(WIP) Mjana's Labyrinth - A New Beginning

[Trykz]

 

For those of you who recall this project from earlier this year, you may remember that I swore off taking it any further until Bethesda fixed the navmesh issues that plagued many mods for months on end. I'm hoping you'll be as enthusiastic about it this time around. Having been quite busy building various custom races for the past few months, I let this linger in the back of my mind, occasionally giving it a passing thought every now and then.

 

Well, that's changed.

 

And so has EVERYTHING else. First, Fallsview Lodge is out. Now before you start thinking about how cool THAT house was, here's what will be replacing it:

 

 

Welcome to Mjana's Castle:



 

It remains in the same relative location as the old lodge, but it's placement is quite different:





 

 

 

If what's behind the spoiler tag has your interest piqued, then you haven't seen anything yet:

 

 

 

The Main Hall







 

Behind this door, you'll find Mjana's Study. And guess who you'll find inside:

 



 

It didn't seem fitting to name the Castle after her, if no one other than me could interact with her. So that's right. I changed that little detail, and now you can see her every time you visit the Castle.

 

 

Moving right along, here are some other things you'll see and interact with:

 

 

 

Here you will find shrines to every deity on Mundus:

 

The Chamber of Worship



 

And if you get the urge to bathe, or simply take a relaxing dip, you'll want to take full advantage of the Castle's many amenities, like:

 

The Steam Works







 

Also in the Castle Basement with the Steamworks, you'll find a fully functional smithing sector to create and upgrade your newest armor set:

 

 

 

What you are about to see, is where your journey through the various sectors of Mjana's Labyrinth will begin:

 

 

 

Things take a slight turn toward the "strange" here:

 

Halls of Oddity

 

This first room is nearly complete. If you look closely, it tells the story of a miniature town gripped in the clutches of war and turmoil, and suddenly frozen in time:

 













 

The house you see behind the Vampire Lord, can actually be entered. It's quite simple, but it contains most everything you'll need for a comfortable night's stay. Every remaining house can be used to expand the Labyrinth by add-ons of the appropriate type. Brothels, taverns, inns, etc...

 

There are multiple rooms in Halls of Oddity with plenty of space for doorways, cave entrances, trapdoors and portals to anywhere and everywhere, each with it's own style of theme.

 

Essentially, the theme of your add-on determines it's room placement within the Hall.

 

 

 

Finally, after a tiring visit to some of the Labyrinth's many coming locations, you'll want to make your way here:

 

 

 

The Guestroom:

 



 

Yes, you read that correctly. GUESTROOM. You DO NOT own it. Mjana does, and she'll be more than willing to rent it to you for a mere 10 gold a night

 

And while you're there, you'll find facilities to enchant your gear, or prepare potions for your next outing:

 



 

The mannequins and bookshelves you'll find around the Castle DO belong to you. So equipping the mannequins with your many armor sets or placing your books on the bookshelves is completely safe. You'll actually find a number of other things throughout the Castle that are perfectly safe to take and use. But be wary of the things that are not. For the guards that are making their way to staff the Castle WILL throw you in the jail Mjana is building for them as I write this

 

 

 

I have but two very simple and basic requirements to get your mod hooked in:

 

First, ABSOLUTELY NO content depicting sexual relations between adult NPCs and obvious children. Your mod can kidnap them, smack them around, enslave them to keep areas of your mod neat and tidy, or even kill them. But if your add-on contains any AI driven sexual situations between child and adult NPCs, I'll bin it faster than I installed it to review, place doors, and hook it into the Hall.

 

EVERYTHING else is fair game.

 

Second, your add-on CANNOT contain any doors/portals connecting it to the vanilla Tamriel worldspace. If you want it to connect back into the Hall, simply make the request, and a door will be placed at the end to send players back. From time to time, I may choose to dump players out of one mod, and directly into another. It depends on the length of time it takes to traverse your cell, and the type of mod it is.

 

So get as devious as you like

 

Feel free to leave the player stripped of all their gear, unable to adequately defend themselves. Because you never know, I may just drop them into a holy shitstorm the likes of nothing they've ever experienced in their time in Skyrim

--------------------------------------------------

 

So there you have it. This is only the beginning.....

 

P.S.: During the coming week, I'll be PM'ing THREE members who I'd like to test what I'll have finished so far. They have already been selected, so PLEASE DO NOT flood my inbox with requests.

