Some thoughts on sexout features

[prideslayer]

I've got some ideas for two new features for sexout (core) that I think have the potential to break existing mods... possibly. Want to describe them here to solicit feedback, especially from other modders working on sexout mods.

 

Queuing

I believe one or two mods have support for this already, but it's something that definitely belongs in sexout. I want to add the ability for modders to 'queue' sex acts up within sexout itself for gangbangs/trains, but that is a separate issue. What I'm thinking of here is, rather than sexout throwing a 9.2, I could have it 'queue' up the act to take place after the current one finished, in some instances.

 

This would happen with a new token that holds the sexout vars being given to the target. The script on that token would watch for the actor to become available and when that happens, reissue the call. To prevent massive breakage of mods, the token would also insert an extended delay if the in-progress scene is using any callbacks, perhaps 20-30 seconds.

 

This will definitely change behavior of some mods. But I'm not sure which ones offhand. For example it wouldn't directly affect mods like tryouts, because those don't instantly start a sex scene -- they use startconversation. They also look for the sex token and abort themselves. It *would* mean that if you were simultaneously using brutalrapers, stalkers would queue up, not only after other stalkers, but after tryout approaches as well.

 

I'm not sure of other potential issues, hence just mentioning it here.

 

Join In

Similar to the above, say actors A and B are already having sex when actor C comes along. Again, instead of throwing a 9.2, I can add actor C into the mix, turning the 2way into a 3way. This would go ahead if one of the two acts is not using callbacks.

 

For example if A+B has no callbacks but C+B does, then it would turn into a 3way with the callbacks for C+B. If A+B have callbacks set but C+B doesn't, it would use the preexisting callback settings for A+B. If A+B and C+B have callbacks set, C+B would either queue up (if that system is implemented) or simply throw a 9.2 as it does now.

 

One particular issue I foresee is with the global notification hooks. Most mods don't use these, but the ones that do rely heavily on them working right. I don't think pregnancy would have a problem, it would probably 'just work' if I made a hook notification for C+B as if it were a new act. Other mods like Lust might break entirely unless I make a new set of notification calls for the whole act (A+B+C) as a threeway... or even that might not work.

 

 

Reasoning

I think both of these have the potential to make things a lot more dynamic and interesting, but the potential to break mods is there as well. I'm hoping all of you can think of some different scenarios that might cause either one (or both) to cause problems.

 

I intend to definitely add manual instances of these calls, as new spells, that modders can use in order to create a queue/train, or add a new person to an existing act, which I think has much less potential to cause any kind of issue if mods stick to modifying acts that they started themselves. In these cases, callbakcs would work as normal, but I'm still not sure what to do with the notification hooks (aka global callbacks).

[jawa4444]

Would gangbangs be possible? Possibly 6 actors, 3 actors in holes and 2 dicks in hands of the receiving actor.

[DoctaSax]

I intend to definitely add manual instances of these calls, as new spells, that modders can use in order to create a queue/train, or add a new person to an existing act, which I think has much less potential to cause any kind of issue if mods stick to modifying acts that they started themselves.

 

Well, I think this has to be a prereq for modders using it: don't add it to anything that ain't yours. Can't be too careful with stuff happening automatically that can break other people's mods or even vanilla quests due to packages getting interrupted.

 

My main worry would be that somebody uses this to make a mod that turns every instance of sex going on into an invitation to a GB or DP. Because that's just going cause a helluva lot of bug reports claiming harmless mods who're just minding their own business blew up their pc.

 

Not that I think you haven't thought about that already, of course, but it can't be stressed enough, really.

[Guest user29]

That sounds more useful than likely to break anything I've done. Though my mod is probably on the more simple side of things.

[prideslayer]

I intend to definitely add manual instances of these calls' date=' as new spells, that modders can use in order to create a queue/train, or add a new person to an existing act, which I think has much less potential to cause any kind of issue if mods stick to modifying acts that they started themselves. [/quote']

 

Well, I think this has to be a prereq for modders using it: don't add it to anything that ain't yours. Can't be too careful with stuff happening automatically that can break other people's mods or even vanilla quests due to packages getting interrupted.

 

My main worry would be that somebody uses this to make a mod that turns every instance of sex going on into an invitation to a GB or DP. Because that's just going cause a helluva lot of bug reports claiming harmless mods who're just minding their own business blew up their pc.

