Submissive Lola: The Resubmission LE/SE

[HexBolt8]

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

When the dialogue breaks, it happens instantaneously.  You say "Mistress?" and the PC kneels and the dialogue closes essentially simultaneously.

I guess it's possible that the timed kneeling is breaking you out of the conversation.  Does this only happen with the kneeling option enabled?

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Can you give me setstage info to force this event for testing? 

StartQuest vkjFasterLolaFaster

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Failing those options, another would be to use the vanilla laying on the ground animation by default (laying on the back, hands folded behind the head, ankles crossed)—AYGAS slaves use this to sleep by their mistresses' beds.

I wasn't aware of that animation.  I downloaded AYGAS and found the reference.  It is indeed vanilla.  Thanks!

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Submission 100 event:

 

Spoiler

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Sounds like maybe, but I've experienced it being hard to come by twice, and another user recently reported the same thing.  Could there be another event blocking it?

Just the way that events tend to play out when you reach a city.  All those city-only events trigger.  You may spend your first several game hours doing confessions, "I Am Famous", pony express, and whatever else can trigger there (though prostitution will not block other events).  Once all the competition is on cooldown, the Tagged event is likely to fire, though it still competes with "trick" events like "strip for me".  In my testing, Tagged came up quickly, but I was using a save where I'd been in the city awhile.  You can use "set vkjSubmissionscore to 100" to test.  Testing in an orc stronghold would sidestep many of the city events.

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

It could just be my ignorance, but I'd think it should be pretty trivial.

There's more to it than that.  And I don't want to hard-code "Lola" as the only response, since many players dislike the name.

 

Edit:  I've added this now, with options for "Lola", your name, or nothing.  Unfortunately, the script that replaces "Lola" won't affect this.

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

If you can give me the setstage info to force the event, I can play around with it and see what I can come up with.

StartQuest vkjTagged will shortcut to the main event.  You won't have the tag, but you'll have all the conversation.

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

I don't think this is likely to be the culprit; I'm not a frenetic dialogue clicker generally, and the equipping scripts are working fine anyway—the problem is just that the dialogue doesn't match the actions.  But can you give me the setstage info to force this event [Pony Express] for testing?

StartQuest vkjPonyExpress

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

[Hair change] That's why I find it weird that, once the three days have elapsed, the player has de facto control, since you can ask to change it back or you can leave it changed as long as you want—the player gets to decide when the reversion happens.

Ah, yes, I see your point.  My counter would be that having to ask can still feel submissive because the owner gets to say yes or no.  As players, we know that the answer will always be yes, but Lola doesn't know that.  With a little work, this could play out like the extended stripping, where you have to ask and might be refused a few times.  However, the justifications for how it works are actually beside the point.  The implementation is driven by design concerns.  The event can't just change the hair -- with the fade-in and fade-out -- whenever it times out, because you might be in combat, having sex, or whatever.  If it has to go into a holding pattern until you're free, I have to build that, and it's more complexity that might go wrong.  Or it would have to be yet another force greeting.  Force greetings can be interrupted by ill-behaved mods that butt in with their own greetings while you're talking.  So I think it's best to keep it simple, and spend the time on something new and interesting.

 

Oh, you'd asked about keeping the hair style.  I think it's risky.  It's implemented as a temporary effect, not a true hair style switch.  If you later change the hair through ShowRaceMenu, I don't know what fallout that might have.  It's best not to risk bugging a player's game, so I've avoided that.

 

13 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Maybe the Submissive Lola book in the world should be set to be unowned so the player doesn't have to commit theft to acquire it?

Just as with other books that start quests, you only have to read it to start the quest (which can be done without taking it), but I've now changed the ownership for the copies in the bunkhouse and the bard college library so that you can swipe them without consequence.

Edited December 22, 2021 by HexBolt8

[shiagwen]

Are events like getting niopple piercings or need to obey clothing restrictions unique or are they repeated with a new master ?

 

idea from tdf for lola event:  Master : Bring me some girls  mastress : bring me some cocks , 

[HexBolt8]

1 hour ago, shiagwen said:

Are events like getting niopple piercings or need to obey clothing restrictions unique or are they repeated with a new master ?

Repeated with a new master, as long as conditions are met.

[shiagwen]

i had great respect for your work here, but for longer i play the more errors show up. now my pc came to auction. mcm buyer Lydia  end of auction : bought by an unknow buyer and set free. No Lydia. so what is mcm good for ?

[HexBolt8]

1 hour ago, shiagwen said:

my pc came to auction. mcm buyer Lydia  end of auction : bought by an unknow buyer and set free.

I tested it just now with Lydia and it worked.  Can you provide a papyrus log for the auction?

[shiagwen]

16 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

I tested it just now with Lydia and it worked.  Can you provide a papyrus log for the auction?

i have to replay it with payprus. usually it works. this time lydia was playmate before, but noz during auction. . i am sure that is the reason..  i have to sort things out and try again.

