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

[rbx4]

Well I may leave this thread if it stops having dedicated people saying 2+2=5. However, I'll part with this thought. If someone can't take criticism, that is: if they become hostile in the face of reasonable criticism, or if they become devastated in the face of it, you know you're dealing with someone with no good coping mechanisms. That's more serious than it sounds. Without good coping mechanisms it's likely that a person will go into substance abuse or abuse of others. That's why I was here--I could tell that something like that was going on. Maybe I'll be back, but I hope not however.

 

[CreativeCritic2]

I think Crush is special.

He's telling a story about someone going under-cover in a Bangkok titty bar and he's struggling to come up with erotic situations to put his character in. That's next-level creative brilliance right there.

I can imagine him taking his patreon fortune, flying to Thailand, sitting in some Soi 6 bar in Pattaya, he's got ladyboys rubbing their junks against his arm, he's got Thai girls falling over themselves to transform his patreon dollars into orgasms and Crush is just sitting there frowning into his overprice lager going 'Nope... this does absolutely nothing for me. Maybe if they bought a new pair of shoes?'

 

[Hooah]

You're where I was 18 months ago. I'd only been watching the game like a year at that point. But over on his Discord you get update after update, all saying that he's working very long hours on the game, day after day, then week after week, then month after month, and always that the update will be out SOON(TM). Enough of those and I was forced to finally admit that it's all BS -- if he were writing 50 words a day -- less than this post! -- then his updates would be be much more frequent and much larger. Instead they're short, trivial side stories that don't address the main story and endlessly recite "Why am I getting turned on by this?"

I've been following this game on and off a lot longer. I think the big turn was like 4-5 years ago, when he was endlessly fucking around with the sex scene generator he thought would save time. He mentioned taking trucker pills just to keep writing longer-and then there was a crash followed by a long hiatus.

 

[MrAnarchy]

Studies should be done on the level of copium that fills his discord.

 

[42ftw]

Studies should be done on the level of copium that fills his discord.

Not so long ago, I hypothesized the same idea. I really am waiting for the paper to be published. Such a fine study it is indeed.

After this I'd say that I'm pretty sure that this whole thing got to be a research on methods of copium production and milking patrons. I mean ~5-6k per month almost for nothing! That's huge! Can't wait to read the paper.

And look how much "results" are produced. A decent sum of milk™ on Patreon every month and huge amounts of malding and copium (mine included) in this thread.

Bravo!

 

[CreativeCritic2]

I imagine Crush's Discord must be like one of those cults after the apocalypse fails to materialise.

There was a book written about that phenomenon and the anthropologist found that, rather than causing communities to unravel, failed prophecies actually bring communities together because everyone a) doubles down to save face and b) relies on everyone else doubling-down to convince themselves of their own bullshit.

It's an interesting dynamic but what's *really* interesting is that there are a number of Devs on here who have questionable update records but not everyone gets either the loyalty of Crush's consumers OR the degree of anger on here.

There's one dev who has a game that has been rebuilt three times over seven years and has never gotten much further than day 2 of his plot and NOBODY defends them. Conversely, you have the femdom guy who basically did one very short update in a year and while there was some criticism there was also a lot of 'how very dare' - evidently Crush is a better cult leader than the 'choose to be gay or straight' guy but not as fine a cult leader as the femdom guy... which kind of makes sense.

 

[asdfasdf12341234ACSACA]

If you spend just a bit of time on the discord you'll see that it's not exactly a cult, it's much simpler than that. It's a community, and people are only there for the sense of community. They have the same inside jokes and mannerisms that every community with a shared interest eventually develops. Them defending/encouraging Crush isn't really so much as "No, I totally believe he's the greatest person ever and hardworking and everything" as much as "Hey, we all like the same things, don't insult us"

 

[rbx4]

I imagine Crush's Discord must be like one of those cults after the apocalypse fails to materialise.

