This "game" already has curmbs of content for one that was in development for nearly 7 years, at least if it had a system like that it would help tie in that so called skills and stat system which should be able to speed up development (like that would ever happen) allowing more content to be made for the "game" :/
HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]
There's no skills and stats system to speak of in the game, so there's nothing such addition would help with. You wouldn't speed up development but the opposite: you'd slow it down for the time needed to re-implement the "skill system", then the time needed to implement these grind crumbs, and finally you'd get the game with even more stretched out content crumbs that they are already. It's like, lose-lose-lose scenario. Or, to better drive the point home, like the Summertime Saga "tech update" which was supposed to "speed up development" too, except it's been two years in the making with no progress to actual game in this time.
- Oct 26, 2017
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How difficult is it to introduce some sort of plot twist tho? Devilfish doesn't need to be the end.
- "Hey you can actually get to the objective earlier than expected"
+ "Finally I can end this"
- "Oh no it turns out we only caught this one chess piece but we can continue and get all of them. You in?"
- "Hey you can actually get to the objective earlier than expected"
+ "Finally I can end this"
- "Oh no it turns out we only caught this one chess piece but we can continue and get all of them. You in?"
- Aug 11, 2020
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Again though, this isn't about Crush making progress or finishing the game. This is about Crush making excuses not to make progress or finish the game so his cult can keep giving him money for nothing. I strongly believe that at first he genuinely wanted to make a game, but once he discovered the fact that Patreon disincentivizes people from finishing projects, he settled comfortably into the scam rut. He has no desire to leave that rut, and he absolutely will not do so until people stop paying him to not produce. He'd find his motivation PDQ if his monthly receipts dropped by 80%.
- Mar 26, 2017
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If you've seen a single James Bond film you are obviously already far more qualified than Crush.
Wait what.
You dislike erotic events that fire between the week while the MC might do spy stuff on one night?
That wasn't about my tastes specifically. But even though i do play sandboxes, no, i don't think much of having to click through week(s) of repetitive snippets between actual plot parts. Does it genuinely sound like actual fun to you? Like, did you think the mad libs in the early build of this game, the ones where you'd get to hit on random people in the club or whatever it was, they were actually erotic? Would you still think the same after reading them for the 30-50th time, while waiting for your MC to maybe again do spy stuff on one night? Or would you just mechanically click through them at that point?
(and they do have to repeat, otherwise this is no different work from what Crush is doing already, which is writing one-off barmaid shifts)
Also, i was responding specifically to idea of "a repetitive sandbox event in which you interact with the location and its characters. (Spending hours for) nothing but a slightly different porn GIF and watching fake numbers increase so I can buy a new shirt or something."
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Well again, that's what makes it a game instead of a linear novel. You can't do much more with Twine anyway. I like Crush's writing, but he's been struggling with the game part of it and having a tiered grind is one way to do that...I mean didn't most of us start our western H game journey with crap like Princess Trainer?
Not to say it's good, but it's something to wile the hours away and immerse in the world more.
Not to say it's good, but it's something to wile the hours away and immerse in the world more.
Some grind is unavoidable if you're going to have a game... if you're going to have a linear novel (visual or kinetic) then that is another thing, but in that case you don't really need Lifepath and whole lot of other stuff Crush wasted months (if not years) so far. And you certainly don't need multiple months between updates for an almost completely text-based novel because there will be no gameplay, no meaningfull choices, no branching paths and just a single ending.
The skills and stats from original Lifepath worked fine and were decent idea, but Crush had no idea what to do with it because he designed it without having any idea what his "game" is supposed to be and how that "game" will use those stats and skills. And he still have no idea what to do with them so reintroducing it now is rather pointless and serve nothing other then yet another excuse for not moving the plot forward (which is something else Crush have no idea how to do).
- Jul 6, 2023
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I think it's obvious that FA is dead. Crush is trying to simulate some activity to justify funding and to keep hope that something will be miraculously changed in the future and all his promises will be implemented
There are no miracles in our world. Crush doesn't want to change anything in his work process, because it means introducing new people into development process and then, as a result, uncovering what he is basically do nothing
I know, this is extremely sad, but life is life
face it
Well, you definitely don't need the lifepath to have a game about female spy, this is true. That said, grind and linearity are not related -- you can have non-linear VN without grind and a lot of them are exactly that. So the idea the grind is unavoidable if you want a non-linear game is simply false.
(you can also have a linear RPG with shitload of unnecessary grind and there's plenty of them, too, but that's another story)
Don't worry, he and his defenders will come out and say "That's such a silly thing, how could it be dead, now that it's getting exciting and there are so many things to explore?"