[HexBolt8]

On 12/21/2021 at 4:06 AM, Antiope_Appolonia said:

I'd also really like to be able to configure the [hair change] duration as well as the cooldown.  Since I'm playing this event basically as a "let your hair down" (think the cliché teen movie scene where the plain girl is transformed into prom queen by letting her pony tail down), it'd feel a lot better if the duration could be set to 0.5 days like most of your durations can, and then I'd set the cooldown to 1 day.  

I've been looking into this.  The cooldown won't do what you might be expecting.  A cooldown is the minimum time between repeats of an event.  With a 1-day cooldown, you might go for 2 days or more before the event triggers, and of course it could happen at any time of day, such as just before bedtime (it which case you'd sleep through much of it).

 

However, a configurable duration should be possible, with a min and max to allow random times.

Edited December 23, 2021 by HexBolt8

[ZorinBlitz]

Just awesome work! And i have a question. I've noticed "display thoughts" option, but it requires some file. Where i can get it or i have to write it by myself?

 

[HexBolt8]

4 hours ago, ZorinBlitz said:

I've noticed "display thoughts" option, but it requires some file. Where i can get it or i have to write it by myself?

When you highlight the setting for thoughts display interval, it tells you the location of the file (in Data\Interface\Lola).  In that folder is a file "How to Edit Thoughts" with instructions.  You start with a basic example file.  The intention is that you'll do some editing to change and add thoughts to suit your game.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

I guess it's possible that the timed kneeling is breaking you out of the conversation.  Does this only happen with the kneeling option enabled?

Seems to.  I just did a quick test, and 20 out of 20 interactions without kneeling worked correctly.  With kneeling, 3 out of 20 broke, which surprised me; in natural gameplay, it feels a lot more common than that.  Interestingly, the three interactions that broke were three of the first four, so I don't know if there's anything in that, or it's just stochasticity of a small sample.  Anecdotally, it's still happening regularly while testing other things with kneeling on, too.  I can gather more data if needed.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

StartQuest vkjFasterLolaFaster

Okay, so I just ran the quest a bunch of times, mostly back and forth between a mill and a dwarven ruin, but also just around The Rift a bit.  I have to say the current implementation feels really strange.  For one, in design terms, it lacks discoverability.  In the hundreds of hours I've spent with SLTR, I had honestly never even realised that talking to Mistress to complete the event at a location was an option; it's really counterintuitive to have to stop and talk to Mistress during an event that requires you to keep moving.  There's actually some really nice dialogue in that event that I've only just seen for the first time during this test, which is a pity.  And it's even more counterintuitive that you have to conclude the event through dialogue in potentially hostile locations, but not in safe places where you have all the time in the world to chat.  Some of my wandering tests took me to, e.g., bandit forts, and then Mistress would be in combat, so there was no possibility to actually talk to her.  

 

I don't know what technical considerations might have gone into the way the quest is currently implemented, but I think what would feel much better would be if it autocompletes at "Locations" but not at "Habitations" (i.e., the opposite of now), and then at Habitations, you get the dialogue from a beckon event rather than having to stop and talk to Mistress of your own initiative.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

I wasn't aware of that animation.  I downloaded AYGAS and found the reference.  It is indeed vanilla.  Thanks!

Aye aye.  In vanilla, off the top of my head, it's used at least by the bathing hunters in the hotsprings south of Windhelm.

 

Submission 100:

Spoiler

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

You can use "set vkjSubmissionscore to 100" to test.  Testing in an orc stronghold would sidestep many of the city events.

I tested in Whiterun/Riften, because I wanted to get a real feel for how hard it would be to get the event, and none of my tests took long to get Tagged.  So I guess my previous experience may have been just bad luck, unless there's something persistent that can block it, but I haven't figured out what it'd be if there were such a thing.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

There's more to it than that. 

Mind elaborating for my future enlightenment, if it's not too much trouble? O_o I'm always interested in becoming less ignorant!

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

And I don't want to hard-code "Lola" as the only response, since many players dislike the name. [...] Unfortunately, the script that replaces "Lola" won't affect this.

Interesting.  I guess I really don't understand how replacing "Lola" works.  Not too surprising, I guess, since when I tried replacing "Lola" myself, I never managed to get it working properly—I always inadvertently broke something in the course of it—and then I just got accustomed to "Lola" before I figured out what I was doing wrong.  At any rate, I'd be interested to understand what makes the appearance of "Lola" in this context different.  Also, when you say "script that replaces", do you just mean Find/Replace, or did you/someone write a bespoke script? O_o Actually, while we're here, on a tangentially related note, I've also been curious as to what makes it possible to edit the "Mistress" title through the MCM, but not "Lola".

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

Edit:  I've added this now, with options for "Lola", your name, or nothing. 

Anyway, that sounds like a good enough solution that should be positive for most users and neutral for the small remainder.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

StartQuest vkjTagged will shortcut to the main event.  You won't have the tag, but you'll have all the conversation.

