I'm actually so depressed I caught up on this game and found out updates are so sparse. It's such a good game
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HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]
It could be a good game, yes. Sadly it isn't. Then again, it has spawned a few spin-offs or inspired others to create games with a similar premise. You can even find them on the last few pages of this thread and I think they are far better in execution and making progress at a much faster pace than the original. FA has been surpassed by them already, which is quite telling, considering that they have been in development for a few months only.
FA is in its 7th or even 8th year and with the announced reintegration of the lifepath I can guarantee you that it will take another two years, before any progress will be made. Quite frankly, I'd go out and say that it will lead to a complete reboot of the game for a third or even fourth time, because there is no way you can integrate that stuff within the existing framework.
- Aug 11, 2020
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And it will be a ground-up reboot, because people who know a lot more about coding than I do (which is literally anyone who knows anything about coding) have looked at it and concluded that the bedrock programming choices Crush made when he did the last reboot make it impossible to implement the mechanics and do the things he wants to do. I don't understand it and it may not even be true, but it was pointed out more than once by different people over on his Discord. So we'll have a year of fucking around and pussyfooting by Crush, followed by the announcement of another restart, "This time I know exactly what I'm doing and where I want things to go, and if you believe that I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you."
This is only partly true.
The engine itself, Sugarcube, isn't exactly the best for a fully dynamic game. You have to fight the engine and javascript itself, trying to make both things work with each other (one of those situations of "it should just work, but it doesn't").
But here's the thing: He isn't trying to do anything "clever". He isn't dynamically adjusting flavor text based on previous options, or even based on traits. He's just blocking some options based on the kinks you select. In other words, he's blocking passages based on variables.
The existing framework works just fine for what he actually does (not what he wants to do). Some people might be thinking that the game will end up adjusting the flavor text on a passage narrating an escape sequence on a bike based on whether or not you took three biking lessons or five during the lifepath...but that's just not going to happen, and it's not a fault of the framework.
Expecting to have a unique flavor text based on choices during lifepath is not just unrealistic, it's borderline delusional. Something like that barely exist in AAA games so expecting it from Crush is laughable at best.
What those choices could lead to is to have a beter chance of success (additional +1 or maybe +2 to the roll) IF he ever manage to integrate a meaningful dice rolls...
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- Jul 25, 2017
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MOABS third draft
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Hi guys! Last week I finished a third draft of the design doc I’m working on, the Mother Of All Beat Sheets (MOABS).
This was always my fear too. But the results are just so exciting! Like I said last week, significant improvements are on the way. I’m psyched about getting them out to you ASAP.
By its nature, the MOABS is full of spoilers (including plot twists), so I’m trying to limit who has to see it (and end up having their game spoiled). But some selfless contributors have seen early versions.
With the third draft, the MOABS is roughly complete; we now have a (very) detailed outline of story beats to implement. The existing Bangkok structure has been kept – but we’re moving around some events, introducing a few new locations, and bringing forward the introduction of some important NPCs (and an organised crime subplot stolen fro...I mean inspired by Johnnie To, which the heroine will get sucked into). The overall aim is to pack out each episode with more variety and more for her to do (instead of being passively led through the story by NPCs). I think you’re gonna love it!
Next steps
What’s left is some fine tuning. The structural changes have created some continuity and characterisation issues. (For example, Connor’s role in sexualising the heroine has now been spread out across a few different NPCs, which is a big improvement for the player – but that’s left his story role feeling a little inconsistent, so I want to work in a few extra story beats to handle that. Also the heroine’s friendship with the bargirls requires a little more bonding time than is currently planned in the MOABS, so I want to squeeze in some “friendship mini-quests” to make that feel believable. That kind of thing; technical story stuff.)
Workflow
The MOABS has now become so big that it’s actually kind of hard to visualise. I’ve put together a calendar of story beats allowing me to easily move things around and visualise where the story beats we need can be inserted.
I took a break from it to write this report, but I’m itching to get back to it!
While I’m working on this, our illustrator lovely Victoria is working on a few avatar improvements that we’ll roll out as part of the reintroduced Lifepath. (More info on that will be released in a little bit.)
Okay, thanks for reading, guys, I’m gonna eat lunch and get back to work! ❤
TL;DR Same as always.
- Aug 11, 2020
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And it's officially another complete reboot. That was fast.
Newlife kind of does it for sex scenes, based on the traits of both your character and the male you're with. The same "suck his cock" action can have a fairly good amount of variation.
I'm not saying it's a great example or that Crush will "totally do it, just wait you guys", I'm just saying, Crush (and to some extent, the fans) thinks "I can't do this really complicated feature because I'm limited by the technology and existing framework therefore I must change it to achieve it" when in reality, he can't even do the basic stuff.
Or, in other words, it's like crying out you can't replicate a three Michelin star dinner because you don't have some industrial machinery, when you can't even fry an egg on a pan.
Newlife kind of does it for sex scenes, based on the traits of both your character and the male you're with. The same "suck his cock" action can have a fairly good amount of variation.
I'm not saying it's a great example or that Crush will "totally do it, just wait you guys", I'm just saying, Crush (and to some extent, the fans) thinks "I can't do this really complicated feature because I'm limited by the technology and existing framework therefore I must change it to achieve it" when in reality, he can't even do the basic stuff.
Or, in other words, it's like crying out you can't replicate a three Michelin star dinner because you don't have some industrial machinery, when you can't even fry an egg on a pan.
Just run with me for a second, what would happen if say instead of writing some sexy crime noir spy thriller where we controlled an ambitious and confident woman using (or not using) her feminine wiles to advance the storyline and her career, we set all this back to highschool and had a 40 minute vignette where our conveniently legal protagonist got fingered at homecoming?
I can already imagine 1600 words on just the setup, how are we meant to proceed if we don't know just how humid it is in the backseat of that 1997 jetta, or wait, is it a passat, it feels a little roomier and there are leather seats, but wait did they even offer the passat as a manual transmission option in new brunswick in 1997. Some mysteries will never be solved. But don't worry, the fingering wil happen no matter your choices, but you do get to choose, will she a.) like it b.) really like it, c.) like it but pretend not to or d.) not like it but everything will progress as if you chose a, or it's a game over. God damn can I build a world or what, and yes I might be Todd Howard. Or not. This is a sexy mystery afterall.
I can already imagine 1600 words on just the setup, how are we meant to proceed if we don't know just how humid it is in the backseat of that 1997 jetta, or wait, is it a passat, it feels a little roomier and there are leather seats, but wait did they even offer the passat as a manual transmission option in new brunswick in 1997. Some mysteries will never be solved. But don't worry, the fingering wil happen no matter your choices, but you do get to choose, will she a.) like it b.) really like it, c.) like it but pretend not to or d.) not like it but everything will progress as if you chose a, or it's a game over. God damn can I build a world or what, and yes I might be Todd Howard. Or not. This is a sexy mystery afterall.