Imp's More Complex Needs
Hunger/Thirst/Sleep Simulator

Finally Released! Available on the http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10639 and http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=13056.




So once I finally got my hands on the creation kit I got cracking on porting my Fallout 3/New Vegas needs mod over to Skyrim (past versions are linked in my sig.) It's another total rewrite, but should share most of the features that the New Vegas version had. For those unfamiliar with past versions, the most distinguishing characteristic is the use of http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/505763950866676499/0C95E5B8F488744F615B02D1941C57CCBBCFC788/ rather than semi-arbitrary game units. This is an unreasonably accurate simulation, not just a game mechanic. Sleep is measured in hours, hunger in calories, thirst in ounces of water (or mL, if that's your thing.) In addition to the usual hunger/thirst/sleep statistics, it also keeps track of:

• Satiation - Some foods are more filling than others. Try not to get too full.
  
• Nutrients - Eat your veggies for nourishment bonuses
  
• Protein - Protein offers additional bonuses, and promotes muscle building
  
• Alcohol - Tracked like any other stat, you'll be able to go from buzzed to hammered to dead depending on what you drink, and how much. Reported as an accurately calculated BAC (Blood Alcohol Content)
  
• Caffeine - I'll probably be adding in coffee and tea, so you can rise and shine
  
• Morale - Cooked food stats are equal to the sum of their parts, so in order to provide some incentive for cooking, tastiness will boost or lower your morale for a long lasting bonus (or penalty)
  
• Mental & Physical Fatigue - As the day progresses, your peak stamina and magicka will slowly diminish, depending on how active your are. Sleeping or resting will restore them to full. This is independent of your sleep requirement, which is fixed at 8 hours per day (configurable.) Thanks to Norbingel for the general concept.

If all that seems a bit daunting, one feature new to the Skyrim version is the optional "basic" mode. You'll still get accurate hunger/thirst/sleep tracking, but all of the other stats will be hidden and ignored (apart from satiation.) You can also choose to view all stats in terms of percentages, which makes things a bit easier, if less edifying (try to keep everything between 0% and 100% when you eat.) All options are configured via in-game menus rather than optional plugins.

Consumption rates factor in your activity level (i.e. whether you're sitting, running, sprinting, etc.) as well as your body weight, inventory weight, and the weight of your equipped gear. The amount of impact they have is configurable, as are all of the overall consumption rates. Upon installation, your height, body weight, body fat percentage, and skeletal muscle percentage are calculated based on race and six, and also used in determining rates of consumption and degree of inebriation. You can view all of these statistics and settings in in-game menus. If you're using the "more complex" mode rather than "basic", your character will build muscle and burn fat, or vice versa, gradually changing their body composition for various penalties or bonuses (and maybe an optional appearance change if SKSE's up to it.)

IMCN uses both the carrot and stick methods of enforcement. You'll be penalized for being hungry or dehydrated, but you can rack up bonuses from being fit and well nourished. Some statistics have a more or less instantaneous effect, like thirst, while others, like nutrients, body fat, and skeletal muscle yield long lasting effects that take a relatively long time to develop (several in-game days.)

Because this mod models consumption rates on reality, the game's default timescale of 20 is not recommended (you'd be hungry all the time.) So there's a built in timescale adjuster, based on the one I made for New Vegas (one of PC Gamer's top 25 New Vegas mods, mostly due to timing.) It has both fixed (timescale = what you set it to) and dynamic (timescale varies depending on location and activity) modes, and can be fully disabled if you'd rather use something else.

Other miscellaneous features:

• Eating/drinking animations
  
• Food spoilage (probably)
  
• Food poisoning
  
• Sleeping animations (maybe)
  
• Adjustable h/m/s regen rates (if people are interested)
  
• Rebalanced food weights
  
• Rebalanced recipes
  
• Rebalanced animal loot drops
  
• New recipes (eventually)
  
• Might do something with glycemic index at some point
  
• Optional snarky vitality status updates

Oh yeah, and I like playing as a vampire, so vampirism gets special treatment.

