Slaves of Tamriel (Obsolete - Please use theFirstHeretic's version)

[Slaves of Tamriel]

One thing concerning Morriscat's idea though,

All the prisoners are gagged so they can't talk to eachother. Not normally anyway. 

Maybe the dialogue in the mod could be altered in such a way it sounds like someone is talking with a gag in. 

So for example a sentence like "what are you doing?" could become "wha ahh yuhh hoing". I would love to see something like that. 

But if that's too much trouble you can always use Zenet's GagQuest mod. 

 

Current plan of mine is remove gags and wrist shackles once the slaves are moved into the cell after the daily schedule. I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea to restrict dialog options and thus plot development opportunities to night time only.

 

I'll keep my eyes on it to see if it needs improvements and in this case, will consider your idea as an alternative. Thanks for the suggestion

 

Thinking about your mod today, SOT.  Had a thought to share, as the mod develops I hope you find a way to make the experience a bit varied or maybe add choice, not that they have to be good choices!  I had just gone through the Captured Dreams Thalmor Embassy quest and as well done as it is repeating the quest a few times and it gets a bit tired.  Reading what morriscat suggested and liked it, maybe have multiple paths that could lead to different results.  Not knowing where you are taking the mod so I don't want to go overboard with ideas, just a general thought to make your exceptional mod have replayability.

 

Please DO overboard with ideas, if you're so inclined I'm only afraid such input from users will be wasted if I don't find enough time to implement them, or in case I found them too much different from my own ideas. Nevertheless, I'm only grateful for any kind of such ideas.

 

Anyway, I'm also concerned about adding enough plot/quest elements with varied consequences according to player's decisions. I'm only deferring to implement them till I'll be reasonably confident about the barebone gameplay itself.

 

For now, alpha releases will focus on completing the daily mining/feeding/sleeping cycle, until we can play this mod from day to day without a fear of starving to death or breaking the quest.

 

Once it's done we're moving to the beta development cycle where we can start adding real contents like dialogues (hopefully, with player choices) and sex scenes.

 

When we'll add enough contents so it becomes possible to escape the mine with proper feeling of a 'closure', it should be the first time we do the official 1.0 release.

[crudo]

 

Please DO overboard with ideas, if you're so inclined .

 

Okay, since you said, "Please".

 

First off, you are completely right.  The slavery day/night cycle should be done first, makes complete sense.  Here are some ideas for ways to escape.

 

1.  Slave is left for dead after being worked too hard/presumed killed during a fight, could be a DA event.  Body is tossed outside in a pit of bones but player regains consciousness and has to escape the mining area or island... depending on location of mine.  If an island you could have an old broken boat that needs repairs on the shore away from the mine.  Have the player gather wood, nails, linen wrap to repair and make there way back to Skyrim.  If part of greater Skyrim just have them escape with everything stripped away.  Shackles would be removed to be resused.

 

2.  One of the guards is a former slave that earned enough privelege to switch sides.  Finds sympathy/empathy with player and offers an escape route.  Maybe they leave together and you have a follower afterwards.

 

3.  Player is assigned a new area to mine.  Cave wall crumbles and gives player a chance to escape through a small dungeon.  Similar to the Solitude prison.

 

4.  Player is eventually sold to a new owner, SD+ takes over.

 

5.  Player crafts/hides some handmade lockpicks and tries to slip out of the cell at night.

 

6.  Player seduces guard.  This would be tough as the slaves are essentially playthings to the guards.

 

7.  Player convinces other slaves to revolt and the next day they all charge the exit with pickaxes.  If player fails speech one of the other slaves reports on player.

 

8.  Player hides in ore/ingot shipping crate and escapes after delivery.

 

9.  Player finds a secret tunnel a previous slave or current slave was working on.

 

These are off the top of my head.  Just for sharing, maybe they don't work, maybe they are a springboard for better ideas.  I guess in the end, whatever escape mechanism (if there is one) you decide it would be good if there were alternate ways out.  Some riskier than others and punishments if caught.

[Slaves of Tamriel]

@crudo Thanks much for the suggestions! I think 3, 5, 9 seem to be more feasible to implement than the others. I like 1 and 7 too but I'm not sure how easy it'd be to make them.

 

Others seem like to be nice ideas too, but personally I found myself prefer those mentioned above for various reasons. Anyways, I'll certainly consider these options when I'll be implementing the escape part.

[Slaves of Tamriel]

Status Update

 

Sorry, I have a bad news to tell It seems it'll need another week to finish the next alpha version, so I won't be able to release it before the X-Mas as I originally promised.

