Others Completed Future Fragments [v1.0.1] [HentaiWriter]

[HentaiWriter]

finally, another dev that's willing to take a risk and doesn't develop a game full of anti-piracy schemes like always online and DRM that ends up fucking the people that pay for it more that the pirates
Kudos

Yeah, we won't have any DRM or anything like that in our game (save for when it's on DLSite, but that's forced by the site I believe; we'll have it on many different websites to buy though)

Maybe talk to Grimhelm, you may be able to make something great together

He's quite hard to get ahold of, that, and I think he likes working solo (and he already makes great stuff as is!).

We got a pretty amazing team working on Future Fragments, too

 

[dragonsix6969]

how did it happen that your have debts for the creation of the game? someone asked too much

 

[HentaiWriter]

how did it happen that your have debts for the creation of the game? someone asked too much

I've covered it in the topic a few times, but it's multiple factors;

• The Patreon dropping every month = less money to keep ourselves afloat while still paying for voicework, sound effects, and music monthly
• The bulk of voicework is being commissioned in the last 6 or so months of development, to the tune of $30,000+ (this isn't counting the roughly $40,000 we've paid our lead voice actress over the years), so we had to take out a loan for that
• When I cancelled Reclaim Reality back in 2018 or so, I'd already paid around $20,000 for assets up front out of pocket to get the demo going; on top of that, I paid about $5,000 in refunds to backers.

Prior to Summer 2021, I was able to pay off my $25k or so debt bit by bit each month, so I had it down to about $10k, but then the $30k loan came in, and yeah, i'm back up to $40k or so in debt.

To be clear on how much each thing costs, btw;

• Music = $100 per minute of music: there's currently over 3 hours (180 minutes) of music in the game, so $18,000 (and that's not counting mastering fees and that we give our musician 50% of the soundtrack tier monthly too)
• Voicework = $2-4 per sentence roughly, and at 250,000 words roughly (or 20 hours of voicework), you can see how this would add up to around $70k total
• Sound Effects = $3-15 per sound effect, and with the game having around 1,000 sound effects as of now, we've roughly paid probably around $8,000 or so, I'd estimate.

We've also of course got to pay rent, utilities, bills, food, gas, etc. as the Patreon income is the 99.5% of our income that the three of us on the core team get (we get a few hundred bucks from Itch.io every few months or so with bundles we run) and we split all the money we make, equally, three ways.

 

[BananaCustardCup]

I always knew game dev (and any kind of dev project really) cost a lot of money because it's so many man/woman hours for basically anything, but thanks for being honest and sharing the details, it's very interesting to know.

 

[dragonsix6969]

So you're losing Patreons? I think it's because your are keep pushing back the release date, hope you do not reschedule the release and I think I understand why you advertise other games now.

 

[HentaiWriter]

So you're losing Patreons? I think it's because your are keep pushing back the release date, hope you do not reschedule the release and I think I understand why you advertise other games now.

We've been losing Patrons for years, but that's not the main reason for the debt; it's because of the bulk of voicework we're commissioning here at the end.

(We also have trouble retaining backers since you can pledge once and never have to pledge again yet still get updates to your reward, as well as making practically all content public on social media besides the demos.)

Also, "advertising other games"? Not sure what you mean, the only source of income we get is from Future Fragments; we're not working on any other games.

If you mean the itch.io packs, those are to get attention to newer up and coming games; they don't pay us for that or anything like that, and it doesn't make our backers go up that much either.

As far as rescheduling the release, I hope we don't have to either, but I'd rather go bankrupt and refund everyone every cent we made than release a poor quality game with large chunks of content missing just to get people's money.

We're trying to get it done as fast as we can without sacrificing quality, that's all I can promise.

I always knew game dev (and any kind of dev project really) cost a lot of money because it's so many man/woman hours for basically anything, but thanks for being honest and sharing the details, it's very interesting to know.

No problem; feel free to ask any other game dev questions you're curious about

 

[st0]

I'd prefer waiting longer for a quality release instead of a rushed release. Recently subscribed to this on Patreon without any expectation of March 31 as being the release date.

 

[strong_p4ssword]

HentaiWriter Mega Link for 0.49 version is broken.