Feel free to post any suggestions, requests, or ideas. I'm expecting to get at least a beta released some time next week (2/13-2/18). So far I'm pretty impressed with the new engine's scripting language and capabilities (woo hoo functions!), though there are a number of features that may have to wait for SKSE.

Sounds absolutely fantastic, certainly the mod that I am most anticipating.

I wonder if it might be an interesting feature to add kind of a full screen blur effect when you wake up from sleeping to simulate waking drowsiness and from that coffee could alleviate that (or otherwise it would dissipate over time).

There was a grogginess penalty in past versions that would fit that pretty well. Visual effects are also toggleable.

To go along with that would it be possible to add stat hits, such as decrease in stamina, stamina regen along with magika and possibly even walking speed/swing speed to kind of simulate lethargy?

This could also work with the other systems such as not eating/drinking/sleeping or eating/drinking too much could reduce these stats as well.

I might also be beneficial to add an audio queue to notify the player that their character is hungry such as a growing stomach or panting when thirsty with increasing severity or volume of the sound effects.

I'm not sure how much of this is possible and none of these are overly important, might just be something to add in as a immersion element.

Audio queues are a pretty good idea, if I can find suitable sound effects. The Fallout versions of this mod relied heavily on posting stats to the screen, but I'm looking for another method for the Skyrim version because A) the dovahkiin doesn't have a pipboy strapped to his arm, so detailed stat readouts are a little unrealistic, I like the minimalist look of the Skyrim HUD, and C) I don't have the tools required to mod the UI at the moment.

As for penalties and bonuses, this new engine supports scripted effects a bit better than the Fallout engine did, so I'll be able to have much more precise control over how I apply penalties and bonuses (just figured out how I'm going to do it tonight, and I'm pretty happy with what it's letting me do.) Movement speed penalties and blanket stat penalties are easily possible.

Is it going to be possible to display something on the hud to keep track of the needs?

it is a pain right at the moment having to open my menu and check active magic effects just to see if my well rested bonus has worn off

Once SKSE has an IsKeyPressed function you'll be able to press a button to have your stats displayed, though it'll be a message box or maybe just a little note in the upper left corner of the screen (I don't have any Flash editing software at the moment, so I can't do advanced UI modding like I did for the Fallout versions.) For now, there are potions that you equip to show the menus, and they can be favorited and hotkeyed so you don't have to open your inventory.

woooww!!!the name's Complex really lives up to it's name...LOL

i really want to add suggestions,but i think you have it all covered up,hahahahaha...anything else on your mind??

Ohh goody. My favorite realism mod for these games.

Are you going to cover hypothermia?

I do want to do hypothermia, most likely built around something like that Ambient Temperature mod that I made. I'm not sure if it would be part of IMCN or standalone (probably depends on how many people request it), but either way, I'm going to try to get the h/t/s stuff done first, release that, then go from there.

I would vote stand-alone. If just because it would make bugtracking and updating easier.

However you had it in F3 (I forget) worked fine by me.

Hi Imp, I was waiting of such a mod and second your idea deeply. Please, if it is possible: add a sleeping animation (delete "maybe").

Out of curiosity how will you implement thirst when there is no drinkable water in the game? will it be newly added bottled water?

It looks like all of the water objects in the game are activators (yay!), which means I can add text overrides to them to make the "drink" text appear when you target them, and I can either attach a script to all of them or create an activation perk to make the menu pop up. It would be nice if bash/TESVEdit had a merge keywords function (I'm guessing they will shortly), that way I could just add a keyword to all of them, have an activation perk check for that keyword, so I wouldn't break compatibility with any other mods that tweak water.

Hi Imp,

would you consider implementing the "green pact" for Bosmer somehow?

