A Perilous Maze (SE/VR)

[Guest]

Just to let you guys know, since it's been almost a week since the last update, I'm still working on the maze. As the next steps require me to learn scripting and because I am also trying to create the first voiced dialogue, using xVAsynth, it's taking longer than usual. The script-learning curve is fairly steep and creating the dialogue very time-consuming, if it's to sound any good. I also have to earn my bread at the same time, somehow.

In any case, I had a breakthrough today, with scripting. It's an insidious little feature of the maze, which I won't spoil here, but it actually works! There is an issue still, related to that, however (I think it's not really a fault of the script, but rather something else; can't be specific), so the next update may very well come tomorrow, or it may take a few more days, depending on how quickly I can find the cause, and how fast the progress will be with the voiceovers... This would be so much faster and easier, if we had a female volunteer

[Mister X]

Heyho,

I don't know if you thought about that, but maybe some maze generators could help for new layers, if those are planned  

http://www.mazegenerator.net is quite simple to use, you can choose whether it should start in the center/bottom or at the top, how big it should be, how long the solution way should be and how long dead end roads are

 

Here's one example how this could look like:

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Mister X said:

Heyho,

I don't know if you thought about that, but maybe some maze generators could help for new layers, if those are planned  

http://www.mazegenerator.net is quite simple to use, you can choose whether it should start in the center/bottom or at the top, how big it should be, how long the solution way should be and how long dead end roads are

 

Here's one example how this could look like:

  Hide contents

 

Thanks for the tip. Additional levels definitely are planned, but I prefer designing them by hand. Also, there are some restrictions in how you can arrange the corridors, based on the static objects available. Not all of what's in the picture can actually be implemented in CK. Also, I really don't like straight dead ends, those are just a waste of space. But it is still an interesting link.
I also plan for each individual level to introduce a unique mechanic or property, to increase variety between levels. But all of this will only come once the main features are complete, what will probably take something like a year...
 

[belegost]

On 2/2/2021 at 5:56 PM, Arion89 said:

You're right, i had 4.3. Update works, thx

Question: did you update straight from 4.3 to new 5.0 on an existing save or did you start a new one? I'm in the middle of fairly advanced playthrough which I put over 300 hours into already and I'm far from considering it completed. I started it on DD 4.3 and now, since the update came out in the middle of it, I'm wondering if it's safe to do mid-game. Do you have any first-hand experience with this?

[Guest]

In spite of what I've posted with my last update, the next one isn't coming as soon as I'd hoped. Quests are a little more complicated than I estimated at first glance. But work is progressing. The next update will bring a quest-giver in the maze, with a nearly impossible quest. I'm mostly making this one for the laughs and also to learn how this is done. After that, I'll add another questless NPC with dialogue, and then I'll move on to the surface and start scripting the slavers, with an output to Simple Slavery ++, at which point the mod will go into alpha.

From there on I'll just gradually add more detail, quests and dialogues, involving a lot of slavin'.

When the output to SS++ is working, I'll likely make a break to start making another mod, a replacement for Hydragorgon's Slave Girls. I really like the mod, but I'd like to have something more lore-friendly, slightly more realistic, and less script-heavy. So that's the outlook for now, in case anyone cares.

By the way, has anyone found the first voiced NPC in the maze yet? And have you discovered the insidious unrevealed feature? How do you like it?

[LinksSword]

can anyone confirm if it still works with LE?

[Phantom2696]

I have an idea for the mod, as a big fan of the Resident Evil remakes I really enjoy being chased around by Mr. X and Nemesis. Maybe having an invincible monster or something making me run away without thinking would get me lost and keep me alert. Maybe something like a giant lurker idk.

Also I found Gary, I like him. Haven't found the unrevealed feature yet

[Phantom2696]

By the time I noticed the feature it was too late lol never saw it coming. I enjoyed it

[Guest]

19 hours ago, LinksSword said:

can anyone confirm if it still works with LE?