 

[ChaoticShock]

When I cancelled Reclaim Reality back in 2018 or so, I'd already paid around $20,000 for assets up front out of pocket to get the demo going; on top of that, I paid about $5,000 in refunds to backers.

excuse my asking, but was there any reasons to start more projects ontop of Future fragments which you've worked/polished and placed alot of your time into?

i hope you get out of the debt, and manage to make more games in the future depending on FF's sales but, with as much ambition placed into this game i can't fathom why developers sometimes wanna bite bigger chunks and more and more things, when patreon is already an unsteady and risky way of gaining money (as it's declining slowly).

Is there any emergency plans or Plan B's in place in the event that the debt possibly isn't 100% gotten off because sales weren't as great?

not sure how many years i've been on the lookout for this game and following it, but all the power to you, and to a successful launch. (PS: maybe at launch or right before, you could campaign into tons of places to advertise it for more people to find the game?)

 

[HentaiWriter]

HentaiWriter Mega Link for 0.49 version is broken.

Ah, that's not my link, so I have no real way of fixing it.

I'd prefer waiting longer for a quality release instead of a rushed release. Recently subscribed to this on Patreon without any expectation of March 31 as being the release date.

Glad to hear it; at the same time, we don't want to keep people waiting, either!

excuse my asking, but was there any reasons to start more projects ontop of Future fragments which you've worked/polished and placed alot of your time into?

When I started Reclaim Reality back around Fall 2016, it was because at the time, our programmer at the time for Future Fragments had, for the most part, not done any work on the game in a long time. We couldn't replace him though because also at the time, people who would work on adult games in what was still a fairly new industry in the West were few and far between, and people who weren't already on their own projects and/or who were skilled enough programmers to make a platformer the way we needed were even fewer and far between. (Luckily, around 2017, we'd run into FrougeDev who would then become our new programmer.)

Because of this, I didn't have much work to do as we were pretty stonewalled; I couldn't make new maps, couldn't make new cutscenes since the cutscene editor wasn't part of our main level editor, etc.

I really wanted to keep working on games though, so I started up Reclaim Reality (and Internal interrogation as well) as a way to keep working on games, and also to get a head start on my general plan for all these games in general being tied into the same universe.

For example, the ending of Future Fragments tied into multiple plot points for Reclaim Reality, and Eroding Ego (which is still going to come out post-Future Fragments, we haven't worked on it in years though) was meant as a direct prequel to Reclaim Reality.

Nowadays though, with the experience and knowledge I have from all this stuff in the past, I don't plan to work on anymore than one "big game" and one "small game" at the same time post-Future Fragments.

Is there any emergency plans or Plan B's in place in the event that the debt possibly isn't 100% gotten off because sales weren't as great?

There are a lot of backup plans in place; we have around 10+ storefronts we plan to sell the game on, and in the event that somehow the sales from all of those platforms don't do well, I've got a good handful of backup ways to make money if I really needed to; I'd hate doing it, it'd ruin my mental health and physical health, but it'd make money. It wouldn't be anything illegal, to clarify, it'd just be really, really stressful stuff, and it'd take a very, very long time.

not sure how many years i've been on the lookout for this game and following it, but all the power to you, and to a successful launch. (PS: maybe at launch or right before, you could campaign into tons of places to advertise it for more people to find the game?)

That's the ideal situation! Thanks a lot for sticking with us all this time

 

[HentaiWriter]

Weekly Progress Report #32 for Future Fragments

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All links are for those 18+ of age and older only.

 

[Furabia]

I've covered it in the topic a few times, but it's multiple factors;

• The Patreon dropping every month = less money to keep ourselves afloat while still paying for voicework, sound effects, and music monthly
• The bulk of voicework is being commissioned in the last 6 or so months of development, to the tune of $30,000+ (this isn't counting the roughly $40,000 we've paid our lead voice actress over the years), so we had to take out a loan for that
• When I cancelled Reclaim Reality back in 2018 or so, I'd already paid around $20,000 for assets up front out of pocket to get the demo going; on top of that, I paid about $5,000 in refunds to backers.

Prior to Summer 2021, I was able to pay off my $25k or so debt bit by bit each month, so I had it down to about $10k, but then the $30k loan came in, and yeah, i'm back up to $40k or so in debt.

