HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]

[Deleted member 3064965]

I agree that this update was slightly less good than the previous ones. The descriptions of the bar shifts feel slightly repetitive and doesn't bring that much to the story—though that's also down to how the first shift was so detailed and good.

I also agree that Kate's getting into it a bit too fast. It's a normal problem for the games on this site that the characters go through way too much change in a short time, and this certainly isn't the worst example, but still. Having more work days with less content in each has been mentioned, but I also think Crush could go a bit more easy on the "never been as wet in my entire life" kind of phrases.

And even though this part of the story is linear—from bartender to prostitute—I think it would be a good idea to, at some point, write some slightly different paths leading up to the same point. As an example, I could see the first meeting with Connor ending with Kate not agreeing to have sex with him, but still getting the job. Not because he's OK with that, but rather because he understands that she won't do it now. So instead of ending up with Kate just refusing the job, he decides to get her on board and wait until the right moment. Then, when Kate is hardly getting any shifts and is treated like shit by Connor, and she'll have to report back to her bosses that things aren't going according to plan, it becomes obvious to her that there's no way to avoid having sex with Connor if she wants to succeed in infiltrating the club.

That might be more an illusion of choice than actual meaningful choices, but it would give some sort of agency to the player, and the possibility to roleplay Kate in a way that fits with how you see her. A lot of the content would be similar, but with the current update frequency it would probably take several months either way, though.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the birthday party in the next update. It will be intersting to see how Kate interacts with her colleagues, and if she might end up forming some kind of real friendships. She could certainly need it in the situation she's in, but it would obviously make her double role even more difficult to handle. Maybe we'll also get a chance to see how Kate reacts to sexual interest from others outside of the club now. Will she be more likely to just go home with some random person because how casually she's using her sexuality at work, or will it be the opposite?

 

[berny]

I agree that this update was slightly less good than the previous ones. The descriptions of the bar shifts feel slightly repetitive and doesn't bring that much to the story—though that's also down to how the first shift was so detailed and good.

I also agree that Kate's getting into it a bit too fast. It's a normal problem for the games on this site that the characters go through way too much change in a short time, and this certainly isn't the worst example, but still. Having more work days with less content in each has been mentioned, but I also think Crush could go a bit more easy on the "never been as wet in my entire life" kind of phrases.

And even though this part of the story is linear—from bartender to prostitute—I think it would be a good idea to, at some point, write some slightly different paths leading up to the same point. As an example, I could see the first meeting with Connor ending with Kate not agreeing to have sex with him, but still getting the job. Not because he's OK with that, but rather because he understands that she won't do it now. So instead of ending up with Kate just refusing the job, he decides to get her on board and wait until the right moment. Then, when Kate is hardly getting any shifts and is treated like shit by Connor, and she'll have to report back to her bosses that things aren't going according to plan, it becomes obvious to her that there's no way to avoid having sex with Connor if she wants to succeed in infiltrating the club.

That might be more an illusion of choice than actual meaningful choices, but it would give some sort of agency to the player, and the possibility to roleplay Kate in a way that fits with how you see her. A lot of the content would be similar, but with the current update frequency it would probably take several months either way, though.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the birthday party in the next update. It will be intersting to see how Kate interacts with her colleagues, and if she might end up forming some kind of real friendships. She could certainly need it in the situation she's in, but it would obviously make her double role even more difficult to handle. Maybe we'll also get a chance to see how Kate reacts to sexual interest from others outside of the club now. Will she be more likely to just go home with some random person because how casually she's using her sexuality at work, or will it be the opposite?

Totally agree.
There is no need for complicated branching storylines that make the slow development even slower, but some kind of player agency so that you don't feel like you are reading a novel is absolutely necessary imo.
And imo this needs to happen sooner rather than later. It's an illusion to believe that prolonging these changes will magically make it easier later on. On the contrary, the more isolated scenes there are, the harder it will be to combine them later on to a coherent story, especially at such a pace.

For example: I remember someone pointing out that the "x likes that" pop-ups are completely fake (it's a simple text and no variables are changed). Adding more and more scenes that aren't connected won't help.

