Sex Mod Framework - Development Discussion

[zaira]

Shared factions, animation tags and keywords in Skyrim have failed because lots of modders are more interested in realizing their thing than to collaborate with other modders. I doubt that this will change with Starfield. Modding is a very time intensive hobby - my own core motivation for modding is to realize my things, but I would appreciate it if I could easily interface with other mods using standardized keywords/factions/tags

Edited September 9, 2023 by zaira

[TheStranger]

7 minutes ago, zaira said:

Shared factions, animation tags and keywords in Skyrim have failed because lots of modders are more interested in realizing their thing than to collaborate with other modders. I doubt that this will change with Starfield. Modding is a very time intensive hobby - my own core motivation for modding is to realize my things, but I would appreciate it if I could easily interface with other mods using standardized keywords/factions/tags

 

Yes, that I why I think it is important to discuss this in the early stages, and hopefully a unified system could be made this time, either as a part of this framework or as a separate system. While I do have an interest in possibly learning to mod Starfield, I don't have the skills to build something like this. So I'm simply throwing the idea out there and hopefully someone who has the skills and motivation can create something out of it.

[vietthai96]

all and all, i would love that we can avoid the situation where FO4's AAF is just too simple and meh and Skyrim where there are like 3 sex frameworks, we should focus on a single one and develop add-on around it

[ag12]

50 minutes ago, zaira said:

Shared factions, animation tags and keywords in Skyrim have failed because lots of modders are more interested in realizing their thing than to collaborate with other modders. I doubt that this will change with Starfield. Modding is a very time intensive hobby - my own core motivation for modding is to realize my things, but I would appreciate it if I could easily interface with other mods using standardized keywords/factions/tags

 

The previous games showed that while the notion is true in it's core, people also go to great lengths to enable compatibility between mods - though sometimes it's not the original author that provides the compatibility. I think Skyrim's modding ecosystem just grew organically without any sort of planning and therefore as new things were introduced, each time a wave of compatibility patches had to roll out across many mods.

 

I think the key to collaboration is to make the shared resources work so well and be so easily accessible, that by utilizing them the modder actually saves time and effort, example being the player controls tracking I brought up earlier. If it makes their lives easier, people will use the collaborative resources. They only don't if it's a big hassle and you have to think about 16 different frameworks and such. There's always going to be people that just go through the wall, and patch compat later, but if the majority sticks with one system, it'll establish itself as the gold standard.

[Trykz]

1 hour ago, Ashal said:

 

Making another mod track the sort of information the diary tracked would've been difficult and cumbersome. The diary was more or less just a side effect of me wanting to have the framework track a multitude of information on the player and separate NPCs so that other mods would have a common pool of information/stats to pull from. I wanted other mods to pull from the same data about sex experience for NPCs and the player rather than generating their own and becoming inconsistent. I essentially wanted to avoid mods disagreeing whether or not an NPC is a virgin or a whore. The diary page in the MCM was basically just meant as a way to surface that information to the common user.

 

As far as I'm aware, few mods actually ended up using any of that stat tracking.

 

It makes perfect sense now. Thank you for the explanation. Admittedly, I'm pretty oblivious to most of the sex mods internal workings.

I don't mean to seem pushy, but I'm just generally curious. Have you gotten anywhere with the early stuff? Like figuring out how to extract

data you need from the game's files? I saw a couple of mods on Nexus that seem to have worked out extracting meshes and manipulating

them using some swapping method. Like this one. And thanks for what you're taking on here. I know it can't be easy ??

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, zaira said:

Shared factions, animation tags and keywords in Skyrim have failed because lots of modders are more interested in realizing their thing than to collaborate with other modders. I doubt that this will change with Starfield. Modding is a very time intensive hobby - my own core motivation for modding is to realize my things, but I would appreciate it if I could easily interface with other mods using standardized keywords/factions/tags

 

This reminds me of something very early in Fallout 4 development of Armour smith Extended, there was one modder who created their own slot naming convention, when asked why, and it was in that mods faq, the answer was because, no other reason, just because, what they did not add was it was actually because I wanted to be an arse and make my armour/clothing mod completely incompatible with pretty much everything that used vanilla keywords or the new armour smith extended ones.

[Gristle]

4 hours ago, Ashal said:

I wanted the framework to be useable with very minimal scripting and modding knowledge; that way, anybody with an idea for a sexlab mod would be capable of implementing their idea with minimal knowledge.  You only need to know two things in order to use SexLab to implement your sex mod idea: how to set a property on a script and how to call the StartSex() function from it.