 

edit: This project is VERY dependent on the Dawnguard DLC. So using it or building content for it REQUIRES having the Dawnguard DLC installed. This was not a choice I made lightly, and I didn't make it without community input. If you missed or didn't vote in the poll that determined this choice, then you have my apologies. But a clear majority of the 120+ members who took part in the poll, have determined that there's just WAAAAAY too much cool stuff in the DLC to not include it as part of this project's base.

 

Trykz

[Muh]

1 word: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA O_o

[PimpToast]

Good Stuff, always glad to see your hard work up so fast. Here take all my brownie points

[Dritskit]

I was about to write another angry comment in one of your threads, telling you to work on this project, but it seems that won't be necessary any more!

 

The mod, as always, looks great, keep up the good work!

[sammythesquirrel]

of course it looks amazing its trykz also hes restarted this thing like 4 times now each incarnation looks better than the last

[remois]

The dungeon can only start and finish in Mjana's castle that's ok...

 

But can the quest start outside? (for example fetch the key to the dungeon or investigate a dungeon in a library before coming in the labyrinth) or must all be bottled inside the castle?

[Trykz]

The dungeon can only start and finish in Mjana's castle that's ok...

 

But can the quest start outside? (for example fetch the key to the dungeon or investigate a dungeon in a library before coming in the labyrinth) or must all be bottled inside the castle?

 

No quests, no keys, no running all over Skyrim just to get in the front door. That's not what this project is about. It's not about the Castle or even Mjana really.

 

It's about providing a good looking, bug free common framework of prepackaged resources for myself and anyone else who wants to build under it to utilize to launch their mod in the form of add-ons that start in the castle and branch out into a huge labyrinth of no-holds-barred, non-stop adult or non-adult themed content. No detail is being left unchecked. A fully functional common faction system, guards to protect or punish NPCs based on alignment no matter where within the labyrinth they commit their crime, even a prison to send offenders to, from wherever they are caught.

 

These provisions will spare the mod author countless hours of development time, because they're already in-place, ready to use. Allowing them to focus more on the primary content they want the user to experience, while keeping them in the labyrinth, unaware of what might happen next. It raises questions in the player's mind like "Where does this go?..... back to the castle, or the start of the labyrinth, or should I prepare myself for the worst?"

 

The exit to vanilla Tamriel worldspace restriction is more or less to keep as much of the labyrinth in constant use by the player as possible, and for the player's mind to get truly lost and immersed in the content they choose to move through, until they finally arrive in a familiar place (whichever Hall they begin in), to get back to the castle.

 

A key quest to enter the castle, would serve no purpose other than delay the player's goal of getting to the content they plugged into the labyrinth.

 

The castle is merely the beginning. So bring your camping gear. Because once you enter, you may just find yourself stuck here for quite a while

[remois]

I think you misunderstood: It's not a key to enter the castle itself, but just the dungeon I would make... (I'm learning very slowly ^^)

 

Roughly something like a backstory to a particular add-on why it has been sealed in the labyrinth and a key to enter this particular part meaning that other content would not be affected at all

[Trykz]

I think you misunderstood: It's not a key to enter the castle itself' date=' but just the dungeon I would make... (I'm learning very slowly ^^)

 

Roughly something like a backstory to a particular add-on why it has been sealed in the labyrinth and a key to enter this particular part meaning that other content would not be affected at all

[/quote']

 

Ahh, I see. And that's exactly what I had in mind

 

Mod authors building under this framework are free to use whatever mechanics they wish for entering their add-on. And those mechanics can take place anywhere they like, using whatever methods they choose, apart from restricting the player from entering the castle or the labyrinth.

 

For instance, a quest for a key to enter a specific dungeon within the labyrinth, can begin anywhere in the game the mod author sees fit, but it CANNOT use any part of the castle or labyrinth (such as the entrances to any other area of the castle or labyrinth) to lock the player out until they complete it.

 

Anyhoo, I have some errands to run, and then I'll be finishing the jail and faction systems this afternoon. So be on the lookout for some more pics later this evening

[ibanez85]

Yeahhhhh

[Trykz]

I wanted to post some pics this evening, but they may have to wait until tomorrow.

 

The Castle's "Detention Center" is finished and working as it should. The faction system is mostly in place, with just a few kinks to iron out. I added some other things as well:

 

The Castle now has a working blacksmith in The Steamworks smithing sector. She'll buy and sell from 8am - 10pm. She has a new bedroom right off the hall leading to the smithing stations.