 

[Joe Steel]

And even though this part of the story is linear—from bartender to prostitute—I think it would be a good idea to, at some point, write some slightly different paths leading up to the same point. As an example, I could see the first meeting with Connor ending with Kate not agreeing to have sex with him, but still getting the job. Not because he's OK with that, but rather because he understands that she won't do it now. So instead of ending up with Kate just refusing the job, he decides to get her on board and wait until the right moment. Then, when Kate is hardly getting any shifts and is treated like shit by Connor, and she'll have to report back to her bosses that things aren't going according to plan, it becomes obvious to her that there's no way to avoid having sex with Connor if she wants to succeed in infiltrating the club.

Yes, this is going to be necessary at some point, but isn't necessary now. What is necessary now is carrying the story forward so that we get to the parts where choices can make a big difference. At this point in the creation of the game, getting sidetracked to add story changes through player choices would be, IMO, a mistake. Crush could implement some sort of stress/corruption/suspicion tracking to help make choices meaningful (thus, for instance, choosing to give a hand job would be suspicious for the sexually sophisticated woman the agent is pretending to be, while giving a blowjob might give stress because acting in character goes against the agent's real character). But I think that this sort of stat tracking needs to be thought out ahead of time. The last adventure in stat tracking in this game wasn't thought out, and it became so complicated as to become meaningless (look at the last few life path iterations).

Choice is good, but the price of choice can be high.

 

[Marlin Brandy]

for our red string, i legit just play the optimal whore/most sex choices, and gallery unlock everything else i missed. this is what i assume most people do....

bruh you ain't lookin for a game you're lookin for a cg dump with some bits of text to get the context for a scene.
if that's what you want you do you man, but that's not a game. You're literally trying to just unlock all the scenes so you can jack off to them later, narrative and connecting tissue be damned

 

[Deleted member 3064965]

Totally agree.
There is no need for complicated branching storylines that make the slow development even slower, but some kind of player agency so that you don't feel like you are reading a novel is absolutely necessary imo.
And imo this needs to happen rather sooner than later. It's an illusion to believe that prolonging this will magically make it easier later on. On the contrary, the more isolated scenes there are, the harder it will be to combine them later on to a coherent story, especially at such a pace.

For example: I remember someone pointing out that the "x likes that" pop-ups are completely fake (it's a simple text and no variables are changed). Adding more and more scenes that aren't connected won't help.

Yes, this is going to be necessary at some point, but isn't necessary now. What is necessary now is carrying the story forward so that we get to the parts where choices can make a big difference. At this point in the creation of the game, getting sidetracked to add story changes through player choices would be, IMO, a mistake. Crush could implement some sort of stress/corruption/suspicion tracking to help make choices meaningful (thus, for instance, choosing to give a hand job would be suspicious for the sexually sophisticated woman the agent is pretending to be, while giving a blowjob might give stress because acting in character goes against the agent's real character). But I think that this sort of stat tracking needs to be thought out ahead of time. The last adventure in stat tracking in this game wasn't thought out, and it became so complicated as to become meaningless (look at the last few life path iterations).

Choice is good, but the price of choice can be high.

I think both of these takes can be correct, depending on the circumstances. It does make things more complex if you’ll have to go back and add important paths later on, and if I was in Crush’s shoes, I would’ve struggled with both the motivation and the restrictions it would involve to go back and do it later. Other developers create and develop all the branches as they write their games, and in theory there’s no reason Crush couldn’t do the same. Prolonging the difficult parts rarely makes it easier.

Though the development of the game so far has showed that Crush easily gets lost if he works on too many aspects at once. It’s also relevant that the whole bargirl story is a relatively new part of the bigger story, so it’s understandable that he sees that as a more straightforward path to the main story he’s planned for years.

Will it work better if he goes back and adds things later on, both putting the life path back in and adding more choices for the early parts of the mission? That remains to be seen, though I’m not convinced he won’t end up hitting new dead ends if he does it that way. But for the time being we’ve at least arrived in Bangkok and started the mission, something I wouldn’t have expected a year ago, so it might be the best chance to just continue as he does now if we’re ever to see a complete game. I’m not convinced it’s the ideal way to do it, but it might be the best and most pragmatic solution in this specific instance.

 

[Atlas]

The people understand it's the dev who is overambitious with this whole open-world thing... People were calling for a simpler VN type of game as far as 2018-2019. After 4-5 years of stubbornness recent updates show that's where this is going and updates have become larger and dare I say more frequent.

