Devious Followers - Continued

[Herowynne]

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

You're on SE, which seems to be a common thread with people who have a non-working DF.

As a point of reference, I have successfully been using my own conversions of DFC for Skyrim SE for about a year. I convert each new version that you release. DFC has always worked well for me, and it continues to work very well for me. DFC has been very stable for me on Skyrim SE.

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, Herowynne said:

As a point of reference, I have successfully been using my own conversions of DFC for Skyrim SE for about a year. I convert each new version that you release. DFC has always worked well for me, and it continues to work very well for me. DFC has been very stable for me on Skyrim SE.

This is good to know. Possibly you should post it?

Or just link it to me and I'll post it here or something.

 

I don't see any obvious reason that DF would not work on SE, as it has no C++ and no weird functions; it's just a mod with some dialogs and sexlab; the scripts are not doing anything low level.

 

Likely reasons it might not work in SE are differences in SexLab, DD or some other mod it depends on, or some mod it modifies, such as a follower mod.

[Charisma]

13 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I think I see a problem with the debug add follower dialog though...

The test it does it too narrow.

To make it work, you need to specifically set the faction rank for the target follower to 1.

e.g.

Select the follower in console mode.

addfac 5C84D 1

 

I've fixed this in my dev version.

 

This worked for me, thank you  

[Buridan]

20 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I think I see a problem with the debug add follower dialog though...

The test it does it too narrow.

To make it work, you need to specifically set the faction rank for the target follower to 1.

e.g.

Select the follower in console mode.

addfac 5C84D 1

 

Oh shit, this worked for me as well! Seems to work on everyone. (Tried on Jenassa, Uthgerd, Nazeem, random guard.) I'm so excited, I have quite a few DF dynamics I've been wanting to test out. 

 

Attached is my papyrus log anyway, in case any useful info can be gleaned. The sqv commands spat out a lot of lines, I wasn't able to copy from the console so here's a bunch of screenshots instead (sorry). This is on nomkaz's SE port of DFC 2.12.2.

dfc 2.12.2 se papyrus log.rar

[Abaddons_Corruption]

Had a bit of a bug after I paused the mod to use Cursed Loot's safe word option. The game started to think I had 2 separate sets of cuffs and a collar equipped after I took them off my follower, thought I should pause it so I didn't get punished for not wearing the things I'm supposed to but a bit later I noticed it had forgotten my modular deals. I had Bear Deal at "Rule 1 - Collar, Rule 2 - Deep Debt Deal," but now it just says "Rule - 0, Rule 2 - 0."

 

I'll just buy out of the deal, take new deals, and console the money I lost back, so it's not a huge problem, just thought I'd let you know. Just delaying that deep debt deal. I'm also not getting the add follower dialogue even though I have the MCM option enabled, I'll try the console command suggested above if it comes up again.

 

Update: okay it didn't just break my current modular deal, it seems to have broke all modular deals, so the rule just says 0 any time I try to take a new one. Went back to my save before I broke it (which I was smart enough to make for once) and using DF's remove [specific item type] option worked better than DCL's safeword option. Just had to use it more than once since I had 2 of the same item equipped. I think things are just getting weird because of interactions with the mod the follower's from, Buxom Wench Yuriana. When you get to a certain point in her quest line it seems to reset her inventory, and that did weird things which the devious devices she had equipped for her... let's call it protection.

[Lupine00]

Your DF looks OK...

 

  

3 hours ago, Buridan said:

Attached is my papyrus log anyway, in case any useful info can be gleaned. The sqv commands spat out a lot of lines, I wasn't able to copy from the console so here's a bunch of screenshots instead (sorry). This is on nomkaz's SE port of DFC 2.12.2.

But, looking at your log, you've got at least one major mod that is hosed and spewing errors from unfilled or corrupted properties.

Just a guess, but that mod is at index 9B?

BYOH also looks a bit suspect.

 

I'm not convinced that "JR_ModChecker" is doing something helpful either. You might want to get rid of that somehow?

Why does it get upset when you don't have AFT?

 

 

_SNDLC ... whatever that is also looks ... bad.

 

If there's something screwed up in your game, it doesn't seem to be DF; it's one of those things.

 

 

 

 

_DFlow has a small complaint of its own, but isn't reporting anything very concerning.

 

Spoiler

 

[01/18/2021 - 03:20:56AM] Error: alias follower on quest _DflowMCM (C600C545): Cannot force the alias's reference to a None reference.
stack:
    [alias follower on quest _DflowMCM (C600C545)].ReferenceAlias.ForceRefTo() - "<native>" Line ?
    [_DflowMCM (C600C545)]._dflowmcm.They() - "_DFlowMCM.psc" Line 4124
    [_DflowMCM (C600C545)]._dflowmcm.noti() - "_DFlowMCM.psc" Line 3964
    [alias PlayerRef on quest _Dtick (C6010617)]._dtickPlayerAlias.OnLocationChange() - "_dtickPlayerAlias.psc" Line 38

 

 

 

This looks like SE is passing a None for either oldLocation or newLocation into the location tracker.

If you have a log for a longer play period where you moved about, and you're seeing the same error repeating, I'd guess that there's a serious problem with location handling in your DF for SE.

 

If it's just a one-off, it's probably just the initial oldLocation, and you can ignore it.

[Buridan]

Thanks for the analysis!

 

_SNDLC looks like it's from iNeed. Not sure about AFT, haven't used it since LE. The BYOH thing might be Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions, I don't think I have anything else that modifies Hearthfire stuff.

 

JR_ModChecker appears to be for the Lucien Flavius follower (JR is the mod author's initials). I've had him in my load order intermittently, but never tried to make him a DF. He uses his own follower system.

 

9B in my load order is the Slave Pack Riekling Porter mod. Looking at the mod page comments, there are some complaints of micro-stuttering, so that makes sense. I actually haven't used him at all since I put it in my load order.

 

Anyway, I disabled these two mods, started a fresh save in Riverwood, and the "I hope you don't try to cheat me" bark triggered! Ran through the recruitment from the same save about a dozen times to test. Sometimes it triggers immediately upon asking Faendal to follow me. I notice if I just stand still doing nothing it will pretty much always trigger eventually (had one instance take over a minute). But if I'm impatient and start running down the road to Whiterun or or up to the barrow it will sometimes fail to trigger altogether, or maybe I just needed to wait longer. Is it possible that sometimes papyrus gets overloaded and loses whatever triggers the "I hope you don't try to cheat me" bark? (Pure guessing, I have no idea how anything works.)

 

In any case as long as the debug add follower dialog works I'm not too bothered.

[Lupine00]

55 minutes ago, Buridan said:

Is it possible that sometimes papyrus gets overloaded and loses whatever triggers the "I hope you don't try to cheat me" bark? (Pure guessing, I have no idea how anything works.)

If you miss it, it will keep being repeated until it works.

If the quest hasn't advanced, it will still be capable of appearing, at some point, and if it has advanced, you don't need it.

 

Sometimes you won't see the dialog due to another dialog popping up over it.

That doesn't matter.

Once you have [Click Me] in your dialogs with the follower, you can click it, see the intro to DF, and proceed.

 

That should only occur for your first recruitment - it's there to force you to read the intro to the DF system.

For later followers, DFs should just start being devious once the hello has triggered.

 

Sometimes the hello doesn't occur promptly due to other mods stealing all the hello time. Sometimes entering or leaving a building will help make it show up.

 

In the new dev version, I find it appears immediately for me; it's much less prone to delays. At least for mercenaries. I can't remember what I did to change it though - that was nearly a year ago!

[Lupine00]

Unlikely as it may sound, I actually found time to refactor all the classic deal dialogs to use the new deal system tonight.

I also refreshed some of the texts a little. It gets boring reading the same old thing all the time. It's even practical to add alternative wordings now.

Maybe tomorrow I will get the modular deals done?

Hmm, let's not get too optimistic.

[YojimboRatchet]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Unlikely as it may sound, I actually found time to refactor all the classic deal dialogs to use the new deal system tonight.

I also refreshed some of the texts a little. It gets boring reading the same old thing all the time. It's even practical to add alternative wordings now.

Maybe tomorrow I will get the modular deals done?

Hmm, let's not get too optimistic.

 

nice, looking forward to the changes.

 

did you ever get any time to look further into more humiliating comments and behaviour towards the PC at all ? i know it was mention a while back between myself and a few others in this thread, and that you did think it had potential, but i've not heard anything since then about it.

[Lupine00]

7 hours ago, YojimboRatchet said:

did you ever get any time to look further into more humiliating comments and behaviour towards the PC at all ? i know it was mention a while back between myself and a few others in this thread, and that you did think it had potential, but i've not heard anything since then about it.

