I don't know what to say... This mod and it's story is just so well made. The ambience, the music the voice acting. Thrilling and intriguing. Not what I was expecting at all. Never could have imagined a mod would ever be this good.
@antistar atm i'm setting up a new playthrough. i already played the mod twice without any problems and it's definitly in my top 10. so my question is, should i wait until the update or will i be able to update midgame? i guess the update is only bugfixes (which never happen to me) and maybe some small additional stuff? oh, and will there be some bodyslide files in the update? I like the dresses. cheers DK.
The plan with the update is to do more than just bug fixes (e.g. to also make Lamashtu a potential follower), so I wouldn't wait around if you're keen to start a new game right now.
My hope is for the update to work with existing saves - though maybe not saves where you're actively in the middle of the Clockwork main quest - we'll see.
I've never bothered with body mods, so probably no bodyslide files from me.
As mentioned in the bug report you made, there have been no other reports of this, so it's safe to assume that it's something specific to your save or setup.
Hey, I just started this mod today and I'm facing a crash every time this happens **SPOILERS AHEAD**
If I place my character next to the bed where Ludwig was found, my game crashes. It happened once when he was still in the bed, then it didn't happen and I was able to progress with the story. I asked the caretaker to remove the body and clean his room and now it keeps happening.
I am playing with a bunch of mods but this was the first crash I've encountered in my entire play through. Even after downloading the additional clockwork mod, it keeps happening.
Thanks for the info - this is a known issue that should be fixed in the update I'm working on at the moment. There's some more info on it in the "bed of dust crash" bug report.
(I wasn't able to reproduce this issue on my end until very recently, and even then it's been very rare for me.)
Nice, glad to know a good mod like this is still getting updates! I'll ask since we are on the topic, will the updates make Additional Clockwork Mod irrelevant? Meaning, will it fix what the mod fixes already?
If any other thing happens while I play I'll submit a new post. Currently exploring and fixing pipes, loving the atmosphere and the work you put into it <3 Endorsed
The update will make most of the fixes in the Additional Clockwork bug-fixes plugin redundant, yes. (A number of the fixes were merged in from Additional Clockwork, in fact - with permission.) Some of the fixes were more subjective though - more along the line of "changes" - and those weren't merged.
The other parts of Additional Clockwork - like the sorting plugin - should remain relevant.
After all these years I finally got around to finishing this amazing mod. It certainly was a unique experience, especially that damn ghost! It has some very nice story pacing as well.
I'm not sure if this was on my end since I'm on a 800+ modded load order, but there were a few missing textures around some doors and the floor. Hardly enough to detract though. Endorsed.
Hello Antistar, i like your mod very much and know that you are working on an update.
Within my load order Clockwork is one of the plugins which have the most temporary references (about 30K). Since the game can only unload temporary references for esm plugins maybe clockwork could also be made into one this can be a problem for people who have a big load order and near Skyrims reference handle limit of about 1 million.
I'm no modder and do not know which consequences this would have but I just wanted to suggest it.
This has come up a few times before. Basically, the proportion of that limit taken up by Clockwork is so small, comparatively, that if someone were approaching the limit, Clockwork is probably the last of their problems.
So I'm unlikely to do this myself, but people can convert the Clockwork plugin to esm on their end themselves if they would like.
I've completed the mod quest and it was amazing! However I'm having an issue where the sorting system doesnt work in any room other than the workroom. For example, even though I've sent tons of arrows to the armory receptacle and interacted with the scale for ammo, it won't add my arrows to the arrow box.
Some spoilers ahead. I'm writing this review primarily for the author's benefit; if you're looking to give this mod a try, I think you should. The main things to note are that there is a rather large dungeon segment that seems to be generally disliked, as there's a lot of backtracking and unrewarding exploration, but the introduction is fantastic and the home is well-liked. I'm not a home mod enthusiast, so I can't say much to that aspect. It certainly looks nice.
I knew nothing of this mod going into it, even skimming the description as lightly as possible to only find how to start the quest. I only heard it was highly recommended, and vaguely recalled that it had some spooky elements—and it was definitely spooky. I only suffered one technical issue, which was a single crash as I was approaching the entry point the first time.
The intro was very engaging, and I was on-edge and shivering with paranoia the whole time. I'm the type that easily creeps myself out by anticipating something at the end of long corridors, around corners, and backtracking. There are a lot of great scares throughout this mod, and even though I recognize the lack of real or significant threat and can logically deduce that the ghost is really just a character model with white skin and some black face paint standing there staring at me, I find that kind of thing deeply unsettling despite my best efforts. I also really like the touch that she leaves behind scorched soot. The moment where you lose control and the camera swaps to the other end of the hall also got me pretty good. However, I must say I did find it unintentionally silly when she's A-posing under the ice at you. I appreciated the concept, but she should be in some kind of hovering animation instead.
Once I arrived at the manor, it became pretty obvious that this was primarily a house mod—not that that's necessarily a bad thing. It did take me briefly out of the experience, but convincing myself in a meta sense that I was likely safe here was a welcome reprieve after the tunnel section. Reading the comments and some of the notes in the description, I'm surprised people had issue with the voices of Lahar and Lamashtu, as I found them immediately refreshing. Every quest mod I've ever played has issues with voice acting, but this only having voices from automatons gave a wonderful excuse to have synthesized, robotic voices that are effectively immune to the standard pitfalls. They sounded wonderfully genuine, suitably inorganic, and were perfectly intelligible to me. Considering the subtitles were completely accurate, I fail to see what others could have a problem with.
Lahar and Lamashtu are both likeable, mysterious, and compelling, and exploring the manor for and subsequently reading the journals was enjoyable. In particular, I appreciated that Ludwig didn't just suddenly descend into madness, and that there was more introspection and humanness to it than just "Yeah he went nuts."
