The Nursery

Zavos

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2016
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Any chance the Stydian kids could have an option to be modded so they don't rust up everything?  It would be pretty horrible in the futuristic space universe if you had the literal touch of technological erosion.  
 

Savin

Master Analmander
Staff member
Aug 26, 2015
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Any chance the Stydian kids could have an option to be modded so they don't rust up everything?  It would be pretty horrible in the futuristic space universe if you had the literal touch of technological erosion.  

I'm pretty sure Sydian kids are just humans
 

Gedan

BUTTS BUTTS BUTTS
Staff member
Aug 26, 2015
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I can get behind that sorta thing, totally.

This is p. much exactly what I intended when I was suggesting what to do. That combined with some ability to track ages so that shit can, at the very least, react roughly to the kids that aren't uniquely written as they grow up rather than existing simply as a static, racially-type number forever.
 
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Jacques00

Administrator
Moderator
Aug 26, 2015
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there needs to be an "Infertile" starting perk for people that dislike the fetish to the point of never wanting to have to deal with it.

Implemented a "Infertile" starter perk in the pull request (#876) that can only be attained in the character creation menu.


If it gets in, it will drop fertility and virility down to zero, making natural pregnancy impossible (hopefully). This may have some inconsistencies with a few items/events that attempt to increase said values, but all in all, it's like a permanent male and female Sterillex effect. I don't think it will prevent forced incubation, so anal "pregnancies" can still happen.
 

Nonesuch

Scientist
Creator
Aug 27, 2015
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It might be because they are the mutated crew/colonists of the ship. 

Are you basing that off anything? I know Zeik has a Tarkus quest draft floating around somewhere.
 
K

Krynh

Guest
Are you basing that off anything? I know Zeik has a Tarkus quest draft floating around somewhere.

Pure speculation based on the Sydian giving you a human baby. Plus I think Fenoxo said there was a reason why they did that.
 
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Lashcharge

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2015
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Pure speculation based on the Sydian giving you a human baby. Plus I think Fenoxo said there was a reason why they did that.

I assumed it was a temporary code simplication reason, rather than a lore one.
 

Nik_van_Rijn

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Sep 10, 2015
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Moscow, RF
We really need Tarkus to have it's own planetary topic, because this place's lore is one big hot mess, and neither of the sizable info dumps about the planet's history really makes it any more clear.


As for the colonists ship idea, at least the general concept of several vessels crashing down on the planet and leaving their crew behind is supported by Nova and whatever ship of an unspecified alien civilization Kaede and Anno found in Genestealer. It'd be weird to have two ancient human vessels ending up crash-landed on one planet, but little about Tarkus makes much sense. Which brings us to the starting point of my post.
 
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Nonesuch

Scientist
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Aug 27, 2015
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I assumed it was a temporary code simplication reason, rather than a lore one.

No, Zeik definitely hinted at a reason on his sydian doc why you get mostly human kids off them. I doubt he would have bothered putting together the pregnancy that he did otherwise.


I highly doubt it's because sydians are mutated humans, though.
 
K

Krynh

Guest
No, Zeik definitely hinted at a reason on his sydian doc why you get mostly human kids off them. I doubt he would have bothered putting together the pregnancy that he did otherwise.


I highly doubt it's because sydians are mutated humans, though.

I'm happy to be wrong about it. I'm sure the real answer will be more interesting.
 
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Gedan

BUTTS BUTTS BUTTS
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Aug 26, 2015
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No, Zeik definitely hinted at a reason on his sydian doc why you get mostly human kids off them. I doubt he would have bothered putting together the pregnancy that he did otherwise.


I highly doubt it's because sydians are mutated humans, though.

Ye, the answer is in ~the quest~ that needs reviewing/cleaning up/implementing. As with all things Z though, I cry a little inside when I look at the doc.
 

Zavos

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2016
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Implemented a "Infertile" starter perk in the pull request (#876) that can only be attained in the character creation menu.


If it gets in, it will drop fertility and virility down to zero, making natural pregnancy impossible (hopefully). This may have some inconsistencies with a few items/events that attempt to increase said values, but all in all, it's like a permanent male and female Sterillex effect. I don't think it will prevent forced incubation, so anal "pregnancies" can still happen.

