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

[Leiafanman]

I feel like he spent forever trying to develop game systems to help make the game more gamey before he started the story in earnest (I've spent untold hours trying to get Twine systems to work myself and I can understand wanting everything ready) but then he gave it up and decided to write a rough linear draft and actually share it so he had some content for patreons. BUT now he's getting stuck in the small details of what should be a quick rough draft to get the story figured out.

He needs to either add back some of the gameyness or just blitz out these linear story updates because the troops are getting restless. I feel like making some "hub" interactive areas of the game would scratch the itch. Like during the day your agent has some time to choose her own actions around town, add an interactive money system and a shop to let us buy the clothes, toys, etc.. I've thought her getting sussed out as an agent by the local authorities would be a cool way to add tension/sexy scenes/money drain as she either needs to bribe them or blow the mission and she needs to keep it from her tenders (maybe drive her into becoming a Bargirl so she can earn enough money to pay the bribes etc.).

Tons of other HTML games have these simple hub style gameplay loops that make them feel open world when there really isn't that much going on with them. You can nest them inside your linear narrative fairly easily.

 

[MrAnarchy]

All good advice, but as he’s shown multiple times, he won’t take it. Whenever he’s give advice on how to improve writing time he, in the nicest most polite way, says “thanks, but I know what I’m doing.”

 

[rbx4]

Well he started out his way, and then people said, "That's not how you make a game. This is how you make a game." So he rebooted, and eventually this is what we have. He's missed deadlines since approximately the start, mostly in the same ways each time. I'm not bothered by it, having not played FA in any form in ~5 years.

We've seen what will be the status quo here, and I think people are better off throwing money at him than throwing their money at....other people who also survive off whatever they are. It's funny, and that's why I'm here. Plus, there are things to learn from this. It's a non-traditional way of making a game, which works to make money instead.

 

[gymnopedies]

I have no problems with the new update it seems to me that it is at the same level as Crush's works has given us before.
But it takes too much time between updates and works more on excuses than in the game
That is why I am no longer Patreon, or I plan to be again.

 

[leg28]

Your explanation is sound but, the protag accepts payment for fucking Connor more than once so she's a whore for sure. That's my take on it anyway. Take care.

valid point. and fucking for job with connor/boss can also been counted as whoring (if you give your body for something else than money is also prostitution?).
that's why i liked original intro more where she was from the very beginning in scotland prepared to be whore. instead scrapping whole intro he just had to compile it. "of course we are sending you to be bartender not whore, but expect anything since we are sending you to brothel. that's way we are sending you in whoring training in glasgow by night to see what might happen. are you ready for that worst case scenario?" personally i would expand bangkok mission from sitting and waiting into proactive mission of gathering info on human and drugs trafficking, rl terrorism in thailand - attacks on tourists, mc rising thru ranks. season 1 ends by catching money guy but bosses ask her to stay for new mission with dea since her cover has not been damaged. gradually she become more corrupt, running her own shaddy businesses protected by agency..... he can run honestly this game for years and keep quality story.

All good advice, but as he’s shown multiple times, he won’t take it. Whenever he’s give advice on how to improve writing time he, in the nicest most polite way, says “thanks, but I know what I’m doing.”

of course he knows what he is doing - milking. if he is paid by delivered content game would be finished a long time ago (or abandoned). and if he hires writing help less money to him and quicklier game progress. goodbye easy money. one dev has at parteon tiers set not monthly but per major update. we are not going to see such honesty from crush because instead 12 payments by year, with current pace he would have 2-3 payments

I feel like he spent forever trying to develop game systems to help make the game more gamey before he started the story in earnest (I've spent untold hours trying to get Twine systems to work myself and I can understand wanting everything ready) but then he gave it up and decided to write a rough linear draft and actually share it so he had some content for patreons.

and patrons are paying him bunch of money to learn how to make a game. this is, mildest to say, despicably. but i believe it is worse than that. it is deliberate scheme to milk sheeps. as i said above money is coming monthly no matter what. after 4 years of scotland and experimenting with intro, he throws most of it in recycle bin, kept money and move to bangkok. so much time spent on tattoos, physical and mental shaping of mc, sex history, whole life and in general making whole piles of details just to throw them away. he delivered some content in 6 years, just enough not to call him scammer or fraud and keep some patrons on the leash

 

[okokok]

you both got a point. it sounds stupid because our perfectionist milkman who is rewriting scenes like zillion times simply failed to explain motive to this meltdown. she basically is going to cross the line, get paid for sex (bj) and she knows next time she'll be bargirl/hooker like the one from vip room servicing south africans for unknown period of time. if she refuses connor said they have exceded limit of foreign waitresses so she'll be out. end of mission.