The first steps into the labyrinth are great, and overall the atmosphere and presentation are really wonderfully done. The ambush/introduction of the gilded is fantastic, and the way they speak in broken language, like they're simply regurgitating things they've read or heard to communicate broad concepts, was really cool and suitably creepy. After this, unfortunately, the experience starts to wilt. The dungeon is really, really big, and aside from having nice visuals and lighting, there isn't really anything important or interesting to discover in it. I'm fine with the mundane nature of having to repair steam pipes, as long as the journey to find all the parts makes it worthwhile. This also works rather poorly in combination with the reviving enemies, which I didn't discover I could alter or disable until I read the mod page today. This created an unpleasant situation where searching the vast space for the remaining parts was unrewarding and made tedious by having to kill the same enemies numerous times and then having to fight them again any time I went past. I normally make it a point to kill every enemy in an area when I play a game, so this ran counter-intuitive to my instincts, and I ended up going out of my way to avoid them a lot of the time. I also gradually lost enthusiasm in exploring since there was nothing of significance to find. That said, finding enough parts thankfully wasn't too difficult, and while I was worried I might have a hard time finding all the broken pipes, I was happy to see quest markers appear once I got to the final three. I don't think I would have needed them, given how easy they are to spot in the open landscape, but having them appear at that stage was an excellent balancing decision, I feel.
Things pick back up again once you're tasked with finding Amalgam. I loved how you're directed solely with audio, and its dialogue following you through the sound system was inspired. I found myself taking superfluous routes just to make sure I heard everything it had to say. The boss fight itself, and even the room it dwells in, are unfortunately nothing special; it's simply a normal centurion tucked in the corner. I'm not sure if this was functioning as intended, but once it got to a certain HP threshold, I simply lost control of my character and was forced to watch it very slowly walk away, round the corner, stop to perform an idle animation, and then lumber over behind a gate. The lack of context for why I would just let it escape was baffling. There could have at least been some kind of stun animation or knockdown or something for this.
Thankfully, I came across the necessary lever myself as I was exploring, so I wasn't forced to endure another trek through the huge labyrinth to search for it. I did once again greatly enjoy the presentation of taking Amalgam's heart as it eerily laughed at me, like it knew something I didn't. I thought for sure this wouldn't be the last I'd see of it, but alas.
After this, we go to repair Lamashtu, and I have a very minor nitpick about this. Lahar puts great emphasis on you following his instructions precisely, but said instructions are so simple and rudimentary (open chest, remove item, place item on thing, repeat in reverse order) that I don't see why he didn't simply do it himself. I know the meta reason is that you're the player so you should do it, and that standing there watching him do it wouldn't be very interesting, but there's a disconnect between the actions and the narrative. I don't know what you could have made the steps be that would warrant such a setup, or what you could have Lahar be doing that would make sense, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
Afterwards, Lamashtu finally clearly explains what's going on, but you don't really learn anything that you likely hadn't already more or less deduced, aside from the the identity of the ghost, I suppose. Now that I'm really thinking about it, it seems like this should be satisfying enough, but I can't help but feel like there should be more impact to it. Maybe I just really craved a more gasp-worthy reveal. Either way, it's back down into the labyrinth once again, with the added unpleasantness of having to bring a follower, meaning you can't just spelunk your way down. I ended up doing so anyway and just teleporting her to me with the console (she also didn't understand how to use the elevator, so I had to do the same thing on my way back up). The final battle isn't particularly epic in presentation, but it is reasonably difficult in terms of raw numbers. I did have a rather satisfying kill on her, as I finished her with a greataxe killcam that ended with me Sparta-kicking her into one of the magma streams.
Overall, this mod has a really strong start, a weak middle, and a decent ending. Everything more or less resolves, but I must admit I was left wanting more. In re-reading the journals and trying to recall the events, I can't say that anything wasn't wrapped up, but I still feel like there must have been something else to discover about Ludwig's fate or the ghost's origins, or that Amalgam had some kind of master plan. For example, Ludwig mentions having family, but their fates seem to be unaddressed. Did they all simply forget about him up here? I really wanted a punchier ending.
Something else that bothers me is the ghost's explanation for haunting you simply being that she was lonely and wanted to be near you. This seems rather at odds with the overtly occult imagery she weaponizes against you; so many bones and skeletons arranged in macabre patterns and displays, such menacing wrath, and she never had ill intentions? It doesn't seem to add up.
Lastly, I wasn't going to mention this but I saw there's a thread about a similar issue. There is a wall tile I found, I think in Amalgam's room, where the corner has some kind of column-like structure to it that is meant to link up to a matching tile, but instead there is a flat wall piece. This causes the geometry there to halt abruptly and cause a seam.
Again, really great atmosphere, presentation, voice er... "acting," lore, and visuals. Despite its downsides, as I said in the intro I would definitely still recommend playing through this. The dungeon itself isn't very interesting and can be painful to traverse (I have a mod that adds a blink spell so I didn't really suffer that aspect), but it's worth dealing with for the story. I think this mod is about 80% of the way to being truly spectacular. Thanks for your work.
Well hey, thanks for the detailed thoughts on the mod.
It's tempting to say that people who identify the Nurndural dungeon as a non-linear, semi-open environment may consider it something that "rewards exploration", while people who identify it more simply as a huge dungeon may instead consider it something that "requires back-tracking"... but it's not necessarily that simple, right?
The intention was that Nurndural be a semi-open environment that rewarded non-linear exploration, with the reviving enemies being there to support that - as opposed to the area becoming depopulated and "lifeless". (Consider if enemies never respawned in Skyrim generally. Different time-scale there, though.)
Kind of like Dark Souls enemies, I guess - and I did play that for the first time while making Clockwork, though I can't remember if that was before or after deciding I'd handle the Gilded that way. (And it was also intended as a unique aspect of a new creature/NPC type that tied into their back-story, of course.)
That whole sequence with Shadow "A-posing" under the ice - out of the entire project - is the part of the mod that was most compromised compared to my concept for it; for technical reasons. (Skyrim's lighting engine being absolutely miserable to work with was a big part of that.)