To be clear on how much each thing costs, btw;

• Music = $100 per minute of music: there's currently over 3 hours (180 minutes) of music in the game, so $18,000 (and that's not counting mastering fees and that we give our musician 50% of the soundtrack tier monthly too)
• Voicework = $2-4 per sentence roughly, and at 250,000 words roughly (or 20 hours of voicework), you can see how this would add up to around $70k total
• Sound Effects = $3-15 per sound effect, and with the game having around 1,000 sound effects as of now, we've roughly paid probably around $8,000 or so, I'd estimate.

We've also of course got to pay rent, utilities, bills, food, gas, etc. as the Patreon income is the 99.5% of our income that the three of us on the core team get (we get a few hundred bucks from Itch.io every few months or so with bundles we run) and we split all the money we make, equally, three ways.

Oof that's a lot of debt and mostly for "cherry on top" stuff as well like voice acting and music, I didn't know those things cost that much. Pardon for asking but is it really worth it in the end to have this level of quality in those departments?

I obviously have no idea about the numbers or scene, but I guess what I'm asking is if having this amount of polish in the voice and music side of things will directly correlate to an increased volume in sales that make it worth the investment, specially when compared to the hypothetical scenario where you released FF without that expenditure.

Anyways I hope that my little bucks when I purchase on steam will help you pay off your debt lol

 

[HentaiWriter]

Oof that's a lot of debt and mostly for "cherry on top" stuff as well like voice acting and music, I didn't know those things cost that much.Pardon for asking but is it really worth it in the end to have this level of quality in those departments?

Personally, I believe music, voicework, and sound effects are just as essential to a game as art, programming, gameplay, and writing are.

Imagine Chrono Trigger, Undertale, or Final Fantasy 7 without their soundtracks; the games wouldn't be as enjoyable, for sure.

Or imagine something like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Detroit: Become Human without voice acting; the characters wouldn't be nearly as believable or empathetic.

And then there's stuff like FPS games and fighting games where the sound effects may not be that noticeable because they're well done, but if they were missing, you'd definitely notice it and like the other examples, it'd lower the game's immersion and quality.

-------

But for a more specific example to our game, I captured two videos of our game which I'll embed below; I'd say to listen to them normally muted first, and see what you think about them.

Then, try unmuting them and listening; let me know if they're now more enjoyable to watch as a result.


First, here's a cutscene/story based sequence.
This is from an earlier build of the game, so a few things are a bit off, but it gets the general idea across.


And here's a wholly action/gameplay based sequence.
This build I'm playing this on has had the voicework stripped from it for testing purposes/file size purposes; normally, the boss would be shouting out bursts of voicework/attack lines at you.

-------

I obviously have no idea about the numbers or scene, but I guess what I'm asking is if having this amount of polish in the voice and music side of things will directly correlate to an increased volume in sales that make it worth the investment, specially when compared to the hypothetical scenario where you released FF without that expenditure.

Even if it wouldn't relate to a higher amount of profits, I'd still want to include it in the game just because I want to give players the best possible game; I'm the opposite of the kind of companies that want to rake in as much profits as possible at the cost of game quality.

That said, don't get me wrong; we do want to make a profit so we can make future games faster/easier/with higher quality. We just don't want to make a game that is "solely for the purpose of making profits" over "the enjoyment of the players" so to speak, no matter how much money we'd make by doing so.

And we think it'd be a lot more enjoyable to have all 250+ NPCs voiced, giving them variety and making them each more distinct, rather than having just the writing alone to go off of.

As far as the game making more money because of the audio work though, if you check the F95 reviews, almost every review mentions that the voicework or music or sound quality in general was a selling/positive point for them, so we're pretty confident that'll be a big plus for sales.

Anyways I hope that my little bucks when I purchase on steam will help you pay off your debt lol

It absolutely will; every purchase counts. Not only because of the financial reasons, but also because each person who enjoys the game means that we did a good job at what we set out to do.

 

[HardcoreCuddler]

agreed
animations and sound effects can make or break a game honestly, but it depends on the type of game
for this type of game, they are very important

 

[dragonsix6969]

Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Detroit: Become Human just games movies, the best voice acting in the game is legacy of kain no one can compare with this voice acting.

"As far as rescheduling the release, I hope we don't have to either, but I'd rather go bankrupt and refund everyone every cent we made than release a poor quality game with large chunks of content missing just to get people's money.