 

(Rant mode on... so you can skip below)

 

 

 

When I started to work this morning, I thought I could finish the release version today.

 

But then I found a small bug which seemed not too difficult to fix. I finally found a semi-working workaround just now... the problem is that it took almost 8 hours to fix and made me playing the same scene over and over like 100 times - sufficient number to expire any excitement a modder might have felt for his work.

 

Skyrim's game platform is the most inconsistent and unpredictable programming environment I've ever seen, so such things happen when you try to do something unusual with it (which this mod has plenty).

 

Since I've been working on this mod mostly on weekends, and I as wasted this Sunday on this silly bug, it became impossible for me to finish it on schedule.

 

 

 

(...Rant mode off...)

 

Still, I think I'll just need another week to catch up the schedule. So, you can expect it before the next year at least.

 

Sorry for anyone who might have been waiting for the release!

 

P.S.: And for modders who might get struck with this issue in the future :

 

 

 

Do not ragdoll actors via applyHavokImpulse in a scene stage without allowing them sufficient time to recover.

 

Putting another package in the next stage for those actors might cause them get stuck in the air or being immobile which only resurrecting them or 'moveto player' will bring them back to normal (i.e. IdleForceDefaultState or enable/disable trick does not work).

 

 

[jfraser]

Ah, the lovely CK. I completely empathize with your rant.

 

Suggestion #1 of the escape scenarios should be reasonably easy to do. Say the player picks up a disease or two from the various methods discussed previously and can't keep up with the workload. Then, if the player ends up last in ore production a certain number of days, the continued punishment and lack of food makes them so weak they black out. The player hears this: "I think she's dead." "Dammit. Dump the body." Before a debug.messagebox says "you fade into blackness."

 

Then wake up in the pit, naked but free.

[Slaves of Tamriel]

Ah, the lovely CK. I completely empathize with your rant.

 

Suggestion #1 of the escape scenarios should be reasonably easy to do. Say the player picks up a disease or two from the various methods discussed previously and can't keep up with the workload. Then, if the player ends up last in ore production a certain number of days, the continued punishment and lack of food makes them so weak they black out. The player hears this: "I think she's dead." "Dammit. Dump the body." Before a debug.messagebox says "you fade into blackness."

 

Then wake up in the pit, naked but free.

 

Yeah, but I thought the hard part of #1 could be more of designing the exterior itself.

 

Of course, some other options presuppose some kind of exterior clutters as well, but in that case, I thought such a minimal scene with only an entrance and couple of guards would suffice until I can finish other parts of the mod first.

 

But if we think about making a dedicated island with dumpsters, and boats, etc it might become a much larger task, so that's why I said it's relatively difficult to do

[jfraser]

You don't need all that. Just any random, already-existing, mostly-unused mountain base will do. No need to over-complicate things.

[Slaves of Tamriel]

You don't need all that. Just any random, already-existing, mostly-unused mountain base will do. No need to over-complicate things.

 

Maybe I'm too much obsessed with the details

[Kimy]

 

You don't need all that. Just any random, already-existing, mostly-unused mountain base will do. No need to over-complicate things.

 

Maybe I'm too much obsessed with the details

 

 

From one developer to another - try not to. Particularly not with the CK. It will result in mods not getting finished, ever!

[jfraser]

 

 

 

 

You don't need all that. Just any random, already-existing, mostly-unused mountain base will do. No need to over-complicate things.

Maybe I'm too much obsessed with the details

From one developer to another - try not to. Particularly not with the CK. It will result in mods not getting finished, ever!

^

[Slaves of Tamriel]

Alright... I'm persuaded! Thanks for the sound advice

[crudo]

@crudo Thanks much for the suggestions! I think 3, 5, 9 seem to be more feasible to implement than the others. I like 1 and 7 too but I'm not sure how easy it'd be to make them.

 

Others seem like to be nice ideas too, but personally I found myself prefer those mentioned above for various reasons. Anyways, I'll certainly consider these options when I'll be implementing the escape part.

 

No problem, they are just ideas and it's understood that they may never be implemented.

 

At some point, if you want to round out the mod after the day/night cycle and sexlab stuff is added you could simply have some of the ideas be a narrative rather than a playable game.