I would have preferred more natural animation for Shadow, so that it looked like she was floating underwater, basically - but learning the character animation workflow was a technical rabbit-hole I decided I didn't have time to go down. (The mod took nearly five years to make as it was.) Animation is hard. I did eventually get back into animation a bit for the sake of WARS, but at the time of working on Clockwork, it had been a decade or so since I'd last done any 3D animation.
That's actually part of why the player does the Lamashtu "heart transplant" rather than Lahar. To have him do it - and to have it not look silly or unsatisfying - I'd need to animate him doing it. Of course the larger reason is that it's simply more fun for the player to do it - like you said.
Amalgam ended up being a more compelling character than I expected - at least based on how a lot of people seem to react to him. He is supposed to be a bit of a mystery - though some people find unresolved mysteries unsatisfying, I guess.
I think I may have to change the part of the Amalgam fight where he paralyses you to make it more obvious that that is what's happening. (Your journal does mention that he paralyses you to escape.) At the time I specifically decided against having the player be actually knocked down, because ragdolling can look very goofy, and be unpredictable - but I may have to do it after all. The green vision overlay is supposed to represent the paralyse spell effect, but you're not the first to not make that connection.
Also, that bloody spin-around idle animation he does when he's supposed to be just walking away, ugh. That's not intentional; the game just decides to have him do that most (but not every) time this scene happens.
A minor note on the part with Lamashtu following you: from memory I did make her teleport to you at the points where she's required to do something, if she's over a certain distance away. Using console commands shouldn't be necessary.
Re: Ludwig's fate, and his family; Ludwig wanted to be left alone (at least, to all appearances), and he got what he wanted. His family did essentially forget about him, eventually. Or more like he was ignored until the people who even knew about him all died out. There are some themes to the mod, and this stuff relates to them.
Shadow's behaviour is open to interpretation, but (very obliquely, to be fair) she also relates to the themes of the mod. Somewhat more obviously though, she does chase the player towards Clockwork Castle... and once they're trapped there, she leaves them alone.
On the geometry seam you mention; often the level geometry needs to be bodged together out of the available tilesets in service of making the desired layout work, but I am working on an update at the moment, so if you can show the part you mean in a screenshot, I can have a look at fixing any issues.
I should clarify what I mean by rewarding exploration. I forgot to poke through all the items the mod adds, but I was pretty thorough about looking over each room I entered and areas that looked significant, but never found anything beyond standard clutter and some dwarven armor. There weren't any new weapons with custom enchantments or other interesting items to find, no optional bosses to discover or NPCs to talk to, no journals that told a story, or environmental details that gave new context or revealed any secrets. If you really step back and remove the visuals, there isn't much going on there mechanically. It's effectively a very large open space in which you find 10 items and then click on 10 objects. Having something tangible to obtain would really go a long way, I think.
I did organically find your Dark Souls Easter egg, though, so that's something.
The gilded being able to revive is a pickle. I understand what you're saying about it becoming lifeless, but I think it would overall be better than a player likely being annoyed they have to kill an enemy again. I think the the standout example is the three that ambush you at the entrance. Every time you go down or come back up, you'll either have to fight them again in that spot or run past them, a minimum of six times, and you never want a player to want to run past your enemy. Personally, I just didn't have anything to gain by fighting them other than to remove an obstacle; my character is a high level and has all of my core skills at 100, and I didn't loot any of their enchanted weapons because I find the recharge system in these games annoying. I do think their revival is a cool idea in terms of flavor, but mechanically it grew repetitive too fast for how many there are, how large the area is, and how much time you spend there.
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I totally understand the aversion to animating. What I was thinking was to have a static pose that looked more organic, if that could be done relatively easily. I'm definitely curious what your original vision was like; I never would have imagined compromises were made in that sequence. I thought it was great otherwise.
After I posted my comment, I quickly realized that I think a simple solution for the heart transplant is if Lahar had some kind of technical reason that he couldn't do it. Any kind of hand-waving mumbo-jumbo about how he had to concentrate on some kind of delicate work would be just fine. Like if he had to maintain some kind of specific control over a secondary device or something like that.
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I hope you didn't think I didn't find Amalgam mysterious—I definitely did. I simply thought that it would return in some form considering the vibe I got after you defeat it. Moreover, I would say that there's a lot of room for potential with this character, and it could have been expanded on greatly if you had the time and manpower. At minimum, I think if it had some cool unique attacks it would help a lot.
Your explanation clears a lot up, because I didn't have any screen or character effects during Amalgam's escape—I simply put up my weapon and stood there. I wonder if something just went wrong with the scripting or if I had some kind of conflict.
That's also funny to hear that the idle spin was outside of your control. Totally understandable, and I'm glad to have that knowledge.
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My use of the console to move Lamashtu along with me was preemptive; my comment was in regards to the follower system in general, not with anything you did. I didn't have any issues with her following me, but I never gave her the chance to get lost, so I couldn't say if the auto-teleporting you mentioned would have been properly functional for me. I also only gave her a few seconds after using the elevator. I still had her selected with the console, so I just repeated the teleport command.
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It's really difficult to sort out my feelings on Ludwig. It's not that I'm dissatisfied with the quest or that I feel there's a plot hole. I really want to say that I simply wanted more from it, to know more about him and what was going on, but when I think back on it I don't see anything that's explicitly missing. I mean, of course you could always expand on it, but I don't think you need to. I think I was just invested enough that it was over too quickly, and I wish it had stayed longer. Does that make sense?
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I see your point about being chased towards the manor, but her approach is so overtly evil that I can't reconcile it. I feel like no spirit would have the ability to conjure such imagery and hostile forces unless they were evil themselves; at the very least, I'd expect she was a necromancer in life. I feel like there should be some element of having to banish her anger and hatred before she rejoins Lamashtu or something.