Rgds, Haldir

Sounds fun, maybe a bonus called Y'frre's Patronage that only applies if a Bosmer subsists solely on meat and water for several days. I'm a little new to TES, so if anyone else has any lore friendly suggestions I'm all ears.

In addition to alcohol, have you considered adding effects for consuming Skooma, moonsugar, tree sap, etc?

Moon sugar and skooma seem to be the same substance, just different concentrations, while sleeping tree sap has totally different effects. I could probably add a couple of more stats and track them similarly, moon sugar and sleeping tree sap. I'd use the same rate multiplier as caffeine so the config menus don't get too crazy.

*Edit - Though moon sugar's an ingredient, and skooma and sleeping tree sap are potions. I wasn't planning on doing anything with anything other than foods until a little farther down the line.

Hi Imp,

glad you`re not against the idea. Green pact or maybe just Bosmer culture, AFAIU, also included ritual cannibalism, consuming your fallen enemies, in the mod for buffs.
That would be awesome to have.

Rgds, Haldir

@Imp

Can't wait to try it "optional hardcoe mode like FNV choose or something like that"...

I'm trying to decide if vampires should feel the effects of alcohol and caffeine. At the moment, food has no effect on them apart from any blood they may be able to drain out (so they get a little benefit from raw meat, but that's about it.) Anyone have a preference?

I don't see why vampires wouldn't feel the effects of various substances, exactly, but they wouldn't necessarily be the same effects.

Take caffeine: Do vampires need to sleep, or do they need to be out of the sunlight, or do they need to enter a resting state ("meditation") that is not actually sleeping? Caffeine might eliminate a need that corresponds to sleep, so it might help alleviate the ill effects of sunlight, for example. Or it might do something else, like get them drunk. Or just make them hyper, having no effects on their needs but providing a temporary stat boost followed by a mild withdrawal.

Take alcohol. It has no real place in human needs, although many forms provide some calories. In fact it's pretty bad for you, at least if you push the consumption levels high enough. The argument for making it provide even a temporary stat boost for humans is slim, but that's what the devs did, so let's develop their (possible) argument: It's a painkiller, and might allow you to better endure your combat injuries (health boost). It's a muscle relaxant, and can in fact cause you to take less injury from accident (although it does make you more accident-prone, for what ought to be a net combat malus to most people); this could translate into, I dunno, an armor boost with an Agility decrease? (If Agility were in the game as a chance-to-avoid stat.) Anyways, alcohol has not a thing to do with human needs, so I don't really see why it should affect vampires differently. But it could, and you could make the effects pretty wacky if you wanted.

So... no opinion from me, but some possible ways to handle it.

Vampires won't need to sleep eight hours a day, but if you're using the complex mode, which has mental and physical fatigue, they will be able to use sleep to recover from fatigue. Caffeine will probably negate fatigue to some extent, as well as possibly increasing some intelligence related skills, like speech, so vampires would still gain some benefit from it. I guess the question I'm asking is more a lore thing, just how undead are TES's vampires? Is it a supernatural condition or a scientific one?

The past versions of this mod were for the Fallouts, which let me make alcohol mostly detrimental unless you had certain perks (party boy/girl I think.) Skyrim doesn't have any fun perks like that, but I could probably make a case for the health (or maybe damage resistance) boost that you suggested. Alcohol also boosted charisma in Fallout, which I think makes sense, so you'll get that bonus provided you aren't belligerently drunk. I usually try to have a BAC "sweet spot" that produces the greatest benefits - any less and the benefits are weaker, any more and you start having serious penalties.

My understanding of Vampirisim in TES is that it's a combination of both scientific and supernatural... I mean, for all intents and purposes the vampire is undead. Yet the condition is reversable with the right cure...


Anyways, I'm looking forward to your mod, it's intense and just the kind of survival addition I'm wanting for the harsh realm of Skyrim.

BTW, loved your powered power armor mod =D