Maybe make it carried exclusively by traders in the Khajiit camps you find outside of towns?

And those random skooma dealers you find roaming around in the wilds?

Wait, why would skooma dealers have coffee?

Will this mod be compatible with mods that add lots of new cooking recipes to the game?

He'd have to edit each new food item added by those mods just like he has to edit every vanilla food item to use the new effects/scripts.

Well it stands to reason that if they are able to smuggle in skooma they would be able to smuggle in coffee. As was earlier suggested having coffee be treated as as light drug then it would also make sense that the skooma dealers might carry it with them.

If the Jarl's have it, it's not illegal, which would mean that unless there's a large tariff on it, importing would be cheaper than buying it off of a dealer. So there's no need to smuggle it. It's rare because it's expensive, not because it's illegal.

Even if the Jarl's did have it it doesn't necessarily mean that its automatically not illegal. There are many people with higher power that use drugs and I would have thought that any drug would have been illegal similar to Skooma.

I'm not sure that jarl's would be a great source of acquiring it either, unless they readily give it to you why would they want to trade it for gold if its so expensive and hard to obtain?

I'm going for maximum compatibility at the moment (blame Steam Workshop), so I won't be editing any cells or leveled lists, which means you won't be able to steal coffee from Jarls, at least for this first release. You'll be able to get beans from Khajiit traders, and craft coffee from beans and water. Bottled water and tea will be available at inns though, and general store type merchants will sell tea leaves.

Imp-

This is only tangentially related to this mod, but hear me out. I was thinking that considering the history of realism mods with Oblivion that there may be a value in having a core esm for managing stat adjustments and other settings.

The issue that came up with Oblivion was that there turned out to be several different approaches to penalizing a character, so much so that if say a hunger mod used method A and then a sleep mod used method B that they would not play well together and at times would even upset other types of mods like leveling mods. Mostly this had to do with the use of player.setav instead of player.modav. Still those of us who used a lot of different realism mods over the last 4 or so years know that even if player.modav is used (differently) by several mods that they still don't articulate right and that stat damage was a near constant thing to watch for.

If, however, there was one controlling plugin that was designed to manage all the bonuses and penalties for the character (and NPCs) and did this in a uniform manner then there may be less of a chance of them stepping on each others toes and interfering with each other. This way (with a controlling main plugin that managed only this aspect) then one could build extensions on the theme: Hunger thirst, new food mods, hypothermia, sleep mods, etc. ... all without the need to cover every base from the start.

For Oblivion Tejon made http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=41005 which approaches this idea in that it brings under control all the factors of a characters growth. It was made mostly for character advancement mods - with the idea of making all the variables of a character open to manipulated by a central control.

I know I don't have the head or the know how to pull that kind of thing off. In fact my head may be mush in even thinking this is a any kind of useable idea, but I thought I'd put it out there.

[edit]
I always use COBL with Oblivion - but COBL hunger is not a mod I would recommend.

But to expand on the idea. A core realism mod that could handle cataloging food, drink, and alchemy effects and then implement bonuses and consequences.

This here is another reason to have an esm. That way mods with new foods could have new foods with nutritional value.

I've given a lot of thought to the application of penalties/bonuses, and how to keep it from going fubared if I want to change things in an update. What I've done is to create a separate script effect for each of the various penalty types - hunger, satiety, alcohol, etc. The appropriate effects are applied when IMCN is activated, and dispelled when it is paused (pause and save before uninstalling.) When one of these effects is applied, it hands a reference to itself back to a central script that keeps track of things, so that that script can dispel all of the active effects when IMCN is paused.

Each effect script calculates percent changes to applicable actor values every few seconds based on your needs stats. It takes that percent and multiplies it by the appropriate base actor value, to get an overall change that's proportional to the player's stats, so things scale better with player level. That percent is a float, but to prevent rounding error from screwing up your actor values, the actual change to your stats is an integer, and tracked as such. Each script carefully keeps track of the total integer amount of change modded (I use modav) onto your character's actor values. That exact amount gets modded back on (or off) when the effect is dispelled.

This system will allow me to tweak penalty amounts in updates without messing up stats, since the amount of change is stored separately from the penalty strength. If I make substantial changes to penalties (like making them effect an entirely different actor value) I'll deprecate the old effect and create a new one, so the old one can still be dispelled when an update is detected (there's a system in place to detect updates and take the appropriate actions.)

As for a central system for keeping track of all this stuff, as a modder's resource, the penalty scripts I've created would be a great starting place for creating one. Basically I could create an esm with its own modav functions that other mods could use, with a central script actually modding the actor values and making sure nothing horrendous happens (like ending up with a negative speedmult.) If there's any interest in such a thing, I wouldn't mind creating it.