Okay.  So I've played with the event a good bit to think about what could be expanded.  The first conversation before being sent to the smithy is pretty much perfect—after having replayed it a few times in quick succession, it's even better than I remembered, honestly.  Especially if you aren't already "kept forever"—I'd never seen that dialogue before, but it's nice. 

 

The interaction with the smith is mostly nice—especially if it's a female smith—but there's one line that irks me a bit, where you're asked, "You know the story about Lola the shieldmaiden?" and then speak out of turn despite your max training.  Having a simple, "Yes, sir/ma'am," response option would be great.  Bonus points if you keep the current line as an alternative—maybe expand it slightly, "Well, yes, I'm actually named af..."—and when the smith has to reprimand you for impertinence, you actually lose a little bit of score, fail the event, get punished by Mistress, and then have a few days' cooldown before you can try Tagged again.  

 

But the interaction when you return with the tag could really be developed further.  She attaches the tag to your collar so unceremoniously—you're not even kneeling!  I've thought a lot about ideas for what could be done here, and this is the best I've come up with:

• Mistress leads you to the city market during business hours.  If you bring her the tag outside of business hours, she says something like, "I'm going to hang onto this for now, but don't worry my pet, I've got something special planned for you in the morning."  Maybe we get the inn events idea, too, and she takes you to the inn to rest—or at least try O_O—until time to go to the market. ?
• Mistress kneels you down, then invites everyone present to watch.  As the crowd gathers around, she makes a brief speech, then attaches the tag.
• She then invites the spectators to come inspect your new tag... and you.  Ideally, random NPCs present would approach one at a time and make some comments (pulled randomly from a pool of possibilities, perhaps).  
  • The comments would be varied in tone, mostly addressed to Mistress and praising her work, but maybe a couple possible comments would be made to Lola herself.  
  • It'd be great if these comments could take the NPC's disposition score into account.  Maybe a friendly NPC can come and give you a little pat, tell you you're a good girl, whisper something sweet in your ear—maybe something about how you put other slaves to shame by comparison?—and then tell Mistress she's lucky to have you.  That'd completely melt hearts!  Not sure about NPCs with a negative disposition, but maybe they could taunt you for your status—maybe something to the effect that you'll never compare to some other slaves they've seen?
• After the marketplace event concludes, you get the "let's go to a secluded place" event we have now, but maybe Mistress let's her guard down just a little bit, just for a moment, and admits that she felt proud of you while everyone was admiring you in the market earlier.  

I don't know if anything there poses prohibitive technical hurdles, but from my perspective, something like that would be incredible—a true culmination of the whole SLTR experience. 

 

Also, regarding possible SlaveTats integration with a brand, I'd forgotten about the line when talking with the smith, but it feels like adding this would slide right into the event so naturally—the smith even asks about it!

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

However, the justifications for how it works are actually beside the point.  The implementation is driven by design concerns.  The event can't just change the hair -- with the fade-in and fade-out -- whenever it times out, because you might be in combat, having sex, or whatever.  If it has to go into a holding pattern until you're free, I have to build that, and it's more complexity that might go wrong.  Or it would have to be yet another force greeting.  Force greetings can be interrupted by ill-behaved mods that butt in with their own greetings while you're talking.  So I think it's best to keep it simple, and spend the time on something new and interesting.

Either I'm missing some core concept, or I think we're talking past each other a bit.  First, can you clarify exactly what is meant by "force greeting"?  My understanding would be that it's what happens when you approach Mistress after she beckons, correct?—when an NPC initiates dialogue rather than the PC?  If so, since SLTR only uses this mechanic for what I've been referring to as "beckon events", then the two concepts would be functionally equivalent in practice.  It seems like you're under the impression that I'm imagining the reversion happening with much more immediacy, with the end of the event's duration as some kind of hard limit, but that's not what I meant at all. 

 

My idea is that, after the event's duration has elapsed (i.e., currently, three days), a "revert hair" event would be added to the pool of possible "beckon events"—alongside all the existing possibilities from "dance for me" to "zap" to "fetch" and so on—probably with a higher priority, but not necessarily.  My possibly flawed understanding is that this wouldn't really be any different from what happens when the cooldown for the existing "hair change" event expires, and the hair change is re-added to the pool of possible beckon events.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

Oh, you'd asked about keeping the hair style.  I think it's risky.  It's implemented as a temporary effect, not a true hair style switch.  If you later change the hair through ShowRaceMenu, I don't know what fallout that might have.  It's best not to risk bugging a player's game, so I've avoided that.

Ah, fair enough.  Yeah, given that implementation, making it permanent seems like a bad plan, indeed.  If there's a good way to make it a "true hair style switch" instead of temporary, then I still think making the change permanent and letting the event cycle between them as I described might be the most elegant way to implement the event, but it sounds like, at minimum, that'd be way more work, so I guess it isn't a viable path.  

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, HexBolt8 said:

you can swipe them without consequence.

Cool.  

 

On 12/23/2021 at 1:08 AM, HexBolt8 said:

The cooldown won't do what you might be expecting.  A cooldown is the minimum time between repeats of an event. 

