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

[yaryaryar]

The game is meant as a lot of things, scopes change and this current progression is way better than whatever open world stuff you can dream up.

It's really, really simple math.

It already takes us 1-2months to get one string of events. If you need to make 20, we're going to either end up like Apotheosis where every single interesting path has 1 passage and nothing else, or its going to take 1 year per update.

 

[hornguy6]

The real problem is you believing that Crush, who currently struggles to deliver updates of a linear prologue in a timely manner, will suddenly develop an ability to create complex nonlinear quests in a reasonable time frame. Right now after years of stalling we are finally moving forward with the story, at the glacial pace, but still forward, and I would like to keep it that way.

Adding a map for no other reason than forcing players to add one extra click before they can enter a location is purely idiotic.

To alleviate your fears about this new complicated tech, they would need to learn to create map, it's already

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.

You misunderstood me entirely. My point was never about having a map for the sake of having a map and I pretty clearly said that I don't believe he's going to be good at making nonlinear quests.

My point is that he could have been laying the groundwork for what his game is supposed to be from the very beginning. Not just from the coding but how he creates content. If he had been trying to create that kind of open world content from the beginning, then he would have been building up his muscles this whole time. He would know how to approach making that kind of content instead of starting to work out how to do it 5 years in development down the line.

The majority of the people who were attracted to this project were sold on the idea that it was going to be open world and that their choices would matter. Neither of these things are true and at this stage in development, they aren't likely to be true for another 10 years.

 

[Riven]

So you understand that Crush has done nothing to transition this game into an open world. You don't believe he will be good at making nonlinear quests. You know it will take him forever to implement functionality you want.

And despite all of that, you still believe Female Agent is going to be an open world game. Why?

Can't speak for the majority, but I've been following this project since it was posted here, and it was always going to be a visual novel/chyoa telling a story of exploited agent with a slight variations based on a few variables (kinks, bra size etc.).

 

[TheDeviant]

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Hey guys! Scene 6 is the most complex scene in the new episode. I’ve been working on it this week and although it started well, during testing I realised that something wasn’t working as intended.
It’s hard to explain without dropping spoilers, but this is supposed to be the freest, funnest part of the episode. In testing it didn’t feel that way, though.
When something we’re trying isn’t working, I think we all have that helpful inner voice that tells us It’s because you suck! You can't do this! Give up!
The fact that this is a critical scene left me feeling, uh…stressed.

When I was done freaking out, I looked at it clearly and realised the problem is the pacing. The pace that worked for the last scene is too slow for this scene – it needed a change to inject some energy and excitement. I’m now trying something new and it feels much, much better.
I’m stressed because I just want this episode done, but things don’t always go to plan. ‍♂ I always knew this scene would be tricky; I feel like I’m on the right track with it now. I’m going to continue with it next week and report progress at the end.
Wish me luck and have an awesome week everybody, I love you guys

 

[boulimanus]

An interesting game.

Its best part is the great story with a spy undertone that is well done and perfect pacing of the corruption. It's also effective at keeping the story interesting while keeping the sexy scenes coming often too. The gameplay with dice throw is a nice addition that makes it feel like playing a classic board rpg.

The biggest turn off for me are twofold.
First, there are way too many clicks to get through too many small screens. It could do with sometimes merging a few together, or even maybe only having to click when there is a choice involved.
Second, there is no illustration at all. The character is really well made, but there is nothing else. It might be the appeal for some though. I still wish there was some drawings, even if it was just one or two per scene. It's even more frustrating as the art could be great, as proven by the aforementioned character quality.

 

[Dracis3D]

And despite all of that, you still believe Female Agent is going to be an open world game. Why?

Can't speak for the majority, but I've been following this project since it was posted here, and it was always going to be a visual novel/chyoa telling a story of exploited agent with a slight variations based on a few variables (kinks, bra size etc.).

All the content delivered meets your statement apart from a few variables (Crush planned loads at the start), but the vision was always open-world, so the below in italics is a direct quote from the 2019 vision statement. Lifepath, Training Missions, Dubai etc was the linear intro to the vision -

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- "My vision for Bangkok is repeatable, open-world gameplay to which we continually add new scenes, outfits and story content. There’ll be a repeatable gameplay loop that’s fun/sexy (working in the brothel), plus a continually growing number of side quests and activities that your agent can experience"

I think you and Hornguy are in agreement, it makes sense for this to be a fairly linear game. I can't see Crush pulling off open-world, or a decent sandbox experience in the current game stucture. I can see him able to layer on some more choices to the existing Bangkok linear content (e.g not be a slut for Connor). Lifepath could be spun off as a separate game. Time will tell what happens, I have no clue.

 

[applesnacks1111]

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Hey guys! Scene 6 is the most complex scene in the new episode. I’ve been working on it this week and although it started well, during testing I realised that something wasn’t working as intended.
It’s hard to explain without dropping spoilers, but this is supposed to be the freest, funnest part of the episode. In testing it didn’t feel that way, though.
When something we’re trying isn’t working, I think we all have that helpful inner voice that tells us It’s because you suck! You can't do this! Give up!
The fact that this is a critical scene left me feeling, uh…stressed.

When I was done freaking out, I looked at it clearly and realised the problem is the pacing. The pace that worked for the last scene is too slow for this scene – it needed a change to inject some energy and excitement. I’m now trying something new and it feels much, much better.
I’m stressed because I just want this episode done, but things don’t always go to plan. ‍♂ I always knew this scene would be tricky; I feel like I’m on the right track with it now. I’m going to continue with it next week and report progress at the end.
Wish me luck and have an awesome week everybody, I love you guys

You would think after 3 (4?) years of development, Crush would be able to write a scene without tripping over his feet and needing to talk about how stressed and uncoordinated he is. But no, still amateur hour, here. Except it's not. Crush is incredibly transparent. He's not having trouble with pacing, he just hasn't done anything. He just hasn't written the scene so he's making up some story to give him time... as always.

Shame considering how the game is good, but deserves so much more development than Crush can give it. Write and release a scene every week, for the love of God. The avatar coding is out and running fine. The text and choices aren't wildly complex. Just take the tools and build. This isn't a problem of team or planning or technique, so trying to improve any of those won't help.

It's a problem of discipline. The man has no discipline. Talent without discipline is a tragedy, as we're witnessing with the non-development of this game over 3+ years.

Still, as I said, the game is good. I'll take what I can get and laugh when Crush abandons it in 10 years. We'll still be in the prologue, naturally.

 

[asdfasdf12341234ACSACA]

You would think after 3 (4?) years of development, Crush would be able to write a scene without tripping over his feet and needing to talk about how stressed and uncoordinated he is. But no, still amateur hour, here. Except it's not. Crush is incredibly transparent. He's not having trouble with pacing, he just hasn't done anything. He just hasn't written the scene so he's making up some story to give him time... as always.

Shame considering how the game is good, but deserves so much more development than Crush can give it. Write and release a scene every week, for the love of God. The avatar coding is put and running fine. The text and choices aren't wildly complex. Just take the tools and build. This isn't a problem or team or planning or technique, so trying to improve any of those won't help.

It's a problem of discipline. The man has no discipline. Talent without discipline is a tragedy, as we're witnessing with the non-development of this game over 3+ years.

Still, as I said, the game is good. I'll take what I can get and laugh when Crush abandons it in 10 years. We'll still be in the prologue, naturally.

I genuinely love reading the patreon updates once I reframed them as "episodes in a tv show". You see, each major update is a "season" (both figuratively and literally, considering they take 3+ months...) with each post being a new weekly episode.

Each episode follows a very similar formula: The main character finds himself in some trouble doing the thing he usually does. Sometimes, that issue is solved in the same episode, sometimes it's a two part episode and the issue gets triumphantly resolved in the second episode. Hero sets out to do something - hero has problems doing that something - hero eventually triumphs. It's classic storytelling! All the episodes are more or less independent stories, related to the main major plot that is resolved at the end of each season.

Just to clarify, I do genuinely like reading them when I think of it like that, it's not a criticism.

 

[Riven]

"My vision for Bangkok is repeatable, open-world gameplay to which we continually add new scenes, outfits and story content. There’ll be a repeatable gameplay loop that’s fun/sexy (working in the brothel), plus a continually growing number of side quests and activities that your agent can experience"

It's a nice sales pitch, but that's all it is.

To put in plainly, it doesn't matter what his vision is, if he has no skill to bring it into reality.

I can see him able to layer on some more choices to the existing Bangkok linear content (e.g not be a slut for Connor)

He probably could, but that would mean months of waiting for him to create that content. I would like to avoid that if possible.

With linear prologue, we are getting one update per quarter. I don't want to think how long it would take Crash to create a quest with a meaningful branching.

Hero sets out to do something - hero has problems doing that something - hero eventually triumphs.

Sadly, our hero is cursed with the goldfish memory curse, so every quest appears as a new challenge even if he already solved it in the past episode.

 

[boobthief]

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

Drowned in negativity from opinionated anonymous coomers who fake-believe they could do so much better at game development if only they could recover their dominant hand from constantly strumming their genitals for five minutes to knock out 10,000 words of superb porn plot.

How about you just acknowledge just how much you personally enjoy playing their game before you start whinging on your impotent rants about how the developer is so dumb and how you would make a better game?

I'm calling you all out. None of you can make a better game. I would like to see you try. Prove me wrong: where's your greta game?

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

 

[hornguy6]

I'm calling you all out. None of you can make a better game. I would like to see you try. Prove me wrong: where's your greta game?

Well, I contribute to Girl Life and those contributions are arguably the most complex repeatable content in that game. Granted, it's not an entire storyline and is a little buggy at times, but I'm willing to put that up against all of the linear writing that Crush has done. And just for the record, I'm not saying that I make the best content in that game, merely the most complex, with a lot of different variations dependent on NPC RNG and player choices. Plus I have the help of other contributors to support me when I get in over my head. I've ended up making more than one thing that's overly complex and has been put on the shelf as a result because I can't get it to work right.

At the very least, I'm not a complete armchair critic because I do understand the time and effort that goes into making a game, even if it's only a hobby to me and not a full time job.

How about you just acknowledge just how much you personally enjoy playing their game before you start whinging on your impotent rants about how the developer is so dumb and how you would make a better game?

I was a $10 supporter of Crush from the first time I saw his original post on TFGamessite until about three years later when he decided to scrap his prologue and start over. I saw the circular habits he had gotten himself into and I disagreed strongly with his approach to the game, so I said so and cancelled my support. For the record, this was also two years after he said,

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And here we are almost another two years to the date after he restarted his Lifepath, and while we're now in Bangkok, we're also still in a prologue that is one third recycled content from what he had published in 2018. By any objective measurement, it's not good progress.

If you think complaints about five years of development and still not getting out of a prologue is just whinging, then I'd like to know you what you think constitutes a valid criticism.

 

[D4n0w4r]

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

Drowned in negativity from opinionated anonymous coomers who fake-believe they could do so much better at game development if only they could recover their dominant hand from constantly strumming their genitals for five minutes to knock out 10,000 words of superb porn plot.

How about you just acknowledge just how much you personally enjoy playing their game before you start whinging on your impotent rants about how the developer is so dumb and how you would make a better game?

I'm calling you all out. None of you can make a better game. I would like to see you try. Prove me wrong: where's your greta game?

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

I worked on small-time video game projects for years as both a designer and a spriter. The reason why I come to threads like these time and time again is that, from personal experience, I've noticed that a great deal of these games follow the same spiraling pattern of having their ambition crush any hope of delivering a complete product one day. It's even worse when it comes to Patreon-funded projects since the service provides a safety net of money and blind support. Just look at High Tail Hall, for example. Crowchild been making a living off of it for around a decade now and he's barely made any real progress for half of that time. He doesn't have to; his support isn't drying up anytime soon, and neither is Crush's.

 

[rbx4]

I think that more progress could be made if less time and effort was being spent arguing with disliked feedback. This is the Internet after all, and there are many creators here who take feedback very personally. There are others who let it go and ignore it when they don't want it. I suggest that those who let it go get more work done. Here, several people have a tendency to try to prove that all disliked feedback is fundamentally invalid, which is a particularly wasteful and vain pursuit on the Internet.

After all, nobody on the Internet has truly believed that they were wrong. This has never happened before and it never will happen, no matter how much time is spent trying. Like I said, these aren't the only people on forums who do that, but here it seems that an excessive and very noticeable amount of time is spent doing that. If people just ignored most feedback that they don't like, this series of events would not generate such a meme.

Still, people tend to stick to their natures. If time was not wasted on this, it would be wasted on the next, slightly less engaging, distraction.

 

[Kevin Smarts]

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

Drowned in negativity from opinionated anonymous coomers who fake-believe they could do so much better at game development if only they could recover their dominant hand from constantly strumming their genitals for five minutes to knock out 10,000 words of superb porn plot.

How about you just acknowledge just how much you personally enjoy playing their game before you start whinging on your impotent rants about how the developer is so dumb and how you would make a better game?

I'm calling you all out. None of you can make a better game. I would like to see you try. Prove me wrong: where's your greta game?

This thread is the 4chan of F95.

Crush literally linked Girl Life when replying to me. I'm not gonna say its better (that's way too subjective), it is far, far more active though. For 7 years I've been the community leader and a major contributer. I host the repo and post all the updates, oversee many projects, run the sub-forum on TFGS, the thread on F95 and the Discord and co-ordinate the whole team.

So what's your fucking amazing game called?

 

[asdfasdf12341234ACSACA]

That whole "okay make a better game, and faster, if you think you're better" is a bit disingenous when phrased like that. Rephrase it to "okay, make a better game, do it faster, without having a day job while earning close to 6k monthly*and with collaboration from a community and other people dedicated at the job" Oh and that's without the whole "Having X years of experience in the same project" aspect.


Basically, it's like watching a guy with an excavator take years to dig a hole and saying "Yeah well, I bet you can do it faster - but do it with just your bare hands".


* I'm well aware that he doesn't actually get the full 6k thanks to fees and whatnot, and that the other people in the team (probably) get paid as well, but even after that, it is a sizeable amount that can't really be ignored or thrown away as beer money.

 

[rbx4]

Well also the refrain "you can't criticize a game if you have not completed a well-known game" is invalid, and always has been, but it gets repeated here endlessly. I have completed games, but I'm not going to invite people to flame-war my games due to someone simply being butthurt and ultra-sensitive to complaints. I will happily remain anonymous and well-separated from my own games here thank you very much.

That said, people who play games should be allowed to disapprove of games. Who are you making a game for, if players are not allowed to disapprove?

 

[HeelsMaiden]

Even after all these years this is still one of the only adult games with a sexpionage theme. This is part of the problem: not that there aren't better games around but lack of games with the sexpionage theme. Not a lot of alternatives if you're into sexpionage even with male MC instead of female which is surprising when we consider that there's a whole popular genre of spy fiction with huge titles like James Bond, Mission Impossible, etc. Lack of competition in the sexpionage theme (especially those with a promise of a highly customizable MC and RPG-like mechanics) means that Crush effectively has monopoly on it. The solution is of course for other devs to make their own version of sexpionage adult games so that people will have more alternatives to choose from but sadly it seems that very few devs are interested for one reason or another. Just my two cents that I have repeated several times already in this thread.

 

[rbx4]

Lack of competition in the sexpionage theme (especially those with a promise of a highly customizable MC and RPG-like mechanics) means that Crush effectively has monopoly on it. The solution is of course for other devs to make their own version of sexpionage adult games so that people will have more alternatives to choose from but sadly it seems that very few devs are interested for one reason or another. Just my two cents that I have repeated several times already in this thread.

Well people should make what they are passionate about making. I suppose there is a different passion in consumption of content versus creation. Making content takes a great deal of effort and discipline, and there are times when it is not fun. Crush is actually quite good at what he does, which is mainly blogging about game creation, but when he does produce a product it is also good. I won't be making a sexpionage game anytime soon, but the existence of Female Agent should not stop anyone from following their dreams if they want to make one.

 

[yaryaryar]

If directors and actors can get paid millions to make super shit, worthless movies that pander to specific audiences, surely we can scrape together several thousand a month in patreon and get a decent porn game made.

If there's an audience there should be someone seeking to exploit it.

 

[rbx4]

If directors and actors can get paid millions to make super shit, worthless movies that pander to specific audiences, surely we can scrape together several thousand a month in patreon and get a decent porn game made.

If there's an audience there should be someone seeking to exploit it.

Theoretically, yes, and sometimes actually it happens. We've established a while back that making a great game does not predictably result in deserved support. There are quite a few really good games out there that make barely a few hundred per month. Some get developed anyway even with that relatively small amount of support. Instead, I think that good visuals in Patreon and regular engaging communication result in better support. It's more a lesson in things: you can make the best game in the world, but if nobody knows about it or checks out the page, few or none will support it.