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

[Crushstation]

@Crushstation what's used to create the visual assets for the game? Looks very clean!

Illustrator! I export the layers as PNGs. In 1.4 and below, they looked a bit blurry on HD screens, and it was hard to make out small details (like eye colour, or makeup). We fixed the problem by exporting them at 200% size then scaling them down using HTML – now they look lovely and crisp. The only boring bit is redrawing every single fucking art asset in the game argh I can't wait until this avatar upgrade is over

 

[Crushstation]

Not really, or at least not all the time on every update, and it's not actually with most games. Yeah it's going to happen, but only on certain back-end system alterations, otherwise should be fine. It's those back-end deep alterations that I'm talking about.

Saves from previous versions definitely won't work in the next version (1.5) because we've introduced lots of new variables (like body shape) that won't be present in an older save file.

1.6 (NPC upgrade) and 1.7 (Sex Engine upgrade) may possibly be compatible with saves from 1.5 – we'll see.

Hopefully this will stabilise soon, once we move past building systems and move into building new content.

 

[HeelsMaiden]

What does the hypnosis treatment actually do? Causes the female agent to unable to say no to stuff like the porn audition? Or will it open up exclusive storylines down the line?

 

[Nymphonomicon]

From what I've heard Crush say, it will add hypnosis checks to the game, rolls where Agent is trying to resist actions that have been programmed into her with the hypnosis. At current time, we only have one faux-hypnosis check during the porn audition.
In an earlier build of the game, the hypnosis sessions added more kinks to the Agent's profile, unlocking more options in dialogue- but the option to have more than one kink was eventually worked into the game and I think that function was removed from hypnosis entirely.

 

[SuperMaxo]

From what I've heard Crush say, it will add hypnosis checks to the game, rolls where Agent is trying to resist actions that have been programmed into her with the hypnosis. At current time, we only have one faux-hypnosis check during the porn audition.
In an earlier build of the game, the hypnosis sessions added more kinks to the Agent's profile, unlocking more options in dialogue- but the option to have more than one kink was eventually worked into the game and I think that function was removed from hypnosis entirely.

AFAIK, the hypnosis still adds a kink, but only if you start with only one kink; if you start with 2 or more kinks (which only the Patreon version allows), hypnosis doesn't add a kink.

 

[HeelsMaiden]

AFAIK, the hypnosis still adds a kink, but only if you start with only one kink; if you start with 2 or more kinks (which only the Patreon version allows), hypnosis doesn't add a kink.

Yeah, I checked the script and it will add another kink if you only have one. There are different descriptions of the agent's new sexual fantasies for different combinations of kinks which is rather neat.

Other current effects of choosing hypnosis that I know of:
1. It will force the agent to wear short skirts at the base on Saturday after the 2nd club (game won't let you continue if you don't change to short skirt and you're constantly bombarded with pictures of girls flashing their short skirt lmao).

2. Agent can't refuse the final hypnosis session which is rather strange because you can only get that scene if you've agreed in the first place anyway. I guess this mean that in future versions the agent can learn hypnosis resistance skill that lets her break free of the hypnosis suggestion?

 

[Crushstation]

Hypnosis was written before we had any underlying game mechanics, which is why it feels a bit binary: it's either on or off, and if it's on it leads you to slightly different passages.

This is a limitation of the "flag-based" approach that @DinosaurUnion and I were talking about a couple pages ago. It's one of the reasons we created the SURPS game mechanics, with skills and levels and dice rolls – I want to create more complex, interactive systems in areas like this. (The downside of this approach, as DinosaurUnion pointed out, is that it takes much longer to develop.)

Now we have SURPS, I plan to create something much more interesting and sexy with the hypno subplot. I'm imagining getting a bit clearer on exactly what the psychiatrist is conditioning her to become (maybe with some variations, which are hidden from the player), then penalising her with a stat debuff when she resists that conditioning. (Example: the agent turns down a potential sexual partner, thus resisting her conditioning to be "slutty and available". The game plays a hypno montage, and tells the player that the agent feels guilty for some strange reason. She suffers -1 to all dice rolls for the rest of the day, reflecting her subconscious punishing and distracting her for making the "wrong" choice.)