Lozeak had some idea for a "humiliation system", though it was more internal narration rather than NPC comments.

The code that's there for it doesn't/wouldn't work, so it would need to be substantially reworked to make it possible to finish it or get any value out.

 

I think the idea of NPC comments belongs in another mod; some kind of reputation/dialog mod.

I also think dialog mods are going to have a good year.

Let's see?  

[Buridan]

Sexist Guards has a pretty good, modular-looking system for internal narration imo, always seemed a shame to me that no one else picked up on the framework.

 

How does the "Selling Player" feature in the Additional Content tab work? Does it require Simple Slavery, and is it independent of slavery/abandonment? While playing around I managed to get the "with that many deals I basically own you now" bark from the DF that seems to be related to this, but I didn't get anything else to happen.

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, Buridan said:

Sexist Guards has a pretty good, modular-looking system for internal narration imo, always seemed a shame to me that no one else picked up on the framework.

I've never looked at its internals.

I use the mod, but I disable all the player narration/stories thing.

 

2 hours ago, Buridan said:

How does the "Selling Player" feature in the Additional Content tab work?

If you are enslaved for too long, if selling player is enabled, the follower can sell you to another NPC.

There is no SS requirement, instead it's a "private sale" handled via a little scene in DF.

 

Because of the way it works, you have to be near a suitable NPC for it to happen.

 

Originally, Lozeak made this so it could sell you to literally any NPC. You could end up sold to Nazeem, or Haelga, or Heimskr, or even some quest NPC that could definitely blow up your game.

 

The intent was to (potentially) encumber you with a useless follower who wouldn't offer much value in combat.

 

I felt this was mostly going to break games and had questionable value, so I modified it so now you can only be sold to a potential follower.

Possibly, the faction check is too narrow, so I should probably check that it isn't.

Thus if you wanted a chance to be sold to Ysolda, you would have to put her in the potential follower faction.

 

Supporting DF selling you into SS is theoretically trivial, but for it to be "nice" I think the follower would have to make you go to the auction hall.

It would certainly be a "fun" feature, if you could simply go there while enslaved, and the follower would have a good chance of deciding to put you up for auction based on how long you've been enslaved.

It would be a way to get out of DF debt, though you might end up straight back in it again.

I'll put it on my list of possibilities, but I have no idea about ever getting to it.

 

I've been doing the new dialogs for the modular deals. It should be clearer what the expectations are.

I have a bit more to do and then you'll be able to refuse both classic and modular deals in an informed way, and if you refuse a deal you will not be offered it immediately next time you ask.

[Clea Strange]

With Devious Devices 5 out, will this be safe to use with Devious Devices 5?

[Baltasarr80]

dd5 works fine with dev followers i use it on my sse variant. I have no problems so far

[Lupine00]

4 minutes ago, Hiderius said:

With Devious Devices 5 out, will this be safe to use with Devious Devices 5?

I've been -told- it works.

 

I haven't confirmed it myself.

I am going to wait until DD5 goes to 5.1 or higher before I play around with it; I'm not interested in beta testing it.

 

I've also heard tell that its animation filter is not compatible with various SexLab animations and overrides animations it shouldn't.

[YojimboRatchet]

14 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Lozeak had some idea for a "humiliation system", though it was more internal narration rather than NPC comments.

The code that's there for it doesn't/wouldn't work, so it would need to be substantially reworked to make it possible to finish it or get any value out.

 

I think the idea of NPC comments belongs in another mod; some kind of reputation/dialog mod.

I also think dialog mods are going to have a good year.

Let's see?  

 

great, looking forward to it. and i hope you are right about the dialog mods. it's very much lacking overall. the humiliation system especially, not just from NPC's, but also from the follower as well. a lot of potential that remains untapped in my opinion

[Baltasarr80]

The Humiliation(comment) system could take place in the fame framework. I think that would be the most appropriate place to be

[YojimboRatchet]

14 minutes ago, Baltasarr80 said:

The Humiliation(comment) system could take place in the fame framework. I think that would be the most appropriate place to be

 

imo fame is its own beast into itself. humiliation doesn't need to be fame-based or -fame-driven, even though some parts could be. i think Lupine has the right idea though, a separate beast of its own. developing this though as a plan/outline is going to be interesting, and possibly very complicated. i'll say this though, there is no way that whatever is developed, will appease everyone, as humiliation is different for everyone out there. just going to have to find a compromised common ground, and then have his own special brand of twistedness added in lol

[Lupine00]

59 minutes ago, YojimboRatchet said:

i hope you are right about the dialog mods

I base my theory on the release of SKVA, which is not perfect, but is likely to continue to improve and is already sufficient to voice a mod if you are patient with it and design appropriately.

 

I posted a roadmap for DF for 2021 that trims things back from 2020.

I want to finish off this release, which is going OK again, but assuming that gets finished the next thing for DF would be a less-random way to get deals and then radiant quests.

 

The less-random deals thing replaces the idea of introductory deals etc, and would have the follower offer deals in a semi-random order that sort of makes sense and tries to build up gradually and avoid annoying deal conflicts. It's pretty easy to do in the new deal setup, and I might even make it part of the forthcoming release.

 

I currently need to test all the "completed" deals, and then do the main mechanics for the three deals that aren't done (milking, keys, skooma). Actually, most of the skooma deal is done I think, but I need to check it. Milking and keys aren't done at all though.

 

And yes, the "slave sale" mechanic requires the potential follower faction level to be '1' exactly. Fixed that and added support for mercenaries too.

 

There will likely be a test version without those two final deals in it available tomorrow, for people who can make a convincing case that they'll actually run it, test and report issues. Previous betas have been a complete fail, as nobody reported glaring problems, though a couple of people did provide some useful feedback.

[Baltasarr80]

one question though ... if your follower will sell you will he leave you in the moment of selling or stick around?

[Anunya]

I'd like to suggest a different implementation for the "tell people you're a slut" deal (you know, in case you have the time and inclination).

 

The current implementation (I believe) is that every time you  initiate a conversation there's a chance that you'll get a conversation option that's "I'm a slut..." that overrides all other conversations until it's taken. This produces a few issues:

1. The follower will tell you to call yourself a slut even if they're half-way across Skyrim, waiting at some other location. This isn't super realistic.
2. Sometimes you get the instruction to say you're a slut several times in a row before you can carry on with the actual conversation. Repeating the same action several times is somewhat immersion breaking IMO, given it's the exact same lines you're repeating.
3. It can interact badly with the forced conversation from wearing a gag (the whole "I'm sorry, what did you say"/ "You use gestures to make yourself understood") and/ or the conversation loop from Radiant Prostution ("follow me"/ "take off clothes"/ "collect money"), where the game starts having CTDs every few minutes (or more frequently). I'm guessing it's some sort of unfinished/ broken conversation leaking memory or something and once you get several of those you're in trouble. I'm playing SE, in case that makes a difference - but it's consistent enough that I've disabled the slut deal altogether.

My suggestion:

1. When the deal is active, put the option to say you're a slut into the regular conversation options so you can choose to use it at any time.
2. If the follower puts his hand on your shoulder and you don't take the option you get punished (debt added/ lives lost/ quick Slap That Ass spank from the follower/ whatever).
3. Alternately, you could get rid of the hand on the shoulder and just add a counter. Tell X people that you're slut every so often (maybe same interval as debt is calculated), and be punished if you fall short.
4. If you're feeling fancy, you could include a proximity check for the follower so they don't put their hand on your shoulder if they're far away and/ or that voluntary confessions of sluthood do not count. If combined with #3, that would mean that the player would have to make sure to stay near enough to make sure their confessions counted toward the limit.

The potential advantages as I see them are that it's more immersive when there's an actual choice to comply or not and, hopefully, it avoids getting the game into a state where CTDs are happening all the time.

 

Just some thoughts, in case they're useful to you. Thank you for your work on this great mod

[Aldid]

On 1/18/2021 at 11:43 PM, Lupine00 said:

Lozeak had some idea for a "humiliation system", though it was more internal narration rather than NPC comments.

The code that's there for it doesn't/wouldn't work, so it would need to be substantially reworked to make it possible to finish it or get any value out.

 

I think the idea of NPC comments belongs in another mod; some kind of reputation/dialog mod.

I also think dialog mods are going to have a good year.

Let's see?  

NPC comments does feel unnecessary for this mod, but one thing I've always wished was included is more comments from your follower regarding your current situation, specifically in a way that's aware of your current deals.

 

For example, the DF could comment after the "I'm a slut" event triggers ("Does it thrill you to tell people what you really are?"), when naked with the piercing deal active ("Those piercings really suit you, pet"), when at high debt ("My patience isn't limitless, you know"), etc. Awareness of Sexual Fame would also be nice, but definitely secondary to deal comments.