I want to elaborate on this. If it is a visual novel, does Crush even have an outline of that novel or have the last 4-5 years been wasted recreating wheels and solving unnecessary tech problems? I'm not asking for a draft, just if an outline of story points for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc exists. What percentage of the game has been planned?

Seriously, you can write a linear twine game where most scenes are pictures are at the top and text is underneath with a continue button. You can have meaningless choices that branch right or left but then return to the main story line. Here is an example: the PC is asked how they will spend the evening at home and are given two options: read a book or watch TV. Each choice provides a different scene but regardless of choice the player still goes to bed and wakes up in the morning. No stats, no rpg elements, no flagging conditions so that if your character reads 5 books they unlock the book worm perk. Go on Amazon and see how fast some authors churn out 20 page erotic short stories. The art should be the bottle neck, yet here we are.

 

[StenKilla]

I want to elaborate on this. If it is a visual novel, does Crush even have an outline of that novel or have the last 4-5 years been wasted recreating wheels and solving unnecessary tech problems? I'm not asking for a draft, just if an outline of story points for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc exists. What percentage of the game has been planned?

Seriously, you can write a linear twine game where most scenes are pictures are at the top and text is underneath with a continue button. You can have meaningless choices that branch right or left but then return to the main story line. Here is an example: the PC is asked how they will spend the evening at home and are given two options: read a book or watch TV. Each choice provides a different scene but regardless of choice the player still goes to bed and wakes up in the morning. No stats, no rpg elements, no flagging conditions so that if your character reads 5 books they unlock the book worm perk. Go on Amazon and see how fast some authors churn out 20 page erotic short stories. The art should be the bottle neck, yet here we are.

Dont know if he had some sort of rough sketch of the whole story planned out. To my knowledge, he has never talked about that.
In the last Patreon post, he said about having some ideas about speeding up production but don't know how much truth there is to that. Previous promises of decreased dev time ended up in restart after restart after restart :/

I agree that this update was slightly less good than the previous ones. The descriptions of the bar shifts feel slightly repetitive and doesn't bring that much to the story—though that's also down to how the first shift was so detailed and good.

I agree. 1.15 came off as kind of rushed IMO. If Crush would've inserted some "intermezzo" content into Tuesday and Thursday
I think it would've been better. Something about Noodle or the Instagram couple anything really. Then again that would've increased dev time and Crush would've stressed over every word

I also agree that Kate's getting into it a bit too fast. It's a normal problem for the games on this site that the characters go through way too much change in a short time, and this certainly isn't the worst example, but still. Having more work days with less content in each has been mentioned, but I also think Crush could go a bit more easy on the "never been as wet in my entire life" kind of phrases.

I just played 1.11 and if that was still in the game it would make Kates reaction more plausible. That version is about her uni years and if the player chooses her to be slutty there her reaction in HCC would be on point imo.

 

[asdfasdf12341234ACSACA]

Dont know if he had some sort of rough sketch of the whole story planned out. To my knowledge, he has never talked about that.

I've been following this "game" for yearsm and Crush used to post a lot here.

He's said multiple times that "he has a lot of ideas for scenes" and he's also mentioned "an internal dev document" a few times. But considering how many of his answers were in the tone of "yeah we have ideas....yeah we can code that...yeah we could add that...", if you're looking for an actual design document, it doesn't exist. The many, many rewrites of both each minor scene as well as the whole game itself should be proof of it alone.

 

[_Zebra_]

Maybe he has a small outline of where the story is supposed to go. However, I would be willing to bet that is not something that one spends more than a few hours or days to think over.
I don't know if anyone else was curios about what can be found in the HTML file, but after spending a few minutes looking over it, what I can say is that is not really organized. The story boards aren't even placed in chronological order. You can still find parts of the old story (life path) or parts of the new story that didn't make the final cut. At least now I understand why it takes so much time to deliver an update. I guess I'll check the game again in 5-6 months.

P.S. If you didn't like the cliffhanger ..

Spoiler: there is a good chance that this is how the story will continue

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[restlez]

maybe Crush should just finish writing the whole story as a script and then implement it into the 'game'. then comes options for story branches. Finished game inspires a triple A title, makes L&P ashamed, game inspires a movie, makes whoever was responsible for the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco embarrassed, Crush earns royalties, a sequal follows (game and movie), a female agent francise empire begins. Hopefully Crush will look back fondly at this (probably long archived) thread here by then.