There'd be some kind of escalation built in, so agents who made too many "good girl" choices would be compelled to satisfy their conditioning somehow. Through some kind of resistance mechanic (maybe tied into the agent's Arousal score), the agent would start to have to make dice rolls or good girl choices would start getting greyed out, and new very bad choices would start appearing on the menu.

This all needs some clearer design, but basically I want to use the game system to model self-imposed restrictions on behaviour, which I think is the sexy part of hypno. If you guys have any ideas or feedback, that will be helpful!

 

[SuperMaxo]

Hypnosis was written before we had any underlying game mechanics, which is why it feels a bit binary: it's either on or off, and if it's on it leads you to slightly different passages.

This is a limitation of the "flag-based" approach that @DinosaurUnion and I were talking about a couple pages ago. It's one of the reasons we created the SURPS game mechanics, with skills and levels and dice rolls – I want to create more complex, interactive systems in areas like this. (The downside of this approach, as DinosaurUnion pointed out, is that it takes much longer to develop.)

Now we have SURPS, I plan to create something much more interesting and sexy with the hypno subplot. I'm imagining getting a bit clearer on exactly what the psychiatrist is conditioning her to become (maybe with some variations, which are hidden from the player), then penalising her with a stat debuff when she resists that conditioning. (Example: the agent turns down a potential sexual partner, thus resisting her conditioning to be "slutty and available". The game plays a hypno montage, and tells the player that the agent feels guilty for some strange reason. She suffers -1 to all dice rolls for the rest of the day, reflecting her subconscious punishing and distracting her for making the "wrong" choice.)

There'd be some kind of escalation built in, so agents who made too many "good girl" choices would be compelled to satisfy their conditioning somehow. Through some kind of resistance mechanic (maybe tied into the agent's Arousal score), the agent would start to have to make dice rolls or good girl choices would start getting greyed out, and new very bad choices would start appearing on the menu.

This all needs some clearer design, but basically I want to use the game system to model self-imposed restrictions on behaviour, which I think is the sexy part of hypno. If you guys have any ideas or feedback, that will be helpful!

I also made a suggestion, a few pages back, on a possible use of hypnosis. My reasoning is that, apparently, some players don't want hypnosis at all, while others do (you ran a poll at some point on the subject), so what would be a way to make choosing hypnosis "rewarding" without unduly penalizing a player who's against it? I thought that under certain conditions, perhaps when agent is feeling high amounts of stress (is there a «stress» variable?), hypno-conditioning could be taken into account as a stress-reducing (stress-coping) mechanism, thereby helping agent "perform" in Bangkok. Those players who decided early on that they didn't want hypnosis in their gameplay would be slightly penalized, but not unfairly, in skill-rolls where high amounts of stress would prove detrimental

 

[Jaster42]

Hypnosis was written before we had any underlying game mechanics, which is why it feels a bit binary: it's either on or off, and if it's on it leads you to slightly different passages.

(Snipped for space)

This all needs some clearer design, but basically I want to use the game system to model self-imposed restrictions on behaviour, which I think is the sexy part of hypno. If you guys have any ideas or feedback, that will be helpful!

So as a player of these sorts of games, I -really- dig this path. It's always hard for me to justify a lot of the rape stuff as I really like to see these through a 'normal' lense so to speak. That someone who takes themselves rather seriously as an intelligence agent isn't super eager to be submissive, be raped / abused, or get into those situations. Most games obviously rely on fail states to put these in, which would be fine IF the difficulty was ever there to back it up, so I have to underplay ULTRA hard to even get content like that which feels dull.