Yeah, I know, that's what I'm expecting. ? 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Antiope_Appolonia

[Antiope_Apollonia]

On 12/22/2021 at 8:37 AM, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Failing those options, another would be to use the vanilla laying on the ground animation by default (laying on the back, hands folded behind the head, ankles crossed)—AYGAS slaves use this to sleep by their mistresses' beds.  Then you could have optional integration with the Extension,

Thinking about this a bit more, I guess you could even use the Extension's animation with the Extension installed but disabled, like with the TDF dance animations, right?  So for optional integration to replace the vanilla animation, that'd be pretty simple/unintrusive.  

[HexBolt8]

This is advance notice that I'm planning to remove the MCM setting for "Minimum level for treasure hunting".  Delaying the availability of the quest can still be accomplished by setting its cooldown to zero.

 

Be aware that the new "Always kneel above this score" feature seems to break dialog with the owner some of the time.  I recommend not using this feature.  I'll probably have to remove it in the next update.

Edit:  I'm reconsidering this.

Edited December 29, 2021 by HexBolt8

[caqa]

Bug: Careless Hands quest doesn't handle Sexlab scenes properly.

When already wearing arm cuffs before the quest starts (not sure if that actually matters), and Careless hands quest times out during a Sexlab scene, the quest cuffs aren't removed.

[HexBolt8]

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

With kneeling, 3 out of 20 broke, which surprised me; in natural gameplay, it feels a lot more common than that.

I don't think I can fix this.  A failure rate of 15% or more is unacceptable, so I'll probably remove the feature in the next update.  For now, I recommend not using it.  Thank you for taking the time to document the problem.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

I guess I really don't understand how replacing "Lola" works.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

when you say "script that replaces", do you just mean Find/Replace, or did you/someone write a bespoke script?

The process is outlined on the mod page, under "Changing Lola".  It lets you indirectly edit the esp file to perform a global search & replace, a feature not supported by mod editors.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

I'd be interested to understand what makes the appearance of "Lola" in this context different.

It' embedded in a script, with no way to get a changed version of the name from the mod.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

I've also been curious as to what makes it possible to edit the "Mistress" title through the MCM, but not "Lola".

Skyrim has a powerful (though awkward to use) text substitution mechanism.  Unfortunately, it only works for things the player character says, or for various unspoken text, such as notification messages, quest objectives, and notes.  Text substitution does not work for things that NPCs say.  It's a limitation of the game, presumably because all NPC dialog in vanilla Skyrim is voiced and couldn't support it.  It's my fear that in future games the developers might remove even this much, given the (unfortunate, in my opinion) trend toward voiced player dialog.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

it's really counterintuitive to have to stop and talk to Mistress during an event [Faster, Lola, Faster] that requires you to keep moving.

Speaking to the owner is consistent with the way that many of the mod's quests are completed.  When you reach a landmark, you have a small time period of non-enforcement of the running requirement, to allow the follower to catch up (if the follower isn't lagging too far behind).  You can choose to end the quest there, or continue to a better landmark.  Many landmarks are not good places to be.  The choice to end the quest there or not is yours, as is your choice of destination.  If you decide to lead Mistress to a bandit fort to prove you're not lost, it's not surprising that it might not end well, though you're not required to keep running during combat.

 

So far, I don't believe that anyone else has expressed a complaint about this aspect of the quest.  If you think it would help, I can try to add a one-time pop-up at the start to clearly state the need to speak to the owner at a landmark.

 

11 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

can you clarify exactly what is meant by "force greeting"?

When an NPC initiates a conversation with the PC.

 

11 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

It seems like you're under the impression that I'm imagining the reversion happening with much more immediacy, with the end of the event's duration as some kind of hard limit, but that's not what I meant at all. 

Yes, that was my (apparently mistaken) understanding.

 

11 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

My idea is that, after the event's duration has elapsed (i.e., currently, three days), a "revert hair" event would be added to the pool of possible "beckon events"

I don't see the advantage to that.  I can't remove the existing completion mechanism of talking to the owner without making many (if not most) players unhappy.  In your own experience, a certain event in the random pool (though at high priority) felt to you like it took a long to trigger.  Players who just want the hair changed back might not like the wait.  But if I keep that in place and add a random event to have the owner initiate ending the quest, it seems a bit pointless.

[HexBolt8]

1 hour ago, caqa said:

Bug: Careless Hands quest doesn't handle Sexlab scenes properly.

This mod doesn't have a Careless Hands quest.  If it's perhaps something from Kalmah's extension, it would have to be fixed there. 

 

Edit:  Oops, it does.  Now I get to feel foolish.

Edited December 24, 2021 by HexBolt8

[caqa]

25 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

This mod doesn't have a Careless Hands quest.  If it's perhaps something from Kalmah's extension, it would have to be fixed there.

 

It's the quest you get after damaging your master/mistress in combat, editorID is vkjFriendlyFire. The punishment for damaging your master/mistress is disabled by default in MCM I think, but it still is a part of the mod. I am not using the expansion mod, so it can't be that.