 

The factions are broken down as follows:

---------------------------------------

 

Crime Faction (holds the common faction list that crimes are reported to and forwarded to the guard faction) All common factions are friend or ally, EXCEPT for the prisoner faction

 

Guard Faction (runs the jail)

 

Citizen Faction (the girls in The Steamworks and other areas of the Castle)

 

Services Faction (the blacksmith and the upcoming trainers/vendors near the crafting area upstairs)

 

Prisoner Faction (the prisoners in the Detention Center) neutral to all other factions

---------------------------------------

 

Attacking any of them gets you heavily fined. If you can't pay, you either go to jail, or try to fight your way out. Which is NOT advisable, since the guards are level 80, essential, armed with Rank 6 Daedric weapons, many of which will paralyze you nearly every time you get hit, and perked to the teeth with top ranked abilities. My Mjana took on two of them, and ended up getting disintegrated by a lightning bolt staff (which I was under the impression could not be done to the player LOL) in pretty short order. They are not to be trifled with, that's for sure

 

Anyway, I'll have pics tomorrow for sure.

[redwulfen]

Outstanding sir as always, thank you for sharing the fruits of your labors with us.

[Trykz]

Well this sucks.....

 

So far I've spent all damned day just trying to get the blacksmith to train as well as buy/sell

 

Adding her to the necessary factions does something to the vendor side of her package. Damned if I can figure out what it is. She's set up EXACTLY the same as both the alchemy AND enchanting trainer, and they both work fine. So enough of screwing with that. I'm thinking Skyrim has enough blacksmith trainers anyway, so screw it. I'll fix her vendor side and scrap the trainer side of the package and move on.

 

The jail is finished and working top notch. And I have a few surprises lined up in there as well. I'll post some pics a bit later, but the player cell..... well, you'll see for yourself should you get arrested within the castle. Don't worry. Your character won't be killed. Actually, now that I think about it, female characters may find themselves getting arrested a bit more often than, umm.... usual LOL

 

Suffice to say that if you have a good working MLA set up, you may find..... doh! I'll say no more

 

I need to add a few more guards, then set up their schedule rotation packages. Which is always a bit time consuming. I also need to finish the 3 Labyrinth Halls that add-ons will plug into. But before I go into the technical side of how this will be set up, I want to clarify a few other things.

 

First, Skyrim is a Rated "M" game. I'm pretty sure that needs no explanation.

Secondly, I don't equate "nudity" to "adult". I was reading my dad's Hustler and Easy Rider mags in the can when I was 9. My first son was born when I was 17. I was married the following year.

Finally, I DO understand that some people might be a bit sensitive about the type of content they want to experience.

So here's what I'm thinking:

 

The Labyrinth is currently comprised of 8 cells. 7 of which make up the entirety of Mjana's Castle. When I'm finished with the base that everyone will build on, there will be 10. The Castle and three separate Halls:

 

The Halls of Oddity: (part of which you see pictured in the first post) will be for the truly hardcore stuff. Weird, strange, over-the-top mods will link up with this cell. I suspect we're on the cusp of what will surely be a torrent of "very adult" material. Looking around here at some of the phenomenal work being done with SSG/Sexrim by DocClox and company, the ZaZ Resources that mastercchris has been posting, and the more recent MiniLovers stuff is all the evidence anyone needs to foresee the things we're likely to see in the coming months. This is the type of material that will be linked into The Halls of Oddity. If it has sex involved, it finds it's home here.

 

The Halls of Horror: is where the all-out combat related dungeon/new worldspace stuff will hook into the Labyrinth. Short dungeons can be linked with others to extend their content, by author request. Which may be necessary at times. If your dungeon can be completed in less than 30 minutes, then you may want to consider linking it with another, similar dungeon.

 

The Halls of Wonder: this is where the pure vanilla based material will hook in. Things like new towns (in NEW worldspaces ONLY), taverns, shops, etc..

 

So lets evaluate:

 

Lets say you build a mod to hook into the Labyrinth that consists of a new worldspace, with vanilla npcs and monsters to fight, and these npcs and monsters rape you at low health.....

 

where does it go?.... The Halls of Oddity.

 

Needless to say, more users here are likely to be most interested in this cell than any other. Which is why it currently consists of 8 separate rooms, with plenty of space for doors. The two remaining Halls will consist of 3 rooms each, which I will expand if or when it's necessary.

 

So that's the basic gist of things at the moment. I'll get into the technical aspects of hooking in at a later time. When I get this finished to send out to the testers I've selected, I'm going to begin work on my own add-on which will be the very first to plug into the Labyrinth (to make sure hooking in works flawlessly, and with as little effort as possible). The new Redlight Palace will be sooooo much better than the last

 

With a little luck, I'm hoping to have BOTH parts out to users in the next 2 weeks or so. But no guarantees......

