Devious Devices Framework Development/Beta

[naaitsab]

On 9/21/2022 at 10:27 PM, daeeb1a said:

Discord servers make for terrible knowledgebases. Cannot be seen by google, so only people who were told "there'd a discord server you might want to join" even know it exists at all. Chat history is linear and can only be edited by each message's original author, message order immutable if you hit the character limit. When the original invite dies, it becomes nigh-impossible for new people to join until someone already in the server notices. Every time I've seen a community create a new server, it fractures activity, with a subgroup moving into the new hotness, the old stagnating, yet enough of the old core remains behind that the new server never replaces the old community fully either; they both suffer from the split. Public blog posts and wikis make for far better knowledgebases long-term, especially as you can edit in cross-links so that articles are actually discoverable. While there is a benefit to chat rooms for getting quick help with a pressing problem, it's even better if someone can take the knowledge shared and then edit it into an article or FAQ to preserve it.

The issue with most guides I've found on 3D modeling for Skyrim is the fact that they are from around 2012-2014 at the height of the modding. Especially if you never touched something like Blender as I've done you get stuck almost immediately if there is a GUI change (layout and/or hotkey). 

Or critical steps are ignored as "everyone knows that". That's the biggest issue of someone with knowledge writing a manual. You need to let it check by somebody who doesn't have the knowledge to see if it's complete. As steps that might be obvious will probably not be for a new comer

Video's are also easier to follow but a lot harder to maintain if things change, so they tend not to get updated and are in essence useless.

 

I would also like to try to make animations for Skyrim but found it almost impossible to find a decent guide to start with 0 knowledge. Not to mention some software is no longer working on modern OS'es or no longer available. But if anyone has a proper guide for this let me know. As DD is in dire need of some extra animations imho.

[t.ara]

On 9/21/2022 at 8:11 PM, audhol said:

 

This was the point I was trying to make, there are simply hundreds of pitfalls and dead ends for new modders to try to circumnavigate that I'm sure 95% give up. I know that most of you are using LE CK as your development tool and arguments LE Vs SE Vs Ae are simply irrelevant as all new modders will have the SE version of CK. My particular issue was that I had not placed manually the SKSE scripts in the relevant folder for the SE CK so nothing would compile. The simple fact is that anyone new wanting to mod will have to spend countless hours chasing down problems if they want to have compatibility with older mods. I wonder if this is partialy the reason behind the fact that there is nothing new coming out on LL whereas nexus is a hive of mods that are pushing the boundaries of the game such as traversal and precision?

This is of course another circumstance and I also have SE "installed"-was a present in the past;-))...but the CK of se had to learn to "run" and the whole game of se did not touch me because mostly it looked different, specially the faces-even with same skins-I also was little sad about the overall ENB effects in SE...and at least I did not like to follow to the update-war...so I could not take SE to be for me a serious game. If you work since years with tools, which exactly match to SKYRIM and if you made your way working finally, you may not like to change too much...for me is the artistic aspect of modding much more interesting then the technical picture of graphic-quality or some few more headroom for the game-engine. With a nicely setting of an ENB, the old game is fine. And this problems with the updates and the hunting again after all the new versions of skse and different other aspects of SE I don´t like to have during my time, which I spend at my computer...

The compile aspects, I also had in OLDRIM, but depending on some missing SKSE /SKYUI scripts, which I forgot to copy onto my newer installations. In that case, I would also need longer, to find the error after hours...or little shorter...in between:-)

 

At least it doesn ´t matter if you swear to be a fan of SE or LE. Important is only, that you feel comfortable with the content, which you do or which you want to create.

I would prefer to compile scripts with CK. I also did that with NOTEPAD++++, but that is somehow also messing up, if you do not have the system complete for such a job. If stuff is missing, both is not working.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by t.ara

[t.ara]

5 hours ago, audhol said:

@Roggvir

 

Using your Nif I have added more segments to all the straps, 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I did notice in a couple of places your nif was colliding with the female head so I moved a to compensate

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Also doubled the number of segments on the Toruses but kept the same number of rings

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Total face count has risen from 6196  to  7676 so I dont think thats going to have much of an impact even on a potato PC

 

gagHarnessBallHD.nif 462.82 kB · 2 downloads

This thing has errors in the front belt. And no weighting-maybe that aspect is following later.

If you go higher to a little more than the double amount of file-size, (1,11MB), you can get a mid-poly-quality smoother version-question is if that suits to one´s taste. For the game you need not to count the poly-amount , as long you do not play with hundreds of NPC right in front of you, wearing all this asset.