 

I've been playing around with it a bit in my game, but the problem is that you would have to add a lot of potential lines for it to feel natural, especially since many would have to be locked behind specific deals.

[Lupine00]

6 hours ago, Anunya said:

My suggestion:

1. When the deal is active, put the option to say you're a slut into the regular conversation options so you can choose to use it at any time.
2. If the follower puts his hand on your shoulder and you don't take the option you get punished (debt added/ lives lost/ quick Slap That Ass spank from the follower/ whatever).
3. Alternately, you could get rid of the hand on the shoulder and just add a counter. Tell X people that you're slut every so often (maybe same interval as debt is calculated), and be punished if you fall short.
4. If you're feeling fancy, you could include a proximity check for the follower so they don't put their hand on your shoulder if they're far away and/ or that voluntary confessions of sluthood do not count. If combined with #3, that would mean that the player would have to make sure to stay near enough to make sure their confessions counted toward the limit.

This would certainly remove a problematic design element that leads to conflicts with quest mods.

 

I like the existence of a choice ... at least for characters with sufficient willpower.

 

The proximity "bug" has annoyed me on many occasions, but for some reason I forgot about fixing it.

That can (and should) be fixed regardless of any other change.

 

I'm not sure how to present the "hand on shoulder" information using this approach.

 

I could potentially rewrite the entire slut mechanic so it works like a bunch of new deals that require you to do something N-times per day.

In that case, the follower would not "put a hand on your shoulder" at all, but instead require you to tell N different NPCs that you're a slut per day.

 

That isn't exactly what Anunya suggested, but it avoids worrying about how to know if the follower is expecting you to say it this time, and gives the player more freedom. For example, they could be tricky and avoid telling males and instead only tell females. It seems perfectly legitimate to exploit the deal terms if the deal allows it, and there could turn out to be subtle consequences for it.

Also, I have this code pattern for some new deals already, so it's just cut+paste for a lot of it.

What if you don't talk to anyone at all, other than the follower? I think, probably, that can be overcome somehow - you get a pass if you didn't spend any time in town, for example.

 

The downside to that approach is that it requires some non-trivial work, as does any other significant mechanical change to slut deal.

Just fixing the proximity bug would be a much smaller piece of work.

 

Swapping to a case-by-case choice without swapping to a different way of measuring compliance would be a middle-ground, but needs to inform the player of the "hand on shoulder" event, and that's most easily solved by using pop-up message boxes ... which I dislike - though SLS seems to get away with them - I find they aren't very immersive. Overall, I think the pop-ups would be too frustrating if they came up as often as they'd need to.

 

I guess it could be done by adding some text after the "I'm a slut topic" such as "[Your follower has their hand on your shoulder]".

And doing it like that would allow the choice and retain the punished for each non-compliance approach.

It requires you to spot the option showing up in a potentially large list of stupid topics though.

Spoiler

My current game has serious topic spam, introduced by a variety of mods, from BFW, SLS, MME, SWL, SD+ ... there's just too much of this nonsense and I'm starting to think I need to patch those mods so they are less annoying.

 

And then you talk to an innkeeper and it's even worse.

 

MME is particularly lame, in that it puts the dialog on everyone, but only a tiny number of NPCs respond to it. I could happily disable that on everyone except vendors.

SD+ wants me to enslave myself to everyone ... and I guess I could easily gate that on DF willpower in my own game, as the _DWill global is injected and won't even create a dependency).

 

SWL is very tiresome. It desperately needs a way to toggle "working" on/off.

I forgot why I got rid of it before, and this is one reason.

 

BFW is just plain bugged and adding a ... dialog to everyone that pointlessly results in them searching me for stolen goods.

Not sure why it's doing that, may be an override issue.

 

 

 

So, it's a choice between "fix proximity bug" and leave everything else as it is, or do a lot more.

 

Doing it all seems great, but inevitably means that something else is pushed back.

So for now, I think I'll just worry about the bug, and put the rework on the roadmap as a "maybe", back behind radiant quests.

 

[Anunya]

45 minutes ago, Aldid said:

I've been playing around with it a bit in my game, but the problem is that you would have to add a lot of potential lines for it to feel natural, especially since many would have to be locked behind specific deals.

 

If the challenge here is writing the lines rather than the implementation, I can pitch in.  I've done games writing earlier in my career. @Lupine00 - if you need a few hundred lines for the various permutations of DFC comments let me know and I'll be happy to help. If not, that's cool too