Developer needs to go full Valve mode. Stop communicating and let the work do the talking. No point making any more breathless updates.
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Who could have possbily seen this coming? I did. You did too.
You aren't working on the game, so this is a baseless assumption. The pace has been fine for a few people attemping to do the work of a team 10x our size.
At the end of the day, we don't want to compromise on quality or content, so the only thing left is time. We aren't here to make a quick buck, we're here to make something memorable, because the people giving us their money deserve that.
But, as a result of all of that, we can't predict how long it'll take to do stuff, so that's why we're not going to do release dates anymore.
To SeverianThecla , omp123 , leotort , O_Conceito , wmeifmf89498m3 , agreed on all points.
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Well, it's a good thing then that this won't ever happen again, because per the Discord and Patreon poll we ran yesterday (as well as notifying people about it on Twitter), due to over 80%+ of people voting as such between the platforms, we've decided to make the following changes.
Effective immediately, the release date for the game is set as "When It's Ready". (Not "when it's done", since there will be numerous updates after the core game's out; we just want to get the core game finished before release.)
The next time you hear a release date from us, will be once Steam has approved the game, and it's ready to go.
Also, we'll be making progress reports bi-weekly, instead of weekly, until the game's released on Steam.
If you've played the demos you've likely already seen most if not all of the enemy animations already. The last six months or so seem to have been focused on 'polishing the final boss', voice and soundwork, and cutscene editing based on the progress reports. I wouldn't hold your breath for a massive deluge of H animations in release, aside from a few cutscenes.I just want to see the animations and at this point its been so long and built up that next year when I do get to see the animations I feel like im just gonna be underwhelmed and not match the build up
I just want to see the animations and at this point its been so long and built up that next year when I do get to see the animations I feel like im just gonna be underwhelmed and not match the build up
Mhiggey's right; I can actually provide a pretty comprehensive list of all the H-content, and the vast majority of it's already in-game.
I'll put the list in a spoiler, in part to avoid spoiling anyone who hasn't played through all the patreon demos and in part just to save space.
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Honestly, I don't care if the game is delayed. I just wanna clap Hentai writer's cheeks for 15 bucks.
Unless game studios relying on crowd founded projects already have a solid reputation and/or some pretty big names in their ranks like, for example, Igarashi when he announced Bloodstained, not communicating is a massive red flag (as it should be I might add). You try it and see if you can reach even a 6 months milestone
Nah your mind is playing tricks on you. It never happened.
In all honesty, I really do not care about games in development (with minor exceptions like Futaken valley right now, ffs) until after they have released. It's better for devs to just stay quiet and work on the game if they care about releasing it, rather than constantly doing PR and talking to the community bullcrap.
If you let the haters live rent free in your head, you're gonna enter this same feedback loop of you talking back to the haters, and them shitting on you, all while you make no progress., giving the haters even more fuel for shitting on you, ad Infinium.
Well, it sure doesn't bode well for an end of the month release. I feel both sides but I'm starting to empathize more and more with the "bad" guys. A game like FF can only be released on Steam to make any money at all but people who have been pointing out the flaws for the dev are not completely off the bat. We understood full well the points made by HW but, whenever we asked for a potential release on when the game was ready, we got a date for a submission on a game the dev was well aware it was likely not to be accepted.
Semantic is a bitch but we all asked for a date was 100% ready to be shipped, not a "almost done, still plugging cutscenes left and right". A date for a complete game is NOT a date for an attempt on a game still missing key elements and the result, much to the dismay of both the devs and players, is the current situation. Still going to wait for the game but I won't hold my breath now.
The way I understand it's almost guaranteed to be release at least in 2023
Semantic is a bitch but we all asked for a date was 100% ready to be shipped, not a "almost done, still plugging cutscenes left and right". A date for a complete game is NOT a date for an attempt on a game still missing key elements and the result, much to the dismay of both the devs and players, is the current situation. Still going to wait for the game but I won't hold my breath now.
The way I understand it's almost guaranteed to be release at least in 2023
I think what I found ambiguous about the regular status updates that we've been receiving so far is that there's always a perception of work being done, but not exactly a clear indicator towards what end goal.
