Shuffle Me v0.4.2 - Small Update - Skin Color, Card Upgrades

Hey, it's Sifa :D

Today is a small update again, so a small post. Haven't added everything I promissed, added some other stuff though xD

(download links are at the bottom of the post)

Themed Cards Upgrade

I wasn't fond of our old card upgrade system. Often it just upgraded the same theme over and over again.

With the new system, you choose between the 2 themes that you have the most experience in, along with a 'skip' option which resets their experience.

I think it's a bit better for both roleplay players and "deckbuilder" players. Also, for roleplay players we added another cool thing - a demonstration of the skill after you upgraded it. We'll likely add this when getting new cards, too, in a future update.

Skin Color

And yeah, forgot to mention that if you're upgrading a card that requires a "partner", there is a new NPC that will help you with that :D For now, this NPC is quite silent though.

As you can see, this Android NPC is white. We ended up reworked the Avatar a little so we can paint a character with any skin color. For now, we use that only for this new NPC and for the player character. There are 6 'basic' skin colors you can pick from when starting a campaign. Patrons can even pick their own unique colors in character creation :D

We might make something gameplay-related out of that later. For example, we could add tanning beds, and your 'tan level' could affect other stats, or become a new TF category. Regardless, this will give us a little more character variety going forward.

Plans and next steps

Sound

We prepared and tested systems for animation-driven sound in the game. Currently it's on me to make and add the sound to the animations themselves. The game systems can handle it now, but need to make assets. The plan to add sound looks like this:

1. Add SFX (sound effects: plaps, claps, etc.) for all the Human characters' animations

2. Add one Unisex (femboy) voice (moans, breathes, maybe short phrases) for all the animations

   1. A new "voice TF" will be added to tweak the pitch of the voice as characters are transformed, but all humans are otherwise use the same voice clips to start

3. Add SFX for all the non-Human characters

4. Add a feminine voice variant (in addition to pitch changes)

5. Add a masculine voice variant (in addition to pitch changes & other variants)

In the end, we'll have SFX and 3 voice timbres with dynamic pitch. This should be enough to cover everything we need in the future. The good thing is that I can add these step by step, even if the steps are quite big.

Sex Change

Sex change mechanics will be implemented soon. Already added a replacement that will help with the interactions; you can see it on the Android character in game. Just faced some unexpected problems that I won't explain. Just it requires some additional designing and programming.

Rebalance

Delayed it because of the adjustments to the Upgrade system and post-battle rewards in general. We'll do some stat balancing in the next update.

Jester unique NPC

We have a major issue: it's important for Unique NPCs to have some unique equipment, but we don't have a good way to separate those uniques from the regular clothes & cosmetics that are usable by players. The avatar systems weren't really built for use by enemies too, and that's starting to bite us here. We'll figure it out, but Jester is delayed a bit until then.

Shuffle Me v0.4.2 Changelog

• Added ability to adjust skin tone of human characters (including your avatar)

  • Everyone can pick from a "basic" skin tone at start of campaign, and "full" character creator has a color picker too

• Reworked card upgrade events in Floors:

  • Pick from your "top two" card themes (by usage/experience)

  • Shows animations of an upgraded card after upgrading

• Added unique NPC that helps with some animations (during Upgrade events only for now)

• Reworked post-battle rewards a little, mostly their chances to appear + some tiny QoL

• Added "UI sounds" volume slider for menu buttons & card sound effects. (This is a new subgroup of SFX, though we don't have other SFX audio added yet.)

• Added more internal controls for displaying decorations/objects in the level background and foreground. Not much done with that beyond "floor #" decals in the Floors campaign.

• Added systems to handle animation-driven SFX, voices, and their pitch in the game (though we haven't actually added audio to animations yet.)

• Fixed minor issues with "skip" button in some cutscenes/choices

• Fixed "bare" walls of the level background