[audhol]

8 hours ago, t.ara said:

At least it doesn ´t matter if you swear to be a fan of SE or LE. Important is only, that you feel comfortable with the content, which you do or which you want to create.

I would prefer to compile scripts with CK. I also did that with NOTEPAD++++, but that is somehow also messing up, if you do not have the system complete for such a job. If stuff is missing, both is not working.

Yep I think this is what I was trying to explain, the issue for new modders is getting their setup correct before starting and I just feel that the information to do so is widely scattered.

@daeeb1a post highlighted very well a better way to correlate the needed information than I had previously suggested. If I was being perfectly honest I would say that there is an element of exclusivity among modders that believe informmation should be earned rather than simply given freely. I don't share this view and all the information I have collected regarding mesh building texture manipulation and nif integration I am happy to share as I think a number of people would acknowledge.

 

 

6 hours ago, t.ara said:

This thing has errors in the front belt. And no weighting-maybe that aspect is following later.

If you go higher to a little more than the double amount of file-size

What are the errors that you refer too? I believe that each part of the nif is correctly weighted and has the appropriate body slot assigned.

 

With regards to the face count, I don't know if you followed why I am doing this but it is for @Roggvir tool that moulds meshes using presets, it was felt that the current gag model lacked the amount of vertices to correctly apply a deform cage (or however hes doing it)

however a few people have commented that simply filling the mesh vertices could lead to performance issues so whilst I agree with you that making the nif have 15000 faces wouldnt change a thing other users dont agree so I simply tried to give the maximum amount of flexibility to the mesh for the minimun amount of faces.

Edited September 23, 2022 by audhol

[t.ara]

10 hours ago, audhol said:

Yep I think this is what I was trying to explain, the issue for new modders is getting their setup correct before starting and I just feel that the information to do so is widely scattered.

@daeeb1a post highlighted very well a better way to correlate the needed information than I had previously suggested. If I was being perfectly honest I would say that there is an element of exclusivity among modders that believe informmation should be earned rather than simply given freely. I don't share this view and all the information I have collected regarding mesh building texture manipulation and nif integration I am happy to share as I think a number of people would acknowledge.

Yes, but such problems can occure also to more professional creators. If you suddenly have problems with the system, you make a copy of skyrim-or if you only get a new installation from steam...the game is simply not seriously prepared, then.

This "exclusivly" way not to share own experiences may be also depend on the character of the person behind the user-profile-account. Some and also me, I use different accounts on different platforms, because specially for LL i need to stay anonymous and I await this feature from this page-if not, I have to leave. Some may feel not to share their knowledge because lot of people in between use modding as a "second" way to make money, which some maybe don´t like to support. This may be the second aspect. I met one very friendly old man on NEXUS, which offered very serious guides of all his work and with all the suiting parts and work-files-everything for a download and also active answering one´s questions. And here we have also some nice and helpful friends around-but lot of them are mostly AFK, in between. Or filled up with modding-or they jump to different game-versions or wait for new stuff to mod into it. Or they create own games or they went professional.

 

 

10 hours ago, audhol said:

 

What are the errors that you refer too? I believe that each part of the nif is correctly weighted and has the appropriate body slot assigned.

 

With regards to the face count, I don't know if you followed why I am doing this but it is for @Roggvir tool that moulds meshes using presets, it was felt that the current gag model lacked the amount of vertices to correctly apply a deform cage (or however hes doing it)

however a few people have commented that simply filling the mesh vertices could lead to performance issues so whilst I agree with you that making the nif have 15000 faces wouldnt change a thing other users dont agree so I simply tried to give the maximum amount of flexibility to the mesh for the minimun amount of faces.

 

If you switch the textures off, you´ll find the front belt don´t show correctly all faces-you have some grey ones-it ´s a small problem with the normals. Lot of people created such files and they do work, but the textures are not working ideal on reversed normals, also can you get some strange effects, if a model has the complete mesh reversed. It als may have influence on alpha-settings if you want to use transparent textures.

When I loaded the model into my 3dsmax, I had the head bone but the asset did not show weighting-maybe I imported it without it´s skinning-I can check it again. Depending on it´s "home-mod", this asset could maybe get different new textures. But that ´s the task of it´s place and the taste of the mod-creator.

Body slot is head only. As far I saw. Neck is not necessary, spine also is not necessary.