This is a fair criticism. It's pretty late for the agent to be getting such nerves. That should have come earlier

where mistake is made is: if owners are aware that they have more foreign waitresses than needed and one or two has to go upstairs or be fired, then why hiring new aussie girl? only motive is to drag mc into prostitution (since she is very popular and she can earn them some money). but we don't know that. it just popped from the sky. he spent more time picking types of lipstick or eyeliners and other trivias than polishing really important part of story.

It isn't explained but I can't imagine that line of work having anything other than an extremely high turnover. The foreign girls who stuck around for more than a few months would be rare so the bar would always be hiring

 

[Cazzo_duro]

Very weak update, like the excuses of the developer when he postpones the release.

 

[leg28]

This is a fair criticism. It's pretty late for the agent to be getting such nerves. That should have come earlier

It isn't explained but I can't imagine that line of work having anything other than an extremely high turnover. The foreign girls who stuck around for more than a few months would be rare so the bar would always be hiring

that is what you get when you remove 4 years of intro. and i mean her whoring herself in glasgow clubs. as i said in other post: "of course we are sending you to be bartender not whore, but expect anything since we are sending you to brothel. that's way we are sending you in whoring training in glasgow by night to see what might happen. are you ready for that worst case scenario?" and that covers all. dilema about bj with guy (who seems fine looking asian youngster on photos) would be non-existing. anyway she would have some issues with that bj, not because of bj itself, but because she knows what is next - becoming full time prostitute, what is not big deal neither if prepared, but her co-workers at agency willl know and it is all on tape (what if tapes leak?)

about foreign girls you are right. but if we accept hiring foreign waitresses limit, only logical reason to hire aussie rookie waitress and fire capable & well-liked senior waitress, is that bosses think she can earn them lots of money as whore and using firing her as leverage. it has logic after south africans scene. they complained and mentioned how much they were willing to pay and management now wants her as a whore.

whoring prices: did i miss something? they are charging 2500b and whores are keeping it. where is house cut?

 

[JoshuaTree89]

I've never weighed in on this game or this developer, so here goes:

I echo those people who have written recently "great game; poor dev cycle." I played the update, and like the rest of the game, the writing is good. Real good, in my opinion. This is one of the hottest games out there, with a real... I won't say "realistic," but maybe "plausible" plot and characters, unlike so many games which are like "oops I'm in a slightly sexual situation that I never would've been before; this feels good; I'm a whore now."

The criticisms about the BJ scene and the Agent's reluctance are very fair. I think that most of what's written here would be fine if there were maybe a page wherein, maybe as she's waiting to go back to the VIP room, she thinks to herself about why this time is different from Connor or the uncle or (depending on if she did) the drug dealer. Because it could be argued that this time IS different. "When I blew that guy in the car I was hopped up on Molly. With Connor it wasn't so blatantly transactional." Here, the Mama-san Lin says "you're going to give this guy a blowie and you'll get money to do it." But of course, that isn't clearly written into her thoughts, so her violent reaction to this BJ (vomiting) comes across as a bit out of left field.

But the big problem is how long it's taking, for how little content, and that what the dev's claiming as far as time on task doesn't really jibe with what we're seeing. There's another Dev, whom I like and support, Nottravis. And she's come under fire, some fair some less so for how long it's been since she's updated her game Heavy Five. But she's handled the situation, IMHO, the way a Dev should: She's explained much of the reasons for delays quite clearly (car crash among other things); and has paused all Patreon charges for a year and a half as she goes through and rejiggers things. That said, it's pretty clear that like Crush, Notty has some problems with mission creep. Which is why I was glad that recently she said she'd brought on someone to basically be a development manager, who's already chopped off a planned future path because it would have been too much time to make for too little end product.