 

For instance, on the revolt idea.  Have the slaves running for the exit with pickaxes swinging.  Fade to black and let the rest be done by good writing with a text narrative.  It could be a check against a number of things the player did before the escape.  Maybe pick the lock the night before, a bonus for each slave they convince to join, payoff one of the guards with favors not to be at his post the next day.  The more success the player has with these mini-quests the greater the odds of escape.  If the player escapes just place them at some location in Skyrim, maybe the docks of Solitude if it were an island or along a mountain range if not.  If the player fails the check then they go back to the mine and are punished for a day or two with limited or no rations and whatever other abuse seems logical.

 

If it's and island,

 

"Your eyes burn as emerge from the mine.  You run past guard after guard swinging wildly.  You stumble to the dock and jump on the first boat you can find.  Not able to see any of your slave sisters you cast off and head for a distant shore.  In the chaos you did not realize the poor condition of your boat as it begins to take on water.  The boat breaks apart in the rough seas and you blackout from exhaustion.  Later you awaken washed ashore amid debris from your boat.  You don't know how you made it to shore but you are finally free.

 

 

If it's mine in the mountains,

 

"After the harrowing escape you tumble down the mountainside with nothing more the pickaxe and shackles to your name.  You're not exactly sure where the mine is and the slope is too steep to return, you are simply relieved to be away and you hope your slave sisters made it too."

 

 

If you fail to escpape,

 

"While you make a valiant attempt to escape you are simply overwhelmed by the guards superior numbers and weapons.  They capture you and realize you are the ringleader.  The captain of the guard exclaims, "you will pay dearly for this".

 

In the future if you wanted to make it a playable experience it could always be added, once an exterior is designed but like others have written, it's not really needed for a complete experience.

 

Finally, no need to apologize for not completing before Christmas.  I'm grateful to all modders for even attempting to create additions to the game.  Thanks for taking the time in making this exceptional mod.

[Psyko1991]

Hey there!

 

I followed your work for some time now, but i was just able to take a look at it.

 

It's pretty good,even if it's still an alpha-version.

It works fine,is atmospheric and (even if it still hasn't that much content) fun to play.

Definitely has a big potential

 

I also have some suggestions,even if i'm pretty sure you have more than enough plans for the future

 

-Could it be possible to add layers of dirt to the body the longer you have to work in the mine?

That's just a small thing that came to my mind during the testing. I know you can add dirt-layers manual,

but it would be more immersive if the dirt would appear after working quite some time.

 

-Now i don't know how big this project is gonna be, but i think it would be pretty cool if you actually had the feeling of being replacable by other,new slaves.

Most of the time in Skyrim you can run away from the danger,fast-load or just come back later if you're stronger. But there is always another way.

I think in your mod it would be very atmospheric if the character get's heavily exhausted by the hard work after a while, so you really have to manage your energy (which you can regenerate through meals or rests whenever you can) to survive. Hunger,exhaustion and punishments could drain your health while food,sleep and rest will restorate it.

You could also add bonuses if you sleep with one of the other slaves,but that's just an idea.... it's sexlab though

I also could imagine some "replacement-system" if slaves can't get their work done properly and other slaves have to jump in for her.

Or even fresh slaves which will arrive from time to time... but this could be very complex though.

 

Morriscat's idea is pretty neat. The suggestions mentioned above would make it more difficult to help "Treva"(or whatever you would name her) because you had to choose if you want to suffer for her (and risking to damage your health-bar ) or let her suffer so you can spare some time for yourself.

 

-I think this next point is pretty obvious and you probably thought about it several times... maybe you already have a solution for it,but a real beginning of the story would be very nice

Maybe a little quest which explains why you're in this situation. Maybe a bit like the Cidhna mine near Markath

 

 

Well,however; Great work so far! I'm really excited about the progress and your future plans!

Keep it up!

[Slaves of Tamriel]

 

No problem, they are just ideas and it's understood that they may never be implemented.

 

At some point, if you want to round out the mod after the day/night cycle and sexlab stuff is added you could simply have some of the ideas be a narrative rather than a playable game.

 

Ah... I haven't thought about it. Thanks I like the idea of adding some narratives (a la Appropos) even when it's possible to provide a full game play. And I appreciate you for providing full text examples of your ideas. I'm not very good at writing in English, so such kind of a help is much welcomed.

 

-Could it be possible to add layers of dirt to the body the longer you have to work in the mine?

That's just a small thing that came to my mind during the testing. I know you can add dirt-layers manual,

but it would be more immersive if the dirt would appear after working quite some time.

 

-Now i don't know how big this project is gonna be, but i think it would be pretty cool if you actually had the feeling of being replacable by other,new slaves.

