fingerscrossed

I didn't directly get inspiration (this was something I wanted and made for myself), and indeed the implementation does look like same goal but pretty opposite approaches. I'm only going to discuss the newer replacement implementation I have, because the old one has additional issues. I'll briefly answer question and explain why I used my approach instead of the one used in PCEAr (at least as I understand their implementation from a quick look): First, yes, there are two sets of armor meshes: "Regular" - NPCs (and player, if you either disable a slot or an armor) will use these. "pa" - The folder for the player specific meshes. You do have to build the files you want into the pa folder separate for the player to use it this way. I use scripts for, when the player equips a piece of armor, it dynamically changes the target meshes used in the armor addons (after a short delay) to the pa meshes. This is in comparison to PCEAr which looks to make two sets of armor (A player armor and a NPC armor) with two different sets of base meshes/etc., and then uses scripts to replace one with the other. I believe the NPCs will then use the secondary armor while the player uses the primary. The main benefit of the PA approach is that it supports having modded armor sets that have different builds without requiring a plug-in to make it compatible since you do not need to go into creation kit and create new armors in game for the secondary armor effect. From a quick example: You have an armor "Special Bikini Chainmail" and a custom player body. In PCEAr, you would likely need to do something like: 1) Create the two meshes and put them in proper folders 2) Create a plugin/modification to create the new armor mesh and add it to PCEAr (requiring Creation Kit and some knowledge there) In PA, 1) Create the two meshes and put them in proper folders This nominally makes PA much more compatible with other mods and is intended so that the user doesn't have to go into the creation kit and do anything there each time they add a new set of modded/etc armor. Additionally, since the mod doesn't effect any of the armors in game base, it shouldn't interfere with any mod that would does. Additionally, because in batch mode, the current recommended, only the meshes are dynamically changed, the item and its stats/enchantments are not affected at all switching between modes. But, use what you want to. I made this mod primarily for myself and then distributed it in case it something others were interested in. If you prefer PCEAr's implementation then I'm glad you've got options and they've got something you like.

Posting an update after a few weeks on status: I've had one person reach out to me on beat testing, and I got them a copy. Initially when they tried to load into the battlezone area their game would crash. With a little bit of troubleshooting and crash logs, the culprit looked to be Zaz. They apparently got the crash to stop by downloading the 8.0 Zaz LE (they were playing on the SE Version). The issue looks to be related to the Zaz Furniture that is in the cell. As I develop on LE and then rebuild on SE (since you can go LE -> SE, but not vice versa) I'm not sure what the issue is and if it's going to be wide spread, so I could use a few more beta testers who would be willing to help look/check for bugs.

Ahhh, yeah, okay, I can see this making some sense. I don't know exactly how the DD Device Hider works on the backend, but I could definitely see it doing some kind of a loop with PA were one of them tries to unequip/reequip/change nif and it triggers the other which activates and the triggers the other ad nauseum. The Devices Underneath/Device Hider is one that I usually turn off on DD, so I didn't even think of it. I'm not sure it's something I could fix without probably going into DD Device Hider to see what they are using to trigger it and it might even require a DD compatibility patch with PA.

Which mode are you running the mod in? Do you have any mods that change animations or do any replacement on doing things like weapon drawing?

The set up is indeed kind of a pain. Glad to hear that it is working out, though.

Oh hey, I got pinged here with Polymorphic Armor being linked. I made the mod a little while back primarily for myself to use, and in the latest version added the Batch Build mode which overall seems to work pretty effectively. The mod basically uses a secondary repository of nifs that are intended to mirror the file structure used by the normal gear except with a "pa" addendum in the file structure (so, instead of Meshes/Armor/Bandit/XXXX.nif, it would be Meshes/Armorpa/Bandit/XXXX.nif, with the pa one being the one intended for player use). This can either be combined with a custom race using a custom body or just for setting up different looking armor for the player to wear. Slots can be restricted to not change, but one of the issues is that for all of the meshes that might be swapped, a corresponding mesh is needed in a "pa" equivalent folder, even if it isn't changing because there is no innate functionality I've found to be able to check and see if a .nif or a file exists. In the batch build mode, what the mod does is shortly after the player equips an item, it goes through all of the items in the player's inventory, checks for any non-restricted slots that have items equipped, and then if it finds any, it changes the .nif files the armor addons are looking at it to the pa version, updates the players 3d model (so that the updated armor is shown), and then resets the armor addons back to their original .nif files so that any NPCs equipping that armor won't use the players model. This mode seems to be much less janky than the way I was originally doing it. Two short videos in the spoiler below showing what this looks like in game (One equipping novice mage robes that have an alternate mesh, and the other equipping a zaz harness and DD gag). The mod isn't a perfect solution, but it seems to have worked fairly well overall as long as you are making sure to have appropriate replacement nifs.