Edited December 24, 2021 by caqa

[HexBolt8]

SPOILER:  Score 100 responses:

 

Spoiler

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

there's one line that irks me a bit, where you're asked, "You know the story about Lola the shieldmaiden?" and then speak out of turn despite your max training.  Having a simple, "Yes, sir/ma'am," response option would be great.  Bonus points if you keep the current line as an alternative...

Heh, when I was testing the addition of an "Answers to" line, that bothered me too.  I've already added a second, less presumptuous, option.  I also adjusted the smith's line about "all you're good for" to "what you're best suited for", to sound less derogatory.

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

...and when the smith has to reprimand you for impertinence, you actually lose a little bit of score, fail the event, get punished by Mistress, and then have a few days' cooldown before you can try Tagged again.  

That's a bit much.  Neither response will have a penalty, and you'll hear the story either way and not miss anything.

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

She attaches the tag to your collar so unceremoniously—you're not even kneeling!

I'll look into that as a possibility.  However, with the recent problems with kneeling I'm unwilling to introduce anything that might break an important scene, so it might have to be a basic kneeling pose without kneeling's other features.

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Mistress leads you to the city market during business hours.

I sincerely appreciate suggestions, but things like this have too many moving parts.  You've commented on another mod that you thought has some nice ideas that are over scripted and can break.  I want this event to wrap up when you return to the owner.

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Mistress kneels you down, then invites everyone present to watch.

Some players will love this, but others will hate it.  Those other players like for the interactions between master and slave to be more private.  I already get comments about that.  I designed it to let the player choose an appropriate location.  Some might like an inn or public square; others might prefer a private location.

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Maybe a friendly NPC can come and give you a little pat, tell you you're a good girl, whisper something sweet in your ear—maybe something about how you put other slaves to shame by comparison?

I've noted this as a possible fit for positive responses to Confession of a Slave.  They might also possibly remark (positively or negatively) if you're tagged.  (Sometimes good suggestions don't fit as-is, but they might appear elsewhere in a different form.)  

 

12 hours ago, Antiope_Appolonia said:

Also, regarding possible SlaveTats integration with a brand, I'd forgotten about the line when talking with the smith, but it feels like adding this would slide right into the event so naturally—the smith even asks about it!

It would be a good fit, though as I said earlier, I have reservations about marking Lola.  Beyond that, for this one-time event I'd have to learn to properly interact with SlaveTats (there are safe ways and not-safe ways to interact with most mods), and add MCM settings for tattoo and location.  Is it even possible to generate a player-selectable list of installed tattoos?  I don't know, but this is looking like a lot of work.  As a practical matter, the player would have to have selected a tattoo in advance (for an event the player won't know about the first time) or it's too late, at least not without awkwardly backing out of conversation.  Weighed against this, the player could just unimmersively open SlaveTats to bestow a tattoo and be done with it.

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by HexBolt8
Forgot to actually put spoilers in a spoiler box

[HexBolt8]

52 minutes ago, caqa said:

It's the quest you get after damaging your master/mistress in combat, editorID is vkjFriendlyFire.

Oh!  I'd done a quick check, but I was sorting the quest list by ID rather than name.  Sorry about that.

 

2 hours ago, caqa said:

When already wearing arm cuffs before the quest starts (not sure if that actually matters), and Careless hands quest times out during a Sexlab scene, the quest cuffs aren't removed.

Thanks for the report.  I'll look into it.

 

Edit:  I see the problem.  I'd just never anticipated that sex might interfere with removing the devices.  I will fix this for the next update.  Thanks again for the report.  

Edited December 24, 2021 by HexBolt8

[Talesien]

1 hour ago, HexBolt8 said:

Is it even possible to generate a player-selectable list of installed tattoos?

Rape Tattoos allows doing so, so it is possible. If it's worth the time ... that's a different question.

[Talesien]

1 hour ago, HexBolt8 said:

Edit:  I see the problem.  I'd just never anticipated that sex might interfere with removing the devices.

Well it makes sense if you think about it, while banging away passionately fiddling with tiny locks, straps buckles does not get easier.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

10 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

I don't think I can fix this.  A failure rate of 15% or more is unacceptable, so I'll probably remove the feature in the next update.  For now, I recommend not using it.  Thank you for taking the time to document the problem.

That's a shame.  Why is this so different from the other contexts where you kneel in conversation with Mistress?  I guess in those contexts, there's always a "get up" event afterwards, and that "get up" always precedes any interaction that'd play another animation? 