I really like what gisgus described about more inner voice and illusion of choice there. And for the problem of slowing down with even these illusion 'branches' using what someone mentioned to replace what always seems challenging for Crush, the right description in words, use the artist's talent to sketch the scene. A picture does speak a thousand words and I'd love to hear those pictures.

I'm not sure what the workflow right now is. Is everyone waiting. For each other's part to go to the next scene? I hope Crush has some evolving storyboard at this point, or we're never getting to the franchise empire bit. Unless... time travel gets invented first. Or inter-multiverse travel, where you can get multiple versions of Crush breaking down the work to even more managable bits.
Oh by the way, has somone suggested Crush to take a masterclass on creative writing in all these years?

AStech thanks for removing the cliff.)

 

[yaryaryar]

I am disappointed with the update as well. The writing was okay, but Kate's progression made no sense.

This update especially made it obvious how little our choices matter when setting up the char, which is disappointing.

Why are we suddenly jumping Connor's bones with no variation based on choices made in the past? Does it matter if you're reluctant or super horny the first time it happens?

Where is the tiny g-string that you get if you go to work your first day with boyshorts?

Why is there basically no interaction with the crotchless panties? Why do I suddenly have them (along with all those other underwear options) with no explanation why?

During the second VIP scene, why can't Kate get fingered or strip? For instance, why don't submissives have an option to stay? Why don't exhibitionists have the option to strip?

There is a brief note about masochist Kate getting aroused by nipple pinching, but that's the only reference to it at all.

Also why is boob size not referenced at all besides the one "gasp" that Amanda gives when you strip for the first time? And that was the last update!

I'm fine with our "stats" only giving +- to checks, (which are easily fudged anyway, but whatever), but the choices (esp the patreon choices) should actually do something.

I feel less and less like I'm playing "my Kate" and more like I'm just mindlessly clicking links to see what's next. The story is *fine*, but this update has made it very clear it's not a game.

The sad thing is 1.6 had a TON of these types of interactions. You had a lot of different choices based on Kate's kinks in the wet t-shirt contest, and it was well written to that fantasy. Yes the story was just as linear, but these mini variations are the whole point of the game aren't they? If those aren't in the game, what are we doing here.

 

[Vengeance_11]

This update seems like proof that he's taking the criticism of his sloth like development times too seriously and so is rushing through content to get it out the door. Delaying the release a full month to fix the placeholder text and unfinished coding, only for the update to still contain swathes of placeholder text and unfinished coding (with a silver tongued excuse as to why you couldn't finish it) is pathetically inexcusable.

 

[fafar]

The author does not need to invent a story to the end. The development roadmap is also not needed. Three times a year you release updates with 3-4 events. Patrons like it. The money is coming in. This can be continued for several more years. Then you can go back to the background, as there are a lot of new ideas. Repeat several times. Success.
When I first saw the description of the game, (rpg adventures of an undercover agent in a strip bar) I was impressed and even was a patron. But alas, this is a star citizen from the world of visual novels. Although there is more choice in visual novels, and do not roll a 6 or more dice, if "success" then everything is fine and you can read on, if "failure", then it's okay and you can also read on .

 

[Barbiecued]

It's actually more difficult than you think. He's making a full on movie-like screenplay here, and if you look into it, most screenplay writers barely finish a page per day. Of course, there's that old saying "write drunk, edit sober" but sometimes this approach results in even more rewrites (and outright scrapping a route entirely) than just the slow regular writing. It's quite difficult to find the right words when you want quality, and honestly I feel like Crush does a pretty good job at that. The setting, the research, timeline, pacing, it's all there. It really just takes time. It's expected for his approach (in-depth detailed story).

But it brings another point that this guy got right:

It's difficult to keep such an intricate story horny at all times. It's obviously going to have ups and downs. I kinda feel bad for him because he put himself in a horrible situation. He needs to deliver sizeable updates, which means writing more of the well-researched technical-procedural story (which takes a shit ton of time) AND he needs to make it horny for his patrons who are already impatient from his previous mistakes. He's screwed.

I'm not a patron and I'm probably not gonna join as well but I have to thank the guys who are subscribed because I'd really hate to see this project die out. At this point I'm getting more interested in the story than the smut itself lmao.