I'd be curious to see a progress report similar to the kind of breakdowns I've seen on some Ci-En projects where you have it broken into small sections and you get to see % progress by individual components.
Here's an example of what it would look like:
I am not able to translate what the categories in the picture mean, but other summaries I've seen would look something along the lines of:
Level Design:
- platforming
- enemies
Enemy Design:
- enemy models
- enemy AI/mechanics
- bosses, etc
Sound Design:
- sound effects
- music/ambience
- voice acting/dialogue
Scripts
NPCs
etc...
I don't know I'm just worried that all these delays are being caused by some perfectionist attempt at polishing every single obscure detail about the game that players won't really interact with for more than 1-2 seconds.
I understand that it's a lot more complicated than that, but when I hear that that the game is projected to release a couple months in the future and then there's two years worth of delays it only makes me wonder how much polish can one add in what feels like another 50% of the game's development cycle.
I remember playing the Electric Level Demo (0.27), the game was quite innovative for its time, but I imagine the delays have only hurt its momentum and it will start to show its age. By this I mean that other projects might've popped on the market that are exploring more innovative approaches to some of the mechanics/kinks/etc.
I still think this game's main selling point is the amazing voice acting and is probably still unrivaled in that category. Closest thing that comes to mind that would even have a chance to challenge it is Succubus Cafe.
Regarding the platformer long-haul grand adventure elements, some new contenders have emerged in the market. You've got Alien Quest Eve as a Metroidvania platformer, but then also got strong rivals in the form of Mission Mermaiden and Holy Knight Ricca.
Regarding the whole robo-BDSM kink that at least the Electric Demo taps into, you've got Training Space Station that is nowhere near perfect, but kinda provides a lot more depth in that direction.
Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that there was a time when all these other projects didn't exist, and Future Fragments was the go-to pick for a lot of the audience that was seeking any of the elements I described above.
As the market is becoming increasingly more saturated in a lot of the unique/interesting elements that this game has to offer, delaying the project further will only hurt its popularity...
I'd be curious to see a progress report similar to the kind of breakdowns I've seen on some Ci-En projects where you have it broken into small sections and you get to see % progress by individual components.
Here's an example of what it would look like:
You must be registered to see the links
I am not able to translate what the categories in the picture mean, but other summaries I've seen would look something along the lines of:
Level Design:
- platforming
- enemies
Enemy Design:
- enemy models
- enemy AI/mechanics
- bosses, etc
Sound Design:
- sound effects
- music/ambience
- voice acting/dialogue
Scripts
NPCs
etc...
I don't know I'm just worried that all these delays are being caused by some perfectionist attempt at polishing every single obscure detail about the game that players won't really interact with for more than 1-2 seconds.
I understand that it's a lot more complicated than that, but when I hear that that the game is projected to release a couple months in the future and then there's two years worth of delays it only makes me wonder how much polish can one add in what feels like another 50% of the game's development cycle.
I remember playing the Electric Level Demo (0.27), the game was quite innovative for its time, but I imagine the delays have only hurt its momentum and it will start to show its age. By this I mean that other projects might've popped on the market that are exploring more innovative approaches to some of the mechanics/kinks/etc.
I still think this game's main selling point is the amazing voice acting and is probably still unrivaled in that category. Closest thing that comes to mind that would even have a chance to challenge it is Succubus Cafe.
Regarding the platformer long-haul grand adventure elements, some new contenders have emerged in the market. You've got Alien Quest Eve as a Metroidvania platformer, but then also got strong rivals in the form of Mission Mermaiden and Holy Knight Ricca.
Regarding the whole robo-BDSM kink that at least the Electric Demo taps into, you've got Training Space Station that is nowhere near perfect, but kinda provides a lot more depth in that direction.
Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that there was a time when all these other projects didn't exist, and Future Fragments was the go-to pick for a lot of the audience that was seeking any of the elements I described above.
As the market is becoming increasingly more saturated in a lot of the unique/interesting elements that this game has to offer, delaying the project further will only hurt its popularity...
We're not going to give release dates, but as noted in earlier posts, we're definitely not going to release during December because that's suicide, November isn't gonna happen either. That's why I needed to sell my car and other things, to keep going until we're done.