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It took some searching, and I very nearly gave up, but I was right that it was in Amalgam's room. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to just upload the image directly to this message, so I'll see if I can PM it to you, as I don't really have a place I can host it. If all else fails, it's in that very short hallway that leads into the room that he hides in. Facing towards that room, it's on the left. There's a chunk of an object right next to the column that has a bronze base.
"... a very large open space in which you find 10 items and then click on 10 objects" is a bit reductive, but I will say that Nurndural was definitely rushed compared to the Velothi Tunnels. (Intentionally.)
Nurndural was made at the end of the project, and it had been a very long and difficult mod, made in difficult circumstances. I consciously tried to be less of a perfectionist with Nurndural. Originally I'd planned to have a separate dungeon for each quest that takes you to Nurndural, but on top of trying to simplify things, having it be one big environment that contains the various quests started to make more sense to me.
Having Nurndural make sense as a place - especially with the tilesets available - resulted in its size ballooning out a bit more than I'd initially wanted, though. Filling all that space in with enough detail - especially if you want that detail to be novel mechanics and new ideas - is challenging and a huge amount of work. I decided that I didn't have enough time to go really hard on that front. It does have environmental storytelling in the form of its architecture (this part is a hospital, this is residential, this is for utilities, etc), but not in the form of lots of notes and little vignettes and whatnot.
I had tons of ideas and plans for things like that; making it more like the Velothi Tunnels - but it was just too much work. It was cut, essentially. Since I'm working on an update at the moment though, I have been thinking about what details I can add to Nurndural. (Reasonably add - I don't want to spend years on this.)
Speaking of original plans, what I'd wanted for the Glass Lake sequence was for it to be pitch black, except for the occasional light on the sparsely scattered towers coming up out of the ice - and for the light coming from Shadow, following you under the ice. Skyrim's lighting engine didn't allow for that, basically. I remember going into more technical detail on that in one of the interviews linked to in the FAQ, if you're interested.
In an ideal world I also wanted Shadow's appearance in that sequence to evoke the kind of eerie "floating in darkness underwater" visuals in the music video for Portishead's "Only You". Not something I really expected to be able to do, but that's how it looked in my imagination.
When Amalgam paralyses you, there is a big spell effect that goes off - but without that image effect (ENBs can interfere with image effects, unfortunately), I can see how people might not make the connection that it's a spell effect acting on them.
I'll take it as a compliment that you wanted to know more about Ludwig than what was in there. He's an important character. Some people already find the amount of dialogue and text in Clockwork to be too much, and I was trying to be succinct. Didn't want to channel Hideo Kojima too much.
Lamashtu touches on this, but Shadow was trapped in torturous situation for a very long time. Ghosts becoming pretty messed up over time due to their endless suffering is a classic concept; I can't claim much originality there.
I got your PM; thanks for the screenshots. I found the spot and fixed it for the next update.
Well, being reductive was the point. I was saying if you look at it in its absolute simplest form, that's all there was to it. For comparison, if I were to do the same for the opening sequence, it's a journey from point A to point B where you are chased by a ghost and subjected to various scares. A journey from point A to point B is unremarkable, but it's all the other stuff around it that makes it compelling. Even better, you could look at finding Amalgam in the sick ward. That's also a simple path from point A to point B, but hearing Amalgam talk to you every time you approach one of the horns makes it interesting. In fact, I somewhat spoiled myself on this because I explored that area before I was sent back to find him.
Look at it this way: you included the ability to forge the parts for yourself, but what does a player objectively miss out on if they do? Outside of the raw experience of looking at the assets, the answer is "Nothing that was directly and intentionally designed." It shouldn't be that way. The skip should only have value to players who have been through the story at least once already and are only playing through it again to get the house.
Sure, there's context for some of the general spaces themselves, but that's pretty much a given. To give some examples from Dark Souls, there's nothing like, say, finding Ciaran's body behind Artorias' grave or Ceaseless Discharge only becoming hostile if you loot his sister's corpse or the passive pisacas in the Duke's Archives.
If you had bigger plans for it and you just didn't have the time, I understand, so I won't harp on about it. I fully respect the extreme amount of time and effort that goes into making a mod for people to play for free, especially if you're by yourself. If you end up putting more work into this later on, that's great and I'd love to revisit it some day.
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What I was thinking for the ghost was, barring having a proper full animation cycle, picking a single frame from an existing animation (such as treading water, resurrecting, or maybe even the dragon priest idle). I have no idea how feasible such a thing would be, though. If it makes you feel better, I think you were close. It's really a shame because the only thing that really keeps it from working is how recognizable the A- and T-poses are. If you could get just about anything else functional there, I think I wouldn't have noticed.
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I'll take it as a compliment that you wanted to know more about Ludwig than what was in there.
You should—I hope my criticisms aren't overshadowing my praise. I really did enjoy my time with this overall, and there's a lot to like. As I said, I really can't figure out how to put words to my feelings, but the problem definitely isn't that there isn't enough to read. That said, as someone who greatly dislikes reading, I also don't think there was too much. I'm also very grateful to whoever transcribed the journals to the Legacy of the Dragonborn wiki, which was vastly more comfortable to read. But yeah, for some reason I lacked that strong feeling of resolution and finality. When I think back on it, I can't see why; everything seems structurally sound on paper. I almost regret bringing it up. It's probably not worth you worrying about. At the very least, I don't think at all that you failed to be succinct.
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Lamashtu touches on this, but Shadow was trapped in [a] torturous situation for a very long time.
Oh - to be clear, when Shadow is following you under the ice, that's not literally an A-posing model. That is something that I posed that way specifically; the idea was for it to look like she's floating on her back, in a relaxed pose. (On a technical level, when Shadow is floating after you, that's not an NPC stuck in a single frame of animation; it's a static mesh that's following you via a script. It's very similar to the skulls that swivel to watch you, earlier in the dungeon.)
