iamnuff

Well-Known Member
Sep 2, 2017
1,670
1,215
Absolutely, I can promise future games will never ever have release dates (until it's ready to go).
They'll still have progress reports, but yeah.



That, and then some. Pretty much lived and breathed this game for the last 7-some years.



They did the 2nd time around per not being complete enough in general (not just endings) to qualify for full release (and not early access). We were going to submit it a 3rd time, but then we ran that poll + fears of getting banned, so we set the release date to "when it's done".
Everyone knows the best release date is "It's actually out now. Go buy it."
But if it got rejected for not being finished in general (not concerning the endings) then what else is left to do? I thought it was all-but done? Is it voice-acting?

The dumb part is, if you tried to submit it with no voice-acting and then add that in a later patch, you probably could have done. (Disco Elysium did that, for example)
But partial voice-acting means that it's unfinished.
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
But if it got rejected for not being finished in general (not concerning the endings) then what else is left to do? I thought it was all-but done? Is it voice-acting?
No; I clarified a lot of this on the Discord poll, but basically, while most of the writing and voicework is done, as far as actually getting it in the game, there's a good chunk left to do.

Once stuff's written, we can't just copy-paste it in the game 1:1 in like 10 seconds; I have to implement cutscenes, by hand, as well as camera movement stuff, sound effect placement, music placement, character expressions, etc. all myself.

Then, for game over cutscenes and a few other things, Frouge has to hard-code those in, since those can appear on any map (regular cutscenes are chained and load up on specific maps, which is why I can do them myself with the editor).

The dumb part is, if you tried to submit it with no voice-acting and then add that in a later patch, you probably could have done. (Disco Elysium did that, for example)
The difference is, we promised voice acting from the get-go, and the demo had it, too. Removing it wouldn't work, even if that was all that there was left to do.
 
May 19, 2018
37
14
well i guess i going to wait until the release and stop following this thread and leave the discord.

to be honest i was hoping at least a preorder or a early access release today
just to buy it and forget it until it releases, my reason?

my country is a shitplace and even if NOW have a "decent" price
with the inflation that we manage is going to be worse and worse as months go by...
 
  • Like
Reactions: D4n0w4r

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
to be honest i was hoping at least a preorder or a early access release today
Steam doesn't let us do pre-orders, and early access isn't something that's viable for us either.

with the inflation that we manage is going to be worse and worse as months go by...
If the price inflation gets worse, we will change prices as is appropriate, of course. We'll likely change them at the very least, one more time right before release.
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
#69 December 2nd progress report.png

Bi-Weekly Progress Report #69 for Future Fragments

DISCORD
-
STEAM -
TWITTER -
FREE DEMO -
MORE PLACES -

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

-----------------

Now, before you freak out at that number, realize that some of these cutscenes take literally only 30 minutes-1 hour tops to put in the game.

However, there ARE some cutscenes (like the core storyline ones) that have a ton of branching variants, or that have a lot of special effects/extra stuff needed to get them working on Frouge's end, and those are the ones that can take upwards of 3-4 hours to plug in.

Again, most of the writing/voicework stuff is done for a lot of these ones to plug in, they just need to actually be put in, by hand, event by event, in-game, and that's why it takes a while.

Probably 80% of the remaining scenes are optional ones, too. Most of the core stuff is done.

We could provide numbers for how many are written, how many are voiced, etc. but it just ends up leading to more confusion (as it did before), so I figure this is the easiest/most straightforward way to quantify how much is left before release; if that number ticks down, a new cutscene, or game over scene, or secret ending, or etc. is in-game, fully playable, with voicework.

But yes, once that number hits 0, we should have everything else done as well (any remaining programming, etc.) so we SHOULD be ready to launch by then.
 
Oct 20, 2017
21
11
But yes, once that number hits 0, we should have everything else done as well (any remaining programming, etc.) so we SHOULD be ready to launch by then.
That's probably the best ETA estimation I've seen yet for something like this. No dates to get hopes up, but visible progress is made and you can extrapolate out. You got this mate, home stretch now.
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
That's probably the best ETA estimation I've seen yet for something like this. No dates to get hopes up, but visible progress is made and you can extrapolate out. You got this mate, home stretch now.
Agreed; we're definitely still learning as we go, and I think having no release date to avoid repeated delay announcements, while still having some sort of counter like this can let us show progress but without needing to burn hours noting every single tiny change (that could be better put towards development itself).