[Roggvir]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:43 AM, audhol said:

@Roggvir

 

Using your Nif I have added more segments to all the straps, 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I did notice in a couple of places your nif was colliding with the female head so I moved a to compensate

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Also doubled the number of segments on the Toruses but kept the same number of rings

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Total face count has risen from 6196  to  7676 so I dont think thats going to have much of an impact even on a potato PC

 

gagHarnessBallHD.nif 462.82 kB · 3 downloads

Looking good!

Just one small thing: Did you try to recalculate normals and/or redo smoothing on those rings?
The surface look a bit more jittery, not perfectly smooth and round... bit like a water surface slightly disturbed by wind?
Maybe its just how it is, or maybe it is a UV problem? You can see it even on the original ring, so maybe that is just how it is.
Not being sure why that is, i would try to re-create those bigger rings from scratch (i am not saying you should, time is precious and you may not want to waste it on an undertaking which results are uncertain. Besides, you need to get real closeup shot to be ever bothered by it, but i don't like having "artifacts" if iam not sure where they came from - its unlikely, but it would be annoying to spend time working on it only t ofind that it has to be remade because ...something).
Do you know why is it like that?

 

I would agree, that the polycount sounds reasonable and not a big deal.

 

And before you do anything more with this one, have you thought about other gag meshes?
There are many that use a lot of the same mesh parts (most of the straps), so we should give some thoughts to how to work smart - so we don't have to manually repeat the same changes in every gag mesh, but maybe work in a way that allows reusing the parts in all the other gags where applicable.

 

[Roggvir]

18 hours ago, audhol said:

On 9/23/2022 at 4:11 PM, t.ara said:

This thing has errors in the front belt. And no weighting-maybe that aspect is following later.

If you go higher to a little more than the double amount of file-size

What are the errors that you refer too? I believe that each part of the nif is correctly weighted and has the appropriate body slot assigned.

I think with the errors, maybe he means the little strap that carries the ball ?
It may need a smoothing rework, or recalculating the normals - it looks like the neighboring faces of the strap are not smothed or the normals are misaligned or something.

It is well visible on the reflection in the area marked red:

...see the reflection looking like bunch of horizonal lines on the face on the right?
Where as the reflection on the face adjacent to the left is way different, not connected to the reflection on the right face.
It may be worth having a look at all the straps.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Roggvir

[Roggvir]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:43 AM, audhol said:

@Roggvir

 

Using your Nif I have added more segments to all the straps, 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I did notice in a couple of places your nif was colliding with the female head so I moved a to compensate

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Also doubled the number of segments on the Toruses but kept the same number of rings

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Total face count has risen from 6196  to  7676 so I dont think thats going to have much of an impact even on a potato PC

 

gagHarnessBallHD.nif 462.82 kB · 4 downloads

Aaaah, nononono, i see a problem!

 

The rings.
I don't know how you did the subdivision on them, but those added faces are shaped wrong.

If you cut the ring at the new segment, in the middle of the original two segments, you will probably see the profile of the cut won't be a nice octagonal shape with equally long sides.

You can also see that even though there original segments have been split in two, seemingly increasing the roundness of the ring, it doesn't actually make it look more round, or just very little.

I think you cannot use a simple subdivision, because it has no understanding of what you are subdividing, and therefore what shape the result should be.

 

Look at the red line which roughly follows the surface of the two segments underneath.
See how the surface across the two segments is still almost completely flat?

This is why remaking the rings from scratch may be worth it.
To make completely new rings, with nice new UV, nicely "round" as the segmentation allows.

Or you can try refining the vertex positions in all the new segments, but then you may also need to fix the UV.

What i used to do, is finding the center axis of the ring, then creating a new ring with more segments, matching the original ring's size, and i placed it on that axis and then used it as a helper to snap the vertices of newly added segments to the corresponding verts of the helper ring.
And then i realized, that while the new shape is now all nice and dandy, i stretched the original UV a bit, and because i am sometimes a perfectionist ahole, i decided to redo the ring completely from scratch anyway ?

I think the best thing to do, would be to recreate the rings from scratch.
But i do not know how easy/difficult it may be in Blender - specifically when it comes to mapping the new rings to the original textures.
The way it is, the added segments aren't making the rings look much rounder.
So if the choice is between this result, and the original lower poly rings, then i'd vote for the original low poly rings.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Roggvir

[audhol]

7 hours ago, t.ara said:

Yes, but such problems can occure also to more professional creators. If you suddenly have problems with the system, you make a copy of skyrim-or if you only get a new installation from steam...the game is simply not seriously prepared, then.

