SHF3 v.27 - Personalities, Orgasm rework, Tickling, Facial animations...

Tier 2 patrons can try it here! 

I'm so late. Check out the Changelog below for a tldr and the FAQ for more info about what's going on.

Here's a long-ass rundown of the big tech features in this update:

Personalities (WIP)

Characters now have unique preferences. They can be aroused or turned off by toys, actions, or other ponies. They can also be intrigued by or afraid of things. 

A preference can be simple: e.g. Shining Armor and Cadance are obsessed with each other, Rarity hates anal. Or it can be complex: Dash is aroused by big toys but also afraid of them, Sweetie Belle likes to watch others take big toys but is terrified of them being used on her.

This can give characters major kinks: Starlight is a sadist, Pinkie is turned on by tickling. 

Or just minor quirks: Luna likes to watch.

I've only put in a basic set of personalities so far, and this whole thing is WIP for sure. Here's some thoughts on the future of this mechanic:

Obviously, some players will want to customize ponies' personalities. I'm working on a customization menu!

A character's emotional reaction only reflects the thing they're currently looking at. This is too simplistic and lends to some odd interactions. E.g. Rarity hates anal, but will forget about that if you show her a shiny thing. I'm working on making the ponies mentally aware of things happening to their bodies at all times, which should help with that.

I'm worried that right now it can be unclear why a character is reacting in a certain way. This one's kind of tough. I have some ideas for letting the characters communicate with you better, but other than adding big features like that, I don't see a super easy fix just yet.

The idea of a "personality" encompasses more than just a character's opinion of a certain toy or sex act. I have stuff in the works for larger-scale personality differences like shyness, submissiveness, willpower, etc. I'll talk more about these features as they develop.

Orgasm and edging rework

This update adds more varied orgasms, edging, orgasm denial, ruined orgasms, and hands-free orgasms. 

A meter pops up when you start Edging, showing how close to orgasm the character is, and what kind of orgasm is coming. Edging will quickly fill up the new Buildup meter, which makes for bigger orgasms. Edging and then denying an orgasm is frustrating for the character.

The new Orgasm meter also shows how intense/long the current orgasm is. If you stimulate them a lot while they're cumming, it'll make it more intense. If you stop stimulating them while they're orgasming, it'll give them a ruined orgasm, which is highly frustrating.

Buildup is a new mechanic that gives more reward for either slowly teasing a character to orgasm, or carefully edging them. It increases slowly, but goes faster when a character is highly aroused. When Buildup is maxed out, an orgasm builds much faster.

When Buildup and Arousal are maxed out, a character can cum without even being touched. Using spells can make this easier.

Tickling rework

Tickling is now its own thing, separate from Overstimulation. It's WIP but still a BIG improvement (the old tickling wasn't really tickling at all). High amounts of tickling will also build up the new Desperation meter, which makes a character panic and freak out. You can still overstimulate them if you try.

Stay tuned for more tickling features! Right now all you can do is tickle the hooves with the hair brush, but I'm working on letting you use vibrators on all the ticklish parts of the body, as well as adding in longer-term features like exhaustion and willpower that'll make tickle torture into a more rewarding mechanic. 

Facial Animation improvements

Okay. It's WIP. Just remember that.

Facial expressions now mix together dynamically. It's a little hard to explain in text, but basically, the face a character makes will be a mix of the two highest inputs. E.g. pleasure/pain, tickling/arousal, arousal/fear. It'll mix at the ratio of those two inputs. E.g. 70% pleasure : 30% tickling. 

This helps fix an age-old problem in this game- when you had a machine pounding a huge dildo in and out of a character, their face would keep swapping unrealistically between pain-pleasure-pain-pleasure-pain-pleasure. Now, their face will linearly scale up the pained expression as the huge dildo enters, then scale it back down as the dildo exits.

Also, there are more base expressions, more mouths, and the pupils dilate now, which helps a lot with communicating the emotion.

Perfect immersion! 

Well, sort of. The mouth still just flips between states. Still, I think this is the biggest step forward so far in making the characters' faces feel believable. Besides bug-fixing, I plan to put the facial animation stuff aside for a while, considering how time consuming it is.

Other features

Struggling animations are more varied now, depending on the kind of torture you're doing. Pain, fear, tickling, and desperation/overstimulation all have different kinds of struggling animations.

Useful hotkeys added for controlling the selected toy- size, abilities, machine power.

Changeling is now futa by default, and has a weird changeling dick.

Some minor UI improvements based on player suggestions.

TLDR Changelog

• Added personalities/preferences
• Added new Edging/Orgasm meter and mechanics
• Added Denied and Ruined orgasms
• Added Buildup- increases strength of orgasm
• Added Desperation- causes increased struggling
• Added dynamic facial expression blending
• Improved smoothness of expression changes
• Added more base faces for new stimulation types and features
• Added pupil dilation
• Improved Tickling
• Improved struggling animations
• Added changeling dick
• Added hotkeys for controlling the selected toy
• Toy and machine settings are now displayed side by side
• Any interaction with a character will now focus the UI on them
• Selecting a new character will auto-switch the UI to the main meters tab

Known bugs

• Having a toy selected but not in use (so it's transparent on the mouse) can cause an fps drop. I dunno what that's about but I'm still looking for the culprit.
• Blindfolding a character messes with arousal right now, since arousal is mostly generated from what they're looking at.
• some eyelashes might be a little off (rarity, celestia, luna, cadance)
• some minor clipping issues

FAQ

Why was this update so late?

I didn't learn time management skills as a child.

Performance issues in the new update?

Please let me know if you have fps issues! Again, moving the mouse around while holding a toy while it's transparent seems to cause an fps drop. But there's also a lot of new stuff added, and frankly I don't know how complex I can make things before performance becomes a problem.

What's coming next?

Chrysalis and some more changeling-specific features. I wanted to get them into this update, but then distractions happened >.<'

OTHER STUFF.

I'm going to do my best to decouple new features and release individual updates as I finish them. I failed miserably at that this time, which is why it was a big slow update rather than multiple quicker updates. 

Will you include X feature?

Maybe. 

This is a sandbox game and therefore the options are pretty wide open. There are some obvious missing tech features that I really really want to add (oral, bulges, cum milking, urethral penetration, new characters, species, customization options) as well as a million features I'd love to add (portals, inflation, pregnancy, multiple object penetration, etc). 

I wish I could give you a concrete roadmap of what will be included and when, but it's hard for me to know. Simple ideas (like latex bodysuits) sometimes turn out to be super hard to do, while seemingly complex ideas (personalities) actually become much more doable when I start working on them.

I love hearing about what you guys want. It helps me prioritize what I'm working on. I just can't give a definite "yes" or "no" to specific features. 

Do you actually read comments?

Yes, I read them! But I'm socially inept and usually don't answer them.

<3 <3 <3