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

[Bulbanych]

I hear that, if it doesn't release by Christmas 2021, it's free.

I remember that message from him, too. Those were the good times...

 

[Smaild]

It's a shame, I can say that Patreon was the worst for porn games, and no, I totally agree that a creator should be financially supported, but, unfortunately, the creators became ambitious, and now it is very rare to find a finished game .

 

[OmniFurious]

If your takeaway from the past few pages is "People want to see this game fail badly" and not "People want the dev to release something when they say they will, just once. One time. Just one." then i'd like to ask you to re-read them again.

A lot of the big talkers here negatively talking about HW are jaded ex-patrons, myself included. We've been around long enough for that glimmer of "This game looks cool as hell!" to fade away. At one point we were so happy to see the game cross that finish line, to be able to play an outstanding game in the adult game genre. However the goalposts have moved time and time again, the runner is exhausted, and now it feels like FF is going to trip and fall over that finish line, covered in its own shit, and then vomit all over the place. What should've been an exciting release for a bunch of us has turned into something that just needs to be gotten over with, and that fucking sucks.

I'll have to decline rereading the past few pages. There's some well placed skepticism for sure, but there's also a lot of shouting into the wind.
From what I understand, the game has been in development for years with deadlines repeatedly being pushed back. But if you saw the first or even the second deadline get pushed back, why would you not stop supporting someone at that time? Did you just hold out and keep faith long enough to the point where it broke you? Weren't there constant updates and even refunds offered? Was something wrong with Patreon or whatever you were using that didn't allow you to cancel or put a pause on your pledge? Are you really angry at a promise that hasn't come to fruition yet, or are you upset that you got too invested and can't let go?
What is it, after all this time, that keeps you holding on?

 

[hu lover]

I'll have to decline rereading the past few pages. There's some well placed skepticism for sure, but there's also a lot of shouting into the wind.
From what I understand, the game has been in development for years with deadlines repeatedly being pushed back. But if you saw the first or even the second deadline get pushed back, why would you not stop supporting someone at that time? Did you just hold out and keep faith long enough to the point where it broke you? Weren't there constant updates and even refunds offered? Was something wrong with Patreon or whatever you were using that didn't allow you to cancel or put a pause on your pledge? Are you really angry at a promise that hasn't come to fruition yet, or are you upset that you got too invested and can't let go?
What is it, after all this time, that keeps you holding on?

Does this game even get updated anymore?

 

[sirretinee]

I'll have to decline rereading the past few pages.

Okay, but, the very least you could do is read my post where I answered... all of your questions?

Really I just want to see what happens. I've pledged enough in the past that I should get a key on release and am not currently, nor have I been for a while, a patron of theirs. Hell or high water i'll get the game (assuming they keep to that promise), all that's left at this point is to watch what happens as they try to release it.

 

[OmniFurious]

Does this game even get updated anymore?

Seems like it, maybe not very frequently, but I don't know what would be considered frequent enough.

Okay, but, the very least you could do is read my post where I answered... all of your questions?

Really I just want to see what happens. I've pledged enough in the past that I should get a key on release and am not currently, nor have I been for a while, a patron of theirs. Hell or high water i'll get the game (assuming they keep to that promise), all that's left at this point is to watch what happens as they try to release it.

Yea I read it, I just didn't believe that the drama was over something as small as keeping a deadline itself. Just remove the pebble from your shoe and walk away man. It's just some deadlines some random guy didn't make, you can't let it eat at you like this. You're better than that man, you got this.

 

[dragonsix6969]

It's a shame, I can say that Patreon was the worst for porn games, and no, I totally agree that a creator should be financially supported, but, unfortunately, the creators became ambitious, and now it is very rare to find a finished game .

Yes, unfortunately, others suffer because of such developers. I think Patreon will close this subscription method because of people like this.

 

[ryukotan]

It's a shame, I can say that Patreon was the worst for porn games, and no, I totally agree that a creator should be financially supported, but, unfortunately, the creators became ambitious, and now it is very rare to find a finished game .

tbh dev ambition is just one small part of a larger recurring problem. many things about these games in forever development are actually fairly realistic, it's always just a few things(usually stuff around "we're going to track like 5324325 variables of decisions you make for a unique narrative experience" type ideas) that balloon out of control and suck up tons of time.

the bigger issue is that the overall workflow many devs have is just, like, straight up bad. patreon models actually carry a lot of blame for this, not because "devs want to farm money while doing no work" but because the type of development people want to see from a patreon model is actually antithetical to good game development. when people subscribe to these models, they want playable demos with regular updates and to see work being done behind the scenes with dev updates that have nice screenshots and gif images and so on. in an ideal world, however, you'd be doing greybox work for like 80-90% of development and only have it get pretty-fied for regular users towards the very end. this way you can get all of the mechanics working properly and level design is much cheaper to do as you don't require reworking of art assets and so on. however this would just look intolerable to regular users and you wouldn't get a lot of regular support for something that would take months to years before getting a fully animated sprite added, so for developers reliant on patreon models, they're stuck in this lose-lose situation where they have to engage in bad development practices or lose their funding.

