Mod Proposal: Semi-simple pregnancy/inflation framework

[libertyordeath]

I'm a big fan of the mod Hentai Pregnancy, since it provides a stable, reliable and high performance solution to pregnancy and inflation in a single mod, therefore bypassing the problem of mods competing for the belly and breast nodes. Yes i'm aware of SLIF: It is 'protoware', rather than 'alphaware'. Not having to deal with something like SLIF is the biggest advantage of 'Hentai Pregnancy'.

 

However, every single feature of HP is extremely simplistic. On a scale of 1-10, HP has a complexity of 2 and all the other mods dealing with pregnancy/inflation have a complexity of 9 or 10. There's nothing in-between, and that's the reason for this post: I would like something with a complexity of 3-4 - so, still on the simplistic side. Just not as barebones as HP.

 

Now before i continue, let me address the elephant in the room. I know what people are gonna say: "Do it! Make it yourself. Talk is cheap, developers are scarce." Yeah, except i'm the uncanny valley type of users: Unlike most, i do understand basic programming principles, i understand the basics of how the skyrim engine works, and back in the oblivion days i even modified some mods by tweaking the code to be 20 times faster (i was the guy who brought mount and blade style horse control to oblivion, without FPS tanking 60%). But the thing is: I know enough to tweak existing mods, but not enough to write new features or new mods from scratch. Hence this post: I'm good enough to write an 'educated' proposal, but not enough to do it myself. Plus i never got CK working on my GOG version of skyrim.

 

Anyways, my proposal is this: Let's take Hentai Pregnancy as the basis. Maybe even literally if the author is fine with the sourcecode being used for a fork. Here's the changes i would make:

 

1.: Simplistic menstrual cycle for the player only. By keeping it player only, this avoids stability and performance issues from tracking dozens of actors. And the cycle itself could be very simple: Just on an hourly basis (ingame time) set an integer global var to define the phase. No fancy maths or status effects. Instead the only purpose is: Set impregnation chance to full (ovulation), half (moderate risk) or quarter (low risk). No need to even make this configurable. Instead when checking impregnation during sexlab orgasm, just take the existing HP pregchance, and depending on phase divide by 1, 2 or 4. So aside from updating the cycle phase once per hour, this doesn't even need new functions: You can just in the existing impregcheck add a few lines of code to decide the divisor, and that's all. Prolly no more 10 minutes of work, plus testing.

 

2.: Complementing the above, make cum-inflation affect pregnancy chance for all valid actors. With current HP-behavior, if you set impregnation chance fairly low (<10%), the RNG can create truely ridiculous scenarios, where an actor has sex for 24 hours straight, is bloated to the brim, yet just won't get pregnant by miracle chance. Now i know the HP-dev is prolly gonna say: 'Yeah, but adding passive impregnation from inflation status adds a whole new mechanic, and the existing system doesn't track the potential fathers for stored cum. Adding that would be a nightmare." True! So just don't do that. Instead i propose a much simpler and more cheaty solution: When sexlab orgasm is triggered and the impreg-check is performed, simply multiply the chance by inflation status. So stored cum cannot trigger impregnation on its own, but it will increase the odds on future orgasms. This way you know the father, and only need to add a few lines of code to the existing check. Disclaimer: Users will almost certainly ask to make this optional/configurable, and i know MCM is a bitch. So the most work likely won't be the feature itself, but rather adding MCM settings to appease users.

 

3. Better cum-volume modifiers depending on creature size. Right now HP has settings for humans, creatures and estrus. I will not mince words here and just call it out for what it is: This is the most lazy and useless developer cop-out i have ever seen in a skyrim mod. The way it works is this: Users ask for cum-volume modifiers, because actors in skyrim can range from tiny rabbits to gigantic dragons. The developer - realizing this is a can of worms because of the sheer amount of vanilla creatures, and the issue of mod-added creatures - does not simply say "No!", which would be the right thing to do. Instead he implements the most lameass excuse for 'i did what i could', by simply checking the actor class (human, creature, estrus), which is just a single line of code. Except this solves absolutely nothing, and might as well not exist. Why? Because again: Creatures range from tiny to gigantic, and estrus actors also can be all kinds of things.

 

My proposal? Put in the work to outsource the problem into externalized configfiles. How? Simple: Have three categories of actors for cum-volume: Small, medium, large. Notice HP already has three (human, creature, estrus), so you just need to rename those. Then have an external configfile that maps races to an integer (1=small, 2=medium, 3=large). This way you don't need complex MCM logic to support all kinds of races. Instead just as before, you have three settings for cum-volumes. And users then can provide race-support, by posting configfiles that map raceids to volumes (1=small, 2=medium, 3=large).

 

4. Immersion via HUD-icons. This is the big ask. The one that looks incredibly simple to users, yet vastly improves feedback and immersion, and paradoxically is the most work to implement, playtest and provide support for: Two fucking icons on screen! Cycle/Pregnancy status and inflation. Yes i know SL Widgets is a thing. It's also heavyweight with all the dependencies, is inherently incompatible with multiple HUD-frameworks, and it's against the whole ethos of HP, which is to have everything related contained in a single mod, instead of dealing with the usual LL patchwork clusterfuck. I have nothing else to say about this: Just do it! And if you doubt the importance of two icons providing visual feedback, just ask former oblivion players about what they consider a downgrade to skyrim in terms of pregnacy mods. The two things they will remember is "HUD icon!", and "children just worked outta the box, including creatures". So don't tell me about difficulties and engine limitations: We had this in oblivion on an inferior engine. Skyrim doesn't have either in a single mod in... over 10 years?

 

5. Trigger system and good documentation for simple 3rd-party addons. HP has a plugin system for birth, yet nobody has released a single mod for it in... how many years? I don't know the specifics, so i might be talking outta my ass here, but i have to wonder why. Is the interface crap? Documentation shit? Are potential modders unable to think outta the box, like why bother with unique child support, when most players just wanna see animations, so you could just spawn non-uniques who despawn on unload like... i dunno, that's how it worked in oblivion i think? And the lack of plugins isn't limited to children. Why do i need to download heavy feature-creep mods for simple things like iNeed hunger support on swallowing, when this could be a simple trigger and a few lines of code? Yes, i realize this kinda borders on SL framework support for stuff like this. But SL framework development has been dead for anything else than game updates for half a decade. And from my basic understanding of programming, adding preg/inflation related triggers for anything relevant is almost no work. Instead it's all about writing good documentation, examples and presenting it right?

 

That's all for now.

Edited December 28, 2023 by libertyordeath
typo fixes

[Ed86]

well... lets see...

1st and 2nd you can do yourself, and when its good enought submit changes

 

3rd skyrim has no sizes, developer did what he could, developer not going to go through all(hundreds-thousands) actors and measure them, developer doesnt belive in humanity and doesnt belive anyone would do that, developer wont stop you from trying

 

4th its nowehere simple, you need to get icons, widget and make it work. which you would need to steal/borrow from somewhere, buy, or do your self - buy photoshop, swf editor, learn all that, learn action script to pass widget data to papyrus and who knows what else ... oh and lots of time

 

5th maybe because its faaar to complex? if you want something more than baby item/soulgem youll need to write huge framework with data tracking, custom race patches, ai, ui and w/e

and as a modder you dont have instruments to do that without huge ammount of pain

also i dont see reason to birth non-uniques who despawn on unload, i'd think about that as dissapointment and immersion breaking, but donig more than that leads you to above

 

documentation is egg-chicken problem, those who can read code dont need it, those who cant read code dont do mods

 

[Vigor]

I used Fertility Mod with fixes + Fill Her Up and it didn't look too complex if you set the right settings (shorter cycle, higher chances, disable npcs).
But I still prefer Hentai Pregnancy for its simplicity, because in the end I just want a bridge to MME and other milk mods (isn't it what pregancy in Skyrim for  )

[zerochance67]

Gotta say that I agree with Liberty on this.  Don't understand why these mods need to be made so script heavy.  Honestly a simply, percentage chance result, maybe with a few modifiers would be all that was really needed.  No need to track the cycles of every female and the sperm count of every male.  

 

On a side note, anyone else having some sort of issue with Fert Mod+ and Fertility Mode having a script conflict?.  Get a warning at startup every time.