 

I don't know how closely analogous these situations are—seems like it'd be the same, but I don't know the systems deeply—and I don't know how much work it'd be.  But I do know that PAHE/DoM deals with a lot of similar situations—except with NPCs instead of the PC—and I know a little bit about how it works.  NPCs in PAHE/DoM need to play certain animations at different dialogues, and they may need to play a new animation while still in another.  My understanding is that the dialogues that play an animation include a "stop all animations" event before they play the new one.  I remember a bug in DoM where one animation lacked that step, and so it'd bug out if they were in a previous animation, which I'm guessing is the same thing you were trying to avoid by doing it this way with the timer instead of doing it like, e.g., "May I be of service?"  Maybe you could look at DoM and see how it's set up—I just tried, but I didn't know what to look for, and I couldn't figure anything out—and perhaps it'd show you a useful technique (the bugged dialogue/animation was "Time for a body inspection" if memory serves)... or maybe I'm just wrong and the two cases aren't actually a close parallel.  

 

11 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

The process is outlined on the mod page, under "Changing Lola".  It lets you indirectly edit the esp file to perform a global search & replace, a feature not supported by mod editors.

Ah, okay.  I thought maybe you saying someone had written an applet or whatever to automate that process.  

 

11 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

It' embedded in a script, with no way to get a changed version of the name from the mod.

[...]

Skyrim has a powerful (though awkward to use) text substitution mechanism. 

All very interesting.  Thanks for educating me!

 

12 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

It's my fear that in future games the developers might remove even this much, given the (unfortunate, in my opinion) trend toward voiced player dialog.

I usually like voice acted player dialogue for some kinds of games—felt good in Mass Effect or Horizon, for instance—but not for open-ended sandboxy games like Skyrim.  I think the future a generation or two of games from now will be synthetically voiced player dialogue, where you can configure your voice at character creation just like you can configure your appearance, and where that voice can dynamically process any new text you give it.  The technology is just about there now, but figuring out how to implement it in the character creation UI will be a hurdle—right now, you'd need a lot of technical knowledge to configure it—and of course the costs and processing power required will have to come down.  But at that point, I don't think there'll be much reason to have silent player characters.  

 

11 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Speaking to the owner is consistent with the way that many of the mod's quests are completed.

Eh, "yes" and "no", I'd say. 

 

I think a lot might depend on serendipity the first time a player encounters this event.  If the player's first experience is running to a "habitation" where the event auto-completes, that signifies to the player that that's how this event should conclude and primes the expectations for future encounters with the same quest.  If, in the future, they run to a location and it doesn't auto-complete, it becomes confusing.  An expectation was primed by the mod's previous behaviour, and now it's being violated.  I could imagine that, if a player's first experience serendipitously leads them instead to a "location", they'd be more likely to figure it out, since they wouldn't have had that prior priming.  

 

But add that to the fact that the player behaviour required to complete the event does conflict with the event itself, and the player is receiving really mixed signals.  One of the first mechanics you figure out as a new Skyrim player is that you can't move your character during dialogue.  So it's natural to think that stopping to chat with Mistress would be a violation of the dictate to "keep moving."  This really isn't helped by the fact that the completion dialogue is buried fairly deep in the dialogue tree—you have to scroll to see it.  I recall interacting with Mistress thinking maybe just talking to her would complete the event, and when it just opened the normal dialogue tree, which looked the same as any other time, my immediate thought was to the effect that, "I guess that wasn't it, better get a move on!" and I closed it as quickly as possible and started running.  

 

11 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Many landmarks are not good places to be. [...] If you decide to lead Mistress to a bandit fort to prove you're not lost, it's not surprising that it might not end well

But Mistress and Lola are adventurers—or well, Mistress is, anyway, and Lola serves her on her adventures—so visiting dangerous locations is par for the course.  It's not at all unlikely that you were already en route to a bandit fort when Mistress asked if you know where you're going.  The most realistic thing to happen in that situation would be that you continue on to said bandit fort, and when you get there and encounter hostile bandits, Mistress quickly puts her zapper away and you both get to work.  

 

12 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

If you think it would help, I can try to add a one-time pop-up at the start to clearly state the need to speak to the owner at a landmark.

I would say that that'd be rather like taping a paper sign that says "pull" onto a badly signified "Norman door"—if you need the sign, then the design has fallen short of some of the principles of effective/"humane" design.  Taping up the sign is definitely better than letting people continue running into the door, but it's best to fix the underlying problem.  (I would consider Donald Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things a must-read for basically anyone who designs anything; if you're unfamiliar, 99% Invisible has a good introduction.)

 

12 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

So far, I don't believe that anyone else has expressed a complaint about this aspect of the quest. 

I would just say that an absence of evidence for frustration is not the same as evidence of an absence of frustration.  Most players simply do not meticulously document their experiences.  While it is possible that I'm the first player to have ever been frustrated by this, given the way that the current implementation violates design principles, I'd find that pretty surprising.  

 

All together, maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see what the motivation is for the current implementation, other than the status quo.  If you had to speak to Mistress in this way everywhere, that'd be one thing.  It'd be a little quirky, but it'd be easy enough to handwave away as just a foible of the way the mod works.  But why does the event auto-complete at habitations in the first place?  You have plenty of time and safety from interruptions—there's no compelling gameplay reason why the event should need to auto-complete in "habitations".  So the fact that it does so sets a very confusing expectation for when the player experiences the same event in the future in a location that does have a very compelling gameplay reason for auto-completing, and then it doesn't do so.  

 

---

 

48 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

I don't see the advantage to that. 

Disclaimer:  I'm not trying to be pushy or impertinent.  I'm just trying to lay out the best, clearest case for how it looks to me, so you'll have the best, most complete information with which to decide how to proceed.  You'll of course do what you think is best with the result, and I'll continue to support you in your work.

 

49 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

I can't remove the existing completion mechanism of talking to the owner without making many (if not most) players unhappy. 

I'd love to hear some voices from the peanut gallery on this.  This is an empirical claim, and I haven't seen any evidence one way or the other, but on a purely rationalist level, I'd be rather surprised if that were correct.  It feels to me like the whole point of playing a mod like SLTR is to give up control to your mistress.  I'd expect mechanics that reinforce that core concept would feel good to a clear majority of users.  

59 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

Players who just want the hair changed back might not like the wait. 

Sounds like those players need a strong hand to guide them more than ever!  Mistress has her work cut out for her; I'm sure she'll enjoy taming them! ?

 

In all seriousness, though, I'd suggest that the player exerts control through configuring the MCM.  The player then relinquishes control within those constraints by submitting to Mistress through gameplay.  By adding MCM configuration for the event's duration, you'll effectively be giving the player more influence than the change we're discussing here would be taking away.  So it seems like a win-win.  

 

56 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

But if I keep that in place and add a random event to have the owner initiate ending the quest, it seems a bit pointless.

Well, if you really wanted to have it both ways, you could justify it with a difference in score outcomes—more submission score for the more submissive player behaviour; negligible score for demanding little pets.  Seems like overkill to me, but I'm just one voice.  You could also just put the "reversion" beckon event in the highest priority category, like punishment after you've failed to serve Mistress enough for the day; that seems like a middle ground.  

[blahity]

15 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

So far, I don't believe that anyone else has expressed a complaint about this aspect of the quest.  If you think it would help, I can try to add a one-time pop-up at the start to clearly state the need to speak to the owner at a landmark.

I mean when Mistress tells you to inform her when you reach a landmark, I always assumed she ment a a city or town, not rapey bandit camp junction.?

[Antiope_Apollonia]

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

SPOILER:  Score 100 responses:

Spoiler

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Heh, when I was testing the addition of an "Answers to" line, that bothered me too.  I've already added a second, less presumptuous, option.  I also adjusted the smith's line about "all you're good for" to "what you're best suited for", to sound less derogatory.

Cool.  I like your second change, too.  Looking forward to it!

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

That's a bit much.  Neither response will have a penalty, and you'll hear the story either way and not miss anything.

Aww, you softie! ?

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

However, with the recent problems with kneeling I'm unwilling to introduce anything that might break an important scene,

If you ever want to send me pre-release test builds with specific things that need testing, I'd be glad to help, by the way.  I'm no substitute for @Nonseen when it comes to figuring out broken scripts and things on the back end, but I'm happy to do what I can.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

so it might have to be a basic kneeling pose without kneeling's other features.

What do you mean by "other features"?  Isn't "kneeling" always just a "basic pose"?  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

I sincerely appreciate suggestions, but things like this have too many moving parts.  You've commented on another mod that you thought has some nice ideas that are over scripted and can break. 

Well, I'm not sure of the details, but I'm not sure if you'd need much scripting to do what I've proposed.  I think there's a vanilla mechanic you could use for what I suggested; I'm not sure if it's a script or an AI package or what.  The first thing that occurs to me to look at would be what NPCs do after you kill a dragon—they gather around the slain dragon, watch you absorb the soul, and make some idle comments—but I think there are other examples, too.  This is basically what I had in mind, and I know I've seen other mods utilise similar (the same?) mechanics, but I can't think of specific examples off the top of my head, unfortunately.  But I could imagine it being possible to do something like place the "slain dragon marker" in the centre of the market so everyone would gather around, and then just not actually place a slain dragon there, so you could treat the crowd as being gathered for your event.  Maybe you could even use a modified copy of that exact vanilla event where you've just edited the dialogue and removed the dead dragon!

 

I guess some degree of scripting would probably be involved in that—placing/removing the marker, for instance; I really don't know—but I'd think it'd be pretty light and unlikely to break.  At least it doesn't seem to remotely resemble any of the problematic scripted events I've encountered previously.  The big thing that I've seen causing problems is scripted movement—especially scripted player movement.  I know next to nothing about writing scripts, but I have read a lot of discussions about good and bad scripting from people who do know, and I have played with a lot of mods at both ends of the spectrum, so maybe I have a little bit of insight here—or maybe all of the following is trivial to you; not sure.  I know one issue I've seen discussed repeatedly, and which is clearly plaguing the SLTR Extension, for example, is when the mod author doesn't write in a "plan B" for when the scripted movement fails; the advice has always been to include a teleport to the destination, that way you'll walk to the destination if possible but teleport if not.  The other thing I've read about causing problems is failing to account for the possibility of higher levels of latency (which occurs to me might could be what's going on with your recent kneeling troubles?), which I think can basically cause things to end up overlapping and thus breaking.  