 

IMO, it's the job of a framework mod to be as dead simple as possible for a modder to make use of. The more time they have to spend learning to use the framework, the less likely they are to use it at all. Being able to implement ideas quickly is the mother of innovation and growth. 

 

I plan on carrying that philosophy forward in this framework.

That's great to hear. Due to the simplicity (and documentation) of SexLab, and despite not being a programmer, I was able to create a popular SexLab-based mod (SLSF Fame Comments) as my very first mod. I started very slowly using QuickStart, moved on to StartSex and its additional features, and now -- two years later -- have only just begun to learn how to register for SexLab events and set SexLab hooks.  So, thanks for making it easy for a novice! Looking forward to Starfield modding!

[Gristle]

4 hours ago, TheStranger said:

The first one is a keyword/tag library for equipped gear (I think Starfield still uses this system). The idea is for there to be a set of standardized keywords so mods using the framework can trigger events/dialogue using them. Could have some that define the clothing in general: Suggestive (some cleavage, tight), revealing (short skirt, lots of boob), skimpy (barely anything there, breasts fully or near fully exposed), lewd (most or everything is on display) etc.

 

There should also be multiple sets of more specific keywords that describe at least the following body parts: Breast left, breast right, butt right, butt left, genitals. Each set would include keywords that describes how visible it is: slightly (only briefly or from certain angles, like going commando), partial (think side boob or dangerously close to the vagina/penis), full (its out in the open). So we would end up with keywords like: "breast left full", "butt right slightly", "genitals partial", "breast left slightly", etc.

I don't think this needs to be part of a sex framework, as it is specific to dialogue and conditions, which in turn can make use of a sex framework. However, I agree that a standardized set of tags for revealing clothing is important. Without it, in Skyrim for example, NPCs can really only distinguish between clothed PCs and naked PCs.

 

That said, the proposed level of detail sounds too complex to me. I don't think it's realistic to imagine that someone will create a dialogue mod with different comments for "butt right slightly" and "butt left partial".  The Skyrim Baka keywords suffer from similar issues, e.g., four different "thong" keywords? Is some Skyrim farmer really going to have four different sets of comments depending on the exact degree of butt cheek/inner thigh coverage of one of four types of thongs visible on your PC?  

 

I have a sex-based dialogue mod with some 7000 comments and despite that large number, I've never once felt the need for an NPC to comment on anything but the following in terms of state of undress: a naked PC (as per vanilla game), a topless PC (visible breasts and nipples, genitals covered), or a PC wearing skimpy clothing (lots of skin, but genitals and nipples covered). Personally, I'd rather spend time writing a large variety of context-specific and immersive comments on these few scenarios then writing comments that parse degrees of butt cheek coverage. To me, the emphasis should be on a large variety of comments, as repetitive comments are not immersive. And, the broader the tag categories, the larger the set of comments for each category. For this reason, overly specific tag categories lead to smaller sets of repetitive comments. Also, for voice pack users, keep in mind that adding comments that can be spoken by any NPC in the game means a lot of voice types and this can lead to huge voice packs, so comments cannot be added without end.

 

That's not to say that my mod's system (naked, topless, skimpy) can't be improved and expanded upon, but I think it would have to be done in a very deliberate and targeted manner. First, as you suggest, you would need to establish a coverage rule so each tag has a precise meaning (e.g., what does SLA's "Erotic Armor" cover? Which half is Baka's "Half Naked Bikini"?) Second, in my opinion, the tag should not be created and applied unless it's going to generate a substantially different type of comment.  So, maybe you could justify distinguishing between clothing that is merely "suggestive" vs. "skimpy".  But even adding two more to reach the four levels of general coverage you suggest (suggestive, revealing, skimpy, lewd) is a lot. The levels are perfectly logical, but my instinct would be to simplify to categories where the resulting NPC comments would generally fall into the same bucket, which would probably lead me to lump suggestive/revealing together and skimpy/lewd together. But, I like this kind of general coverage categorization, because it can lead to broad sets of comments. 

 

4 hours ago, TheStranger said:

The last suggestion I have is for a set of parameters to describe the look of the player character so mods using the framework can use them to trigger mainly dialogue, but possibly other situations.

 

The game already has a way of determining the overall body build of the player character: light, heavy and muscular. At some point one could read other values about the look and body of the player when BodySlide and a way of defining the morphs (LooksMenu?) in game becomes possible (assuming that happens). But to begin with one could let the player manually describe their character through using MCM settings (again assuming Mod Control Menu becomes a thing). Obviously the setting would include things like butt size, breast size, genital size. Some values would need to be inputted manually anyway, they would be things like: body hair, pubic hair, hair color, hair length, eye color, scarred, tattooed. Could also have a value set up for the inevitable mod that adds visible dirt on a character.

I'm not sure the game engine's dialogue conditions will be able to pick all this up, but I like the idea of setting the PC's key physical attributes (that can't otherwise be detected via vanilla dialogue conditions) via an MCM (for dialogue and other condition purposes). It's not going to change much over time, so it wouldn't be much of a bother to set.

 

[ButtJutsu]

Skyrim was 12 GB in size, with mods people went above 200 GB.  
Imagine what starfield will do to ones PC's.

[julnic]

3 hours ago, ButtJutsu said:

Skyrim was 12 GB in size, with mods people went above 200 GB.  
Imagine what starfield will do to ones PC's.

And 90 percent of that size was because of textures or LODs. I might only have to download flora and water this time, because everything else books good so far. Might not even download that much flora, just a replacer for the trees in New Atlantis.

 

Knowing me though, I am gonna download 200 GB worth of HD textures.

[SleepyNinja]

Ok so I know like 99% of you guys don't want an Ostim framework me included. Sexlab was far superior in terms of functionality. However I found myself using Ostim alot more over the past couple months due to better animation rigging despite the lack of functionality. I found the vanilla sex in Ostim quite relaxing with included mods. I remembered back in 2018 when I got a pc and started to play Skyrim. I downloaded Sexlab and I remember how much of a chore to get animations to rig right. Increasing values, decreasing values. pausing and unpausing. Restarting animations over and over again just see my dick clip through the chicks stomach....

 

I'm sorry but the creator OSA did wonders and even the people that tail coated off their framework(Ostim). It was nice because it felt like Skyrim had a updated sex engine where after a tedious install it was simply a plug and play. I can see that Ostim looks more appealing to horny casuals while Sexlab nowadays are for the fetish peeps. Though giving Sexlab it's credit there was more options and more animations suited for it like creature packs, defeat, slavery and solo animations that Ostim lack. Plus before OSA was even thought of, us horny casuals HAD to use Sexlab since the beginning of Skyrim.

 

It's a been a long way since and since Bethesda likes rereleasing it every 4 years it only makes sense that the sex gets updated too. Starfield is very new obviously and with that it runs completely different from previous Bethesda games. In due time when you modders get ahold of the new Havok animations(apparently they still use Havok? It's credited at game launch before the title screen) I have two requests.

 

1. Better animation rigging. I don't want to do none of that value +/- for 20 minutes for an animation that lasts 45 seconds to 3 minutes if it has stages. Modders for Ostim figured it out, should be no different here. The technology is there. However keep the options there for people that want it, I'm just saying by default the animations should already have the actors lined up ready to go.

 

2.  Let it be plug and play. I know that sounds easier said than done but what made OSA appealing to me was on the fly animation selection without pausing the game all the time and since I don't have a number pad, I used my controller to select everything, it really felt like a casual sex game at that point lol. I know you guys really want to hone in on old sexlab but just getting to the actual pause menu is a drag on controller because for some reason the inventory screen is the same button as the pause button. Now I got to push that button 5000 times more just to test run an animation.

 

So I have an idea, obviously framework settings and other options should still be in the pause menu. However animations could be tied to furniture and NPCs through dialogue. So for example, you want to masturbate in bed, simply long press the A button or E on mouse&keyboard you'll start masturbating. Dialogue is self explanatory just ask any NPCs for sex. Or if you want to have sex on furniture, have a conformation window pop up for your choosing. 

 

Well that's my two cents, the Sexlab take in Starfield shouldn't be too similar to one in Skyrim given how outdated it is compared to AFF(eww) OSA And Flowergirl, I'll let you modders cook, y'all still in the prep phase so I'm not rushing. I'm just simply giving ideas from my experiences. Please don't fumble the bag y'all, aman.

[nine cake]

11 hours ago, ButtJutsu said:

Skyrim was 12 GB in size, with mods people went above 200 GB.  
Imagine what starfield will do to ones PC's.

I think I need buy a new SSD

[zaira]

One idea comes to my mind that I am really missing in Skyrim:

The framework should be free of context - not a sex animation framework but an "Advanced Animation Scene Framework" as the core and then add adult specific stuff as plugins.

This would have a lot of benefits for all:

• We can define non-sex related animation scenes (cuddling, kissing, whipping, BDSM, ass slapping, ...)
• Less danger of being banned
• Find more developers who are willing to contribute but who don't like adult entertainment

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by zaira

[TheStranger]

16 hours ago, Gristle said:

That said, the proposed level of detail sounds too complex to me. I don't think it's realistic to imagine that someone will create a dialogue mod with different comments for "butt right slightly" and "butt left partial".  The Skyrim Baka keywords suffer from similar issues, e.g., four different "thong" keywords? Is some Skyrim farmer really going to have four different sets of comments depending on the exact degree of butt cheek/inner thigh coverage of one of four types of thongs visible on your PC?  

 

I have a sex-based dialogue mod with some 7000 comments and despite that large number, I've never once felt the need for an NPC to comment on anything but the following in terms of state of undress: a naked PC (as per vanilla game), a topless PC (visible breasts and nipples, genitals covered), or a PC wearing skimpy clothing (lots of skin, but genitals and nipples covered). Personally, I'd rather spend time writing a large variety of context-specific and immersive comments on these few scenarios then writing comments that parse degrees of butt cheek coverage. To me, the emphasis should be on a large variety of comments, as repetitive comments are not immersive. And, the broader the tag categories, the larger the set of comments for each category. For this reason, overly specific tag categories lead to smaller sets of repetitive comments. Also, for voice pack users, keep in mind that adding comments that can be spoken by any NPC in the game means a lot of voice types and this can lead to huge voice packs, so comments cannot be added without end.

 

Love your NPC fame comments mod for Skyrim, and yeah, I think you're right when it comes to the complexity as well as the comment and dialogue variety. I think I got a bit carried away when I typed out the keywords, and over complicated it. I was just worried that the keywords would be too generalized, but the most important thing is to try to standardize it early and have it cover the main types of outfits one can expect to find in a modded game.

 

 

Well, back to the topic of the sex framework: I do wonder if it will it be like SexLab where it just assumes that at the end of a scene that all the involved characters orgasm, or if it will have a system more similar to the separate orgasms mod for Skyrim. I would personally like to see something closer to the latter, but if not, then I hope the framework will be able to let other mods handle that stage. All the characters "finishing" in sync always felt a bit strange to me, but is obviously much easier to implement.

 

Just though about another thing, has there been any thoughts on how to handle things when animations plays on sloped ground? I'm wondering if some animation sets could be set to align with the terrain (within reasonable angles, aligning to 45 degree slopes would look funky) to reduce the amount a character clips into the ground. In my mind this would only apply to animations where none of the involved characters are standing, so positions like missionary, cowgirl, etc. Not sure if rotating actors and their animations in such a way is even possible in the engine.

[beidancii]

I hope to add some simple interactions instead of just playing animations.

For example, the other party may request a change of posture, faster or slower, or try again, and provide positive or negative feedback.

As a victim,  can choose to strongly resist or actively cooperate.

[mikey7979]

Please..........someone find a way to avoid having your female PC from using the male masturbate animation.

[alcurad90]

On 9/9/2023 at 9:33 PM, zaira said:

Shared factions, animation tags and keywords in Skyrim have failed because lots of modders are more interested in realizing their thing than to collaborate with other modders. I doubt that this will change with Starfield. Modding is a very time intensive hobby - my own core motivation for modding is to realize my things, but I would appreciate it if I could easily interface with other mods using standardized keywords/factions/tags

 

Maybe we can setup a danbooru style data base for users to add tags to animation?

[alcurad90]

19 minutes ago, beidancii said:

I hope to add some simple interactions instead of just playing animations.

For example, the other party may request a change of posture, faster or slower, or try again, and provide positive or negative feedback.

As a victim,  can choose to strongly resist or actively cooperate.

 

A "huney rush" style system would be enough

I rememberr that the "SL tools" mod has the fuction to adjust animation speed

[Malakar]

Please keep configurability via mod menus for your framework.

One of the key advantages of Skyrims framework over Fallout 4's in my opinion is that Skyrim's gives me access to modify even small details such as which slots to unequip for male or female characters during which part of the animation.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Malakar

[Akira1364]

On 9/8/2023 at 11:12 PM, Deathmaw said:

 

Is there? What is it?

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/73889

[HoodedDream]

@Ashal

 

I might be wrong but I think you had largely skipped Fallout 4.

 

May I ask, what motivated you about Starfield to once again 'enter the fray' as it were?

