It's just on a timer.

Jarl - collar no belt no heavy bondage
They can be blocked by other devices (getting in the way) or quest devices. 

 

 

However I believe this is somewhat out of date with the changes and improvements you have made?

[Herowynne]

Quote

Changes for 2.14.2 (Fixed):

• now has the correct ESP, not old 2.14.1 ESP!
• removed several merge-annoyances
  • no longer has faction edits to NPC's - priest dialog uses a form list instead - no longer requires merge resolution against Bijin etc.
  • removed multiple ITMs, some of which caused difficulties depending on whether you use USLEEP or not

 

Thanks @Lupine00 ! These changes are a big help!

 

In the past, I would address these issues each time I converted DFC to SE.

 

For the Fixed 2.14.2, I did not need to touch the ESP at all for SE conversion, and that was great!

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, MrMagoo said:

However I believe this is somewhat out of date with the changes and improvements you have made?

No, that's about right.

I did fix some bugs in the jacket game recently but those changes aren't released yet, and only fix stuff, don't change anything.

 

I also started adding some enhancements to the jacket game, but they're still work in progress.

[MrMagoo]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

No, that's about right.

I did fix some bugs in the jacket game recently but those changes aren't released yet, and only fix stuff, don't change anything.

 

I also started adding some enhancements to the jacket game, but they're still work in progress.

 

Ah OK - thanks for confirming

 

I thought I dimly remembered some past changes to events such as the Jarl game, slave event but I guess those were just fixes too!

[Lupine00]

8 hours ago, MrMagoo said:

but I guess those were just fixes too!

There were some slight alterations to the willpower requirements.

The code changes were significant, but changed how the events were implemented, not what the trigger conditions were, or the basic intent of the events.

 

In terms of code changes, fixing, refactoring, and re-implementing old mechanics will never end with DFC.

Spoiler

 

The code base has hundreds of hard-to-maintain fragment scripts.

Even recently fixed ones have possible issues that require further update because the information is always improving.

 

For example, (something totally boring to anyone but modders) Roggvir asserts that GetOwningQuest() is an unreliable function and can lead to script failure.

 

I believe it's possible (in SE at least) for it to fail due to cross-core native-threading issues. Maybe that can even happen in LE, but it's less likely? It was suggested this could be due to the object being unloaded, but I suspect that is not the cause; it's unlikely that running quest objects get unloaded, especially ones with live dialogs in play. I believe this is almost certainly caused by cross-core issues (essentially the object's data is not present in that core's caches), and this also correlates with with other data synch issues: uninitialized values showing up even when there's no new Papyrus thread, even in LE. SE seems far more prone to it, likely due to more threads and less core-affinity.

 

So, just removing GetOwningQuest() is a major chore for the future, ignoring any other improvements. It never ends!

And yet, none of that gives players a single new interesting feature in their game, it just stops seemingly random breakages.

 

From some perspectives, there's been too much fixing in DFC over the last 18 months, and not enough fresh content.

 

Players with broken games will have broken games no matter what I do in DFC - they don't know how to install, they don't know how to merge, they don't know how to identify game-breaking mods, and they use outdated tools like Bash, etc. sometimes incorrectly - but the newest and most engaged players are often in this category; they persist with brittle mods and broken games due to content they are excited by.

 

On the other hand, players with stable games aggressively remove mods that aren't adding enough value for the resource cost, and that includes some measure of freshness or novelty. They tend to be picky about what they install, and have been playing for a long time so it needs a lot to get them interested. 

 

There have been a lot of subtle mechanical changes - for example the way the core debts are calculated is substantially different - but Boredom and Fatigue don't have the supporting content yet to make them feel important.

 

 

One issue that came up a lot the last few weeks has been the classic deals and how they create rule conflicts. Either players can't get the classic deal they want while still using modular deals (or without disabling a mot of the rules), or they can't disable some part of a classic deal they dislike while retaining the other parts.

 

It's been a relatively large amount of the forum noise, but it's still only a few people. Does addressing this area justify holding back genuine new content again? Is now the time to expunge the classic deals entirely, in favor of modular deals that are themed instead of completely random?

 

To be realistic, classic deals will have to go away eventually, but it might not be for a long time.

 

 

So, instead of the five totally random "Dragon Deal, Skeever Deal, Slaughterfish Deal, etc.", there would be ten modular deals, all with names that mean something, including all the names of the old classic deals. The rules that can go into a deal would always have some flexibility, even if the deal attempted to follow a logical and consistent path.

 

Possibly something like:

• Bondage Deal
• Ownership Deal
• Slut Deal
• Piercing Deal
• Whore Deal
• Breasts Deal
• Servitude Deal
• Desire Deal
• Appearance Deal
• Profits Deal

 

So, you might acquire nipple piercings from the piercing deal, or the breast deal, but if either one of them has applied them, then the other will still be able to fill stage-one with something else, so your piercing deal or breasts deal might end up adding a chastity bra, etc.

