Custom Story Creator Documentation

[fighteer]

After spending some time on Steam and Discord looking for anyone who'd written up formal documentation of CSC, I decided to do it myself. This is sort of a hobby of mine. I do it for work, and they pay me well, but that's not the core motivation.

There are two components: a Google Docs file and a Google Sheets file that I created to manage some of the lengthier tables.

House Party Custom Story Creator Documentation
House Party Custom Story Creator Data

These documents are works in progress. I think I have all of the structural elements of a story in there, and I've tried to capture all of the values and options and items and such that I could, but many of the effects/game functions are still poorly understood.

I could publish this as a Steam Community guide, but I have zero experience with that.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, but I am easier to reach via Discord.

[peter980]

Thanks on this.

[chimneyfish]

Yeah. Thanks!

[Biguette]

Good work ! thank you for that

[fighteer]

I am in the process of updating the documentation for House Party version 1.0.9. The biggest change is the addition of Character Groups, which I'm still working to understand.

Also added is Dynamic Dialogue (with the old Dialogue section renamed to "Static Dialogue"). This is not yet implemented in the game and CSC has warnings about it. I won't attempt to document the feature until we know more about it.

[fighteer]

Sorry for the delay: the documentation has been updated for House Party 1.0.9. Major notes follow.

• A (hopefully) complete description of the functionality of Character Groups has been added.
• Added missing sections for Character Interactions, Criteria Groups, and Character Item Interactions.
• Added more thorough documentation for State values.
• Separated Socializing from Roaming as they are separate behaviors.
• Added information about the unique features of Ashley's Top.

[eekdon]

Very cool. LMK if you have any pointed questions.

[fighteer]

As an FYI, I am working on updating the guide with the 1.3.0 changes. We don't have a new CSC version yet, but it is still possible to build functional stories in the 1.2.2.1 editor.

Major notes between the versions:

• Outfit management ("v2" clothing commands) is not available yet. You can still use pre-1.3.0 Clothing events, but alternate sets will not work as intended.
• You can use the new 'InOutfit:*' and 'IsWearing:*' values to check (but not set) the clothing configuration for NPCs.
• The Character Function 'IncreaseBreastSize' is broken and will cause weird things to happen if used.
• The Item Function 'FixShirt' of Ashley's Top will only retie the top if it is untied. It will not put it on.
• Ashley's Top is now On when it is Untied, but she is still considered Topless. This eliminates the need to use a Value to track its state.
• The Female PC 'FlashBreasts' Player Function works similarly to Ashley's Top now: Clothing:Top is On while State:Topless is true.
• Stephanie is no longer considered Bottomless or GenitalsExposed when her Underwear is off and her Top (dress) is on.
• EnableNPCAsync command has been removed. Use EnableNPC instead.
• Characters and Items no longer always load at game start. Instead, they load asynchronously after being enabled (either as a default or when referenced in the story). Events that reference Characters and Items may be queued and not fire immediately on Game Start. Story logic should take this into consideration.

As a reminder, any issues with Custom Stories or CSC in general can be discussed on Discord

[peter980]

This is a really good summary.

A couple of other things to add:

Intimacy state criteria checks that happen at 0s delay after intimacy pose change will detect new intimacy pose (before in 1.2.2.1 they would detect the previous pose). This will affect custom stories that used what is previous intimacy state to assign specific follow-up intimacy state. For example, the Against Walls action in the Original Story needed to be redesigned due to this.

InvisAudioPlayer and InvisAudioPlayer2 are removed and their functions to play sound. If you want to play audio, use the new PlaySoundboardClip event that was already used in Liz Katz DLC stuff.

SwitchToAlternateBodyTexture event is changed and does not use as key an integer id of texture but with an actual string value of the alternate texture.

SwitchToAlternateClothingTexture is completely removed. No longer possible to give alternate texture to clothing.

There is a new "Clothing" event function to give/remove wet or bloody effects to clothes.

Some other item/player functions are removed and replaced with other solutions.

.

Also Important:

If Doja Cat or Liz Katz DLCs are disabled in the game menu, any items specific to those stories will be disabled on the game start.

They could still be manually enabled and used if having those DLCs installed.

But, if you do not have those DLCs installed at all (for example DLC disabled on Steam or now owned at all), those items can not be used.

[Johnnyslim12]

As a longtime lurker, just wanted to thank peter for all his work on the Documentation, the page is very thorough and well written, and it answered several of my questions.


One thing I'm still not certain on after some tinkering is what determines whether the game uses the stock audio voices lines or not. I realize these correspond to the scripted dialogue responses in the original story, yet exporting the original story, and recreating it with edits as a mod; (edits which reference existing dialogue calls) result in no voice audio being played when a game is started on that new mod.

However, I've found if I treat this mod as the 'original story', moving to the game folder and preventing write access (game auto checks), then indeed character voice audio plays when called. What's the difference? Does it specifically check for a title of "Original Story.story"?