Anything specific? Or you just in general felt like tackling another challenge?

[Ashal]

1 hour ago, HoodedDream said:

@Ashal

 

I might be wrong but I think you had largely skipped Fallout 4.

 

May I ask, what motivated you about Starfield to once again 'enter the fray' as it were?

Anything specific? Or you just in general felt like tackling another challenge?

 

I'm a sci-fi nerd, so Starfield's setting and themes appeal to me a lot more. I'm also just enjoying the game more than I enjoyed Fallout 4.

 

I wanted to like Fallout 4 but found its gameplay boring and clunky, and I didn't like spending time in its world. Not to mention by the time modding tools came out and making something for Fallout 4 became more viable, I was very checked out of the game. Hopefully, the delay in modding tools being released for Starfield doesn't have the same result.

[SadSun]

Better alignment solution... Possibly the creator of the new skeleton that will eventually exist can create placement positions in areas of the bodies to use as reference for hand placement and such. I guess that would need to scale with the mesh in some instances though, so it might be too much to ask.

 

Anyway, offset xyz by crotch bone positions instead of by trying to align with base character position. That way character height or high heels would be a non factor in aligning the business end. Or, something like that.

 

A way to play in and out animations to make things look smoother.

 

Chain based animations so the mod creator can dictate how many stages there should be in their animation.

 

Better furniture animations. Either make the prop furnature placement seamless, or find a way to not remove the characters from the furniture altogether. (Goes hand in hand with in and out animations.)

 

Code break points that advanced users can use to stop the normal function of the framework in order to implement their own action if they want to, then resume the normal framework actions afterwards.

 

(Going with your 'dumb as possible' theme)Possibly a second program that would allow the creator to use drop down boxes to create the code that they need to make their mod work. then they could copy paste it into their mod script file.

 

Moonshot... The option of Procedural Animations so alignment can be adjusted on the fly. With code.

 

If I can think of anything else... I'll annoy you again.?

[gasspoll83]

first thing todo is naked body, I don't see any of body replacement mod for starfield only some character face preset

[Anunya]

Happy to see this conversation. I'm basically only getting Starfield once the LL modding scene is well under way...

 

In general I think @zaira's comments make a lot of sense.

 

My comments and requests:

1. Design it to support making gameplay out of sex (for those of us who want it). Skyrim has SL Separate Orgasms and various mods related to arousal; I think Spank That Ass has a "dirty talk during sex" / "slapping during sex" feature. None of them quite hit the mark IMO, but I'd love to see sex-gameplay becoming a thing (in addition to gameplay leading to sex). Things I think would support that:
   1. Marking any number of state changes and discrete moments during a specific animation so mod authors can trigger things off that. Things like "first penetration", "kissing", "getting rougher", "slapping", "close to orgasm", "getting tired", "no longer resisting" and so on.
   2. Easy ability to trigger HUD or audio feedback at specific times during sex acts (maybe that's the same thing as 1).
   3. Native support for some kind of rhythm game mechanic (simply timed input) to simulate hitting the perfect flow for your partner(s) / for your PC; or edging; or struggling / resisting for those who are into that kind of stuff.
   4. A way for mods to check for non-sex-framework states during sex; i.e. recognizing if someone is dirty (once there are dirt mods) or hungry or whatever else people come up with.
2. Some way to easily trigger a variety of post-sex states: exhausted, satisfied, traumatized, etc - both to trigger a post-sex pose, and also to help support mods that provide buffs/ debuff and or rate how good the fuck was.
3. This may be too complicated, but ways for the player (and NPCs) to be gentler or rougher, or take discrete actions (say something sweet / say something crude / slap their partner / trying not to scream during an orgasm / stifling someone's screaming) during sex would be great too.
4. Something to allow for PCs to have different preferences / personalities in terms of what they like (get off on anal or really dislike it, enjoy rough sex, enjoy sex more when the relationship warrants it, enjoy sex when certain outfits are worn). This could potentially hook into the tag system, whatever it is.
5. Building the framework in a way that doesn't lock features out for controller-primary players (i.e. if there are interactive sex features, don't require so many different inputs that you have to use mouse and keyboard to access them all).
6. If there is a way to give the player the option for their PC to "spit or swallow" and "pull out or cum inside" inherently built into the framework, that'd be grand.

... I don't know if these features necessarily should be part of the framework itself (some of them may be overly complicated), but I'd love for the framework to not make choices that make it difficult to implement such features for mod-authors who might want to.