I guess it's unfortunate that it can be mistaken for an A-pose, but I couldn't think of another pose that would represent what I wanted both without animation and without it looking (more) silly. I think the main problem is that lack of animation; choosing a different pose wouldn't help much in that regard, in my opinion.
There is that part after the lake when she's slumped over while floating after you (notably not an A-pose), and that pose works a bit better, I think - but that's in a different context. At that point she's not supposed to look like she's floating underwater while looking up at the player.
That's quite remarkable because it looks exactly like an A-pose. I looked up some playthrough videos to make sure it wasn't just something wrong on my end, and it was as I remember it. At minimum, I definitely don't think it's conveying what you're intending, but I can also confidently say there's no need for animation. Personally, I can think of a million ways to pose it that would look good, but the most in keeping with what I imagine you're going for is to bring the legs together and droop the limbs a little—most of the body's buoyancy is in the torso. I could sketch you an example if you're having a hard time visualizing or if you want a reference.
Something else I noticed that I didn't remember is that the body's spawn point is a little awkward. It starts from off in the distance and then hurriedly moves over to you. If there's no good reason not to, I think it should start underneath you so that you don't know it's there until you step out onto the ice.
No, I got it - no need for sketches - and I broadly disagree with you there, but hey, I'll keep it in mind.
Shadow starts a distance away from you and moves over to you so that players see that she's there. That "gamers don't look up" rule also applies to looking down. Even with the current setup, I've seen videos of people playing Clockwork where they still manage to completely miss that Shadow is even there, throughout that entire sequence.
If I could have had the lighting in that sequence work in the way I originally wanted, I probably would have had her start beneath you, but unfortunately not.
I figured that might be the case. It's a really tough call given the limited audience, and I've dwelled on my response for several days because I keep thinking about my suggestion and ending up unable to determine which course of action is better. I want to say that I would put more value on the quality of the moment over its visibility, but I realize how unlikely it is that anyone else but me has ever even thought this hard about it before. But then I consider that some have already missed it and I come back around to thinking "If someone misses it, it was probably in a way that was out of your control to begin with," and ultimately I get nowhere. So I suppose the best I can say is that it's something to consider.
Anyway, I sense we're more or less at the end of our discussion, so thanks for taking the time to talk with me. It was nice to have some insight on your decisions.
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cheers DK.
The plan with the update is to do more than just bug fixes (e.g. to also make Lamashtu a potential follower), so I wouldn't wait around if you're keen to start a new game right now.
My hope is for the update to work with existing saves - though maybe not saves where you're actively in the middle of the Clockwork main quest - we'll see.
I've never bothered with body mods, so probably no bodyslide files from me.
Keep up the good work!
And thanks.
If I place my character next to the bed where Ludwig was found, my game crashes. It happened once when he was still in the bed, then it didn't happen and I was able to progress with the story. I asked the caretaker to remove the body and clean his room and now it keeps happening.
I am playing with a bunch of mods but this was the first crash I've encountered in my entire play through. Even after downloading the additional clockwork mod, it keeps happening.
Link for crash logs
I'm not very good at reading these logs but maybe you can find what might be causing the issue, until then I'll just avoid the room...
(I wasn't able to reproduce this issue on my end until very recently, and even then it's been very rare for me.)
If any other thing happens while I play I'll submit a new post. Currently exploring and fixing pipes, loving the atmosphere and the work you put into it <3 Endorsed
The other parts of Additional Clockwork - like the sorting plugin - should remain relevant.
And thanks; glad you're enjoying it.
I'm not sure if this was on my end since I'm on a 800+ modded load order, but there were a few missing textures around some doors and the floor. Hardly enough to detract though. Endorsed.
i like your mod very much and know that you are working on an update.
Within my load order Clockwork is one of the plugins which have the most temporary references (about 30K). Since the game can only unload temporary references for esm plugins maybe clockwork could also be made into one this can be a problem for people who have a big load order and near Skyrims reference handle limit of about 1 million.
I'm no modder and do not know which consequences this would have but I just wanted to suggest it.
Again, thanks for your work!
This has come up a few times before. Basically, the proportion of that limit taken up by Clockwork is so small, comparatively, that if someone were approaching the limit, Clockwork is probably the last of their problems.
So I'm unlikely to do this myself, but people can convert the Clockwork plugin to esm on their end themselves if they would like.
That'd be an Additional Clockwork thing; the ammo sorter/s don't exist in Clockwork itself.
I knew nothing of this mod going into it, even skimming the description as lightly as possible to only find how to start the quest. I only heard it was highly recommended, and vaguely recalled that it had some spooky elements—and it was definitely spooky. I only suffered one technical issue, which was a single crash as I was approaching the entry point the first time.
The intro was very engaging, and I was on-edge and shivering with paranoia the whole time. I'm the type that easily creeps myself out by anticipating something at the end of long corridors, around corners, and backtracking. There are a lot of great scares throughout this mod, and even though I recognize the lack of real or significant threat and can logically deduce that the ghost is really just a character model with white skin and some black face paint standing there staring at me, I find that kind of thing deeply unsettling despite my best efforts. I also really like the touch that she leaves behind scorched soot. The moment where you lose control and the camera swaps to the other end of the hall also got me pretty good. However, I must say I did find it unintentionally silly when she's A-posing under the ice at you. I appreciated the concept, but she should be in some kind of hovering animation instead.
Once I arrived at the manor, it became pretty obvious that this was primarily a house mod—not that that's necessarily a bad thing. It did take me briefly out of the experience, but convincing myself in a meta sense that I was likely safe here was a welcome reprieve after the tunnel section. Reading the comments and some of the notes in the description, I'm surprised people had issue with the voices of Lahar and Lamashtu, as I found them immediately refreshing. Every quest mod I've ever played has issues with voice acting, but this only having voices from automatons gave a wonderful excuse to have synthesized, robotic voices that are effectively immune to the standard pitfalls. They sounded wonderfully genuine, suitably inorganic, and were perfectly intelligible to me. Considering the subtitles were completely accurate, I fail to see what others could have a problem with.