I can definitely see Victor choosing this.  
 

Lashcharge

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2015
706
137
AOkay, so after some planning, discussion, questioning, and more discussion, there seems to be a tentative agreement about a "new" aspect of TiTS' pregnancy system: genetics!


The lore of gene mods is such that passing down modded traits is not supposed to be possible. That's not how they work. There's some notable inconsistencies with that in the game right now (Briha and Kelly come to mind), but tying up those loose ends isn't what this is about. This is about forward progress!!


Pending eventual coding implementation, we're hopefully going to have a new system in the game that will track the superficial traits Captain Steele has immediately upon exiting character creation. That is, stuff like eye color, hair color, and skin/fur/scale color. When these are properly stored within the code, it will allow writers to call back to them using either new parser calls or... something. What that allows is a consistent and tidy set of genetics that Steele can reliably pass onto their children, even generic ones. Steele's traits won't need to be tracked during pregnancies, and your kids aren't going to be wildly inconsistent in their appearances. They'll be your kids (even if you look different than they do :p ).


So, for an example of how this might work, here's a blurb from my [WIP] zil birth scene:


[baby.hairColor] and [baby.skinColor] would return the hair and skin color Steele had at the start of their adventure. Their "true" hair and skin color that they were born with, essentially. Of course, since this isn't implemented yet, there's no guarantee it's going to use parser calls in that exact way. This is just an example.


This feature will make creating children with inherited traits much easier, and, as far as I'm aware, lighten the coding legwork required to track pregnancies, since traits will no longer need to be saved in a statblock (like they are for Briha) unless someone wants to go way out their way to account for specific special snowflake features. (If that last part's not true, any coder can feel free to correct me!)


When this is implemented, there's going to be an in-game prompt that will let you re-enter your "birth traits" into the Codex or some other database thing. That's how this is going to work for saves that predate it. I don't know much about the coding of it beyond that, though. Sorry.


Anyways, that's it. Have a great day! :D  

According to the Zil Codex, hybrid zil children are not true hybrids, but chimeras. Here is the wiki link. You should probably adjust the description to fit that.
 

Lashcharge

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2015
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Yeah I know, but "You're the father of two adorable zil chimeras," well... it doesn't sound as good. :p  


Also, I don't even know what the implications of hybrid zil being "chimeras" really are, because a biological chimera is:


That's not what zil kids are. I don't know how or why they're supposed to be chimeras. The only way I could see a zilmom giving birth to a chimeric child is if the two fertilized zygotes fused together over the course of her pregnancy, which is not unheard of in the real world, but I don't understand how that would be standard for all interspecies zil pregnancies.


I just generally don't know why that bit is there in the zil wiki blurb, but maybe @Savin or @Fenoxo can answer that?

Zil already have a tendency to produce twins and triplets(which is how the more noticeable chimeras are made) so that might be a factor.


To be honest I also dislike making children look extremely close to their non-human father/mother pc, as it feels a bit uninspired to me. I do understand why it's done considering that the player can be born as several hybrids races.
 

Lashcharge

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2015
706
137
It's either watering down what Steele passes on or just not allowing interspecies breeding, honestly. There's too much potential variance. This level of interspecies breeding is already wildly unrealistic and would absolutely never happen barring some kind of horribly misguided science experiment, so we just kind of have to do what we can.

In the Lore Bible there was mentions that all of steele's children would be as if the player was a pure human, unless that pc had transformed into a pure race then it would be that way. I assumed Vic's genetic manipulated the pure human part at the start of the game and the nanites would do the second part.


Even through these are only one paragraph long descriptions, it would be a lot more work if we consider that applying both of these would be an exponential amount of work.


EDIT: Here it is:

[SIZE=17.333333333333332px]A Note on Breeding[/SIZE]



[SIZE=14.666666666666666px]    [/SIZE][SIZE=14.666666666666666px]For the sake of writing/coding sanity, the PC's microsurgeon enhanced immune system effectively maintains his ability to produce human seed and eggs, even if the surrounding ejaculate is transformed into something else. Because not being able to have pure alien babies when you're 100% alien is gay, it's plausible that 100% morphed PCs could have this temporarily fail or become overwhelmed during copulation with the same species.[/SIZE]

This is likely outdated at this point.
 