This "exclusivly" way not to share own experiences may be also depend on the character of the person behind the user-profile-account. Some and also me, I use different accounts on different platforms, because specially for LL i need to stay anonymous and I await this feature from this page-if not, I have to leave. Some may feel not to share their knowledge because lot of people in between use modding as a "second" way to make money, which some maybe don´t like to support. This may be the second aspect. I met one very friendly old man on NEXUS, which offered very serious guides of all his work and with all the suiting parts and work-files-everything for a download and also active answering one´s questions. And here we have also some nice and helpful friends around-but lot of them are mostly AFK, in between. Or filled up with modding-or they jump to different game-versions or wait for new stuff to mod into it. Or they create own games or they went professional.

 

A lot of what you say makes sence specificaly about others making money off of the help you give them, the same could also be said of contributing to things that get donation points on nexus where solely the author chooses how to distribute the points accrued. Like you say its down to everyone to decide how to share what they know and do.

 

7 hours ago, t.ara said:

If you switch the textures off, you´ll find the front belt don´t show correctly all faces-you have some grey ones-it ´s a small problem with the normals

 

1 hour ago, Roggvir said:

It may need a smoothing rework, or recalculating the normals

Yes you are both correct there was an issue with the normals that I failed to spot, however simply refacing them in nifscope did the trick.

 

1 hour ago, Roggvir said:

I think the best thing to do, would be to recreate the rings from scratch.

Yes I would agree 100% the only issue is trying to unwrap the new taurus onto the correct location of the uv map to not have to retexture everything, I dont think its a huge issue but space is a bit limited as all the textures are 1k, I do wonder if there is some demand for higher res stuff? 

 

Also the lock looks awfull, the rest of the mesh is realy well optimised and looks amazing for just how optimised it is but that lock is pig ugly.

 

1 hour ago, Roggvir said:

There are many that use a lot of the same mesh parts (most of the straps), so we should give some thoughts to how to work smart - so we don't have to manually repeat the same changes in every gag mesh, but maybe work in a way that allows reusing the parts in all the other gags where applicable.

Yeah I kinda had this in mind with the way that I renamed the parts of the nif, you are correct that lots of thoose parts can be reused.

 

I will have a play with a new taurus and maybe a lock too (dont panick I wont add the Auds lock from the muzzle gag to all other DD's)

[audhol]

So I remade the tauruses (Taurai?) added some bevels to the lock but also did a 2k retexture, its not required for the taurus or locks but I just wanted to see what it would look like in a higher res.

 

Spoiler

 

[AndrewLRG]

A small suggestion regarding editing properties of worn Devices. Now, if I understand correctly, normally we can't scope zadEquipScript of a worn item. That's why whenever DD wants to get some Device property it spawns an invisible copy as ObjectReference, retrieves needed info from zadEquipScript and then deletes it. If we were to edit properties of zadEquipScript it will apply changes to all devices of that type. Suggestion is to store property value in StorageUtil and make zadEquipScript use it instead of default value:

 

For example, changing line in zadEquipScript

 

ElseIf libs.PlayerRef.GetItemCount(DeviceKey) < NumberOfKeysNeeded

 

to

 

ElseIf (libs.PlayerRef.GetItemCount(DeviceKey) < StorageUtil.GetIntValue(none, libs.PlayerRef + "_" + DeviceName + "_NumOfKeys", NumberOfKeysNeeded))

 

This way zadEquipScript will check whether an Int Value representing the NewNumberOfKeys exists and will use it. If this Value does not exists, the script will use default NumberOfKeysNeeded Property from zadEquipScript. This will allow 3rd party mods to sort of override Devices properties via script. It can be used in various Escape mods(  fail to struggle out of the device and its BaseEscapeChance decreased, fail to unlock it with a key and now use need two keys, etc. ) If we want to increase the number of keys for a worn Suit it might look like this:

 

Function IncreaseNumberOfKeys()

     Armor InvDevice = Libs.GetWornDevice(Game.GetPlayer(), Libs.zad_DeviousSuit) ; Selecting worn Suit

     String DeviceName = Libs.GetDeviceName(InvDevice) ; Get worn Device name

     StorageUtil.SetIntValue(none, Game.GetPlayer() + "_" + DeviceName + "_NumOfKeys", 10) ; Set new number of keys

EndFunction

 

In this case we are specifying that the device with 'DeviceName' worn by Player uses 10 keys.

 

Example of how zadEquipScript might look. I've only done a basic testing, not sure if it breaks anything in the long run.

 

zadEquipScript.psc

 

 

[l1nkler]

Feature request to please the VR players: SendModEvents when starting an animation.