this game actually has a good example of how this development method can waste a shitload of time, too. there was the first fire level demo released forever and ever ago but it didn't have a lot of mechanics that later levels would have because those mechanics weren't made yet, like the item pickups and such. then, once those mechanics did get made, they had to redo the entire level to account for it, so lots of time was wasted having to build the same level twice. not to say that this mistake was entirely forced by the patreon model because going for a metroidvania style level design with literally nothing to find in it was certainly, uh, a choice, but needing to have a level out to generate money for further development isn't a story unique to this game. i'd put patreon model design methods at the top of the reasons of why these games take forever to make and end up with tons of problems for this reason, followed by dev incompetence in the field of project management, then maybe over ambitious projects as a distant third. the projects that are really actually too ambitious tend to fail extremely fast as it quickly becomes apparent that those teams lack the skills and manpower to make those ideas happen.

the thing is though that a lot of devs are still reliant on patreon type models to stay afloat. game development is expensive and time consuming so unless all of the devs are comfy NEETs, they're going to have to make games alongside a day job unless the players pay them enough to dev full time. so the cycle will continue unless players somehow collectively decide that they're okay with giving devs money while devs just don't talk about anything for months or years, which has its own obvious problems too.

the whole ecosystem is basically a perfect storm for nonstop problems. inexperienced dev teams make mistakes because they're inexperienced. patreon supporters want a steady stream of updates and playable demos so developers have to restructure development from "make the mechanics then make the levels then make the game" to "make the game right now so people can play it so you can get funding". players barely have even a vague idea of how game development or any level of programming works in general and make unrealistic demands. ero dev teams are also typically very small so every issue is felt so much more as well. patreon development is fucked but we're stuck with it unless someone creates a better funding method, and/or players become more understanding of how development work and become okay with multiple months of dev silence as a regular occurrence.

disclaimer: this post is not a defense of why this game has taken so long to come out as the influence caused by patreon would not be enough to explain the time taken lol

 

[Noble 6]

At this point, I'm spoiled by these types of charts, and wouldn't really trust any monthly-crowdfund projects that don't have something similar.
Even if you don't feel comfortable showing content that is possibly a spoiler, you need a gameplan at the start. Goals you want to reach other than "the game is done and release."
You have to limit yourself. It's always the feature-creep that extends projects. Harem games add more women, platformers add new gameplay systems, VNs try to add more routes.

I use this specific chart, because like 4 years ago, some of the devs in the circle played an old Future Fragments demo and said they liked it. In that time, this circle released two entire platformer games with many similar features.

 

[AngrySpergMarine]

View attachment 2916984

At this point, I'm spoiled by these types of charts, and wouldn't really trust any monthly-crowdfund projects that don't have something similar.
Even if you don't feel comfortable showing content that is possibly a spoiler, you need a gameplan at the start. Goals you want to reach other than "the game is done and release."
You have to limit yourself. It's always the feature-creep that extends projects. Harem games add more women, platformers add new gameplay systems, VNs try to add more routes.

I use this specific chart, because like 4 years ago, some of the devs in the circle played an old Future Fragments demo and said they liked it. In that time, this circle released two entire platformer games with many similar features.

To be fair I think the bi-weekly updates he does now are the right way to handle things. If he did that early on and didn't keep making promises, it would be fine.

 

[Noble 6]

To be fair I think the bi-weekly updates he does now are the right way to handle things. If he did that early on and didn't keep making promises, it would be fine.

Yes, and you're welcome for that.
I had to openly challenge him for weeks, telling him to make a similar chart that showed clear goals. Even threw together a mock image explaining how they should be done, and it got deleted.
Imagine if the game had that from the very start of its development. "Lack of transparency" is basically the biggest problem that people can agree on, whether you defend or hate the game.

Imagine if, from the start, they had a chart similar to the one above and was spaced something like this.

• Implementation of planned powerups
• Five levels planned (each level being about seven disjointed hallways)
• Three enemies per level, one guard and two uniques
• One boss per level (5 bosses)
• 5 overworld scenes per level (25 scenes)
• 4 game overs per level (one for each enemy and the boss)
• 1 Faye scene per level (5 scenes)
• 20 terminals per level (100 terminals)
• ~10 cutscenes per level (50 scenes)

and then just make a completion-percentage for each of those. One hallway got finished? Add 3% to the Level column. Knocked out like 10 terminals for a level? That bar is now 10% full!
You'd be able to, without spoilers, inform everyone every week or so what progress you made. You would have a visual representation of how far the game has come. It would also make people more aware when goalposts get changed, like when something is added to development or cut, such as how equipable powerups were added, or the earth charge attack was removed.