Missed this post a while back, but it should work the same for armor mods. If the armor is normally in Meshes/Armor/XXXX then it should just be in Meshes/ArmorPA/XXXX. If it's Meshes/MyModName/XXXX, then it should be Meshes/MyModNamePA/XXXX. Similar to above, you just add pa to the end of the new folder. In terms of remembering choices, there's probably a way of doing that, but that's also probably non-trivial. If I had to guess, when the body/cock gets replaced, it like has a mesh somewhere (i.e., Meshes/Actors/XXXX) and when it comes to the pa check, it then attempts to replace the mesh with a pa version. If you haven't tried it, try finding the mesh for the schlong and then copying it's path to an equivalent path (i.e., Meshes/Actorspa/XXXX) and see if that works.

Also, while I don't plan on doing a full update description on what I've fixed/changed/added, because it was a lot and there was a lot of really weird esoteric bugs that came up because for some unknown reason Bethesda never seemed to plan for you to do something like this, I'll give a quick update on where the mod is at: There is a fairly fleshed out MCM that contains values, sliders, options, and the ability to select options for your party members. You can also discuss some things with your party members via dialogue. The MCM contains adjustable values for everything from damage bonuses to weights for choosing categories to success chances to options you can toggle on or off. There is an ability to have turn based combat auto start on basically the player getting into a fight. You can actually win/lose these fights, and if you win them you can chose what to do with the enemies and loot them. Based on the set difficulty, the fights will potentially generate extra enemies to make them more interesting. There's a pretty wide range of actions that can be taken in combat. You can attack with weapons (anyone) or magic (player only currently), use special weapon skills (player only), assist allies, hamper enemies, strip, bind, seduce, forcefully engage in sexual conduct, struggle out of a situation, and more. Enemies can do much the same to you, and can do things like ganging up to improve their chance of hitting you. You can rescue allies, or tell them to suck it up, put out, and try to tire out the enemy. Regular damage scales off of levels, skill with the weapon/magic, effects like enchantments, etc. Sex damage, which drains stamina before health, takes stats from sexlab into account to scale up the damage based on how experienced you are. There are a few bugs. Sometimes initiating sex really confuses sex lab and the controller script when something happens like an unexpected race enters (Though this usually recovers). I have absolutely no idea why the script that equips restraints sometimes removes some armor from the players inventory that they had equipped at some point (There's no RemoveItem called, so why does it disappear?). You also don't want to autostart a combat with dragon (there's only one battlezone currently, and it's a bandit cave. The dragon doesn't fit (a common problem Dragonborn's face)). There's a ton of things I haven't had the time to do and honestly would love if someone else wanted to. There's only one line used by everyone when they strip someone, or miss an attack, etc., and while it wouldn't be hard to make more, and make some that are only said by certain types, I just have my hands full with the other parts of the mod. Similarly, there's I suppose two battlezones, but one of them was just a debug/test one. I'd love to have/make more, but priorities, but also I set it up so that this could be done in the future without needing to rewrite. Overall, though, it's running much more stable than before and I think that's pretty great progress. If there is interest, I might be able to post a demo of it in its current state (or maybe someone who reaches out for Closed Beta can). Let me know if that's something you'd want to see.

Haven't been in the thread in a while, figured I would make a post while I'm on: I haven't looked at DAR, but it sounds like a good framework to use. I also haven't look at any of the code for this since in probably two years at this point, and I'm sure if I did I would cry with how poorly it's written. I've been working on other projects and haven't really had the desire to work on this to get it fixed up/updated. It's possible I'll do it in the future, but at the moment the time that I am spending modding I have other priorities and interests. I might try and work on this at some point in the future, but with how long it takes me to get other things out I am working on (like Turn Based Combat mod), I wouldn't expect it anytime soon. If someone wants to pick this up, let me know and I'm happy to work with you. If someone really wants to add to the mod and wants my help to get things fixed up so they can, let me know and depending on what you are looking for I may try to carve out some time. But, barring things changing, and for the purpose of being upfront with everyone, this is not on my immediate priorities.

Looking at my previous post, I'm realizing it's been about 6 months since I updated anything here, so you can probably imagine what I'm about to say: It's been too much effort and I've given up, abandoning this. It truly was just a bit too much to handle. . . . . Lol, just kidding, I've got a closed beta version. It's still a bit buggy but most of the bugs seem pretty rare and outside the mod itself. If you are someone who is familiar with dealing with potentially buggy mods and want to help me troubleshoot issues, send me a PM. I want a bit of testing and a bit more work on a few fringe cases before I put out a public beta/version, but hey, a couple sentences back you probably thought this was dead. If you are interested in doing closed beta testing and trouble shooting (not for people who just want to play it), send me a message and let me know which version you want, LE or SE. I've been developing entirely in LE, and then testing entirely in SE, so both should probably work. I'll try and check back in at least once a day for messages for anyone interested in helping. Once the mod seems to be relatively stable in closed beta, I'll put a public version out.