As I'm not sure what exactly it is that causes incompatibilities, I unfortunately can't tell. Lately, I had been adding new NPCs, quests, voices and scripts, so it is getting a little more complex now. If someone can tell me in detail, what makes a mod incompatible, I will tell you whether I have done it or not. Or you could just try. I accidentally installed some LE mods on my SE game, mods much more complex than mine, notably the Prisons Overhauled Patched, and it seemed to work fairly well, so I'd say there is a pretty good chance my mod will work in LE. If it doesn't, I declare that anyone willing to spend the time to port it, is most welcome to do so and has my permission and endorsement to share the result under their own account here on Loverslab exclusively, as long as they give me credit.

 

18 hours ago, Phantom2696 said:

big fan of the Resident Evil remakes I really enjoy being chased around by Mr. X and Nemesis.

I played around with the idea of making something like a Minotaurus, but I'm postponing this until progress has been made in the enslavement part of the mod. That's what I'm going to be focusing on in the coming weeks. I had to take a break for the past five days, to tend to visitors, but work should resume tonight.

I've never played Resident evil, so I'm not sure how much the result will resemble your idea. One other thing, in terms of scariness, I want to do, is to trigger jump-scare events when you let your lights go out, but that, too, will have to wait until the surface part has progressed into the next stage.

 

18 hours ago, Phantom2696 said:

I found Gary, I like him

Thanks!

 

6 hours ago, Phantom2696 said:

By the time I noticed the feature it was too late lol never saw it coming. I enjoyed it

Thanks, this statement made my day. Seems to have worked exactly as designed Nasty, isn't it?

[LinksSword]

gonna try it on LE with Milk mod economy and Being A Cow basically for this scenario if i don't find a way to escape before the transformation is complete its game over.

[LinksSword]

@gargamel9seems to work on LE, though the maze it self has inconsistent random fps drop for me for some reason, but it is firing scripts like normal so seems to be fine.

[LinksSword]

really just wanted some sort of huge really big maze map mod so really that my excuse for trying this mod and your def fills that void, because there is a disappointing lack of maze or labyrinth mods for skyrim.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, LinksSword said:

inconsistent random fps drop

I never had any. The only reason I can imagine, if you run it on old hardware, the cell is maybe 5x the size of what a cell would normally be, but other than that, idk. The scripts are qute simple. Maybe it could have something to do with the 32-bit nature of LE, though that's nothing but a guess. Maybe some other mod is doing that... But I'm glad you got it to run.

 

7 hours ago, LinksSword said:

there is a disappointing lack of maze or labyrinth mods for skyrim

That's really strange, isn't it? For me, it was the first thing that came to mind, when I decided to do a mod, even back when I was trying it with Oblivion. I had an even larger maze back then, with three separate labyrinth cells, each with a different theme, but it all came apart due to my inability to prevent the Construction Kit from crashing whenever I was trying to add quests and dialgue to characters, so I gave up. Now, I revived the idea, and given how it is fairly easy to do the maze itself, it is really strange no one else did...

I will add more levels to the maze, in separate cells, eventually, so you can look forward to ore content. But at the moment I will be developing the Fort and related quests. Then I'll make a break to make another mod, a replacement for Hydragorgons Slave girls, which should be much less resource-intensive and less over-the-top. Than it's finally back to the maze itself. That's the roadmap right now.

[LinksSword]

11 hours ago, gargamel9 said:

I never had any. The only reason I can imagine, if you run it on old hardware, the cell is maybe 5x the size of what a cell would normally be, but other than that, idk. The scripts are qute simple. Maybe it could have something to do with the 32-bit nature of LE, though that's nothing but a guess. Maybe some other mod is doing that... But I'm glad you got it to run.

 

That's really strange, isn't it? For me, it was the first thing that came to mind, when I decided to do a mod, even back when I was trying it with Oblivion. I had an even larger maze back then, with three separate labyrinth cells, each with a different theme, but it all came apart due to my inability to prevent the Construction Kit from crashing whenever I was trying to add quests and dialgue to characters, so I gave up. Now, I revived the idea, and given how it is fairly easy to do the maze itself, it is really strange no one else did...

I will add more levels to the maze, in separate cells, eventually, so you can look forward to ore content. But at the moment I will be developing the Fort and related quests. Then I'll make a break to make another mod, a replacement for Hydragorgons Slave girls, which should be much less resource-intensive and less over-the-top. Than it's finally back to the maze itself. That's the roadmap right now.

now mod mentions some helpful npcs in the maze but i never come across any npcs, some spiders with the "mudcrab" id which were the only enemies i found,  And the exit i did cheat to get there but the end where you are "captured" by slavers who are immediately hostile does happen.