 

Not that I think you haven't thought about that already, of course, but it can't be stressed enough, really.

 

I have thought about it, but that's what the thread is really about -- what are the possible conflicts? The idea *is* to have sexout blindly turn almost every sexual encounter into a GB/DP, as long as there are no obvious potential conflicts -- which means as long as the first act has no callbacks set.

 

For the most part I think the automatic stuff would mostly only affect a few mods.

 

- Brutal Rapers. This doesn't use any callbacks that I'm aware of, so if one stalker was having sex with someone, and that someone were approached by a second, they would join right in rather than aborting.

 

- Non-callbacked tryouts would have stalkers 'join in' on the act. All tryout sex is initiated with a conversation, but once it's running, most of them don't use callbacks. The ones that don't would be "fair game" for stalkers or other approaches that also don't use conversations to join in.

 

I honestly can't think of any other sexual encounters it would affect, which is why I'm asking all of you. I do think it has the potential to, somehow, affect Lust -- so I'm hoping Chase sees this and chimes in as well.

[srayesmanll]

I like the idea of these, but I think there should also be a way of temporarily disabling it. Basically adding an NX variable for both Join and Queue, that the dev calls to prevent these action in specific scenes. For example, in my Rapist mod, I might want to prevent "Joining" but allow the "Queuing".

[prideslayer]

That is something I would definitely add, but it only helps "aware" mods. I'm trying to look for pitfalls in mods that exist and aren't modified to support it. Chances of loogie going back and adding that flag all over the place in tryouts is pretty small, and I wouldn't expect him or anyone else working on a large mod to do so.

 

Other mods that would be easy to update might not get updated just because they're old and somewhat unmaintained, but still work, like sewerslave.

[DoctaSax]

Ok, bear with me here.

 

Part of what I said was mostly caused by me seeing some trouble with packages getting interrupted by brutalrapers & hookups. In order to be sure a simple travel package completes (leading to a side-questline) I'll already have to tell people to turn those off for the time being. So I was already annoyed with 'automatic' stuff. Compounded with the caffeine not having kicked in yet, I might have jumped the gun a bit.

 

But if I read you right this time, joining in could happen to any sex act that doesn't have a callback set?

 

Technical conflicts aside, I can see some problems from the POV of storytelling and immersion. Your PC finds that special NPC out there in the wastes, they get busy, and all of a sudden nasty ol' Pete or some other douchebag walking by gets it into his head that he's invited to join. But he ain't! Or, your PC is hookin', she's with a john, he paid up, fair transaction going on - bam, some jerk thinks he can get somethin' for nothin'. And what can you do about it: can't shoot 'em because most people are essential anyway and even if they're not you don't want a bad rep with their faction, so you have to let it slide. (I'll admit I'm a bit more heavily into immersion than many, but still.)

 

I don't think the lack of a callback is enough to assume other people can join in. Instead of making joining in standard behavior and making the primary mods be responsible for opting out, shouldn't it be the other way around? Have an opt-in instead, via MCM?

[prideslayer]

Ok' date=' bear with me here.

 

Part of what I said was mostly caused by me seeing some trouble with packages getting interrupted by brutalrapers & hookups. In order to be sure a simple travel package completes (leading to a side-questline) I'll already have to tell people to turn those off for the time being. So I was already annoyed with 'automatic' stuff. Compounded with the caffeine not having kicked in yet, I might have jumped the gun a bit.

 

But if I read you right this time, joining in could happen to any sex act that doesn't have a callback set?

[/quote']

 

My initial thought would be to allow it to happen when the callbacks couldn't potentially conflict. So if the first act has any callback at all set, then it wouldn't allow a 2nd act to join in (queuing, with an extended delay to give the callback a chance to finish, would be fine). If the first act had no callbacks set, but the 2nd act did, then it would be allowed to join in and the 2nd acts callbacks would be used as normal.

 

Now the package issue is.. interesting. By the time sex starts, there is no longer a package on the actor in question -- or rather, it's been replaced by the SexoutDoNothing package. Now rapers doesn't really 'care' what package an npc is running, and is just blindly interrupting any NPC it finds no matter what it's doing. This is a bug in rapers, it could be changed to only select sandboxing NPCs as potential targets or something like that.

 

You can't tell what package an npc is running, but you can tell what *kind* it is running.

 

This doesn't really impact the idea though, since it only affects actors that are already having sex, or have been told to try to have sex.

