My physchological "smut for good" Starfield adult mod plan.

[MSM_Alice]

TL: DR

Hello Everyone!
I am an aspiring modder, and I need some help getting the lay of the land.
If you trust this ask should be in a different section, please let me know.

Below are the details of what I want to build (without spoiling too much) and a few starting questions I have for the modding community on LL.
I am aware it is a fairly ambitious project, but I think I can pull it off, as I have worked in game development for more than a decade, with titles published on consoles and PC.




Details:
The idea behind this upcoming mod is to create a portal into secret sexual desires and fetishes that many people have but might not feel comfortable expressing, and find a way to make sense of it all and exorcise some bad parts of it if at all possible. 
Think of it as a safe space where one can explore a darker side without any actual self-harm or real-world judgment. An experimental playground for that inner part you keep hidden away.
 

The mod will primarily focus on the theme of physical and emotional abuse. In the words of Annie Lennox, "Some of them want to abuse you/ Some of them want to be abused".
I do not know the mind of an abuser, but I am all too familiar with longing for (and feel ashamed by) being abused.
The mod will revolve around the player character ending often on the receiving end of abuse and mind corruption/ fighting for sanity.  

The end goal for this mod is to provide an actual mental benefit,  genuinely exploring the less-discussed sides of human sexuality, mixing in some steamy content with a good dose of humor.
I was inspired by JB's excellent work  Nuka Ride from Fallout 4 (of which I am in awe and cannot thank JB enough for), but I want to take an even deeper and well-documented psychological angle, focusing on published papers and research on sexual desires, needs, and fetishes as discussed in specialized literature.

Also wanted a longer road and deeper explorations. If this ever takes off it will be a multi-year project, with many iterations.

The mod will likely have two arms: 
1. Adult game mechanics with interplay with regular game mechanics. 
2. A story arc (likely on its planet at first), with new allies, friends, enemies, and so on. Also a lot of flashbacks to formative years. 

Unique aspects (or maybe not unique but less common):
I want to have 4th wall-breaking aspects, have characters of the mod lean in the multiverse theme of Starfield, and surprise the player by occasionally addressing the player through the character, and not just the character the player plays. Like they were in the "game universe" and found a way to be aware of and talk with the "real universe".  
How well I will pull that off remains to be seen.
I do want key game choices to be saved ideally also outside the game's save system and have the game logic realize and take actions (not immediately in very non-obvious ways) against the player if the player tries to cheat key-choices with quicksave/quick-load, adding money, or removing some restraints with console commands. Like in the real world, I want your first choices to be your forever choices, and force you to live with the consequences,  (at least for that one playthrough). Trying to change them sneakily should do more harm than good, often causing problems much larger than if obedience to the game rules was picked in the first place. 


 

The Setup.
As the player departs from their first planet, they find themselves unexpectedly thrust into a journey of becoming either a galactic bimbo or galactic goddess after being kidnapped and having a strange device implanted in their brain. You are transported to a parallel universe to your original one, where you have no obligation to finish the Starfield Story ( but you can if you want to)
The are layers to the story. The person kidnaping you and implanting the device in your brain came across it by accident; he does not fully understand the device and its true purpose, he is too just a mere puppet in the grander scheme, there are mysterious extraplanar beings even above the Starborn transcending the multiverse, time, and space,  orchestrating this all (you will only learn about them later on).
This device grants them amazing survival skills (and the player can take on a lot of abuse that would normally be fatal)  but also gradually alters their body and mind, leading to one of three possible outcomes:

 

Outcome A - a transformative journey, an awakening: If the player grasps their situation, breaks free from constraints, and embraces their condition and desires with confidence and self-respect, embracing rather than shunning and feeling guilty about their sexuality they can rise to power. 
Outcome B - a plunge into becoming a depraved version of oneself: If the player succumbs to unclarified trauma and dirty desires and focuses solely on pleasing others, losing their sense of self and respect (likely the most indulgent and easiest route). 
(A disheartening ending, leading to self-destruction, yet filled with explicit content.)
Outcome C - If you prefer: remain constantly repressed, steering clear of any sexual mechanics.
(But really, how long can you hold out? Too much repression can lead to explosive moments)
(A wildcard ending.)

 

The mod will try to implement (or link to existing mods with) functions similar to other adult mods that exist for other Bethesda games (but  limited and fine-tuned for the particular psychological goal)

- Fashion/Aesthetics

- Bimbo-ification 

- Arousal Properties/management
- Sex Crime
- Sexual Attributes
- Sexual Fame
- Sexual Harassment
- BodyMods
- Restraints BDSM
- Sex-Work themes

It will not have: 
- Pregnancy /child rearing

Might have
- Adopting a child/forming a family.
- Cheating/Adultery


To preempt a few inbound questions

Why choose Starfield instead of Skyrim or Fallout4?
The original plan was to create this ambitious version for the next Elder Scrolls game, but starting with Starfield will help me get familiar with the latest Bethesda modding tools. 

 

Why share this now if you haven’t made much progress outside of the design documents?
I want to bring this idea to life beyond just being a thought in my head and in the game design doc. Plus, feedback should motivate me to accelerate work on it.
Also, you don't know how much of a beast the game design document is already ^_^.

There are a lot of gaps in the Starfield modding scene, and this mod seems like a 10 mods-in one. Are you up for the challenge? 
It’s not going to happen in a day. If all goes well, I’ll kick things off by implementing just the story/mechanics and the unique elements of this mod, using stubs or placeholder modules for the missing parts (for instance text popup boxes, with descriptions of what you should be seeing or hearing) It can be just a smut filled romance novel at first that you read rather than play.
Eventually, those will connect to proper content, when body replacer mods, animation mods, and so on come out as time goes by.