 

and the fps drops literally makes no sense as it happens if i look a certain direction but from what i can tell it can't be the maze itself, and there shouldn't be anything causing that so i will go with the case that it's LE.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, LinksSword said:

"mudcrab" id

How do you mean? "Mudcrab" appears above the spiders in-game? That should not happen. I used a modified mudcrab race to create the spiders in order to make them visible through the water surface. I'll check that, but I haven't noticed it until now, so maybe that's another LE issue.
There are indeed three NPCs in the maze. Two should be quite difficult to find, one fairly easy. But If you keep looking for the exit without cheating, you'll probably meet all of them sooner or later. I think that makes for some replay value. Further NPCs will be added later on.

The slavers are mentioned in the description. They are very rudimentary right now, but are about to get a major overhaul in the next update. As is mentioned in the description, If you have a defeat mod installed, it should work just fine in combination with the slavers in getting you enslaved. In the new update, Simple Slavery ++ will get native support. No ETA yet, on when the update will come, but I'm working on it. There are a total of 20 NPCs to script, with their whole daily routines, guard duty shift changes, dialogues etc. So it's probably going to take several weeks.

[Wonders of Eros]

@gargamel9 

 

I was just about to install your mod when I saw that it requires version 5 and up of Devious Devices.

 

I do not think the majority of mod authors were expecting a version 5.0 of DD, and moreover, many mods that rely on version 4.3 are no longer being updated because their authors left the community. Thus, for compatibility reasons, I will not be able to update to DD5. Are you certain that your mod is not compatible with version 4.3 of DD? Does it rely on features and/or scripts only available in v.5.0+ of DD?

 

UPDATE: nevermind, I see now that the mod relies on the contraptions esm. Oh well, good luck with the mod. It looks like a ton of fun. Sad I won't get to experience it since most of my mods rely on pre-5.0 versions of DD. ?

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Coalstorm said:

@gargamel9 

 

I was just about to install your mod when I saw that it requires version 5 and up of Devious Devices.

 

I do not think the majority of mod authors were expecting a version 5.0 of DD, and moreover, many mods that rely on version 4.3 are no longer being updated because their authors left the community. Thus, for compatibility reasons, I will not be able to update to DD5. Are you certain that your mod is not compatible with version 4.3 of DD? Does it rely on features and/or scripts only available in v.5.0+ of DD?

 

UPDATE: nevermind, I see now that the mod relies on the contraptions esm. Oh well, good luck with the mod. It looks like a ton of fun. Sad I won't get to experience it since most of my mods rely on pre-5.0 versions of DD. ?

Hey, thanks for the post, I didn't realize that this was such an issue, for me, all mods seem to work with DD5 just fine, as I am quite new to modding, I was under the assumption that this was simply the newest version everyone would upgrade to. I knew I would use DD resources like furniture and "armor", so I included it from the start, despite not making use of very many of those resources. I don't even know which resources rely on which of those files, so that's why I included all of them. It is quite possible that Contraptions isn't being used as of yet. What does it include? Is there a way to find out what resource relies on what source from within the CK?
You could try to remove the Contraptions file from the list of requirements in the esp, or install it anyway, if your mod organizer lets you, it's quite possible it will work...

[jc321]

I'm not sure the move to 5.0 (or now 5.1) is a bad as some people make out. I've had more issues when moving from 4.0 to 4.3 than to 5.x (ie; slaverun complaining and some minor breakage) but most things working well and no significant issues.  

 

You should potentially look at contraptions. Could potentially be exploited if you wanted to put traps within the maze.

 

Been following the progress on this mod for a while and I think I'm ready to install it now and have a play!. 

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reassurance. In any case, I'm pretty much stuck with DD5 now, I don't want to risk breaking something by removing it or parts of it.

3 hours ago, jc321 said:

You should potentially look at contraptions. Could potentially be exploited if you wanted to put traps within the maze.

I definitely want to place some traps into the maze at some point. Right now, there is one quite insidious one.

3 hours ago, jc321 said:

Been following the progress on this mod for a while and I think I'm ready to install it now and have a play!