We'll likely add a "total cutscenes" counter on the next one too, with the caveat that this is still a really simplified version of things; some cutscenes as noted before have upwards of 500+ lines with 20+ variants and tons of different events/flag checks, while others may have only 1 or 2 variants and barely any checks, etc.
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
I'm shocked that there's even 150+ cutscenes total.
If I had to give a completely off the top of my head guess, if you're counting purely cutscenes / endings / game over CGs, there's probably like 300-ish scenes (so about half are already in the game).

The problem with that number though, is that in all honesty, what defines "a single cutscene" is really, really vague.
------------------
In my documentation, way early on when we were just trying to get the Electric Level demo out ASAP, I documented every time a cutscene would trigger with the Mainframe Computer, which, technically, they ARE separate cutscenes.

If we do it that way, it comes out to 27 different cutscenes with him (not tab variations, just pure cutscenes).
------------------
However, for easier organization purposes on my end, once I started to get the other four level's cutscenes written/voice acted/added to the game en masse, I started grouping certain events and just considering them "one cutscene" due to similar shared factors.

For example;

- All the "End Path scenes (when you get to the end of a path in a level) + the special version of that that happens in the last level", were considered a "single cutscene" as far as my countdown tally goes (they're in the game 100% right now, to be clear)
- The Fire level's "return to save pad scenes", which happen directly AFTER you finish a path, and usually encompass a small back and forth between the player and Vie, cover over 16 possible variants (there's only 5 paths in the level), but this too, is considered one cutscene on the counter (also all in-game)
- Staying in the Fire Level, Vie has 8 different additional optional cutscenes if you want to seek her out, encompassing around 800 lines and 50 variants, but... this too, is considered a "single cutscene" on the counter. (working on this one right now, about halfway done, started a few hours ago)
------------------
So depending on how things are calculated, there's probably between 300-400 scenes total coming for the game, with at least 1,000 variants between all of them I'd assume. Probably 90-95% of them are optional, of course.

This isn't counting the 157 databanks, either, all of which are fully done/in-game and voiced (except for the 12 Gold Databanks, which we still need to get in-game, but art etc. is done for them)
 
Sep 7, 2017
108
90
I'm sad the game never got released this year
But Still Excited for the game and I still have it on my wishlist
This game seems to have a lot in it so i'm going to have a fun time playing it
And after I beat it I will try to speedrun it
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
I'm sad the game never got released this year
But Still Excited for the game and I still have it on my wishlist
This game seems to have a lot in it so i'm going to have a fun time playing it
And after I beat it I will try to speedrun it
About a month or two after launch, we'd like to get SFW mode, a speedrun mode, and the level editor all made available, but no promises on the timeframe for that stuff, of course.

Glad to hear you're lookin forward to it though :)
 

Dexhellhound

Newbie
Apr 18, 2018
68
92
the amount of effort that has gone into this game i am excited for its release and hopefully it takes me a quite a bit of time maybe a few days to beat
 

HentaiWriter

Well-Known Member
Game Developer
Jan 30, 2017
1,229
2,145
the amount of effort that has gone into this game i am excited for its release and hopefully it takes me a quite a bit of time maybe a few days to beat
On a first playthrough, it shouldn't take that long; the game's really dense laterally (lots of replay value), but not super long "vertically" so it doesn't take forever to go through a new run. Probably 4-6 hours on a first run.
 
  • Like
Reactions: HardcoreCuddler

HardcoreCuddler

Engaged Member
Aug 4, 2020
2,591
3,352
The most I could say is that it'll be out in 2023; our new policy is to avoid giving release dates anymore specific than that to avoid missing them again.
I can see the pressure to give out a release date already lol
honestly no wonder dev teams fuck up their release / update schedule so often, it's like the first thing people always ask, even though it can only be decently determined more than like 80% of the way thru a project
People who can give accurate estimations on project durations are fucking gods to me tbh
 
3.70 star(s) 88 Votes