*Edit - Oh yeah, regarding esm/esp. This mod needs to have an esp since its changes to existing foods needs to override every other mod. At the moment its an esp. But it's also the kind of mod that ends up with compatibility patches, which is a lot more convenient if there's an .esm to reference. I'm hoping TESVEdit gets released soon so that I can easily split up my original forms and overrides into esm's and esp's. I'm on the fence as to whether my first release should be an .esp or an .esm./.esp combo.

I'm not sure if it's needed yet, but getting that out early would be awesome.

Cool - seems like you are already heading in that direction.

I've always wished that your realism mods were available for Oblivion, so this is just peachy with me.

With an esm other could then add on their unique takes on the system. Maybe even something like a new alchemy mod that would then reference the effects laid out in the esm. Maybe later expanded into a catalog of effects for other mods to utilize.

Anyway ... glad to see your considering this kind of approach. Makes it more usable/universal in the long run.

You the best IMP! Your mods for Fallout was awesome, so glad you plan on modding and playing Skyrim as well

I was just wondering if there was an eta on this and how basic is the basic?

Thanks for your time on this it will make alot of ppl extra super happy! I was disappointed in wasnt in vanilla skyrim so thx again and again and again!

ETA is later today. Everything I want for this first release is in (I restructured it to be more thread friendly last night) and I'm doing final play testing.

The basic mode tracks hunger, thirst, sleep, (or blood if you're a vampire) and satiety (how full your character is.) Raw meat also has a chance of causing food poisoning (enteritis salmonellosis), which can be cured like any disease via potion or shrine. It also wears off after a day, and is effected by your disease resistance. The only other complication is that it still takes time to digest stuff - drink some water or eat a steak and it takes a few minutes for it to fully enter your system. Liquids enter your system faster than solids, and caffeine and alcohol enter even faster than that. Basically though, just eat and drink before your hunger and thirst get below 0%, and you'll avoid penalties, and the calories and water should enter your system faster than they're depleted.

When you eat something a handy menu pops up to show you how its going to effect your stats, and what those stats are at the moment. This lets you avoid eating something that's going to make you grossly full, and gives you a second chance to say "woops, nevermind" if you accidentally click a food that could give you food poisoning.


Thanks!

I can't wait to try this out - I really think it will be great!

I'm SUPPER stoked for this, btw are you putting it on steam workshop (please) or the nexus... or best case senerio BOTH lol.

Really looking forward to this! Good work!

I'm going to try to do both, but keep in mind this is one of those mods that the Workshop's method of mod management would normally have problems with, so the Nexus version is going to have some advantages.

What usually ends up happening with a mod like this is that a bunch of other popular mods start adding new foods to the game, and if enough IMCN users request it, I'll make a compatibility patch for that mod so that eating its foods satisfies the IMCN eating requirements. In order to do this though, the compatibility patch needs to have IMCN as a master. Because of the way this mod works I need to create and edit the patches in the CK, which means IMCN has to be a true .esm, not just an .esp flagged as an esm. Since the mod also needs to override all of the foods in the game, as well as any changes made by other mods, it needs to also have an .esp that contains the overrides.

I'm new to the workshop, but so far I don't see a way to upload an .esm to it, much less an .esp/.esm pair - opening an .esm up in the CK and clicking "upload to workshop" gives you an error message that tells you to load an .esp into the CK first. Uploading an .esp prompts you to create a .bsa archive with any required files, but even if I could pack an .esm into that archive, it wouldn't be making it into your load order (and the mod would crash your game due to a missing master.)

So what I'm going to do is upload to the Workshop as a single .esp. It'll work fine, but you'll never get any compatibility patches for other mods (or DLC). If you want that, you'll have to use the Nexus version, which will be an .esm/.esp pair. If you switch, you'll need to first pause and uninstall the old version, create a new save, then install the new version.

whats the eta?

Do you have effects for being drunk, like imagespace modifiers or anything?

I tried doing a basic proof of concept inebriation mod for myself last week but I couldn't get the Apply() function to work. The ISMs worked because I tested them using console commands, and the script worked because I had debug messages run alongside the lines calling the Apply() function, but it would never activate them.

I just finished playing through Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD (amazing game btw) and got used to having a needs system so this sounds like it'll work well in Skyrim. I have Necessities of Morrowind and a needs mod for Oblivion but haven't done a playthrough with them yet. MGS3 is the first game I've played that had a needs system and once I got used to it I actually liked it so we'll see if it translates as well to Skyrim as it did for MGS3.