When playing VR with VRIK installed you can configure wich parts of your body are controlled by you the player and which ones will be overriden by skyrims animations. So for example your vibrator goes off and DD decides to play one of the Horny animations only the feet and part of the body are animated. Hands and head are still in the same place as your real hands and head. Which isn't such a big deal with the horny animations but with the catching breath animations it's horrible. Cause the player collapses to the ground and then the whole IK system flips and your body gets put into all unatural shapes. VRIK allows modders to disable parts of it's animation system so it can be controlled by the games animations. And I want to implement a patch for it. But I have no events to listen for and I don't feel like compiling DD myself just to risk it breaking in future updates. I already tried RegisterForAnimationEvent but that apparantly only works with a specific list of animations from the base game.

I already made a patch using the Equip events to fix animations when bound in for example armbinders or yokes (it's the Vrik - DD animation patch located here: https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/17253-skyrimvr-patches-vrik-integrations-for-zazdd-camera-spinning-fixes-other-qol-patches). And that worked like a charm. So I'm sure I could pull this off if DD would send mod events everytime it runs Debug.SendAnimationEvent.

 

[audhol]

@Roggvir

 

Many apologies, I thought I had uploaded the gag mesh and textures in my previous post.

 

gagHarnessBallHD.nif

gag01HD_d.dds

gag01HD_em.dds

gag01HD_n.dds

[titlover123]

Hello @Kimy I have a small question.

Will the formal affair clothing ever be used for anything? or will it just stay in DD forever?

[titlover123]

Also after I upgraded my DD to the latest version (5.2 beta 7) I keep getting this bug with all the gags i've tried thus far.

[zarantha]

2 hours ago, titlover123 said:

Also after I upgraded my DD to the latest version (5.2 beta 7) I keep getting this bug with all the gags i've tried thus far.

 

have you installed mfg fix?

[titlover123]

9 hours ago, zarantha said:

 

have you installed mfg fix?

mfg fix I'm not sure I know what that is

Just looked it up and mfg fix is for SE I am on LE

Edited October 3, 2022 by titlover123

[ihatemykite]

4 minutes ago, titlover123 said:

mfg fix I'm not sure I know what that is

Just looked it up and mfg fix is for SE I am on LE

In that case, try mfg console

[titlover123]

4 minutes ago, ihatemykite said:

In that case, try mfg console

I already have that installed, strangely enough if i downgrade to a previous version of DD then everything works smoothly

[ihatemykite]

5 minutes ago, titlover123 said:

I already have that installed, strangely enough if i downgrade to a previous version of DD then everything works smoothly

In that case it is possible that other mod is interfaring. Can you share the mod list ? Also, there was similiar conversation before, so you can check it.

[titlover123]

44 minutes ago, ihatemykite said:

In that case it is possible that other mod is interfaring. Can you share the mod list ? Also, there was similiar conversation before, so you can check it.

I'm going to try and uninstall some of my lesser used mods and see what happens, if that fails then i'll share my mod list, if I can figure out how, that is.

[Maddac]

34 minutes ago, titlover123 said:

I'm going to try and uninstall some of my lesser used mods and see what happens, if that fails then i'll share my mod list, if I can figure out how, that is.

I had the same problem with upgrading to DD5.2 beta 7 with the gags. I had completely uninstalled DD5.1 then installed DD5.2 beta 7 but started getting the gag problem. couldnt figure out the problem at all. only thing I hadnt tried was installing DD5.2 beta 7 on a build of skyrim that had no previous DD mods on it. I have multiple builds depending on what I am doing with the game

 

[titlover123]

9 hours ago, Maddac said:

I had the same problem with upgrading to DD5.2 beta 7 with the gags. I had completely uninstalled DD5.1 then installed DD5.2 beta 7 but started getting the gag problem. couldnt figure out the problem at all. only thing I hadnt tried was installing DD5.2 beta 7 on a build of skyrim that had no previous DD mods on it. I have multiple builds depending on what I am doing with the game

 

I'm not sure which mod(s) was messing things up but now things are working again, oh well...

[Maddac]

6 hours ago, titlover123 said:

I'm not sure which mod(s) was messing things up but now things are working again, oh well...

hmmm would like to know which mods you uninstalled, I would have done them one at a time

 

[titlover123]

7 hours ago, Maddac said:

hmmm would like to know which mods you uninstalled, I would have done them one at a time

 

devious devices equip, unforgiving devices, deviously vanilla, estrus chaurus, those were the biggest ones

Edited October 4, 2022 by titlover123