The reality is, this project is almost 7 years old, and even for a creator, it's genuinely hard to keep interest for that long, especially when you yourself don't see that much progress.
VN's are not games... they are, as their name clearly state novels. Whether they are completely linear or even non-linear doesn't matter. And those RPG's you mention are not actual games... they are VN's masquerading as RPG's (especially ones made in RPGM who are nothing but walking simulators).
Do you need Lifepath and skills and stats to have a game about female spy? Yes, you do. You don't need it for VN about female spy where everything is scripted and "player" imput doesn't matter.
The RPGs i mention are games like Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, KOTOR, all Final Fantasy games etc, and any other RPG in existence which follows a predefined plot the player has no real control over nor branching to speak of. But sure, go ahead and argue these aren't real games. This is nothing but a "no true Scotsman" fallacy you're employing.
Not to mention this is completely pointless argument. Does anyone perusing this thing actually care whether it's a "game" or "novel" they are fapping to, and they'll zip up and leave if it's the latter? Because such concept is entirely meme-worthy.
An utterly absurd claim. Have fun arguing how e.g. No One Lives Forever isn't a game about female spy because it doesn't have Lifepath. Or skills and stats for that matter.
Just because Crush had silly idea of having few hours long sequence for what's a single-screen character creation, if that, doesn't make such element mandatory. That's just a gimmick.
At the most basic level the game can simply present the player with choices their character can take, without artificially blocking some of them. The player still would need multiple playthroughs to explore all possibilities, without having to repeatedly go through a long sequence which doesn't have anything to do with being an actual spy doing the spy work.
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I thought we are talking stuff that can be found on this site, not mainstream games... but fine, we can talk about them if you insist. Since the only one of those I played was KOTOR (and KOTOR 2) I can say that while those games still have predefined plot, choices made by player in them still matter and they do have multiple endings (even if it's just Good vs. Evil ending) meaning there is a branching paths in them.
I agree that your argument is pointless... whether people care if something is "game" or "novel" doesn't matter as long as people enjoy them. That does not chance the fact that they are two very different things that do tend to attract different people.
- Aug 11, 2020
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That's entirely true, but it's not even the main reason we need to differentiate between them in this case. Novels require no mechanics and no variables, you just get a story and you progress through it like a paper novel or a movie. Games require mechanics that A) have to be devised and balanced, B) implemented across the whole game, and C) have a meaningful impact on play. That's a lot of work, and it's compounded by the fact that Crush would need to retrofit those mechanics to everything that's happened up to now, which not only requires the labor of coding but also the labor of writing many variations of, and alternatives to, a huge number of situations past, present, and future. Crush is a man who is either a complete scammer or paralyzed by the prospect of writing more than ten words a week, and either way this is 100% guaranteed to bring to a halt whatever notional progress is being made.
I've said that it would take two years for him to finish implementing the lifepath, but upon reflection I think that it might easily be four or five years even for a halfassed rendering to be completed. This is a guy who hasn't produced a meaningful update in...what, seven months now? Even someone who works faster and is both honest and competent might well conclude that it would be easier and faster just to start the project over from scratch than take on the awkward and frustrating task of figuring out how to apply all the mechanics he's introduced and abandoned both to everything that has come before and everything that will come in the future as well as writing who-knows-how-many variations of scenes he's already written, provide new paths in already existing material that would open or close depending on your variables. And we all know Crush loves to restart this game.
Again, the main problem with the lifepaths isn't that it's not required for the novel that this venture currently is, it's that it would be an effort toward converting a half-written novel to a game, with all that entails. Half a dozen personality types (which is what he's established the lifepath would produce) require not just half a dozen variations of each scene, but half a dozen alternate paths through major sections of the game, with unique scenes in each and...well, look, Crush can't even write a consistent portrayal of one personality type, how's he gonna handle six? He can't handle writing scenes to progress the default, so he's suddenly going to handle his workload sextupling?
Diversion into lifepaths is just Crush's way of throttling back expectations to zero and keeping that sweet, sweet Patreon tit squirting the milk for another ten years or more.
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- Dec 19, 2019
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Its just a scam, he is making 5k a month in Patreon, and every major update this shit gets is like 5 scenes max. Like there is no personal life excuse, since he makes more than enough money to live of this, and even hire help.
- Aug 11, 2020
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On his Discord, his use of the word "soon" is a running joke even among his ardent defenders, so much so that they made a SOON(TM) emoji that gets attached to every post where he says it. It means literally nothing whatsoever. It could easily be another four months.
The version he shared with supporters was close to "release ready", lots of red links (mostly cosmetic choices as we know) but all three parts otherwise complete. So hopefully release in next week or two.