Lahar and Lamashtu are both likeable, mysterious, and compelling, and exploring the manor for and subsequently reading the journals was enjoyable. In particular, I appreciated that Ludwig didn't just suddenly descend into madness, and that there was more introspection and humanness to it than just "Yeah he went nuts."
The first steps into the labyrinth are great, and overall the atmosphere and presentation are really wonderfully done. The ambush/introduction of the gilded is fantastic, and the way they speak in broken language, like they're simply regurgitating things they've read or heard to communicate broad concepts, was really cool and suitably creepy. After this, unfortunately, the experience starts to wilt. The dungeon is really, really big, and aside from having nice visuals and lighting, there isn't really anything important or interesting to discover in it. I'm fine with the mundane nature of having to repair steam pipes, as long as the journey to find all the parts makes it worthwhile. This also works rather poorly in combination with the reviving enemies, which I didn't discover I could alter or disable until I read the mod page today. This created an unpleasant situation where searching the vast space for the remaining parts was unrewarding and made tedious by having to kill the same enemies numerous times and then having to fight them again any time I went past. I normally make it a point to kill every enemy in an area when I play a game, so this ran counter-intuitive to my instincts, and I ended up going out of my way to avoid them a lot of the time. I also gradually lost enthusiasm in exploring since there was nothing of significance to find. That said, finding enough parts thankfully wasn't too difficult, and while I was worried I might have a hard time finding all the broken pipes, I was happy to see quest markers appear once I got to the final three. I don't think I would have needed them, given how easy they are to spot in the open landscape, but having them appear at that stage was an excellent balancing decision, I feel.
Things pick back up again once you're tasked with finding Amalgam. I loved how you're directed solely with audio, and its dialogue following you through the sound system was inspired. I found myself taking superfluous routes just to make sure I heard everything it had to say. The boss fight itself, and even the room it dwells in, are unfortunately nothing special; it's simply a normal centurion tucked in the corner. I'm not sure if this was functioning as intended, but once it got to a certain HP threshold, I simply lost control of my character and was forced to watch it very slowly walk away, round the corner, stop to perform an idle animation, and then lumber over behind a gate. The lack of context for why I would just let it escape was baffling. There could have at least been some kind of stun animation or knockdown or something for this.
Thankfully, I came across the necessary lever myself as I was exploring, so I wasn't forced to endure another trek through the huge labyrinth to search for it. I did once again greatly enjoy the presentation of taking Amalgam's heart as it eerily laughed at me, like it knew something I didn't. I thought for sure this wouldn't be the last I'd see of it, but alas.
After this, we go to repair Lamashtu, and I have a very minor nitpick about this. Lahar puts great emphasis on you following his instructions precisely, but said instructions are so simple and rudimentary (open chest, remove item, place item on thing, repeat in reverse order) that I don't see why he didn't simply do it himself. I know the meta reason is that you're the player so you should do it, and that standing there watching him do it wouldn't be very interesting, but there's a disconnect between the actions and the narrative. I don't know what you could have made the steps be that would warrant such a setup, or what you could have Lahar be doing that would make sense, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
Afterwards, Lamashtu finally clearly explains what's going on, but you don't really learn anything that you likely hadn't already more or less deduced, aside from the the identity of the ghost, I suppose. Now that I'm really thinking about it, it seems like this should be satisfying enough, but I can't help but feel like there should be more impact to it. Maybe I just really craved a more gasp-worthy reveal. Either way, it's back down into the labyrinth once again, with the added unpleasantness of having to bring a follower, meaning you can't just spelunk your way down. I ended up doing so anyway and just teleporting her to me with the console (she also didn't understand how to use the elevator, so I had to do the same thing on my way back up). The final battle isn't particularly epic in presentation, but it is reasonably difficult in terms of raw numbers. I did have a rather satisfying kill on her, as I finished her with a greataxe killcam that ended with me Sparta-kicking her into one of the magma streams.
Overall, this mod has a really strong start, a weak middle, and a decent ending. Everything more or less resolves, but I must admit I was left wanting more. In re-reading the journals and trying to recall the events, I can't say that anything wasn't wrapped up, but I still feel like there must have been something else to discover about Ludwig's fate or the ghost's origins, or that Amalgam had some kind of master plan. For example, Ludwig mentions having family, but their fates seem to be unaddressed. Did they all simply forget about him up here? I really wanted a punchier ending.
Something else that bothers me is the ghost's explanation for haunting you simply being that she was lonely and wanted to be near you. This seems rather at odds with the overtly occult imagery she weaponizes against you; so many bones and skeletons arranged in macabre patterns and displays, such menacing wrath, and she never had ill intentions? It doesn't seem to add up.
Lastly, I wasn't going to mention this but I saw there's a thread about a similar issue. There is a wall tile I found, I think in Amalgam's room, where the corner has some kind of column-like structure to it that is meant to link up to a matching tile, but instead there is a flat wall piece. This causes the geometry there to halt abruptly and cause a seam.
Again, really great atmosphere, presentation, voice er... "acting," lore, and visuals. Despite its downsides, as I said in the intro I would definitely still recommend playing through this. The dungeon itself isn't very interesting and can be painful to traverse (I have a mod that adds a blink spell so I didn't really suffer that aspect), but it's worth dealing with for the story. I think this mod is about 80% of the way to being truly spectacular. Thanks for your work.
It's tempting to say that people who identify the Nurndural dungeon as a non-linear, semi-open environment may consider it something that "rewards exploration", while people who identify it more simply as a huge dungeon may instead consider it something that "requires back-tracking"... but it's not necessarily that simple, right?
The intention was that Nurndural be a semi-open environment that rewarded non-linear exploration, with the reviving enemies being there to support that - as opposed to the area becoming depopulated and "lifeless". (Consider if enemies never respawned in Skyrim generally. Different time-scale there, though.)
Kind of like Dark Souls enemies, I guess - and I did play that for the first time while making Clockwork, though I can't remember if that was before or after deciding I'd handle the Gilded that way. (And it was also intended as a unique aspect of a new creature/NPC type that tied into their back-story, of course.)
That whole sequence with Shadow "A-posing" under the ice - out of the entire project - is the part of the mod that was most compromised compared to my concept for it; for technical reasons. (Skyrim's lighting engine being absolutely miserable to work with was a big part of that.)
I would have preferred more natural animation for Shadow, so that it looked like she was floating underwater, basically - but learning the character animation workflow was a technical rabbit-hole I decided I didn't have time to go down. (The mod took nearly five years to make as it was.) Animation is hard. I did eventually get back into animation a bit for the sake of WARS, but at the time of working on Clockwork, it had been a decade or so since I'd last done any 3D animation.
That's actually part of why the player does the Lamashtu "heart transplant" rather than Lahar. To have him do it - and to have it not look silly or unsatisfying - I'd need to animate him doing it. Of course the larger reason is that it's simply more fun for the player to do it - like you said.
Amalgam ended up being a more compelling character than I expected - at least based on how a lot of people seem to react to him. He is supposed to be a bit of a mystery - though some people find unresolved mysteries unsatisfying, I guess.
I think I may have to change the part of the Amalgam fight where he paralyses you to make it more obvious that that is what's happening. (Your journal does mention that he paralyses you to escape.) At the time I specifically decided against having the player be actually knocked down, because ragdolling can look very goofy, and be unpredictable - but I may have to do it after all. The green vision overlay is supposed to represent the paralyse spell effect, but you're not the first to not make that connection.
Also, that bloody spin-around idle animation he does when he's supposed to be just walking away, ugh. That's not intentional; the game just decides to have him do that most (but not every) time this scene happens.
A minor note on the part with Lamashtu following you: from memory I did make her teleport to you at the points where she's required to do something, if she's over a certain distance away. Using console commands shouldn't be necessary.
Re: Ludwig's fate, and his family; Ludwig wanted to be left alone (at least, to all appearances), and he got what he wanted. His family did essentially forget about him, eventually. Or more like he was ignored until the people who even knew about him all died out. There are some themes to the mod, and this stuff relates to them.
Shadow's behaviour is open to interpretation, but (very obliquely, to be fair) she also relates to the themes of the mod. Somewhat more obviously though, she does chase the player towards Clockwork Castle... and once they're trapped there, she leaves them alone.
On the geometry seam you mention; often the level geometry needs to be bodged together out of the available tilesets in service of making the desired layout work, but I am working on an update at the moment, so if you can show the part you mean in a screenshot, I can have a look at fixing any issues.
I did organically find your Dark Souls Easter egg, though, so that's something.
The gilded being able to revive is a pickle. I understand what you're saying about it becoming lifeless, but I think it would overall be better than a player likely being annoyed they have to kill an enemy again. I think the the standout example is the three that ambush you at the entrance. Every time you go down or come back up, you'll either have to fight them again in that spot or run past them, a minimum of six times, and you never want a player to want to run past your enemy. Personally, I just didn't have anything to gain by fighting them other than to remove an obstacle; my character is a high level and has all of my core skills at 100, and I didn't loot any of their enchanted weapons because I find the recharge system in these games annoying. I do think their revival is a cool idea in terms of flavor, but mechanically it grew repetitive too fast for how many there are, how large the area is, and how much time you spend there.
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I totally understand the aversion to animating. What I was thinking was to have a static pose that looked more organic, if that could be done relatively easily. I'm definitely curious what your original vision was like; I never would have imagined compromises were made in that sequence. I thought it was great otherwise.
After I posted my comment, I quickly realized that I think a simple solution for the heart transplant is if Lahar had some kind of technical reason that he couldn't do it. Any kind of hand-waving mumbo-jumbo about how he had to concentrate on some kind of delicate work would be just fine. Like if he had to maintain some kind of specific control over a secondary device or something like that.
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I hope you didn't think I didn't find Amalgam mysterious—I definitely did. I simply thought that it would return in some form considering the vibe I got after you defeat it. Moreover, I would say that there's a lot of room for potential with this character, and it could have been expanded on greatly if you had the time and manpower. At minimum, I think if it had some cool unique attacks it would help a lot.
Your explanation clears a lot up, because I didn't have any screen or character effects during Amalgam's escape—I simply put up my weapon and stood there. I wonder if something just went wrong with the scripting or if I had some kind of conflict.
That's also funny to hear that the idle spin was outside of your control. Totally understandable, and I'm glad to have that knowledge.
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My use of the console to move Lamashtu along with me was preemptive; my comment was in regards to the follower system in general, not with anything you did. I didn't have any issues with her following me, but I never gave her the chance to get lost, so I couldn't say if the auto-teleporting you mentioned would have been properly functional for me. I also only gave her a few seconds after using the elevator. I still had her selected with the console, so I just repeated the teleport command.
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It's really difficult to sort out my feelings on Ludwig. It's not that I'm dissatisfied with the quest or that I feel there's a plot hole. I really want to say that I simply wanted more from it, to know more about him and what was going on, but when I think back on it I don't see anything that's explicitly missing. I mean, of course you could always expand on it, but I don't think you need to. I think I was just invested enough that it was over too quickly, and I wish it had stayed longer. Does that make sense?
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I see your point about being chased towards the manor, but her approach is so overtly evil that I can't reconcile it. I feel like no spirit would have the ability to conjure such imagery and hostile forces unless they were evil themselves; at the very least, I'd expect she was a necromancer in life. I feel like there should be some element of having to banish her anger and hatred before she rejoins Lamashtu or something.