 

Back a bit later with some pics

[Trykz]

I think Boss Bitch called a staff meeting to iron out some details in the guard's rotation schedule:

 

 

 

 

Here's some pics of the new Castle Detention Center, which is unlike ANY other jail anywhere (these pics probably aren't safe for viewing at work

 

 

 

Yeah, it's co-ed..... and interracial LOL

 

this cell is reserved for "honored guests".... like vampires

 

but this cell is for "special cases"

 

 

 

The guards take their job very seriously in Mjana's Castle

 

 

And finally, a far shot of the hottest blacksmith in Skyrim

 

 

 

With that, I'm off to bed.....

[Trykz]

Teaser shot of the second room in Halls of Oddity, which is nearly complete. Just needs a bit more clutter:

 

 

 

 

The next room will really mess with..... nevermind

[Guest Crisis244]

Looks awesome I always wonder on making a vampire giving my nord a fellatio... Sorry if you find that disturbing

[challen11222]

this mod is gonna be fun to play i can only imagine all the ideas that might go into it 0.0

[Trykz]

So thanks to a few "issues" that needed my direct attention at the office, I'm a couple of days behind now

 

Which kind of sucks, but gave me a couple of days to think some things over.....

 

First, I got to thinking about the way I was planning on dividing up the labyrinth, and grouping add-ons by type. The more I thought about it, the more I asked myself "is this REALLY necessary?" And I really don't think it is. Users will already have the ability to pick and choose the type of content they want to plug in, so what does it matter where the entrances actually are?

 

Essentially, if a user doesn't want to plug in a particular add-on, then the door it uses simply won't go anywhere for them.

 

So I intend to streamline the labyrinth into one single cell, but in a variety of different themes, such as basic rooms, caves, ruins, etc., with clutter appropriate to the room type. I think that doing it this way will give it a more labyrinth type atmosphere, with smooth transitions from one area to the next.

 

So Halls of Oddity will simply be called Mjana's Labyrinth. The last area will be left open-ended by a "black-hole" that doesn't go anywhere. This will be the connection point "if or when" expanding the labyrinth is necessary, which shouldn't be for quite some time. I'm three rooms in and there are already over 30 doorways available. So I may trim some of the current ones out and re-add them in other areas to keep things tidy and uniform.

 

Before I go any further with adding new areas, I'm going to copy out the .esp and convert to .esm, after which I'll build a basic test cell to document the mechanics of hooking in, and making sure everything works as planned.

 

I'll try to get some more pics up later tonight or tomorrow.

 

o/

[Trykz]

So the cave at the bottom of the labyrinth is nearly done. Well, done enough to drop a teaser shot

 

 

 

 

I'm a bit put off by the stairs leading down to it, though. Moving down the stairs is no issue. But climbing up them requires jumping in a few places. Not quite sure what's up with that, but I'm looking into alternatives. Not too many of the stair options in the CK really fit well, and everything is already navmeshed. I'm thinking I'll just merge some angled ramps or floor pieces into the step level to eliminate the problem.

 

Anyway, I just need to place exit points in the cave and one other room. The cave currently has a one-way exit into Tamriel, which I placed there as an example for others to follow for making one-way exits leading out of their plug-ins.

 

On another note, I decided to build the new Redlight before I hand this to testers. I'd rather hold off because I want to be sure that hooking in will be as seamless and effortless as possible. Redlight will NOT be a palace this time, because I have something else in mind

[GHJKL]

Do we need to make our exit ourselves or should we just add a door somewhere that you can link to Tamriel?

[Trykz]

Do we need to make our exit ourselves or should we just add a door somewhere that you can link to Tamriel?

 

Once you see how the exit I put in is set up, you'll see what you need to do to make it one-way. Depending on how easy hooking into the labyrinth turns out, I'm hoping that plug-in authors can just hook in from their cell themselves.

 

You can't actually create a one-way "door". But you can "hide" the door on the outside by simply placing it's activator underground where the user can't access it, and putting the portal where you want them to spawn. You can also "dead end" your plug-in so users go back into the labyrinth through the same door they entered. You can also request that I drop users from your plug-in directly into another plug-in if you feel it's a bit short. As long as it's a co-op connection between authors, I'm fine with it as well.

 

The way it "should" work, is that once you load up the MjanasLabyrinth.esm and create your mod, the entrance to your mod will be a local change to the .esm, isolated to the cell you hook in (meaning that the door only works if your plug-in is installed). I'll just need to map out and number the doors, so no two plug-ins use the same door by mistake. I'll likely make a thread here just for plug-in authors to keep each other posted on any changes they make, and any doors they use.

 

As long as nothing is altered within the MjanasLabyrinth.esm (which can only happen if someone screws with stuff they shouldn't), then there should be no need to update the .esm unless Bethesda breaks something it depends on.

 

Essentially, all changes are contained within the plug-in. Your plug-in will hold all the info that hooks it in. I'm being especially mindful of the navmesh within the labyrinth, so portals land on them without issue, and followers can move through seamlessly.

 

I'll also be leaving a test character right outside the labyrinth door, so I can test the connection of each one as they get posted for download.

[Trykz]

So after a few hours of playing with doors and navmesh, I decided to work on my plug-in:

 

Welcome to the "under construction" Mjana's Sanctum of Desire (which will be replacing Redlight Palace).....

 

 

 

 

It'll be loaded with lots of neat "toys" to play with

[Trykz]

Out of sheer curiosity, I copied out the MjanasLabyrinth.esp AND the .esp for my plug-in so I could test hooking an add-on into the labyrinth.

 

I converted the MjanasLabyrinth.esp to MjanasLabyrinth.esm using the load and save method in the Creation Kit. Here's what happened:

 

I loaded everything into the CK as follows:

 

Skyrim.esm

Update.esm

Dawnguard.esm

MjanasLabyrinth.esm

MjanasSOD.esp

 

Everything loaded into the CK flawlessly. So I loaded the Sanctum cell to hook in the door. I linked the add-on cell to the first door in the labyrinth, and moved the teleport markers on both ends to where they needed to be, turning them in the right direction (for some reason, the CK always places them in the middle of, and facing the door). After finalizing the navmesh in the add-on to light up the triangle the teleport marker rests on, I reloaded the labyrinth cell to check the connection on that end. As I had hoped would occur, the navmesh was already finalized on that end as a result of finalizing the mesh in my plug-in.

 

Perfect. And I couldn't be more pleased with how seamlessly they fit together

 

I'm hoping to get the labyrinth finished up tomorrow, so I can convert the .esp to .esm permanently, and get it out to testers. I also hope to have the Sanctum finished by the weekend, so I can release them together over the coming weekend, barring any issues.

[Trykz]

MjanasLabyrinth.esm is finished......

 

and I'm about to fire off PMs to the LL members I've selected to test it. Once I hear back from them, and assuming there's nothing pressing that needs to be fixed before I finalize everything, I'll be releasing this for general use and for modders to use as a platform for plug-ins they want to hook in by (or possibly before) the weekend.

 

I'll be working on my plug-in while this is being tested, and hope to release it with this when it's ready.

 

Once everything is finalized, I'll be closing this thread and starting two new threads. One will be for general user support and discussion about the base mod and any plug-ins created under it. The other thread will be strictly for authors creating plug-ins under the base mod.

 

Finally, the images posted in this thread will be removed (in the next day or so), as I'll have a new set of images prepared for the new general user discussion thread.

[Trykz]

So.....

 

testers found a few minor issues, but nothing overly glaring. I thank them for corresponding with me via PM.

 

The issues that were found were pretty minor, and some were even intended. Such as:

 

certain statue models in the labyrinth without collision.... this IS intentional. Primarily so followers don't get hung up on them. In the hagraven statue room, I placed a collision plane just ahead of the statues there. Now the player OR followers can go near them without hitting an invisible wall. I'll be adding a fence there, mostly for aesthetic purposes.

 

guards without vocals.... an known Bethesda bug concerning female voice types that's currently affecting many mods. I worked around it by giving all of the female guards the NordFemale voice type. So now they chat it up just as any other vanilla female Nord guard does. It's a little odd since they're not all Nords, but at least there's no need for subtitles now.

 

the jail escape route is dead-ended.... also intentional. The jail is NOT meant to be broken out of. It's meant to be a minor gold sink, or a method of keeping the player from attacking guards and citizens of the castle and any plug-in that ties into the faction system. Serving your time WILL affect your skill progress as it does with any vanilla jail. The skill progression effects are unchanged, and the fines are the same as vanilla jails for every offense except werewolf form, which is set to zero. The escape route and all of it's assets and activators have been removed, and the grate to enter it has been blocked by the player prisoner belongings chest.

 

I also placed collision planes between the cells to keep prisoners in their respective cells. No more wandering prisoners, or reading books through the walls. Also upgraded the shackled prisoners' AI packages. They should now remain shackled to the walls around the clock.

 

That's it for now, as I'm waiting to hear of any issues other than what I've covered here, which have all been fixed.

 

Fingers crossed.....

 

Trykz