Thanks! Please let me know if you encounter any issues. It's beyond my means now to test everything properly, and I'd rather spend the time creating more features as well as another complementary mod (I've started work on that one today. The Idea is to have some variety, so I don't burn out working on just one thing). So there's likely to be a bunch of issues. In particular, lease let me know if you encounter any CTDs, what would indicate that I have forgotten to include some files.
On the other hand, it is to be expected that the slavers in the fort will exhibit a variety of weird behavior, I know about that, there's a lot of fine-tuning to be done there, still. But there should be always one of them posted at the exit in order to engage you in the enslavement dialogue. So if that doesn't happen for some reason, that would definitely be an issue.
 

Hope you'll enjoy what I've done so far!

 

[sfdrake]

Now that I have installed this, I have an evil idea for you.
A second level with a safe free to go exit. This level though you can only see portions of from the top level but can not enter this level how you enter the top level. The second level you can only get access to is by being sold to go there at the slave auction.

[Mister X]

What could be a nice addition for later on (when your main project is finished), is some kinky Escape Game mechanic.

So, you've got through the maze and the slavers make you the offer: either you beat their Escape Game or off the slaver's auction ...

 

The basic idea of that Kinky Escape Game: either you put yourself into some restraints as easy solution, which then may have negative impacts later on, or you follow an unrestricting but tedious/dangerous/hidden solution.

 

Here some ideas:

Spoiler

 

One example as possible start: you wake up in a prison cell, that's filled with a whole bunch of containers of all kind and a table with an armbinder on top. Either you search for the key (which might not even be there) or you put on the armbinder, both will open the door.

The twist: the next stage is a very dark/pitch black corridor where you get a torch at the start. That torch, of course, is only usable when you don't wear the armbinder ...

As additional amusement for the bandits, you maybe can put on some leg chains to proceed one stage (so you can't jump that long), but soon after there will be a jump to a gallery above a wolf/troll/whatever pit. If you fall in the pit, you're fucked, literally ? 

 

 

[Doobydoob]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I start skyrim. It works perfectly fine, until i try and load a save or start a new game. it crashes. I made sure to uninstall the mod then try loading skyrim and it worked.

I Just installed it with Vortex. Is there something im missing? And yes I looked at the Requirements. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Doobydoob said:

I don't know about anyone else, but when I start skyrim. It works perfectly fine, until i try and load a save or start a new game. it crashes. I made sure to uninstall the mod then try loading skyrim and it worked.

I Just installed it with Vortex. Is there something im missing? And yes I looked at the Requirements. 

Thanks for letting me know. I'll look into it, although it's a mystery what could be causing this. I really only added static assets, so this will probably be a tough nut to crack. I'm assuming you are talking about v0.7a. Considering the strange bug where it causes all the guards in Ambient slaves to lose their outfits, there definitely seems to be something wrong. Does 0.6a work normally for you?

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Doobydoob said:

I don't know about anyone else, but when I start skyrim. It works perfectly fine, until i try and load a save or start a new game. it crashes. I made sure to uninstall the mod then try loading skyrim and it worked.

I Just installed it with Vortex. Is there something im missing? And yes I looked at the Requirements. 

I have uploaded version 0.7c, where I changed around some navmeshes and completely removed the giant navmesh in the second level of the maze, both of which could have been causing the issue. As the mod was working flawlessely on my side the whole time, I can not verify if this does the trick, so I would like to ask you if you could test it out for me. Thanks!

[Guest]

 

7 hours ago, Doobydoob said:

I don't know about anyone else, but when I start skyrim. It works perfectly fine, until i try and load a save or start a new game. it crashes. I made sure to uninstall the mod then try loading skyrim and it worked.

I Just installed it with Vortex. Is there something im missing? And yes I looked at the Requirements. 

I asked a friend to do some testing, and he doesn't get the CTDs in either version. So my guess is that this is a conflict between mods caused by Navmeshes. The only thing I could do about this would be revert to vanilla navmeshes, what would be extremely difficult, next to impossible, and time consuming. I don't think I am ready or capable of doing that. Would you be so kind to provide a list of installed mods that make changes in exteriors, so I can identify the likely culprit? Thanks!