Most of the time in Skyrim you can run away from the danger,fast-load or just come back later if you're stronger. But there is always another way.

I think in your mod it would be very atmospheric if the character get's heavily exhausted by the hard work after a while, so you really have to manage your energy (which you can regenerate through meals or rests whenever you can) to survive. Hunger,exhaustion and punishments could drain your health while food,sleep and rest will restorate it.

You could also add bonuses if you sleep with one of the other slaves,but that's just an idea.... it's sexlab though

I also could imagine some "replacement-system" if slaves can't get their work done properly and other slaves have to jump in for her.

Or even fresh slaves which will arrive from time to time... but this could be very complex though.

 

Morriscat's idea is pretty neat. The suggestions mentioned above would make it more difficult to help "Treva"(or whatever you would name her) because you had to choose if you want to suffer for her (and risking to damage your health-bar ) or let her suffer so you can spare some time for yourself.

 

-I think this next point is pretty obvious and you probably thought about it several times... maybe you already have a solution for it,but a real beginning of the story would be very nice

Maybe a little quest which explains why you're in this situation. Maybe a bit like the Cidhna mine near Markath

 

I already have gradual application of dirt textures planned in a future release (that's why the player does not get a dirt texture while being branded).

 

However, I found that the dirt texture is the one that is the most affected by the body type and also the most time consuming to make. So, I'm afraid it might take sometime for me to create gradual texture sets for both CBBE and UNP.

 

I'll create a new texture for UNP in the next release (after the upcoming alpha 3), because I switched to UNP myself and found the current dirt texture to be rather off. So, I suppose it'd be a good starting point if we're going to implement this feature.

 

Giving health and/or magicka beside stamina some significance in the gameplay is definitely something I'm interested in. My current plan is either to temporarily set player's health to 100, or boost other slaves health according to the player's level, then balance the gameplay so that the player should at least take some care for preventing from being killed in whippings, and other punishment scenes.

 

I probably won't introduce additional penalties for starvation though, because I plan to make such realism mods like RND or iNeed a soft dependency. And for now, I'm thinking about making most of the sex scenes to be non-consensual ones between the guards and the slaves. However, I'm open to make a few exceptions, but I'm afraid they won't be high on the priority list.

 

Lastly, regarding the start of the mod, I don't have any particular way to start the mod currently because I plan to make it a DAYMOYL addon. Also, jfraser is working on Simple Slavery (which is going to provide an slave auction/market intro) to make it trigger this mod.

So, I prefer to have various starting scenarios by other mods rather than providing any specific story of my own.

 

By the way, thanks much for suggestions and the kind words

[Slaves of Tamriel]

Status Update

 

Probably, the last update till the upcoming Alpha 3 release, and I have a good news and a bad news though.

 

The good news is that I've managed to fix most of the blocking issues, so I suppose I'll be able to release the new version before the next year (I mean, in a couple of days ).

 

The bad news, however, is that I've already spent too much time with those issues so it will contain much lesser contents than were originally planned. Most notably, the broken crime faction won't be fixed in this version, and the additional scenes which the release includes are mostly scripted, so don't provide much playability yet.

 

On a brighter side, now we have done more than the half of those things which I've initially thought the most difficult to implement, so I expect it'll be much easier to add contents from now on, even though I can't spend much time working on this mod.

 

(If you're interested in a technical aspect of the subject, you can read some of the implementation details below)

 

 

 

Two of the most difficult problems I've encountered while working on this mod were, firstly, making such scenes wherein a group of actors perform certain tasks in a sequential manner (like the ore counting scene), and move several actors to designated positions simultaneously.

 

For example, the ore counting scene consists of certain stages which should be repeated per each slaves, and it soon became obvious that I just can't copy & paste packages every time, since we have many such use cases and dialogues and LIP files can't be copied in such a manner.

 

Fortunately, I've found a hack to repeat certain stages in a scene for a given array of actors while filling or moving placeholder reference aliases according to the current index of the array.

 

The second problem might be difficult to believe, but I've found that moving many actors at the same time is almost impossible to implement in any reliable manner.

 

To elaborate, if you order group of actors to move to predefined positions there's a chance that they block each other's path and get stuck forever. When it happens, the travel procedure simple never finishes so effectively breaking the package or the scene.

 

The chance of its happening increases greatly when the destination of each actors are placed close to each other, and when we can't determine the starting positions of those actors.

 

I've marched slaves to the dining area and let them move to the troughs which are connected to the former as linked refs. However, I found that about 3 out of 4 times, number of slaves get stuck so causing the scene to hang forever.

 

I've spend days to find a workaround until I managed to solve it by replacing the travel package with a scripted version, which repeatedly issues the 'pathToReference' function call till the actor reaches its destination.

 

It was real hard to believe such a simple thing as 'move actors to position' cannot be done reliably in this platform. I hope it could be a hint to any future modders who might struggle to implement such a scene wherein group of actors should move to certain locations without permanently blocking each other's path.

 

 

 

Anyway, thank everyone for the patience, and I hope I'll be able to release the next version as soon as possible.

[jfraser]

I discovered the same movement issue (to a much smaller degree) in SS. Fortunately it was really just a cosmetic thing for me so I just ignored it. Isn't the CK fun? XD

[formanfred]

I like the screen shots

[Kenjoka]

Your work is absolut amazing   the branding, the shaving, everything...

Reminds me of some Fansadox comics

 

I hope we can get soon a first (release) version, maybe as a Death-Alternative Plugin and you can add further content in a version 2, 3 and so on

 

Thanks and a happy new year

[Slaves of Tamriel]

I discovered the same movement issue (to a much smaller degree) in SS. Fortunately it was really just a cosmetic thing for me so I just ignored it. Isn't the CK fun? XD

 

Yeah, really I suppose this mod is particularly susceptible of this culprit because most of its scenes consist of many actors moving in a small area.

 

I like the screen shots

 

Your work is absolut amazing   the branding, the shaving, everything...

Reminds me of some Fansadox comics

 

I hope we can get soon a first (release) version, maybe as a Death-Alternative Plugin and you can add further content in a version 2, 3 and so on

 

Thanks and a happy new year

 

Thanks formanfred and Kenjoka, and happy new years to you!

 

Status Update

 

Urg... I just accidentally deleted the Data/Sounds folder and verifying the local cache doesn't seen to restore them. I think I was fortunate that I didn't do it before I've switched to MO though. If I had installed all those 140+ mods without it, it would have been a disaster.

 

However, it'll still take another hour to reinstall Skyrim, so I decide to release the mod as it is without finishing up the feeding scene because I don't want to delay the release any longer.

 

Probably I'll follow it up with Alpha 4 very soon to complete the scene and fix any bugs it might have.

 

Anyway, now it's just a few hours to go before Alpha 3

[Psyko1991]

 

Status Update

 

Urg... I just accidentally deleted the Data/Sounds folder and verifying the local cache doesn't seen to restore them. I think I was fortunate that I didn't do it before I've switched to MO though. If I had installed all those 140+ mods without it, it would have been a disaster.

 

However, it'll still take another hour to reinstall Skyrim, so I decide to release the mod as it is without finishing up the feeding scene because I don't want to delay the release any longer.

 

Probably I'll follow it up with Alpha 4 very soon to complete the scene and fix any bugs it might have.

 

Anyway, now it's just a few hours to go before Alpha 3

 

 

Awesome!

 

Hope we can expect many new cool features from you in the next year

 

And of course: Happy new year!

[Slaves of Tamriel]

Finally, Alpha 3 is released just now!

 

I'm afraid the new scenes, which I had to release without finishing, might contain many bugs.

 

In that case, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll try to fix them in the next release.

 

Thanks everyone for your interest and support.

 

P.S.: Changed the category again, as I found no other quest mods except Prison Overhaul are listed under the old category.

 

P.S.2: Does anyone know why the new release does not show up in the 'What's New' / 'New Content' section?

[jfraser]

Finally, Alpha 3 is released just now!

 

I'm afraid the new scenes, which I had to release without finishing, might contain many bugs.

 

In that case, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll try to fix them in the next release.

 

Thanks everyone for your interest and support.

 

P.S.: Changed the category again, as I found no other quest mods except Prison Overhaul are listed under the old category.

 

P.S.2: Does anyone know why the new release does not show up in the 'What's New' / 'New Content' section?

Updates don't show up there, just brand new mods.

[Slaves of Tamriel]

 

Updates don't show up there, just brand new mods.

 

Ah.... got it. Thanks!

[Zirofal]

i got this problem with all mods that uses the gaga and bounds that also this mod uses..thay are all pink >,> how do i get the corectc colors?

[Slaves of Tamriel]

i got this problem with all mods that uses the gaga and bounds that also this mod uses..thay are all pink >,> how do i get the corectc colors?

 

I think you haven't installed ZazAnimationPack_Textures_V0600.7z