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It took some searching, and I very nearly gave up, but I was right that it was in Amalgam's room. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to just upload the image directly to this message, so I'll see if I can PM it to you, as I don't really have a place I can host it. If all else fails, it's in that very short hallway that leads into the room that he hides in. Facing towards that room, it's on the left. There's a chunk of an object right next to the column that has a bronze base.
Nurndural was made at the end of the project, and it had been a very long and difficult mod, made in difficult circumstances. I consciously tried to be less of a perfectionist with Nurndural. Originally I'd planned to have a separate dungeon for each quest that takes you to Nurndural, but on top of trying to simplify things, having it be one big environment that contains the various quests started to make more sense to me.
Having Nurndural make sense as a place - especially with the tilesets available - resulted in its size ballooning out a bit more than I'd initially wanted, though. Filling all that space in with enough detail - especially if you want that detail to be novel mechanics and new ideas - is challenging and a huge amount of work. I decided that I didn't have enough time to go really hard on that front. It does have environmental storytelling in the form of its architecture (this part is a hospital, this is residential, this is for utilities, etc), but not in the form of lots of notes and little vignettes and whatnot.
I had tons of ideas and plans for things like that; making it more like the Velothi Tunnels - but it was just too much work. It was cut, essentially. Since I'm working on an update at the moment though, I have been thinking about what details I can add to Nurndural. (Reasonably add - I don't want to spend years on this.)
Speaking of original plans, what I'd wanted for the Glass Lake sequence was for it to be pitch black, except for the occasional light on the sparsely scattered towers coming up out of the ice - and for the light coming from Shadow, following you under the ice. Skyrim's lighting engine didn't allow for that, basically. I remember going into more technical detail on that in one of the interviews linked to in the FAQ, if you're interested.
In an ideal world I also wanted Shadow's appearance in that sequence to evoke the kind of eerie "floating in darkness underwater" visuals in the music video for Portishead's "Only You". Not something I really expected to be able to do, but that's how it looked in my imagination.
When Amalgam paralyses you, there is a big spell effect that goes off - but without that image effect (ENBs can interfere with image effects, unfortunately), I can see how people might not make the connection that it's a spell effect acting on them.
I'll take it as a compliment that you wanted to know more about Ludwig than what was in there. He's an important character. Some people already find the amount of dialogue and text in Clockwork to be too much, and I was trying to be succinct. Didn't want to channel Hideo Kojima too much.
Lamashtu touches on this, but Shadow was trapped in torturous situation for a very long time. Ghosts becoming pretty messed up over time due to their endless suffering is a classic concept; I can't claim much originality there.
I got your PM; thanks for the screenshots. I found the spot and fixed it for the next update.
Look at it this way: you included the ability to forge the parts for yourself, but what does a player objectively miss out on if they do? Outside of the raw experience of looking at the assets, the answer is "Nothing that was directly and intentionally designed." It shouldn't be that way. The skip should only have value to players who have been through the story at least once already and are only playing through it again to get the house.
Sure, there's context for some of the general spaces themselves, but that's pretty much a given. To give some examples from Dark Souls, there's nothing like, say, finding Ciaran's body behind Artorias' grave or Ceaseless Discharge only becoming hostile if you loot his sister's corpse or the passive pisacas in the Duke's Archives.
If you had bigger plans for it and you just didn't have the time, I understand, so I won't harp on about it. I fully respect the extreme amount of time and effort that goes into making a mod for people to play for free, especially if you're by yourself. If you end up putting more work into this later on, that's great and I'd love to revisit it some day.
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What I was thinking for the ghost was, barring having a proper full animation cycle, picking a single frame from an existing animation (such as treading water, resurrecting, or maybe even the dragon priest idle). I have no idea how feasible such a thing would be, though. If it makes you feel better, I think you were close. It's really a shame because the only thing that really keeps it from working is how recognizable the A- and T-poses are. If you could get just about anything else functional there, I think I wouldn't have noticed.
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I'll take it as a compliment that you wanted to know more about Ludwig than what was in there.
You should—I hope my criticisms aren't overshadowing my praise. I really did enjoy my time with this overall, and there's a lot to like. As I said, I really can't figure out how to put words to my feelings, but the problem definitely isn't that there isn't enough to read. That said, as someone who greatly dislikes reading, I also don't think there was too much. I'm also very grateful to whoever transcribed the journals to the Legacy of the Dragonborn wiki, which was vastly more comfortable to read. But yeah, for some reason I lacked that strong feeling of resolution and finality. When I think back on it, I can't see why; everything seems structurally sound on paper. I almost regret bringing it up. It's probably not worth you worrying about. At the very least, I don't think at all that you failed to be succinct.
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Lamashtu touches on this, but Shadow was trapped in [a] torturous situation for a very long time.
I don't recall that, but fair enough.
I guess it's unfortunate that it can be mistaken for an A-pose, but I couldn't think of another pose that would represent what I wanted both without animation and without it looking (more) silly. I think the main problem is that lack of animation; choosing a different pose wouldn't help much in that regard, in my opinion.
There is that part after the lake when she's slumped over while floating after you (notably not an A-pose), and that pose works a bit better, I think - but that's in a different context. At that point she's not supposed to look like she's floating underwater while looking up at the player.
Something else I noticed that I didn't remember is that the body's spawn point is a little awkward. It starts from off in the distance and then hurriedly moves over to you. If there's no good reason not to, I think it should start underneath you so that you don't know it's there until you step out onto the ice.
Shadow starts a distance away from you and moves over to you so that players see that she's there. That "gamers don't look up" rule also applies to looking down. Even with the current setup, I've seen videos of people playing Clockwork where they still manage to completely miss that Shadow is even there, throughout that entire sequence.
If I could have had the lighting in that sequence work in the way I originally wanted, I probably would have had her start beneath you, but unfortunately not.
Anyway, I sense we're more or less at the end of our discussion, so thanks for taking the time to talk with me. It was nice to have some insight on your decisions.