And this is what you'll get from now on. The next time we announce a release date, will be when the game is 100% ready to be put on Steam, with Steam having accepted it.
The problem with posts like these, are that they take up an enormous amount of time given the scope of our project; a lot of things are at various stages of completion, and so to list and check through everything, every week, and then write it out as such, would probably take up most of the day.
Remember, there's 350+ NPCs alone to account for, plus a significant amount of non-NPC cutscenes and cutscenes solely involving Faye/Vie.
A given cutscene goes through the following stages;
- Prep work
- (Coming up with the character, their backstory, their voice references, personality, speech patterns)
- Connecting things
- (What characters tie in with this character, what scenes affect this cutscene's choices (or if it's a databank, what scenes it affects), tying it into the overall worldbuilding/storyline)
- Actually writing the scene
- (Doing research on science/medicine/history/etc. when needed, proofreading, doing rough and final drafts, as well as flags, camera movement, music selection, sound effects, and other notation for when I plug the scene into the game)
- Creating a voice acting document/voice direction for the VAs
- (With references for how to say certain words unique to the game, context for each scene, etc.)
- Getting the voicework back from the VA and cutting it up
- (Adding/removing silence where needed, clicks, re-arranging sentences if needed, picking the best take)
- Sending the voicework to Lewd K. to get mastered
- (Writing a document listing what filters we want for each character, sound effects needing to be added to the dialogue, etc.)
- Sending that mastered audio to Frouge to put into the game
- Plugging the cutscene in, event by event, adjusting things as needed for cutscene/databank flow
- Testing the scene to make sure things work
- Sending the map file off to Frouge to implement in the game
Trying to list off where each one is at, or giving a various percentage of each, would take an incredibly long amount of time that could be better put towards actually developing the game, as noted here;
Additionally, further complicating things is that the path to get a cutscene done (or anything in the game done, really) isn't always a straight line; for example, a voice actor might be sick or busy with other work so we need to wait longer for that one.
Or, there might be a mechanic we need implemented in the game for some cutscenes, like the special "null node" that Frouge just put in recently for characters hidden behind objects, so they aren't sitting on top of objects.
Or, there might be visuals we need implemented that were done already, but just weren't in-game, like the portal to and from the future, which is used in a few cutscenes.
Since Frouge has to stop what he's doing to implement those latter two things, that means that whatever he's working on has to come to a stop until he's done working on his stuff, which would then skew the % of completion in terms of "expect it to be done by this time" rate, leading to some people going "well, it says it's at 95%, why has it taken a week for that last 5%?!".
The same goes for doing things in reverse; Frouge might be waiting on me to deliver him a document detailing a specific mechanic, or we might need to go over something that isn't working as intended or doesn't look/play as intended, so both of us need to stop pure production/implementation of things as we talk about it and go over it to remedy whatever situation's come up.
For example, there was an issue with the True Final Boss fight yesterday where one of his attacks had an exploit that would have caused issues if players accidentally stumbled on it, only caught by a total accidental oversight, so we figured out a workaround to prevent it from happening without affecting the fight quality/presentation itself.
On top of all of this, for some events or cutscenes, the hardest part/biggest time-sink could be the prep phase, whereas for others, it's the writing phase, and for yet others, it's the implementation phase, leading to even more "incorrectly presented" data that would give a false impression of completion % or time left to complete a specific thing.
It's not this at all. Right now, the game is missing a lot of pure, core content, as noted in earlier posts.
We're saving the polishing obscure content stuff for post-release; right now, we just want to get the core, base game done. There's a lot of stuff we're skipping polish on simply because we want to get it done as fast as possible.
As noted above, stuff just takes a lot of time on a small team. The smallest wrench in the works grinds everything to a halt, as everyone has to stop what they're doing to remedy the situation. With something the size of our game, small complications like that can arise almost daily, no matter how much planning or foresight you have into things.
On large AAA 500+ person teams, those same complications arise, but you've got 500+ people to handle it; 10 of them can tackle a problem, while the other 490 can continue being productive. In our case, we just don't have that luxury.
We definitely under-estimated how long it'd take to get things done, which is why going forward, there'll be no release dates until the game is ready to be shipped, and that goes for future games, too.