And now my outbound questions:

1. Where is a good starting point to learn about the Creation Kit? ( have it installed, and functioning, I am going through the guides on its Steam page )
2. Where is the best point to start learning about Papyrus scripting, and the underlying concepts? Is it Category:Papyrus - the CreationKit Wiki (uesp.net)?  Just take apart mods and study their scripts in Notepad++?
3. What is a good layout/toolset for debugging?
4. What are the top 5 tools in the toolbelt that I need to familiarize myself with:
- Creation Kit general use
- Papyrus scripting and all its concepts
- XEdit for Starfield (SF1Edit I believe it is called)  - is that optional?  Is it a must? Can I just use the CK to do everything?
- Probably Blender for making Anims, (I know more about 3D Studio Max and Maya but can't afford those at home so I'll have to use Blender). I do have a simple motion capture suit at home that might still work (perks of having worked in the industry).

- WWise for sounds as per: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7y4knnvhzE
- some form of versioning tool to make the entire process manageable (What are most modders using for versioning?).
-... anything else?


I am going to forge forward anyway, whether I get answers or not, but I am hoping to avoid painful pitfalls and back-tracking, if possible.

 

Edited November 3, 2024 by MSM_Alice
Typos.

[sen4mi]

Question 1 is indeed a puzzling question.

 

I think we are still waiting for good documentation. Maybe a fan run wiki (can LL do documentation wikis?) would allow people to make progress?

 

That said, there's quite a bit of documentation on papyrus scripting for Fallout 4 and for Skyrim. That's maybe a good place to start.

[espguy]

Sounds interesting, but are there plans to make a route for dominant male or female characters?

[MSM_Alice]

Here is an update on this.

I have spent significant amounts of spare time learning Bethesda modding concepts at a brisk pace over the last two weeks or so.
Scripts no longer look like a foreign language, I am comfortable building my own thing with core functions, and yesterday I finally figured out how to run my own scripts that make use of 3rd party framework APIs with native-level functions (from SKSE and others -thanks JB here on this forum for pointing me in the right direction, as I was chasing my tail for hours and was about to scream).
The first-tier "toolbelt" questions I had in the first post are pretty much answered. I think I have all the instruments to even do minigames on UI during spicy scenes, gather data about what's happening in the scenes, write all rules of the interplay on variables, as well as robust configuration menus, Init and Debug flow, tell the users enough about what's happening to allow for development feedback,  as well as version management/update infrastructure across multiple versions.

Of course, I am just scratching the surface and there is a lot more to learn, BUT am delighted as I am almost at the point where I can package and launch an alpha version of two of the mechanics in my design document.
However, to do so I temporarily hopped over to use the latest NG FAllout4 CK and tooks instead of Starfield CK. The prologue project to this Starfield project will be a Fallout4 project.  Bethesda modding tools apprenticeship goes much faster there. The amount of commented script sources on Starfield and helpful builders that can help with the usual pitfalls count is much higher on FO4 than it is for Starfield.  Even more, if we are talking Skyrim modding scene, but for now I see Fallout4 as a more modern compromise.

This does not mean I won't return to Starfield once I "graduate",  but the first launch will be a (probably more rough around the edges) version of the mechanics of this mod for the  Fallout4 universe. This prevents my builder enthusiasm from being sapped out by me waiting forever for answers to questions that can't crack on my own,  on empty Starfield modding boards/Discord channels.

@sen4mi Thank you! That's what I ended up doing after all.
@espguy Not conceptually opposed to it, but let's see where the first release goes first ^_^

Edited November 3, 2024 by MSM_Alice
typos

[Reigor]

Late to the party, but let's see if I can help with this. 

1. Where is a good starting point to learn about the Creation Kit? ( have it installed, and functioning, I am going through the guides on its Steam page )

 

So, there are a lot of Fallout4 and Skyrim tutorials out there. The CK has advanced especially in regards to setting up scenes/dialogue.

 

Here are a couple of youtube creators who have some good tutorials.

https://www.youtube.com/@Darkfox127

https://www.youtube.com/@510DeshawnPlays

2. Where is the best point to start learning about Papyrus scripting, and the underlying concepts? Is it Category:Papyrus - the CreationKit Wiki (uesp.net)?  Just take apart mods and study their scripts in Notepad++?

 

I learned a lot from this channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/@SkyrimScripting

 

You will want to get Visual Studio Code for making and debugging scripts. The above channel has a guide on how to install it. So does Darkfox.

3. What is a good layout/toolset for debugging?

 

Don't know.

4. What are the top 5 tools in the toolbelt that I need to familiarize myself with:
- Creation Kit general use  - YES
- Papyrus scripting and all its concepts  
- XEdit for Starfield (SF1Edit I believe it is called)  - is that optional?  Is it a must? Can I just use the CK to do everything? - YES, get this. One thing of note, it will only edit/save FULL masters.
- Probably Blender for making Anims, (I know more about 3D Studio Max and Maya but can't afford those at home so I'll have to use Blender). I do have a simple motion capture suit at home that might still work (perks of having worked in the industry).

- WWise for sounds as per: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7y4knnvhzE

- some form of versioning tool to make the entire process manageable (What are most modders using for versioning?).
-... anything else?

 

Visuals:
Starfield Creation Kit
SF1Edit
WinHex or another hex editor - To switch back and forth between esp and esm for editing.

Voices:
xTranslator
ElevenLabs for decent AI voices
Foobar2000
WWise
MediaHuman Audio Converter

[MSM_Alice]

Since October of last year, the target for this mod moved from being on Starfield to being on Fallout4: 

A first playable is live here: