Shuffle Me v0.2.3 - Skirts - Regular Update

Hey, it's Sifa :D

(download links at the bottom)

I'm making smaller updates that will be used in the big Story Mode & Progression update. This time it's a crucial part of upcoming progression system: SKIRTS!

Skirts

Adding skirts was quite a quest. Basically I had to add another set of leg bones for skirts only, then add another set of bones for transformation of lower body. And that's the simple part...

The hard part was supporting skirts in all the animations. You see, skirt has very unique behaviour in comparison with pants. Pants simply follow legs, nothing complicated here. I mean, each pant leg follows the leg. But wearing a skirt is like having 2 legs in a single pant leg.

So, skirts should follow both legs at the same time, making them impossible to automate by rigging. I had to animate the skirt bones for every single animation. Basically like I did with the legs, but with the different behaviour.

Moreover, when I made half of the animations, I realized that I gave the new bones the wrong inheritance... so I had to fix that and start from scratch again xDDD

Another issue is that in some extreme bending positions they look a bit broken. It's most annoying with the mini skirts while you wear a cropped top.

I have some ideas about how to fix that, though it requires quite a lot of time to try everything and adjust it properly. I'll fix that later. Animations like that are not that common, thankfully. In most of those cases your skirt will be off already :D

Next Steps - Sound, Card Expansion, Underwear

And few words about what to expect next.

First, we finally found very cool lewd sound pack. 26 GB of high quality stuff. So audio is coming soon :D

Next, battle gameplay. I've gathered some info about the cards, so I think it's time to add more cards. At first, I will probably make very fast artworks for them. I don't want to add anything generated by AI to Shuffle Me, so at first I'll make a bunch of quick artworks for the cards. From there we will gradually replace them with pretty artworks.

Also, about the action cards. I don't like that interactions can be triggered by Opponents only. So the goal is to add a bunch of player cards that will interact directly with the opponents, rather than just solo animations.

And underwear. Yeah, it's hardly a TF game without trying on panties for the first time. So sure I have to add underwear. First will add legwear, because that's simple. Then undies, bcz I don't expect too much trouble with them, then bras.

Once all of that is done, I think it won't take much time to finish Story Mode with the proper Player Progression. So wait for that :D

f95zone issues

And just a little whining about f95zone from me... You can skip it, it's not about the game.

You see, all of us spent quite a lot of time on the previous update. But guess what. f95 rejected our request to promote the game because there was "no content". I tried to explain to them that we fixed a lot of stuff, including animations, we changed some mechanics, added quality of life stuff like zooming. But all of that was futile... "Content" for them is all about visuals, animations, or a lot of dialogue (aka story).

I was very frustrated. "Don't they want me to work on the mechanics?" "Would they have promoted the game if instead I added one more recolor for an item?". It's so stupid, I had no words. Just think about it, if you improve the mechanics or QoL, it doesn't matter. While "content" updates get promoted and you get new subscribers. It just kills my motivation to improve mechanics. Now I see why there are so many Visual Novel games and text-based games. Bcz they're guaranteed to be promoted... While in gameplay oriented games you can't focus on mechanics, you still need to "produce content".

Why promotion on f95 is so important? Well, yeah, they have a huge audience, so appearing on the first page even for a little while is crucial. I think at least half of people reading this are from f95, so I was very upset about that. Not enough to stop working, but still, this situation forced my brain to work and think about that.

At first I thought about making "content" updates for f95 specifically, by removing content from there, and adding it gradually when it's required. For example, if I release 2 skirts on Patreon, I release only 1 for f95, and the next time I want to make QoL or technical update - I have another skirt as "content" XDDDDDDDDD

But it's stupid, I don't want to make one more build just for f95. After all, there are other websites like Itch and TFGS, so I won't change my approach too much. I just won't post bug fixes or mechanics/QoL updates on f95zone, it will stay on patreon and other websites. Also Public version of the game will no longer get Transformation mechanics. It's paywalled now :D At least till I release the game officially. Though I think the game will be stolen pretty soon anyway xD

I made that to compensate for "No Content" updates. Because I still want to improve mechanics and gameplay. I'm learning game design, I like games with deep gameplay mechanics. So that's the way to go.

Anyway, just wanted to talk about that a little, sorry for whining :D

Shuffle Me v0.2.3 Skirts - Changelog:

• Added 2 types of skirts (with full animation support)

  • regular skirt with simple recolors

  • mini skirt with simple recolors

• Opponent progression in the Arena is now pretty and feminized (including skirts)

• Fixed a bug where losing combat via stress/arousal would allow you to continue a run even when fully transformed

• Body TF is now moved to Patreon versions only

• Updated roadmap

• Several other small fixes, UI adjustments, etc.

(forgot to add the download links at first, sorry)