 

You obviously know way, way more about writing mods than I do, but I know that in any domain, it's easy for humans to get trapped into certain patterns of looking at things, and having outsiders come in and bounce ideas around can help to come up with new solutions, so I'm just trying to throw some strands of spaghetti against the wall here and see if anything sticks.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

I want this event to wrap up when you return to the owner.

How about a little ceremony just with the Playmate if you have one?  I just feel like putting the tag on Lola's collar should be a bigger moment, with at least a modicum of pomp involved.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Some players will love this, but others will hate it.  Those other players like for the interactions between master and slave to be more private. 

Hm.  I hadn't considered that, but it seems obvious enough in hindsight.  Well, Mistress could give Lola a choice of public or private ceremony.  Maybe that could be the moment where her hard exterior cracks just long enough to admit her feeling proud of Lola, and she let's Lola choose how to celebrate the completion of her training.  Of course, I recognise that's more work, but within reason, I think it'd be worth it for the mod's climactic event.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

I designed it to let the player choose an appropriate location. 

Although the current dialogue does explicitly specify a secluded spot.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

I've noted this as a possible fit for positive responses to Confession of a Slave. 

Curious to see how this turns out.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

It would be a good fit, though as I said earlier, I have reservations about marking Lola.

Well, as long as it's optional, isn't it a win-win?  Lola has to ask for "something permanent", or maybe react receptively to the blacksmith's comment, so no one has to use it if they don't want to.  I have very mixed feelings about things like that myself, but as long as the brand were something subtle, I think I'd be happy to use it.  Mostly because I think the event around it has a lot of opportunities to be really endearing.  Like Mistress could ask Lola if she's scared, for example, and that exchange could be really powerful.  But also, since Lola isn't allowed clothes, there aren't that many ways to customise her "uniform" to set her apart from whatever ambient slaves might be in the world—mostly AYGAS in my case, but maybe Hydra Slave Girls or whatever, too—and a brand could do that.  I think I'd probably headcanon it to signify Antiope's role as a slave trainer for Mistress's household, but other players would doubtless have their own rationalisations.  

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Is it even possible to generate a player-selectable list of installed tattoos?  I don't know, but this is looking like a lot of work.  

I am honestly really not a good person to be offering advice on this.  I know SlaveTats is quite a powerful mod that lots of other mods use to do lots of different things, but I have mostly passive experience with it.  I would say, though, that you don't have to figure everything out at once, especially as it would be an optional, opt-in feature.  I think the feature would be a positive addition even if you the brand itself weren't configurable, and then by adding configurability at some point down the line when you're more comfortable with the system, you could improve upon it and bring more users into opting in.  

 

I'm sure there are many people who already enjoy the branding event that exists in the Extension—I sometimes use it myself—but it's really, really buggy—I've never managed to get its animation to play correctly—it has almost no associated dialogue whatsoever and isn't integrated into the relationship between Mistress and Lola at all, and it isn't tied to submission score at all.  Just a carbon copy of that branding event—except that it isn't broken, it's integrated into Tagged instead of a standalone, and it has some of SLTR's characteristic dialogue interaction—would be a good start that many players would doubtless already really appreciate.

 

20 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

As a practical matter, the player would have to have selected a tattoo in advance

Not necessarily.  If you're choosing this path while talking to Mistress in the initial "Tagged" conversation, then there's a break between that dialogue and when you talk to the smith.  That would give the player an opportunity to configure the MCM after being made aware of the event.  You could even give players a warning popup at that point to make it clear to them that this will be their last opportunity to change the branding settings before it's applied.  But I also don't think it necessarily has to be unconfigurable after the fact.  I'm pretty sure SlaveTats would have the ability to let you modify it once applied; maybe this could even be one of the lockable settings on the anti-cheat MCM.  

 

Aside from all that, I'm sure there are plenty because humans are weird, but it's always hard for me to imagine there being players who don't look at the MCM before starting to play with a mod as involved as SLTR.  

 

Edited December 25, 2021 by Antiope_Appolonia

[Dio021]

Punishment animations are cancelled after the player recieved a hit from a punishment Tool is that a feature or intended? 

Both actors are then freezed until timer runs out.

[CaptainJ03]

3 hours ago, Dio021 said:

Punishment animations are cancelled after the player recieved a hit from a punishment Tool is that a feature or intended? 

Both actors are then freezed until timer runs out.

Unfortunatley, that's a known bug without a real cure. It bloody happens from time to time. Try to fail a quest in another spot, or randomly hit your owner just for testing purposes (punishment for harming owner enabled, of course). If none of those work, try a new game, it should eventually solve itself...

 

 

@HexBolt8 about time lag while kneeling down/standing up. It works instantly when you're bearfooted, but takes its sweet time with heels. Even longer with oldschool HDT High Heels, on some occasions I have to remove my boots and put them on again to not be sunken in the floor.