Popping out of lurk mode to comment--there maybe is or isn't a magnetic personality effect going on there (I don't know, but I wouldn't dismiss it). However, I think that things solidified here into what it is because there were dedicated people trying to endlessly mock every single critic that wasn't essentially quoting Crush. It's a strange and interesting thing to see this century, the idea that this would actually work on the Internet even though most of us know that nobody can out-toxic the Internet. Maybe it's more akin to a 1-person or 2-person troll farm which happens on a larger scale this century, but the idea that troll farms work is something that I'm not so sure about. Or, maybe it's like when a certain famous politician would masquerade as a publicist but from a reputation-defender personality. It's bizarre to think that they wouldn't realize that it would just result in people doubling-down and identifying with the positions where they are today.

Either way, I hope it dies down and becomes a normal thread here. It did lead to an interesting atmosphere that caused people like me to hang around to see if the whole bizarre idea would accidentally expose itself, which I think has gone on into strangeness long enough to be exposed in terms of appearances even though I don't have ironclad proof.

 

[shuiko]

wish for more games like this... but with like 10x content. would be nice.. would be nice.

 

[Pede rasta 1]

I imagine Crush's Discord must be like one of those cults after the apocalypse fails to materialise.

There was a book written about that phenomenon and the anthropologist found that, rather than causing communities to unravel, failed prophecies actually bring communities together because everyone a) doubles down to save face and b) relies on everyone else doubling-down to convince themselves of their own bullshit.

It's an interesting dynamic but what's *really* interesting is that there are a number of Devs on here who have questionable update records but not everyone gets either the loyalty of Crush's consumers OR the degree of anger on here.

There's one dev who has a game that has been rebuilt three times over seven years and has never gotten much further than day 2 of his plot and NOBODY defends them. Conversely, you have the femdom guy who basically did one very short update in a year and while there was some criticism there was also a lot of 'how very dare' - evidently Crush is a better cult leader than the 'choose to be gay or straight' guy but not as fine a cult leader as the femdom guy... which kind of makes sense.

As an atheist, I always like to go to church to make fun of believers and insult them for their fantasies.

 

[LordGMLP]

7 years for a text-based html game with minimal graphics. I am eternally grateful for the existence of F95zone, and whoever wasting their money to trash devs should consider donating to this site instead.

 

[rbx4]

Yeah, personally I don't trash anyone. (though I do get upset when games have gamebreaking bugs). But, I don't call devs scammers etc. Never have. But again, it's impossible to take 4 months on an update, and not have 240 slides (minimum! it should actually be 960 at these hours) if you are working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Crush has had, 2-3 years to improve and figure out a story for the game, and instead the production is actually getting worse now. It's just calling it as it is. Don't come and tell me you're working tons of hours but refuse to stream your whole dev process, and have nothing to show for it month after month. His only job, is to put text on a slide and it doesn't seem like he's capable of doing that.

I understand what you're getting at, though I have a somewhat different perspective. If his job was making slides, for sure it would be easy to make many slides with uninspired text every day. Since his job is to write good slides with inspiration and flair, it's more challenging. It seems like Crush just doesn't feel like doing this most of the time or doesn't feel like he's doing what he's supposed to do. I suggest that the toughest thing Crush ever does however is to look in the mirror and analyze his own actions to find creative solutions. It's not that writing is universally hard. It's easy for some and hard for others. However, everything I've seen from Crush's posts suggest that an edge is needed to get there and that edge sounds unreliable and unhealthy.

If anyone ever praises alcohol in a post describing creativity (which was done a year or two back), 100% of analysts will write down a note immediately and use that for diagnosis. It's because they've all seen it dozens of times before. Also when anyone says that I just don't know how it is, it sounds a lot like they're trying to avoid looking clearly at their own actions and instead are directing it outward to people who aren't involved. No one of us is so special that others can't gauge their depth, and when something is said otherwise it's a red flag.

 

[Mr_Ainz]

7 years for a text-based html game with minimal graphics. I am eternally grateful for the existence of F95zone, and whoever wasting their money to trash devs should consider donating to this site instead.

Do you have any examples of other games that have a "paperdoll" or avatar system? Apart from the 90% of twine games which use img/vid it's difficult to find good graphics in an html game.

On a related topic. From my (little) web dev knowledge, is it possible to do anything more than embedding/placing images and videos in html games? I guess playing around with CSS to make the interface more interactive but apart form that, things like 3D elements and such (I'm thinking three.js) are impossible right? Sugarcube and such have to allow that implementation or am I thinking of something else?

 

[rbx4]

Do you have any examples of other games that have a "paperdoll" or avatar system? Apart from the 90% of twine games which use img/vid it's difficult to find good graphics in an html game.

On a related topic. From my (little) web dev knowledge, is it possible to do anything more than embedding/placing images and videos in html games? I guess playing around with CSS to make the interface more interactive but apart form that, things like 3D elements and such (I'm thinking three.js) are impossible right? Sugarcube and such have to allow that implementation or am I thinking of something else?

You can do things with your own javascript that packages make easier for you, though reinventing the wheel is only a good idea if you really need a wheel that works better for you. (*My solution to Sugarcube challenges nowadays is using other platforms that I prefer over Sugarcube). I don't want to derail the thread though, since generative ai can answer coding questions fairly well nowadays and stackoverflow is even better for questions like that. Generative ai has the advantage of not getting impatient, angry, annoyed or tired even if it sometimes says something wrong. Anyways I am going back to lurksville.

 

[somalimechaprogram]

Do you have any examples of other games that have a "paperdoll" or avatar system? Apart from the 90% of twine games which use img/vid it's difficult to find good graphics in an html game.

On a related topic. From my (little) web dev knowledge, is it possible to do anything more than embedding/placing images and videos in html games? I guess playing around with CSS to make the interface more interactive but apart form that, things like 3D elements and such (I'm thinking three.js) are impossible right? Sugarcube and such have to allow that implementation or am I thinking of something else?

Its a different crowd and most of you probably haven't seen it, but there is a copycat game on this website, with a trans protagonist. The developer made it in weeks, as a joke, and hasn't updated it. It has maybe 1/4 of the content of this game. Can't even say the writing is worse.
Obviously the initial development of the UI and systems was already done by Crushstation. Obviously the original idea is taken as is from Crushstation. But that game is basically a bigger and better than the updates we get, and required more work, and was done much faster. As a joke, by a developer who has another game to work on.

 

[Mr_Ainz]

Well if I use the skeleton of an existing twine game That's a lot of initial work that's done. I don't know if Crush made the avatar system from zero or not. I once played around with it on a personal project to see if it was useful for an idea I had and it took me like 15 mins to have it working.

 

[rbx4]

I understand. But I am somewhat of a writer myself...

I agree with the sentiment that you expressed there. I think I have a talent for role-playing and that it translates into a talent for writing in that it results in inspiration for me. I can get into a character relatively easily even if it is very different from me. It sounds like you are similar to me in that respect or at least partially. I don't believe that everyone is equipped for that however, and some people lack the ability to put themselves in another's shoes entirely. Still, I don't believe that it's a race to a word count. We all differ in our creative capacities and faster isn't always better.

The question to me is if Crush is being the best creator within their own capacity. Dollars don't measure that, but sense does. I don't believe Crush is being the best Crush in that respect, and in their best moments I think Crush doesn't believe so either. I've fired enough arrows in that direction that one probably hits the mark. There's just a tremendous amount of smoke and it's becoming increasingly difficult to believe that there's no fire. Anyways, I've been trying to go into perma-lurk and I hope to someday keep my promise on that.

 

[4tune]

I think that a lot of us who are active on different forums, blogs and social networks tend to be good with words and some even think of themselves as being ''somewhat of a writer''. But there are different kinds of writing, so I can completely understand the struggles when it comes to creative writing. Even with that being said, the development cycle for this project is completely ridiculous. The honest developers would at least acknowledge that fact and wouldn't go for monthly donations, they would probably chose some other setup like a donation per update from those who are willing to support them.

 

[Harebariossahan]

I understand. But I am somewhat of a writer myself. I've never written a game before. But when you actually break it down. The most difficult task crush has is writing, the coding even I could figure out and it becomes a copy and paste job. The art is handled by someone else.

So essentially all crush has to do is put words on a slide, and it's just super unbelievable that in 6-8 hour work days someone couldn't write 200 slides in 4 months. There is no way. I can write 1000 words in 10 minutes on these forums. I probably write somewhere between 1000-3000 words a day on the internet alone with different forums, discords, social media combined. Like come the fuck on...

If you actually plan a story and characters, writing is actually way easier than say an average person who may not consider themselves great at writing may think. It's because writing stems from a good foundation. Developing the foundation is both the easy and hard part, but it's also something that surely would have been done by now in the 4 years working on this game. IE you take 4 months, release zero update, but at least that whole time you worked on the foundation of 'female agent'. So essentially the whole game should be planned and laid out by now on a white board in someone's basement. Every plot twist, every side story, every character, it should all be done in at least a sort of very basic 3 sentence structure way, point form etc with overall topics. It's like writing a fucking essay. Your thesis, your introduction 3 body paragraphs, your conclusion. You fit in a lot more details in the body paragraphs, each body paragraph has the main points - the heroes downfall, the heroes rise, the climax of the story etc.

Sigh anyway... my point mainly is writing is easier and easier when you write. Because once you get content down, more flows, and once it flows, it means you have something to work with. And when you have something to work with it actually DOESN'T MATTER how horrendous, how horrible, how fucking utterly shit it may be, once you have it, you can now edit it. And so if it takes 1 month to write utter shit, you have something instead of NOTHING. And now you only need 1 more month to edit that shit into a perfect diamond. The fact it's taking 4-6 months, as someone who writes on the side... tells me he has NOTHING for the majority of those months, and then he finally starts writing when he feels the time crunch. It's either this or he's actually trying to get his writing perfect the first time, and that's fucking silly and not how writing works.

(or you know the claim of many hours a day isn't accurate and he's working very part time instead. which you know is fine, but then just say that, and give people the actual time it will release, like "i will have updates every 6 months because i'm only working part time" or even better just work something tolerable for you if it's 4 hours 3 times a week, that would still put updates in a 3 month range... like it's not insane to work that much when you make good money and updates would still be fast imo i just can't really picture why it's taking so long especially when the writer never releases a before and after comparison of what the update was like before they delayed it another 2 months).

Plus even if there was that whole method acting bullshit applied to writing, and the writer needs to get into the shoes and mind of a character. And crush is a male writer and his character in this story is a female, and he needs to understand the perspective and feelings of a woman... and 'oh it's so hard to understand a woman' (bullshit - they have feelings just like men). then EVEN with that as a justification, how long does it take for crush to get into character? 4 more years? He's already been at this 4 years, he should be a fucking pro and have a split personality now called Kate, he should eat, shit, think, dream and breathe this character already.

I've done some writing too and agree 100 %.

I just can't for the life of me see how someone supposedly working full time could be slow... one of his common justifications excuses is that an episode just wasn't hot enough. Then he goes on the work on it for three weeks before release. I honestly can't see how sexing an episode up could take weeks and weeks. One very intense working day, yes... perhaps even three days, but three weeks? WTAF

 

[ffive]

I honestly can't see how sexing an episode up could take weeks and weeks. One very intense working day, yes... perhaps even three days, but three weeks? WTAF

Look, he obviously sexes it up so much he spends all this time wanking to it and it's hard to write with your hands busy.