And that's what Crush needs: Someone to basically say "okay, you've got to hit X, Y, and Z goals for this next release. No more superfluous programming of elements like 'stress' that happen once, immediately disappear and are never seen again." And then of course, Crush needs to be straight with his audience. I'm not one to go so far as to say it's provable he's LYING about how much time he's spending on task, but I will say that if he has been putting in 12 hour days and this (short, ROUGH) update is all he has to show for it, that's a problem in and of itself.

I hope Crush manages to course-correct. I think it's likelier to happen if he brings someone on board whose job it is to tell him "no" and to harp on deadlines. Just my thinking.

 

[Derrida]

I've never weighed in on this game or this developer, so here goes:

The difference between nottravis and crush is integrity. Crush talks a lot, makes a lot of promises, and when he blows past his own schedule or narrows the scope of the story... he just makes more promises. Nottravis, and other devs similar, have integrity, i.e. they react when they've failed to meet their own standards. But there's no incentive for Crush to change because he has a base of support willing to pay him 6k a month to write one short story over 5 months -- which is absolutely their right to do so, but it's so obvious that if you are currently supporting crush and you want him to improve he's not going to address his issues, whatever they may be, without pressure. You can make all the comments and suggestions you like on discord, nothing will change. Probably the best thing for this game would be for the patreon support to decline -- as consequences always lead to change.

As you say, he is a good writer but I don't know if the promise of his writing will sustain him through another absurdly extended dev cycle. Who knows! There's one born every minute, etc.

 

[somalimechaprogram]

That's not how writing a script works! Words per minute / hour / day is for typists not writers.



Why is that the only explanation?

I can think of many, of which any or all could apply:

- Burns out every crunch time then takes months to recover.

- Surrounded by people telling them their game is so perfect they should spend as long as possible to make sure their next release is even more perfect.

- Imposter syndrome from being told every release is perfect so they struggle to start and finish anything.

- No manager to tell them to just ship it already.

- Stretching out the story and delivery for fear that people are only interested until the first bargirl event.

- Constantly rewriting to be less offensive for the sensibilities of sensitive modern audiences.

- Writing requires research so they're taking regular trips to Bangkok.

- Productive work doesn't really begin until a few weeks before the release.

You forgot:
- The author is actually an MI6 secret agent on a mission to arrest some human trafficker in Thailand, which is why they can only write smut in their spare time. All Kickstarter money goes towards the operation, because the UK economy is fucked and they reduced funding for Jane Bond.

 

[Princess Groundhog]

Because it could be argued that this time IS different. "When I blew that guy in the car I was hopped up on Molly. With Connor it wasn't so blatantly transactional." Here, the Mama-san Lin says "you're going to give this guy a blowie and you'll get money to do it." But of course, that isn't clearly written into her thoughts, so her violent reaction to this BJ (vomiting) comes across as a bit out of left field.

It’s also that she knows the agency and her colleagues will be watching and she helped set up the cameras, so it’s different since she knows she’s performing this for many people who might judge her for it, which is maybe why she feels sick.

 

[MrAnarchy]

It’s also that she knows the agency and her colleagues will be watching and she helped set up the cameras, so it’s different since she knows she’s performing this for many people who might judge her for it, which is maybe why she feels sick.

The problem with this theory is she’s already getting regularly fucked by Connor on camera, once so hard he stuck her panties in her mouth, and the whole time she knows her colleagues are watching her.

 

[zoomzoomzoom]

The problem with this theory is she’s already getting regularly fucked by Connor on camera, once so hard he stuck her panties in her mouth, and the whole time she knows her colleagues are watching her.

Crush needs to play his game more to see some of the things in there just straight up does not make any sense.

 

[Sikisk]

you both got a point. it sounds stupid because our perfectionist milkman who is rewriting scenes like zillion times simply failed to explain motive to this meltdown. she basically is going to cross the line, get paid for sex (bj) and she knows next time she'll be bargirl/hooker like the one from vip room servicing south africans for unknown period of time. if she refuses connor said they have exceded limit of foreign waitresses so she'll be out. end of mission.

where mistake is made is: if owners are aware that they have more foreign waitresses than needed and one or two has to go upstairs or be fired, then why hiring new aussie girl? only motive is to drag mc into prostitution (since she is very popular and she can earn them some money). but we don't know that. it just popped from the sky. he spent more time picking types of lipstick or eyeliners and other trivias than polishing really important part of story.

anyway we probably wouldn't be talking about this if we weren't f**ked by this "dev" so many times with delays because "he is not happy with sceen and he has rewrite it again and again". of course all that time milk is pouring. he is like taxi driver brings you almost to your destination and then turn car back to starting point because he didn't like the route and he'll take new one. of course his taximeter is still counting

Ahem, I just played through the game to completion and i thoroughly recall a scene where all the foreign language was just and I quote "Thai thai thai" for the entirety of it. For someone who rewrites scenes for a living this seems strange no?