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Xeivous

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Sep 21, 2015
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Wouldn't it make more sense for the PC's microsurgeons to keep their genetic material as that of their half-breed species if they were born a half-breed?
 

Xeivous

Well-Known Member
Sep 21, 2015
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It does do that! If you're a half-kaithrit with black fur, and children you have that have fur might be able to have black fur as well! That's why we're only saving the superficial traits. ;)  


We can just say everything else gets washed out by the fact that you're always at least half-human.


We gotta draw lines somewhere. Can't write a three book series for every kid.

That's fair, given that more starting species are far easier to add than mucking with how kids work. Though some sort of message that tells players this during character creation or an e-mail once you get in game that explains the mechanics and lore justification is probably something that needs doing.
 
Jan 22, 2016
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I mean, there's not really a lore justification for it, sadly. At least none other than "gene mods aren't inheritable." Adding a message to the character creation doctor that's something like "Remember, Vic, these are the traits your kid will pass on to their own kids. Choose wisely." wouldn't be a bad idea, though.

Hold on, don't a lot of characters say that children can often inherit certain special traits from their parents if they got modded before conceiving?
 
Jan 22, 2016
17
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If they do, they shouldn't. Pretty sure Kelly is the only one that says that, and she's a canonical inaccuracy. Just like Burt mentions/mentioned zil queens at some point. Zil don't have queens, they have chieftains.


Community contribution leads to those kinds of disconnects when not everyone is on the same page. It's one reason this system is an important step towards implementing pregnancy content. Briha's kids already handle things the wrong way (not that I believe JimT did that on purpose). With this, hopefully we won't have any more like that.

I can't check right now but I remember Syri telling you that the reason she has a dick isn't because of her parents getting modded, implying that it happens sometimes.
 
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argenten

Well-Known Member
Sep 9, 2015
752
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If they do, they shouldn't. Pretty sure Kelly is the only one that says that, and she's a canonical inaccuracy. Just like Burt mentions/mentioned zil queens at some point. Zil don't have queens, they have chieftains.


Community contribution leads to those kinds of disconnects when not everyone is on the same page. It's one reason this system is an important step towards implementing pregnancy content. Briha's kids already handle things the wrong way (not that I believe JimT did that on purpose). With this, hopefully we won't have any more like that.

Fact checking is indeed important in a wide-sourced game like TiTS. As for the baby genetics...I kinda have to side with Steele having minimal impact on their looks. Not because I don't want to see blurbs of how Steele's children resemble him/her...but because it comes down to variance coding and the nightmare therein. 
 

argenten

Well-Known Member
Sep 9, 2015
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Ah, I see. That's a bit disappointing, but I guess it'd be a nightmare to code.

Pretty much, with a video game, even in a text based one like this, story sometimes has to bow to the powers of "This would be awesome...but in practical terms uh no."

With this genetics system, you actually will get blurbs about how your kids resemble you, Just not the modded you. In the TiTSverse, they're probably going to grow up and completely change their appearances anyways, so it doesn't really matter in the long run. :p  

Right, but that also fits with the nature of the TF being primarily cosmetic in nature and affecting things in their specific areas and that's it. Trying to keep track of all the changes to keep the sperm/ovum up to date would be a task and a half for even the best nanites considering how often Steele can change how they look?
 
Jan 22, 2016
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Each one would be a black hole of everything Steele could be plus everything the other parent could be in all potential combinations. There'd be no way to describe them in less than a million words.

It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.


— H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
 

argenten

Well-Known Member
Sep 9, 2015
752
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Pretty much, by keeping the core genetic code locked as it were, Steele won't be putting the dynasty at risk of dissolving in a sea of TFs
 

argenten

Well-Known Member
Sep 9, 2015
752
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This also avoids the nasty moral dilemma of taking things like Throbb that have obvious detrimental side effects. If taking those meant you ran the risk of passing their side effects to your children... Let's not even get into that nightmare.  o_O

Oh gods, that would be horrific. As with all things, there do need to be practical limits to what can impact a story or game. The Bimbo ray would be truly monstrous if it impacted the next generation for example.