If people feel we're "milking the patreon" (despite it not keeping us afloat for well over a year and a half now), they're free to request a full refund, as they've always been.
That's fine; we're not in this as a competition. Also, we're confident the full game will be a much, much better experience than the Steam demo is, and as far as sales go, we're at 47,000 wishlists so I don't think there'll be much issue in terms of sales provided we get the complete game out at launch.
Yes, this is true.
However, putting the game out with core content missing would do far, far worse for it, and it'd be a betrayal for the people buying the game, as well. We don't want to do that at all costs, as long as we can financially hold out for.
Those players deserve better than something kicked out the door, incomplete. We're the ones who took as long as we did and made the mistakes we did, so we don't really care about how much it hurts us, we just care about the experience for the player.
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Absolutely. We don't want to disappoint you, either.
No, I'm just tired of specific people who have a track record of ignoring what I'm writing when I'm replying to them, when they're saying the same things that have been answered in the thread numerous times (usually on the same page they're viewing), or they're spreading misinformation, or they're just trolling/being hyperbolic.
My time's better spent actually working on the game than replying to those people if they've got no actual desire for discussion, since it's not like they actually want clarification on things since they have a track record of ignoring said clarification on things too.
People with actual critique, that actually want a reasonable discussion, that's totally fine.
And here's exactly a case of what I've just talked about, to prove my point.
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Anyone following the game would have gotten this in their alertbox, back on November 22nd.
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And, if you go to the community page for the app, it's front-paged.
So you're either blind, or just blatantly spreading misinformation.
Given the tone of your post here, and other ones you've done, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter reason.
Yes, we are "abusing Patreon" by;
- having it setup so you only need to back once to get your rewards for life
- offering full refunds to anyone who asks, which we've delivered on upwards of $1,000+ in some cases to a single person
- posting all Patreon content publicly to social media
Absolutely terrible, I agree.
Same here. We're more annoyed than anyone else, trust me. But to deliver that quality you noted in the first half of your post, we just need a little bit more time; it'd suck to just kick it out unfinished right at the finish line, especially after all this time.
Also, if you want another grouping of games that are at least somewhat like FF, I run these bundles from time to time of adult action games on Itch to get them attention and a bit of extra money for development. It's all free demos, and everyone splits the tips people give us evenly (with us getting the least %).
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Crisis Point, over at
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would've been in there too, but they opted out given they didn't want to be in another bundle without their demo having been updated since the last time they were in one.The resolution can be upped to full screen in the Steam demo version of course (which I do recommend you check out, it does have a good chunk of improvements over the original Electric Demo, and even still the full game will have much more than that), but yeah, it natively runs at 1280 x 720 so as to keep things manageable for us with art demands since it's not vector graphics.
Much appreciated.
The only people we'd ban from Discord are racists, underage users (luckily haven't had any of those yet), homophobes, bots, and conspiracy theorist / political nutjobs. That's it.
There's been people who've came on Discord and complained and complained about the game, and I've either talked things out with them and they've stayed, or they've left of their own choice. They weren't banned.
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Well I gotta say...HW is right about some people just wanting to critique and whine instead of providing constructive feedback of any sort, and we can't say we haven't seen tons of that around here already.
If it's true that the discord actually decided the release change (which I have doubts of, but I'm not denying just yet since I've not seen contrary arguments) then I don't see a problem with the release change.
Still, it's understandable that some people are reluctant when it comes to this kind of stuff because the porn game industry is plagued with scummy devs.
All in all I don't think we should be telling people to support or not support HW with this because it's clearly not one of those dead-end projects that just racks in cash without providing anything worthwhile. FF has provided TONS of content in comparison to other games, and quality content as well, not just some half assed animations in a shitty platformer combat context.
You are taking monthly payments though? Wouldn't it be fair to have them set as payments on release?
I already paid for it... years ago. Quoting my self from three years back:
Would've been another $360 by now.They've done a good job of trickling expectations, but after five years... subscription supported development is a gold mine, and they're still charging $20 for it. Ballsy, but who can argue with 12K a month for bug fixes
I still think the original fire demo is pretty good, but ~$50 was enough. if i'd stayed subscribed, I'd've paid closer to $600.