We're trying to get it done as fast as we can without sacrificing quality, that's all I can promise."

let's hope that this does not happen and you release the game, I'm wondering what extra sex scenes you put in release, i like it when the creators make such secrets, secret rooms (for example, stuck in the wall ) it shows that you care and I hope EA or Ubisoft doesn't buy you.

 

[HentaiWriter]

let's hope that this does not happen and you release the game

The game will definitely come out no matter what; if I have to sell my car and all my belongings to get the money for it, if frouge or triangulate or myself die we all have backups of our content/data we can access to finish the game off, etc.

I'm wondering what extra sex scenes you put in release, i like it when the creators make such secrets, secret rooms (for example, stuck in the wall )

If you count scenes that we never ever showed anyone at all, that's probably another 7 or 8 animations; if you count scenes we've shown on the Discord or on various places but weren't in the demos, probably another 5 or so animations on top of that, and if you count scenes that were in demos but weren't complete, then probably another 8 or so on top of that.

So depending on your viewpoint, between another 8-20 animations.

We'll have a *lot* of secret events in the game though, both just within cutscenes and outright completely hidden secret events, the game will have lots of easter egg stuff like that cause I love that stuff, haha.

it shows that you care and I hope EA or Ubisoft doesn't buy you.

EA or Ubisoft would have to offer us at least $10,000,000 to buy us out, and even if they did, we'd just turn around and use that money to make an even better game.

Ideally, the game we make after Future Fragments should be better than Future Fragments, and the game we make after that game should be even better, etc.

 

[dragonsix6969]

EA or Ubisoft would have to offer us at least $10,000,000 to buy us out, and even if they did, we'd just turn around and use that money to make an even better game.

Ideally, the game we make after Future Fragments should be better than Future Fragments, and the game we make after that game should be even better, etc.

I think that under their wing you cannot create your own, rather they will force you to make rubbish mobile games or boring games, they don't care about games now they're rotten.

If you count scenes that we never ever showed anyone at all, that's probably another 7 or 8 animations; if you count scenes we've shown on the Discord or on various places but weren't in the demos, probably another 5 or so animations on top of that, and if you count scenes that were in demos but weren't complete, then probably another 8 or so on top of that.

So depending on your viewpoint, between another 8-20 animations.

We'll have a *lot* of secret events in the game though, both just within cutscenes and outright completely hidden secret events, the game will have lots of easter egg stuff like that cause I love that stuff, haha.

Ideally, the game we make after Future Fragments should be better than Future Fragments, and the game we make after that game should be even better, etc.

I played almost all the demos that were , forest, winter level, electro level, lava, but the last one was boring where flying hands eyes, portals, limbo. I like secrets but in such a game I expect, sex secrets more i don’t really like puzzles i don’t know maybe it’s in the demo they are like that, but they seem to me give nothing i love it when the game rewards you for what you have done and does not give you some kind of useless stone or boring nonsense.

 

[HentaiWriter]

I think that under their wing you cannot create your own, rather they will force you to make rubbish mobile games or boring games, they don't care about games now they're rotten.

Oh, I was just talking about the hypothetical of just them buying Future Fragments and nothing else, you couldn't pay me enough to "buy me" so to speak; if I was just in this to make the most money possible, game dev would be one of the last careers I'd choose to go into.

I played almost all the demos that were , forest, winter level, electro level, lava, but the last one was boring where flying hands eyes, portals, limbo. I like secrets but in such a game I expect, sex secrets more i don’t really like puzzles i don’t know maybe it’s in the demo they are like that, but they seem to me give nothing i love it when the game rewards you for what you have done and does not give you some kind of useless stone or boring nonsense.

Yeah, so probably from your perspective, another 10-15 new sex animations I'd assume.

But do take into account that this game is just as focused on being a genuine game with solid gameplay and story as it is the sexual content, so while I think we have improved the rewards you get for exploring some since the demos, a lot of the rewards are still gameplay or storyline based.

 

[Shirafune]

Good going on the game, can't wait, I remember the time when there was that guy called back in 2015 on your dev team and you asked me to call him (as we both lived in the same country) in order to find out what's going on with the guy and why he's missing

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

While it's still very nice that everything is fully voiced, please don't sacrifice nearly every penny you own and then some just for some voices for future titles. No one is going to pitch a fit if all of your dialogue is or isn't fully voiced, and it isn't worth going into debt again.

And if someone does pitch a fit, the rest of the forum will all point and laugh at them.