The monitor looks to have been fixed, but I have come across one more bug I am trying to solve that needs to be fixed prior to beta: Combat not starting/loading after combat had been previously triggered. I don't recall seeing this issue previously, so I am trying to figure out what, if anything, I did that is causing the issue. I'm thinking that the most likely scenario is that something isn't properly getting shut down and restart between encounters, which then passes some kind of bad data and causes the sequence to fail. Going to try and take a look into this and test this afternoon when I can find some time.

I've mentioned this a few times in various PA threads, but there is no native way I have found to check and see if a mesh exists and if not ignore it. As near as I can tell, this would require a SKSE .dll plugin to add a few function to papyrus to be able to check, which is something I do not have the knowledge of how to do nor currently the desire to figure out. If someone has a method for doing this, or wishes to create a plugin to check and see if a file exists inside of papyrus, I will happily implement this as an update.

Wanted to make another quick update: Ran across a few more bugs I wanted to squash before putting out Beta, have gotten a few of them (Creatures not dealing damage on attack) sorted, but came across another one (battlefield monitor validity improperly updating) I am trying to quash right now (Looks like I may have not noticed previously due to party sizes and actions taken, but this may also explain some weirdness I have seen on occasion). The BF monitor is a bit complicated sometimes to re-wrap my head around, but hoping I can get it figured out in the next hour or two, test it, and then have beta (other fixes all seem to be working/implemented properly).

Doing a bit more work on mod. A coupe of updates: Combat Starter Combat Starter for auto starting combats has been improved, and a few options related to difficulty and turning it on/off added to MCM (No longer needs to be repeatedly started from console). Item Disappearance Bug So, I had started building/designing in LE and then testing in SE as this helps for a few reasons (helps me make sure I am getting all scripts transferred, my SE save is more stable, etc). I came across a really weird bug playing with a lower level SE character that I hadn't seen before: When being stripped in combat by enemies, my armor would disappear and get removed from my inventory! I have removed from the mod any gear destruction, as that can really quickly mess up a lot of enjoyment, so this was quite perplexing. Taking a deeper look into things, I couldn't find any reason that this was happening, and it only appeared to be happening on my SE game. More testing, and I come to find out that not all gear is getting removed, and sometimes gear I don't even have equipped is disappearing! More testing, more investigation, and I come to a realization that it looks like only unique/quest reward type gear is getting kept. More investigation into the functions, and I pinpoint what is causing the issue: During scripting for stripping an actor, I nominally go through the following steps: 1) Take whatever outfit they are wearing for their main outfit and store for pulling up later 2) Store the actor's sleep outfit for later retrieval 3) Go through the actor's worn gear and (if using regular setting) strip the pieces of gear that fall in traditional/non-jewelry armor slots while also storing them so that they can be later grabbed for a redressing function. For each slot, check if it's worn, and if it is, store it then unequip it. 4) Set the actors regular outfit to an empty outfit (so that NPCs in particular don't randomly redress to their gear when they are supposed to be naked) 5) The same as above, except with their sleep outfit 6) Add the "stripped" effect to the actor So, for whatever reason, at least in SE (I haven't done testing on this yet in LE), when I set the player's outfit/sleep outfit to the empty outfit, it removes certain armor items from their inventory (appears to remove all but key armors like Archmage's robes). This is, to me, a really bizarre behavior. I need to do a bit of investigation with it on three fronts: 1) Does LE do the same? 2) Do NPCs also get extra armor they are carrying nuked? 3) Does it only remove a single of each armor, or if you have like 5 leather armors does it only remove 1? This is definitely one of the things that needs to be addressed before closed beta, as people tend not to like when their inventories disappear (though, hopefully, all of the beta folks will know well enough to keep back up saves ...) Additional Fixes/Changes/Additions Once I get the above finished working out, and make sure that the combat auto starter is working as intended, there's only a few more things on a punch list: 1) Make magic cost Magicka 2) Make magic impacted by failure 3) Add in magicka regen per turn 4) Make sure XP gain for using skills is working properly Bugs currently not being addressed before beta: 1) I've noticed that there looks to be some issues in certain choice structures with actors flagged to be opposite gender. I'm not going to try and delve in and fix this one before beta but it is tracked 2) Creatures binding female actors - need to make a work around, was only ever intended to be some "creatures" (i.e., like Draugr, or Falmer, which would theoretically make sense) and it's not really a game breaker so I haven't viewed as important yet Beta Assuming no other major bugs come up, I anticipate somewhere in the 4-8 hours of work to get above properly implemented and checked. As mentioned, I've been testing in both LE and SE, so I'll have a beta version available for both, and when I have the SE version available, I might make a post over in the SE boards as well. Hopefully next post will be that the Beta version is available.

A quick update: The night I made my previous post wishing that I would have a break from regular work to work on and get this finished up, the monkey's paw curled and I was able to take a break from work. Except, that was because I had caught COVID and got ill. I've been primarily resting the past week but have done a little bit of work on getting the mod ready for a closed beta, particularly testing a few things that I was unsure of if they were properly implemented (they weren't, primarily just implemented for me testing and knowing how to use console commands). I'm working on an update to this, hopefully this weekend. I think that there is a bit of misunderstanding in this, so I wanted to make a response to it. First, to an extent, as much as this is a mod, it will hopefully also serve as a framework. I have a methodology designed, but not fully implemented, for how other mods could interact and add their own styles/classes/etc to the mod. It's not been the primary focus of initial development, as both getting a working version with basic skills and abilities has been viewed as important, as well as no one has directly reached out and said to me "I really want to start working on designing classes/etc. now". (Please don't take the below as any sort of personal attack or targeted criticism, but I wanted to take the time to lay out and explain on the concept of Lightweight and difficulty here in terms of making something that feels "right") One of the big things here I want to address is the concept of "lightweight". Lightweight is a strange thing, because I completely understand what you are trying to get at, but the reality of the implementation is pretty difficult because it comes down to what you view as being essential and there is not really anything in the base game that supports doing turn based combat in Skyrim (if anything, the base game is actively opposed to this). Let me give a fairly quick example of what's viewed as "essential" and how it impacts complexity using enemy AI: You can start off simple with only having every enemy attack. But then, you want them to do more than that, so you add them more moves that they can randomly choose to use. But, now they are rarely actually attacking, so you add some weighting to make them more likely to attack. Now, you can add more abilities to give them more options. But, now you have enemies using things that don't seem right, full plate fighters with greataxes casting fireball, wizards coming into brawl with their fists, etc., so we need to restrict who's doing what. Okay, looking a bit better, but we want to start considering the target for some of these things. Maybe there are only certain things you should to do a target if they meet certain conditions. Well, we've started conditioning things, and we need to keep going. After all, the rogue is just sitting there stealthing every turn and not doing anything and they keep trying to strip a naked target. Guess we need to add a bit more to natively track conditions on targets we can check against. Ok, we've got some more conditioning set up, but with a lot of the just basic weights in place it feels pretty weird. After all, for H-attacks, the enemy is just as likely to make an H-attack whether it's 1 female target and 4 fighters trying to bash their heads in, or 3 female targets all nice bound up and unable to resist. So, we should probably add some dynamic weightings that take into account what the battlefield looks like to make it feel better. And so on, and so forth. Some of this comes back to the game not really natively supporting doing any of this. What this means is that, if you have a boss bandit to interact/perform differently in any way from a regular bandit, it's not just like the base game where you can go "Okay, here's the Boss Bandit actor. Let me give them a one handed axe, left hand fireball, and change their combat style to Sword Mage" and the game will take care of the rest. The backend of the framework needs to be able to go "Okay, this enemy is tagged as "boss", what elevated privileges/abilities does this give them". Similarly, how do you determine what constitutes a "boss"? It's not like there's a native flag on Actors that denotes they are a boss. From another example, how do you determine what all NPCs should be in a battle? Is it only NPCs that exist in the real world? Potentially going to be a lot of single enemy encounters, and that's not really going to be interesting. So, we're spawning allies in? Cool, how do you decide what allies to spawn for a given enemy? So, where do you stop for a "lightweight" framework? For the most part, most of what I have done and worked on, I consider to be fairly "core" to the framework/mod itself. There are definitely a couple of things (such as personalities) which you could easily argue aren't needed, but for the most part I think that a lot of what I have been working on is core to the concept of doing turn based combat in Skyrim, while also trying to make what you get and track from the base game matter. As a Framework, while I haven't focused on implementation of 3rd party/additional mods, it's not that I haven't thought about them. I have given consideration to and sketched out, essentially, how 3rd party content could be added hopefully non-disruptively. I don't think it's particularly difficult, and would only require minor backend changes and the addition of some functions to handle registering third party mods. In fact, once I had finished with the "basic" features, this was part of how I was intending to add "classes" myself, rather than have them as part of the base mod. Anyways, this post has rambled a bit, but I did want to address the issue, in my opinion, of there not really being any such thing as "lightweight" for doing something like this properly in Skyrim.