You're right in a sense that writing takes a lot of time. But, generally, it only takes time when you're not inspired by the project you're working on or caving under pressure. To be honest, it isn't exactly that much of a complicated story he's writing even if we don't know where this is heading, it feels pretty straight forward.
I have a tendency to get obsessed with ideas and they're generally inspired by other work, be it movies, music or art. I would suggest that he watches something related to "spy dramas" (maybe Alias?) for inspiration, and focus entirely on writing and let someone else do the coding.
When I'm writing its because I have been inspired by something and that creativity flows naturally. In my experience, you have to write those ideas down immediately or risk forgetting them (a reason why I always have my phone ready to write something down).
This is the time you should be writing, sometimes regardless of the social situation you're in (at least write it down) - that is the hazard of this type of work. That is when creativity flows naturally, and when writing is fun. You have to hit that wave of creativity and it'll flow naturally.
Those ideas becomes rough drafts to start with but it helps when you're in that dry spot and have no inspiration or joy of working on a specific project. A draft is still a good start and rather than agonizing on one paragraph for weeks, you can spend that time rewriting and editing the ideas you've already written down. Trying to force that flow of creativity to come out for something you're not feeling the grove for is the main reason why some writers takes a disproportionate amount of time doing little work sometimes. Its not the writers fault per se. They're mostly just tunneled into that position by pressure from outside sources, be it family or monetary - the latter being the prime evil.

I've followed this game for a while now and I've always been impressed by the writing, especially the research/knowledge in the subject he puts in. I can see that he is someone who obsess over smaller but important details in expressing a scene. That is sometimes my biggest weakness in writing, because I have a hard time putting the scene inside my head on the canvas if you catch my drift. I use 3D rendering to get those scenes out on my own personal canvas, even if you have to adapt the information in your head to what assets is available in your programs.

Its a shame that the progress of the game is what it is. He's sort of stuck himself into a hole he can't get out of. I'm sure this is what he wanted to do for a living, or else he wouldn't spend so much time researching about the theme of his story. Its that or he has a backround in the subject at hand (maybe former SAS?).

I really liked the new style of the game (whatever version this is now) and had big hopes that it would release an episode every 2 months or so. It seems reasonable in my head. I've been working on my project for two years on my spare time and I have done close to 3000 renders - where most of the first six months was learning and becoming better at Daz Studio.
Since then I've been forced to redo my first half of my story because my renders from the beginning was not up to par with my latest (at the time) work. Now I've rewritten the story and redone the renders of that time (over 600 renders) over the past 3-4 months while having a regular job. If I can do that in that time with little experience, I think spending 5 months of this latest episode is a little excessive...

EDIT: Another point is the fact that I've worked on my project without releasing it as a early access or version 0.1 etc because of;
1: I don't like releasing half-finished work and I've played too many games like that (Games like BDIK is great because they release their work as episodes, which is much better IMO).
2: It puts unnecessary pressure on me and dampens creativity.
3: I'd rather release the full story and then work on improvements like adding animation, music and multi-choices story and eventually in-game systems.

 

[Kevin Smarts]

It's actually more difficult than you think. He's making a full on movie-like screenplay here, and if you look into it, most screenplay writers barely finish a page per day. Of course, there's that old saying "write drunk, edit sober" but sometimes this approach results in even more rewrites (and outright scrapping a route entirely) than just the slow regular writing. It's quite difficult to find the right words when you want quality, and honestly I feel like Crush does a pretty good job at that. The setting, the research, timeline, pacing, it's all there. It really just takes time. It's expected for his approach (in-depth detailed story).

But it brings another point that this guy got right:

It's difficult to keep such an intricate story horny at all times. It's obviously going to have ups and downs. I kinda feel bad for him because he put himself in a horrible situation. He needs to deliver sizeable updates, which means writing more of the well-researched technical-procedural story (which takes a shit ton of time) AND he needs to make it horny for his patrons who are already impatient from his previous mistakes. He's screwed.

I'm not a patron and I'm probably not gonna join as well but I have to thank the guys who are subscribed because I'd really hate to see this project die out. At this point I'm getting more interested in the story than the smut itself lmao.

Its not a movie screen play though. There's nothing like the level of dialogue or direction you'd expect here. The story isn't even that intricate.

Contrary to Crush's assurance I thought sex scenes in this update were rather short and stale. I copypasted first one into a single file

Spoiler: First scene with Connor

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to count words and I've ended with a staggering number 633 (503 without repetitions in the last part). So, yeah... no wonder every update takes 3-4 months to produce, if this is a result of a 'greta' week.

OMG, seeing a sample of the writing is surprising. I know my friend Violet Kitten could write this better and in about 15 minutes. Given an hour she'd have varied and unique text for each option and have it coded.
Not to say everyone I've worked with is as talented or quick just that I was expecting something more given all those rushing to defend it. Nutluck writes better and churns out pages of text while working 2 jobs. Vengeance_11 a couple of posts up writes with more flair, personality and far more convincing Scottish accents.

Even the most basic of errors is clear with her tugging her panties back up then being tossed the babywipes to clean up with, shit I write this well and I suck.

 

[Nope]

Played the update. Kinda sad tbh. If this was a single months work I could see it. The amount of text is probably about the same as various VNs on this site pump out...except they manage to pump out renders and animations too. Nothing against text games, I actually prefer them. Just sad to see how much time was spent on some text story with no real choices or much variation.

 

[Marlin Brandy]

Is there a way to speed up the dice animation? I'd rather they be completely back end, displaying only results or just have the randomness outright removed, but how would a mentally handicapped person like myself go about tweaking the twine code to fast forward through those dice rolls?
Each time there's a roll check it's like 5 seconds, if you removed it I wonder how much smaller the game would feel? A conspiracy is afoot!

 

[richarddlopatin]

You're right in a sense that writing takes a lot of time. But, generally, it only takes time when you're not inspired by the project you're working on or caving under pressure. To be honest, it isn't exactly that much of a complicated story he's writing even if we don't know where this is heading, it feels pretty straight forward.
I have a tendency to get obsessed with ideas and they're generally inspired by other work, be it movies, music or art. I would suggest that he watches something related to "spy dramas" (maybe Alias?) for inspiration, and focus entirely on writing and let someone else do the coding.
When I'm writing its because I have been inspired by something and that creativity flows naturally. In my experience, you have to write those ideas down immediately or risk forgetting them (a reason why I always have my phone ready to write something down).
This is the time you should be writing, sometimes regardless of the social situation you're in (at least write it down) - that is the hazard of this type of work. That is when creativity flows naturally, and when writing is fun. You have to hit that wave of creativity and it'll flow naturally.
Those ideas becomes rough drafts to start with but it helps when you're in that dry spot and have no inspiration or joy of working on a specific project. A draft is still a good start and rather than agonizing on one paragraph for weeks, you can spend that time rewriting and editing the ideas you've already written down. Trying to force that flow of creativity to come out for something you're not feeling the grove for is the main reason why some writers takes a disproportionate amount of time doing little work sometimes. Its not the writers fault per se. They're mostly just tunneled into that position by pressure from outside sources, be it family or monetary - the latter being the prime evil.

I've followed this game for a while now and I've always been impressed by the writing, especially the research/knowledge in the subject he puts in. I can see that he is someone who obsess over smaller but important details in expressing a scene. That is sometimes my biggest weakness in writing, because I have a hard time putting the scene inside my head on the canvas if you catch my drift. I use 3D rendering to get those scenes out on my own personal canvas, even if you have to adapt the information in your head to what assets is available in your programs.

Its a shame that the progress of the game is what it is. He's sort of stuck himself into a hole he can't get out of. I'm sure this is what he wanted to do for a living, or else he wouldn't spend so much time researching about the theme of his story. Its that or he has a backround in the subject at hand (maybe former SAS?).

I really liked the new style of the game (whatever version this is now) and had big hopes that it would release an episode every 2 months or so. It seems reasonable in my head. I've been working on my project for two years on my spare time and I have done close to 3000 renders - where most of the first six months was learning and becoming better at Daz Studio.
Since then I've been forced to redo my first half of my story because my renders from the beginning was not up to par with my latest (at the time) work. Now I've rewritten the story and redone the renders of that time (over 600 renders) over the past 3-4 months while having a regular job. If I can do that in that time with little experience, I think spending 5 months of this latest episode is a little excessive...

EDIT: Another point is the fact that I've worked on my project without releasing it as a early access or version 0.1 etc because of;
1: I don't like releasing half-finished work and I've played too many games like that (Games like BDIK is great because they release their work as episodes, which is much better IMO).
2: It puts unnecessary pressure on me and dampens creativity.
3: I'd rather release the full story and then work on improvements like adding animation, music and multi-choices story and eventually in-game systems.

