SHF3 v.34 - Linked Senses and Sheaths

Okay, here we go! Sense-linked toys and some much needed sheath upgrades. This one's a mechanics-focused update. 

Starting with the sheaths- Now, the sheath toy can be resized, and tightness is a factor. Sheaths on dicks use the same basic logic as dildos in orifices. Tighter sheaths are more pleasurable, but too much squeezing is painful. The internal walls of the sheath show you how tight the sheath's grip is. 

Sense link- Dildos and sheaths now have the ability to magically link to a character's senses. Dildos can link to dicks, and sheaths to orifices. The targeted character will then feel whatever you do with the toy. Orifice tightness and squeezing transmits across the sense link, so a too-big dildo or a too-tight sheath can hurt both characters. You can, of course, make a character fuck themselves with their own sense-linked toy. There's also no limit on links, so you can link a bunch of toys to one character :3

Tier 2+ patrons can test it out here! 

And... yup, that's pretty much the update! The majority of time was actually spent on the sheath thing. I've mentioned in recent posts that the penetration system wasn't originally built for sheaths and would need an overhaul. I was underestimating the scale of the problem. Wrapping my brain around how to express size, shape, and tightness from both the perspective of the dildo/dick AND the sheath/hole took me a goddamned minute. The result is a somewhat small feature to the player, so the time spent wouldn't have been worth it if that was the only point of this overhaul.

See the stuff at the bottom of this post for more about what's coming next!

Changelog

• added the ability to link a character's senses to a toy. Click on the toy ability, then on the body part's icon that shows up for the target character. The toy settings will show the cutie mark of whoever the toy is linked to. Click the button again to unlink. A link can only be made to a visible body part on a visible character. 
• enabling sense link will change a toy's color to match the linked character
• sense-linked toys transmit sensations from motion and tightness. For example, an extremely tight orifice on a sense-linked dildo can hurt the linked dick, and using a linked sheath on a small dick won't be very exciting for either character.
• sense link can be established multiple times at once on the same body part.
• sheaths now use the same base tightness mechanic as orifices. A tight sheath will be more pleasurable. A too-tight sheath can be painful.
• sheaths can be resized
• sheaths have a visible internal hole. Follows dick shape. The internal walls help indicate how tight the sheath is inside (WIP)
• tightness gives more pleasure and less pain to dicks than stretching does to orifices
• fixed an issue making it hard to leave sheaths attached to dicks
• updated sheath sprite to vector
• added minor base-level pleasure to being penetrated/penetrating a toy
• enabled the "receiving" tab for characters in the personality menu. Affects how the current character likes using a toy sense-linked to another character.
• added short descriptions to the personality menu to clarify what each section is for
• split body parts section in personality menu into two tabs, one for body parts a character has, and one for interacting with body parts
• added gender preferences in personality menu
• overhauled penetration system in the back-end to be unified and more flexible
• fixed issue with blindfolds being misplaced on some characters
• fixed Gabby being mislabeled as Gilda
• added version indicator

Known issues:

• the face can get stuck after repeated pass-outs. Orgasms seem to cure it.
• urethra preferences might be busted right now
• sheath icon shrinks way too much when not in use
• sheath toy has some visual glitches on Gabby
• sense linking won't change the toy's color while it's not in use
• occasionally characters will look at the top-left of the screen if you take certain toys off of them
• some sound effects might not update properly when using hotkeys

Stuff to improve

The personality system isn't quite sophisticated enough to handle all aspects of linked senses yet. There's not a way to make characters fully react to the two-way interaction that the sense-link creates. This is super important, so I want to improve this ASAP.

Sense-linked toys also brings to mind the obvious question- instead of a dildo linked to a character's senses, why not just let me detach the actual penis and fuck someone with it? That brings us to...

What's next?

The truth is, I've been building up the back-end of this game for a long while now to support the next big feature: Portals!

Every update, I've been chipping away at a huge list of prerequisite mechanics that portals will rely on to function. From improving fluids (for creampies via portal), to updating toy size/shape logic (for the many sizes/shapes of dicks the portals will need to handle), to personality features (for letting the characters react to being fucked by one another), and a whole lot more that I'm forgetting. This penetration thing has been holding me back for a long while. Between that and linking senses to toys, this update was the last major technical hurdle before I could begin development on portals.

I have a pretty solid idea of how to handle the mechanics design, so I want to start prototyping the toy and letting you guys test it as soon as I can.

Now, there's still a couple things to shore up on the way to making portals work: the personality stuff I mentioned, cum tubes for dildos (to prepare for cumshots), as well as side features like body modification stuff that'll mesh well with portals. But it's finally time to start putting the pieces together and bringing a portal toy to SHF3. 

Portals are also the last entirely "new" mechanic I'm planning on adding for a little while. Once they're in, my goal is to go through and flesh out the many mechanics SHF3 has with more content and depth. There are a lot of WIP features in this game that could be so much better, and a lot of really good suggestions y'all have given me about how to improve them. 

Rest assured, there'll be lots of new stuff during that period, it'll just be focused around the existing feature set. I'll talk more about this once we get to that point.

What about Factory?

I didn't get a whole lot done on Factory. This SHF3 stuff kicked my ass. I want to balance development of these two games, but when things get tough, SHF3 will take priority as it's still my main project. Will keep you guys updated with my progress on Factory as it happens.

Where the hell is the public update?

Yeah, um, sorry about that. I'll make a post this week on it >.<'

Obligatory IRL update

I've always felt stressed and stupid for having so much trouble planning and managing my time, and now I'm starting to realize that it may just be the way my brain is wired. Learning coping mechanisms for a distracted mind is surprisingly easy, but for some reason we don't get this stuff in school.

This is an ever-present topic on my Patreon. I'm always behind, always wondering why I'm so bad at this stuff, and always feeling like I just can't get a handle on where my time is going. Learning project management has been helpful, but that's large-scale planning. Nothing improves if I can't sit down and focus. 

Learning basic meditation and grounding techniques has been a life saver. I'd recommend it to anyone struggling with the same issues. March might actually be the month where I get stuff done on time.

No promises, obviously. <3