 

Technical conflicts aside, I can see some problems from the POV of storytelling and immersion. Your PC finds that special NPC out there in the wastes, they get busy, and all of a sudden nasty ol' Pete or some other douchebag walking by gets it into his head that he's invited to join. But he ain't! Or, your PC is hookin', she's with a john, he paid up, fair transaction going on - bam, some jerk thinks he can get somethin' for nothin'. And what can you do about it: can't shoot 'em because most people are essential anyway and even if they're not you don't want a bad rep with their faction, so you have to let it slide. (I'll admit I'm a bit more heavily into immersion than many, but still.)

 

Interesting scenarios.. will need to think about that.

 

I don't think the lack of a callback is enough to assume other people can join in. Instead of making joining in standard behavior and making the primary mods be responsible for opting out, shouldn't it be the other way around? Have an opt-in instead, via MCM?

 

That is a possibility but it's actually the exact situation I'm trying to avoid. I want to try to make this work, where it can, without the user having to tell it to -- or without modders having to say "don't turn that on if you use my mod!" If that's the only way it can work, then I'll add the manual calls instead, and just forget about trying to make it automatic, because it obviously can't work.

 

Hope that makes sense.

[DoctaSax]

Now the package issue is.. interesting. By the time sex starts' date=' there is no longer a package on the actor in question -- or rather, it's been replaced by the SexoutDoNothing package. Now rapers doesn't really 'care' what package an npc is running, and is just blindly interrupting any NPC it finds no matter what it's doing. This is a bug in rapers, it could be changed to only select sandboxing NPCs as potential targets or something like that.

...

This doesn't really impact the idea though, since it only affects actors that are already having sex, or have been told to try to have sex.[/quote']

 

OIC. My main concern was it would introduce new package interruptions on the 3rd actor, but instead it just redirects anyone already approaching.

 

In any case, limiting anything package-interrupting to npcs on sandbox and patrol packages only might be a good idea all-around. Follow, escort, ambush, travel, find... they're all more likely to be actually needed for something, and things can break if they're interrupted. Would be nice if this safeguard could be done from the scanner. Both BR & hookups, even on low settings, can be really annoying in terms of timing & selection of npc. Last I had it happen, I was saving Joana from Gomorrah, bam, Carlitos rapes me while she's looking on & the goon squad is already running up to us... not cool.

 

Interesting scenarios.. will need to think about that.

 

I'll just read that as "boy, you're weird"

[prideslayer]

 

OIC. My main concern was it would introduce new package interruptions on the 3rd actor' date=' but instead it just redirects anyone already approaching.

[/quote']

 

Right. My goal with the idea was to just get rid of the 9.2s that result from sexoutbegin being cast on the pair (C, when the pair (A, is already taking place, and instead turn it into an (A,B,C).

 

In any case, limiting anything package-interrupting to npcs on sandbox and patrol packages only might be a good idea all-around. Follow, escort, ambush, travel, find... they're all more likely to be actually needed for something, and things can break if they're interrupted. Would be nice if this safeguard could be done from the scanner. Both BR & hookups, even on low settings, can be really annoying in terms of timing & selection of npc. Last I had it happen, I was saving Joana from Gomorrah, bam, Carlitos rapes me while she's looking on & the goon squad is already running up to us... not cool.

 

This is probably a good idea anyway. I'll see what can be done in the scanner with the the release 70 beta. I'm sure I can exclude them, I'm just concerned that I may be 'overzealous' with it if I restrict it to just sandboxing actors. This would certainly break things like tryouts where the actors are runnning a patrol package or whatever, but interrupting that package is the goal. Note that I don't remove the package from the NPCs -- I just add the SexoutDoNothing package (which takes effect right away), and then remove that after the act is over, checking first that it's still on the NPC.

 

 

Interesting scenarios.. will need to think about that.

 

I'll just read that as "boy' date=' you're weird"

[/quote']

 

No, not really, I'm just wondering how to handle them, if I even can. You're right.. some john getting a 'freebie' in prostitutes, or a random raper filling up your behind while you're making sweet love to your wife... both are rather undesirable outcomes. Or maybe they're not. Depends on the player I guess.

 

We can agonize over it a lot, but the simple fact is, "Rapers is Rapers." It's gonna interrupt shit and generally misbehave all the time. If having it active breaks a particular mod (and it does for a few of them), these features aren't (I don't think) going to make it any worse.