Dude... I'm doing the exact same thing. I'm working on a project that I'll release only when actually ready. None of that pre-release, pre-alpha stuff. Of course that by making it this way I can also fall into that valley of eternal non-released projects but it's fine.

I think I'm quite a bit more defensive to crushstation than most people here because I see myself in him a lot. I love writing 'useless' detail. The military/spy lingo in this game is phenomenal, I live for this shit. And believe me, this kind of thing is a time trap. I can get stuck reading about side stuff for hours and sometimes days, just taking notes and internalizing stuff, just to get my head inside the general mindset of my characters. And he does that a lot. He's either a military guy who was stationed in Thailand for a while (which is obviously quite unlikely) or he's just like me, as described.

And so it's like we both said, he put himself into a horrible situation. He's not inspired, he gets sidetracked a lot. I just hope the best for the story.

Its not a movie screen play though. There's nothing like the level of dialogue or direction you'd expect here. The story isn't even that intricate.

OMG, seeing a sample of the writing is surprising. I know my friend Violet Kitten could write this better and in about 15 minutes. Given an hour she'd have varied and unique text for each option and have it coded.
Not to say everyone I've worked with is as talented or quick just that I was expecting something more given all those rushing to defend it. Nutluck writes better and churns out pages of text while working 2 jobs. Vengeance_11 a couple of posts up writes with more flair, personality and far more convincing Scottish accents.

Even the most basic of errors is clear with her tugging her panties back up then being tossed the babywipes to clean up with, shit I write this well and I suck.

Oh I always go back to Girl Life. Awesome game with an awesome team. I don't know how you people do it. And it's awesome to bring GL up because it kinda does what I was saying. I don't feel like your team get caught up in the details. You just write stuff, and sometimes it's not that tidy but it's completely fine (and always very hot). Girl Life can have quite a few disconnects between content, flow, pacing and stuff, but it's such a huge game that it's to be expected and at the end of the day it works perfectly.

I brought up the movie screenplay thing because I'm writing my story in a screenplay editor. I'm used to the format and it's helping me tremendously flow/pacing-wise (I can't recommend KIT Scenarist enough if you want a screenplay writing tool). And like I said, just like crushstation, I'm so slow at writing. I have a story in mind that simply HAS NOT been made into a game before and I'm dying to get it out there but man... I'm disconcertingly slow at this.

 

[leg28]

I personally don't always like choice games - very few games pull off choices/branches real well

indeed, better no choices game where dev is telling his story than fake choices-based game.

 

[Kevin Smarts]

Oh I always go back to Girl Life. Awesome game with an awesome team. I don't know how you people do it. And it's awesome to bring GL up because it kinda does what I was saying. I don't feel like your team get caught up in the details. You just write stuff, and sometimes it's not that tidy but it's completely fine (and always very hot). Girl Life can have quite a few disconnects between content, flow, pacing and stuff, but it's such a huge game that it's to be expected and at the end of the day it works perfectly.

I brought up the movie screenplay thing because I'm writing my story in a screenplay editor. I'm used to the format and it's helping me tremendously flow/pacing-wise (I can't recommend KIT Scenarist enough if you want a screenplay writing tool). And like I said, just like crushstation, I'm so slow at writing. I have a story in mind that simply HAS NOT been made into a game before and I'm dying to get it out there but man... I'm disconcertingly slow at this.

Maybe working in a team helps, one thing that I cannot recommend enough is getting second opinions about your writing. We tend to put everything through a proofreading stage and give the proof readers plenty of freedom to add some flair to text if it feels a little flat. Something I did was share writing between a couple of guys on TFGS who both run solo projects. We each gave honest and forthright feedback, suggesting what to cut and where to add more. Its a very useful process as it lets you know where to focus your efforts and most importantly see where you should stop refining. There is a point where the text is fine and all the re-writes in the world aren't going to make it noticeably better.
There's also the time factor. When you write something there's no point immediately editing it and trying to edit as you go is a huge waste of time because your brain is in the same mode so it'll just make the same errors and look for the same solutions. So you write and just write, then maybe the next day or two days later you go back to it and read it through. Now you can edit.