 

What won't work, is retaining the old classic deals and hoping that the frequent deal clashes can magically go away. Those deals need the ability to swap one stage component for another otherwise they are prone to being blocked.

 

e.g. an entire classic deal can be locked out because you got a corset from a modular deal. Once you can swap even one component, the existing classic-deal mechanics won't work. Making flexible deals means enhancing modular deals. At that point, keeping the pure classic deals is mostly pointless, and complicates the code for no real benefit.

 

I'm not certain whether classic deals stand in the way of "personality driven deals" but my current thinking is that they are compatible.

 

Personality driven deals could be implemented with the classic deals still in place, and as long as the player doesn't refuse too often, it will provide a non-conflicting deal set that makes best practical use of the classic deals and modular deals together. But I haven't tried to make those sequences yet, and maybe it will turn out to be a flawed approach as long as the fixed classic deals exist.

[Sgt. Marge]

13 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

One issue that came up a lot the last few weeks has been the classic deals and how they create serious conflicts.

 

Sounds like a major milestone amount of work to drop classic.  On the 1 hand, if you feel it's holding things back too much and causing too much confusion, it could be worth it.  Maybe leave a final version of the "classic" mod with an (Unsupported) tag for anyone that still want's that.  They'll just have to live with the fact that version is 'frozen'.  (Of course, the download section is starting to get longer as it is.  Still probably wouldn't hurt.  Maybe package all the voice packs as 1 zip)

 

Moving on with the modular deals and leaving classic behind could mean easier to manage expansion as well, right?  More manageable code, more user friendliness, ya.

 

I'm super impressed with the direction that it is going regardless of dropping classic.  But honestly if it makes life easier in the long run, I don't see why not.

[Herowynne]

33 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

it's still only a few people. Does addressing this area justify holding back genuine new content again? Is now the time to expunge the classic deals entirely, in favor of modular deals that are themed instead of completely random?

 

Sorry, I'm one of those few people. But ... yes please?

[Lupine00]

16 minutes ago, Marg597 said:

if you feel it's holding things back too much

It's not me. But the main issue raised lately has been deal conflicts, debate as to what level of conflict prevention is best, and confusion as to why deals conflict.

 

Whether that amount of commentary is sufficient justification is the question.

It's a topic that's only come up since real conflict prevention was added.

Maybe most people are fine with it for now and there's no rush?

 

But there are two "certainties":

1) one day classic deals will be rewritten somehow to allow more configuration and flexibility.

2) rewriting classic deals means another iteration of no fresh content, just rearrangement of old content.

 

So, the issue is timing, and vocal care-factor.

 

If there are a bunch of people - even if it's just four or five - saying "please fix deal conflicts" and there is nobody at all saying "don't fix deal conflicts, write a new game where the follower does X" then I'm going to fix deal conflicts.

[ck2modfan]

Can you help me understand boredom and what activities the follower will take on their own.

 

I have boredom set to days and have not taken a single deal. boredom score is over 15. other than daily cost penalty, nothing has happened. 

 

what triggers a follower from taking matters into their own hands?

 

thanks!

[Lupine00]

41 minutes ago, ck2modfan said:

I have boredom set to days and have not taken a single deal. boredom score is over 15. other than daily cost penalty, nothing has happened. 

That's fine.

 

Boredom is actually a simple and fairly limited mechanic:

• Boredom resets if you take a deal. (Follower likes this).
• Boredom is reset if you have more deals than expected deals. (Follower likes this).
• Boredom increases over time while you have less deals than expected deals.
• Also, it only increases (in most cases) if you have some amount of willpower left.
• Boredom means your daily rate is increased or your deal discount is offset (basically discount and boredom increase cost are combined and capped).
• The current caps are max discount 90% and max penalty 100%, so you won't be charged more than double due to boredom.

 

 

While there's a plan to make some games and other events trigger off boredom, there are currently only minor interactions between boredom and the follower's direct actions.

So, the daily cost penalty is boredom working as it should. As your cost-per-day increases due to levelling, you might find it gets to be more of a problem.

 

The main purpose of Boredom is to make it so that your costs increase (possibly by a lot) if you don't take any deals.

If you take even one deal, your boredom is reset to zero.

As long as you have enough deals, it won't go up.

 

In future, I may make it less generous and only remove some boredom when you do something amusing, or make the amount removed configurable.

 

 

The impact on your daily rate is configurable. If you don't think it's severe enough, you can increase it in the MCM.

 

Maybe that limit of 100% extra charge due to boredom is too low?

Maybe should be more like 500% or 1000%?

 

 

The mechanic that triggers a follower to take direct action is debt. Purely debt. Boredom merely accelerates accrual of that debt.

If you owe more than the debt limit, they will act to correct it.

If you get too many deals they will enslave instead of adding more.

 

If you owe more than half the debt limit, various games unlock.

If you stay under half-debt-limit, the follower will not do much to trouble you.

 

However, there is also a mechanic based on having a lot of deals.

Get too many deals and a timer starts for enslavement.

 

You can configure these behaviors in the Punishment page, or adjust the Enslavement amount in the main config page.