gds21

Member
Game Developer
Oct 4, 2023
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Tanlines coming soon!
New
14 minutes ago
Hey guys! I've been busy this week doing more writing and coding work on the Lifepath childhood section.
Several people have asked for a release estimate. I can't provide one yet because of some avatar customisation features we're also working on. (We want to include them in the next release, because the start of the game includes the character creation screen.)
One feature we teased a couple weeks ago is the new hairstyle options, another is tanlines. This is more complex than you'd expect, but our illustrator lovely Victoria has produced a system that turns our pasty desk officer into a believably bronzed backpacking babe.

In the story, the tan will be added during the Malaysia episode: the reason we're implementing it now is because this system will also allow us to give you more base skin tones with which to customise your heroine.

Currently the game only supports fair skin: we plan to add olive and pale choices to the next episode. (More can be added in the future.)



Different ethnicities
This is still on my wish list, but it's a bigger project than just changing caucasian skin tones – some avatar assets will need to be totally redrawn (because the tanline layers glitch if you make them too dark), and we'd also need to rewrite some story and background elements to reflect the different experiences the heroine would have in some of the scenes.


So my playthrough of Female Agent Freema Agyeman is going to have to wait. This is a frequently requested feature, so I know this is going to be disappointing news to some players, and I'm sorry about it. We might be able to make a Latina CIA officer work in this update, we'll do our best!



Okay, that's it for the report – I'm going to get back to writing & coding work tomorrow. We're working as hard as we can every day and we thank you humbly for your patience and support.
❤‍
 

gds21

Member
Game Developer
Oct 4, 2023
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On Patreon:


Hair is now over 9000
New
An hour ago
Hair in games is both interesting and challenging, since there is a lot to get right in hair.
It is an enormous time effort and I have yet to see someone do hair fast. As with everything in art: Reference is key!
Hair is one of the best tools to create personality in a character, since it shows a lot of attitude.
–Calvin Verhoolen, Senior Character Artist [EA, Disney, Konami, Ubisoft]
Hey guys! Our illustrator lovely Victoria went crazy and decided that sweet little Female Agent should have way more hair options than your average AAA blockbuster.
She's invented this cool system that uses layers to take the number of hairstyle options in the game from 6 to more than 300 in the next release.


The trick is mixing and matching reusable assets like buns and bangs in order to create more options; she's very clever

We're working on implementing the new options into the avatar system and the UI, and also ironing out some fine details in the new skin tone choices.



The plan is basically to make the avatar more customisable between scenes (and have NPCs/the game react to it from time to time).



I'm also continuing to work on the overall story structure (based on feedback to the MOABS design document) and regionalise/edit the early Lifepath sections.



Okay, that's it for the report, we're basically just working hard on everything, art, systems and content ❤‍
 

robin312

Active Member
Jul 6, 2023
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We're working on implementing the new options into the avatar system and the UI, and also ironing out some fine details in the new skin tone choices.
Each time they are fixing things than isn't even broken make me smile
Implementing all those gimmicks instead of the game engine just shows everyone that it's still the same old Crush
No actual work on the engine, because it's hard and complicated. It's better to add feature that no one need and easy to implement
 
Apr 3, 2019
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Each time they are fixing things than isn't even broken make me smile
Implementing all those gimmicks instead of the game engine just shows everyone that it's still the same old Crush
No actual work on the engine, because it's hard and complicated. It's better to add feature that no one need and easy to implement
Just curious, what features do you want added to the engine? I genuinely think it's fine (not great, not fantastic, not awful, just fine) for what Crush ultimately wants: kinetic novel with a couple of screens to show stats, maybe an overlay, maybe an animation.
 

orellion

Member
May 12, 2023
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The only problem with sprucing up a 2d avatar with so many options is there is no way to accurately represent it with in game photos or renders.
 
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robin312

Active Member
Jul 6, 2023
667
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Just curious, what features do you want added to the engine? I genuinely think it's fine (not great, not fantastic, not awful, just fine) for what Crush ultimately wants: kinetic novel with a couple of screens to show stats, maybe an overlay, maybe an animation.
I don't want anything from Crush
It's just hilarious from my point of view how he is finding side work instead of reworkind the main story and integrating lifepath content into it
Does anyone asked him about a new hairstyle system or tanlines, lol?
 

Senor Smut

Member
Aug 11, 2020
398
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I can't believe man's still drawing this out. I had high-hopes for this, seven years ago. It had such potential, I can't fathom why things have gone the way they have
It's not complicated. Patreon and similar schemes incentivize exactly this behavior. If you can do the absolute minimum necessary to maintain your support base without ever actually achieving anything, you have a steady income stream for essentially no effort. The guy makes a solid middle- to upper-middle class income and most weeks he probably never lifts a finger on this project. Until and unless a results-based funding mechanism comes around and is widely adopted, this kind of behavior will be the norm rather than the exception (although Crush will likely remain an outlier as far as egregiousness goes, because most nonproductive/incompetent/scamming creators can't generate the kind of loyalty over time that he has).
 

camube

Well-Known Member
Jun 4, 2022
1,562
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i'd like to ask, is there anyone else that makes a game like this (spy-themed), preferably html but renpy is okay, that has better rate of updates than crushstation?

i joined this site maybe 2 years by now and from then until now, this game hasn't really been updated much, which is such a shame cuz it's pretty good. I really like the adventuring around town and the country celebration part
 
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Ravnen

Active Member
Dec 25, 2020
659
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130
i'd like to ask, is there anyone else that makes a game like this (spy-themed), preferably html but renpy is okay, that has better rate of updates than crushstation?

i joined this site maybe 2 years by now and from then until now, this game hasn't really been updated much, which is such a shame cuz it's pretty good. I really like the adventuring around town and the country celebration part
Its a whole other kind of game. But Manila Shaw - Blackmail obsession..
 
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CassieBare

Lead Developer of Blue Swallow
Game Developer
Jan 25, 2020
624
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i'd like to ask, is there anyone else that makes a game like this (spy-themed), preferably html but renpy is okay, that has better rate of updates than crushstation?

i joined this site maybe 2 years by now and from then until now, this game hasn't really been updated much, which is such a shame cuz it's pretty good. I really like the adventuring around town and the country celebration part
Blue Swallow
 
3.50 star(s) 126 Votes