Edit* if he actually pays attention to this thread, no you do not get to know where this stupid mistake is. It'll take you two years to fix it and you need no help in delaying more than you already do.

 

[SikaNauta]

Ahem, I just played through the game to completion and i thoroughly recall a scene where all the foreign language was just and I quote "Thai thai thai" for the entirety of it. For someone who rewrites scenes for a living this seems strange no?

That bothered me too. It would take about five minutes with google translate and they would have something better than a placeholder. Find a native speaker later if they want it perfect. Similar thing with some pictures. Headshots of other girls in the bar are a weird muddled mess (and is the picture of the office still a placeholder?). Again five minutes with any AICG generator and they would have something better.

 

[shadow_panther]

I know what the problem is. She's a racist little white girl . Fucking an Irish/scottish man is less traumatizing for her, since they are pretty much white people. But giving a BJ to a thai person on camera is horrible. Problem solved, this explanation actually explains her breakdown.

'Pretty much' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Everyone knows the Irish are a form of barely sentient potato.

 

[Kokainzz]

It’s taken 6 years for him to put out a fairly linear text based game and we’re STILL not at the main act of her becoming a bargirl. Imagine if he tried to add free roam.

Would be a better AAA game than AC: Valhalla

 

[boobthief]

You forget the option where he has no clue where the story is actually supposed to go, let alone finish. He has ideas for scenes, but not an entire picture, it seems. He gets stuck writing about minute details in great length, stretching it as you say, but in the end he ends up nowhere.

He has transformed the game into a linear novel, which is fine and should make it easier for him, but he still can't deliver meaningful content. His writing is good, but over the last few years he introduced several new mechanics that never do anything and aren't even being used ever again. As I said, he loses himself in ideas for scenes and features, but doesn't know where he actually wants to go. No wonder writing takes so long when you literally have to force yourself to come up with something.

Sad thing is, we are still in the prologue. Then again, are we? What is the main game supposed to be when all of this is just the introduction?

I thought the

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(create a character then continue until you click on the testing link) was what was supposed to be happening in 1.19. In fact, one of the interactions, Jack, does happen in 1.19 but I guess those scenes got punched up and polished away until they were replaced with the hot vomiting toilet breakdown.

I am fairly certain there is an overall plan. The Scottish bar manager is very similar to the club manager character in the first(?) version of the game. There is a lot of seeding plot threads e.g. introducing characters for side missions, named bar regulars, hostel guests. Things a writer wouldn't do if they didn't know they needed them. Shame they don't go anywhere!

So I think the random test shows what working as a bar girl would be like in game. It could be really good and offer much-needed replayability and value for paying supporters.

But that's a lot of work and I just don't get the feeling productive work is happening on anything like a recognisable schedule.

 

[boobthief]

The issue is he planned shit, even though I've been telling him to plan the fucking game numerous times, once in dms, and on this forum, and on the discord, and eventually it's going to bite him in the ass. Eventually.

Guess what? the problem of rewriting a scene 60 times is solved, by not re-writing the scene. Don't do it. Nobody wants you to act out your OCD rewriting scenes, go wash your hands 60 times like normal people with OCD. This tells me that crush has no clue how to edit.. or even what he wants.

Agree, generally. The point I was trying and failing to make about words per minute is a good script isn't defined by word count and therefore how many words you write every day doesn't matter.

I think it's fair to say people want a good amount of content. I think developing this game, in particular, is like writing a TV script because of the scenes and dialogue. I want to see a lot more than fifteen minutes of gameplay for months of work. But I also don't want to read 1000 words describing the staff toilets in a brothel.

So, yes, there should be better planning per release / episode. Even something as simple as not forgetting to put the sex scenes in the sex game e.g. at this point in the game, this episode should have had more than some mild flirting over a book, one BJ, one bar shift.

But I also refuse to believe they were rewriting 80 hours per week, punching up three scenes eleven hours at a time or whatever was claimed.