What you're doing (and even, what's already there to a lesser extent) is great as a path for that. I actually think a fair deal of transparency in terms of the mechanics for this is wise, so the player can more easily make the call at the effort / risk of resisting the effect.

Similarly, it's great to show choices that cannot be selected (for any reason, not just hypnosis), though in the case of the hypno plots, the inclusion of your GIF's and a small blurb about the effect preventing you that is currently there is great, so I do hope you keep that / include that in more respects when viable.

Assuming you built up the narrative elements of the binary system, I'd say you're knocking it out of the park to the point I'd hope your second game uses it as its core, rather than an optional bit (obviously finish this one first, it's got a lot of potental). A small detail you could consider is the more they embrace the hypno effects, or the harder they are being imposed upon them, the longer I'd leave each image of the flickering pictures. So during the early stages, the images will flicker fast, perhaps have each image linger for 0.25 seconds, but as it begins totally overriding choices, make them larger, and last longer, perhaps up to 1 to 1.5 seconds (testing required obviously!).

 

[Alleykatt]

Congrats on getting the 1.5 beta out.

 

[Crushstation]

Congrats on getting the 1.5 beta out.

Thanks Katt! Sorry it was just a beta though. I'm going to reflect on why I missed the target and see if there are ways to improve things for the next sprint.

 

[Crushstation]

Great hypno feedback, @Jaster42 and @SuperMaxo, thanks. I'll refer back to it when we're overhauling the hypno mechanics.

 

[Jaster42]

Thanks Katt! Sorry it was just a beta though. I'm going to reflect on why I missed the target and see if there are ways to improve things for the next sprint.

Hey sometimes you just gotta let the time frames be what they are, using them to motivate your work matters more than necessarily hitting every one of them. Feels bad to fall behind (trust me I know!), but as long as you keep working at it and working on a project you still like and can polish, that's the important part. Obviously letting people know when delays happen (doubly so with the whole taking money for the project funding during development) is also important, but if you force too hard, your quality (and drive) can really get damaged in the process.

And please do, always happy to provide feedback on creative processes!

 

[vince638]

I'm going to reflect on why I missed the target

"Because Hofstadter's law is a thing that exists."

 

[Crushstation]

"Because Hofstadter's law is a thing that exists."

This is true, but I have identified some weaknesses in my current workflow. I'll post more thoughts on this once 1.5 is properly released.

 

[hg2390]

Wasn't 1.5 supposed to be out on the 20th? Today? I thought (for some reason) it was today.

 

[archer3334]

This has got to be one of the hottest games out there. Can't wait to see how it develops.

 

[Crushstation]

Wasn't 1.5 supposed to be out on the 20th? Today? I thought (for some reason) it was today.

You're remembering right, that was the plan. But I've fallen behind because creating and coding in the new HD outfits took way longer than anticipated.

One of our targets during this sprint was to introduce avatar rear view with selectable butt shapes. When we started, we thought we'd be able to do this with three slightly different pieces of butt artwork, so each outfit would only need little tweaks.

Unfortunately it looked weird, so eventually we ended up creating three totally different body shapes instead. Then, the six bra sizes looked weird on some of the bodies, so – after a lot of messing around – we ended up creating six bra sizes for each body shape.



It all looks way better now, but the problem is that every single clothing item in the game needs to be hand redrawn 18 times and that has slowed things down considerably. Everything is currently on hold while the new outfits are drawn and uploaded in a special project I've called the Wardrobe Malfunction – you can check the progress reports, with screen grabs of new outfits, on the

You must be registered to see the links

. (It's currently at 78/116 outfits.)

Once this is done, we'll handle any remaining critical dev tasks then release. I'm sorry for the delay.

 

[Crushstation]

This has got to be one of the hottest games out there. Can't wait to see how it develops.

Awesome, thanks @archer3334, glad you enjoyed it! Let me know here or on Discord if you have any ideas about things you'd like to see in Bangkok.

 

[chino222]

It seems to me that people have already lost hope for a trip to Bangkok