Why did this only finally get added on the ninth year of development, after people had to ask for it?
Why did this game take nine years, when the average ACT turnaround time is like three years?
Hell, the game I posted a chart for only took two years, and it does basically everything that Future Fragment set out to do.

 

[punhetas]

Yes, and you're welcome for that.
I had to openly challenge him for weeks, telling him to make a similar chart that showed clear goals. Even threw together a mock image explaining how they should be done, and it got deleted.
Imagine if the game had that from the very start of its development. "Lack of transparency" is basically the biggest problem that people can agree on, whether you defend or hate the game.

Imagine if, from the start, they had a chart similar to the one above and was spaced something like this.

• Implementation of planned powerups
• Five levels planned (each level being about seven disjointed hallways)
• Three enemies per level, one guard and two uniques
• One boss per level (5 bosses)
• 5 overworld scenes per level (25 scenes)
• 4 game overs per level (one for each enemy and the boss)
• 1 Faye scene per level (5 scenes)
• 20 terminals per level (100 terminals)
• ~10 cutscenes per level (50 scenes)

and then just make a completion-percentage for each of those. One hallway got finished? Add 3% to the Level column. Knocked out like 10 terminals for a level? That bar is now 10% full!
You'd be able to, without spoilers, inform everyone every week or so what progress you made. You would have a visual representation of how far the game has come. It would also make people more aware when goalposts get changed, like when something is added to development or cut, such as how equipable powerups were added, or the earth charge attack was removed.

Why did this only finally get added on the ninth year of development, after people had to ask for it?
Why did this game take nine years, when the average ACT turnaround time is like three years?
Hell, the game I posted a chart for only took two years, and it does basically everything that Future Fragment set out to do.

He was too busy pettily replying to every criticism on the internet....

 

[WeebLoop]

View attachment 2916984

At this point, I'm spoiled by these types of charts, and wouldn't really trust any monthly-crowdfund projects that don't have something similar.
Even if you don't feel comfortable showing content that is possibly a spoiler, you need a gameplan at the start. Goals you want to reach other than "the game is done and release."
You have to limit yourself. It's always the feature-creep that extends projects. Harem games add more women, platformers add new gameplay systems, VNs try to add more routes.

I use this specific chart, because like 4 years ago, some of the devs in the circle played an old Future Fragments demo and said they liked it. In that time, this circle released two entire platformer games with many similar features.

Indeed, these kind of progress charts are the best.
Even if it's little, you can see what's being done

 

[nikkunamesu]

Indeed, these kind of progress charts are the best.
Even if it's little, you can see what's being done
View attachment 2919300

You mean like this one?

=P

 

[Noble 6]

You mean like this one?

No. Not like that one.
That tells you nothing at all. Almost every single thing there is "work continues." You don't know what's happening, what's been finished, or what comes next by looking at that. In fact, there were many months were those images were exactly the same, except for the date at the top.
Hell, one of the points there mentions "the entire game's soundtrack." It raises questions: How much of the soundtrack was done? Had it not been worked on at all? How much is left?

That image is not only uninformative, but it makes you ask more questions, which is exactly the opposite of what you were pretending it did.

 

[Lailaichi]

The demo will be release at the same time the final episode of One Piece

 

[PM21]

I had to go back a few pages and get caught up. I'm just here to say that I can't fucking believe the demo still hasn't come out. The demo that was supposed come out within a day or two of its announcement, and it's been what, two weeks?

You cannot convince me HW isn't just having a laugh, or that the other members on his dev team don't want to strangle him.

 

[SofaSofa]

I had to go back a few pages and get caught up. I'm just here to say that I can't fucking believe the demo still hasn't come out. The demo that was supposed come out within a day or two of its announcement, and it's been what, two weeks?

You cannot convince me HW isn't just having a laugh, or that the other members on his dev team don't want to strangle him.

I dunno if ya check into the actual updates or not on the discord, but it’s just Frouge who’s not doing so well recently that’s sort of setting some things back (besides testers discovering minor to major bugs in the “demo of the demo”) but Frouge does the compiling for the game, which is like the installing of updates to put in simpler terms…

 

[PM21]

I made that comment mainly to see if I could fish for an HW DM. And it worked.
This was fun.

 

[D4n0w4r]

He was too busy pettily replying to every criticism on the internet....

HW in everyone's DMs pulling out every excuse in the book to justify delaying the full release/demo/demo of a demo again: