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customizing baby socials

This help file covers two things: customizing how your baby responds when
you (or another player) do things like cuddle or tickle them, and a newer
feature called double actions, which controls how your baby plays with
other babies on their own, with no player involved.
Both of these are managed from the same place.

OPENING THE EDITOR

Type customize followed by your baby's name to bring up their list of
customizable options.
Example: customize jackson
From that list, pick social responses. You'll be dropped straight into
the social editor.
You need to own the baby, or be on the trusted list to do this.
Once it's open, you'll see a menu with these options:
add a new social
edit a current social
remove a social
view current socials
test a social
manage double actions
done
Picking done at any point closes the editor and saves everything you've
changed as you went.

PART ONE: CUSTOMIZING SOCIALS

A social is any action a player can do to your baby, like cuddle, tickle,
or nibble. Every social your baby knows has three parts:
What you see when you do it to your baby.
What everyone else in the room sees at the same moment.
How your baby reacts afterward.
By default, your baby uses a shared set of messages that every baby of
their race can use. Customizing a social means writing your own version
of one or more of those, just for your baby.

ADDING A NEW SOCIAL

Pick add a new social from the menu. You'll see a list of every social
your baby doesn't have a custom version of yet. Pick one.
Your baby's race might not be able to learn a particular social. If that
happens, you'll get a message saying so, and you may need to show your
baby something first before that social becomes available.
Once your baby has learned the social, you'll be asked to write your
messages. You can add as many message pairs as you like, one at a time,
and you'll be asked after each one if you want to add another.
For each pair, you'll be asked:
What do YOU see when you perform this social on your baby?
What does everyone ELSE in the room see at that same moment?
After that, you'll be asked to write one or more reactions, which is how
your baby responds once the social happens. You can enter several
reactions at once, one per line, and your baby will pick one at random
each time.

PRONOUN SUBS

Rather than writing out names every time, you can use these in your
messages and they'll be filled in automatically:
%n and %d stand in for names. In your action messages, %n is you and
%d is your baby. In the reaction message, this flips: %n is your baby
and %d is you.
%his, %he, and %him are pronouns. In your action messages, these refer
to you. In the reaction message, they refer to your baby.
%his2, %he2, and %him2 are the same pronouns, but for whoever %his,
%he, and %him are NOT referring to. In your action messages, that's
your baby. In the reaction message, that's you.
You don't have to use all of these in every message. Use whichever ones
your sentence actually needs.

EDITING A CURRENT SOCIAL

Pick edit a current social, then pick the social you want to work on.
Socials can have different messages for different races, so you'll be
asked which race's version you want to edit, or you can add a brand new
race entry. The race called everyone is used as the fallback whenever a
specific race hasn't been set up.
From there you can:
Add a message (a new player and oplayer pair together).
Edit a message (pick an existing pair and rewrite either half).
Remove a message.
Add a reaction.
Edit a reaction.
Remove a reaction.
Delete this race's entry entirely, for this social only.
A quick note on counts: your player messages and oplayer messages should
stay matched up in number, since they're paired together and used
together. If they get out of sync, the editor will let you know. Your
reactions don't have to match that count exactly, but keeping them close
gives the best variety.

REMOVING A SOCIAL

Pick remove a social, then pick which one. This deletes everything for
that social, every race included, so you'll be asked to confirm first.

VIEWING CURRENT SOCIALS

Pick view current socials to get a quick list of every social you've
customized for your baby. This won't show you the actual message content,
just the names, so use edit a current social if you want to see or
change what's actually written.

TESTING A SOCIAL

Pick test a social, then pick a social and a race, if there's more than
one race set up. You'll get a private preview of what a player would
see, what the room would see, and how your baby would react. Only you
can see this preview, nobody else in the room is shown anything, so
it's a safe way to check your writing before it goes live.

PART TWO: DOUBLE ACTIONS

Every so often, if there's more than one baby in a room and neither of
them is asleep, they might interact with each other entirely on their
own, without any player involved. This is called a double action, and
it uses the exact same messages and reactions described above.
The difference is which social gets picked. Your baby's double actions
list is a separate, much simpler list that just says which socials your
baby is allowed to try on other babies when this happens. It doesn't
have its own separate messages to write, since it just points at the
socials you've already got set up.
If you'd rather your baby only ever tickle other kids and nothing else,
just put tickle on their double actions list and leave it at that.
If your baby's double actions list is empty, they simply won't start
anything with other babies on their own. This is completely safe and
won't cause any errors, your baby just won't strike up an interaction
until you add something to the list.

MANAGING YOUR BABY'S DOUBLE ACTIONS

Pick manage double actions from the main menu. You'll see your baby's
current list, then a small menu:
add a double action
remove a double action
back to main menu
Adding shows you every social available, whether or not you've
personally customized it yet, since double actions can use the shared
default messages too, just like any other social can. Pick one and it's
added to the list.
Removing shows you your baby's current list and lets you take one off.
There's no confirmation prompt for this since it's just adjusting a
list, nothing gets deleted or lost from your baby's actual social
content.

HOW BABIES LEARN FROM EACH OTHER

When your baby has a double action with another baby, something sweet
can happen: the other baby may pick up that social for themselves,
purely from being around your baby and seeing it done. This doesn't
happen every single time, it becomes more likely the more your baby is
exposed to that particular social, and it also gets a little easier as
your baby gets older. So a very young baby might take a few tries before
something sticks, and that's expected, not a bug.
At the same time, your own baby may pick up a new reaction after being
on the receiving end of a social, learning how to respond to something
by experiencing it.
Anything learned this way shows up as a normal custom social afterward,
so you can go back into edit a current social at any time to see it,
tweak it, or remove it if it's not one you want to keep.

QUICK TIPS

If your baby's race can't learn a social, you'll be told so right away.
Some socials are race restricted, and no amount of trying will change
that. You may need to show your baby something first for certain
socials to become available.
If a social feels out of sync between what you see and what the room
sees, check that its player and oplayer messages are equal in number.
The test a social option is the fastest way to catch this before other
players ever see it.
An empty double actions list is normal for a brand new baby. It's not
required, and nothing bad happens if you leave it empty, your baby will
simply be quieter around other kids until you decide otherwise.
You can jump between every part of this editor freely. Nothing you do
in one section affects your progress in another, and picking done only
ends the session, it never undoes anything you've already saved.

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