Ironclad

Member
Jun 10, 2018
234
235
Other than the hundreds of cutscene variants? Over twenty new NPCs? Map Edits? A lot of unprecedented bugfixes alongside engine improvements, new added scenes, new music and sound implementations? Engine improvements? HW has been pretty transparent with what their very small team has been handling here.
Sounds like it was a really bad idea for a first time game developer with no programming experience to create his own game engine.
 
May 25, 2017
820
1,532
I doubt it's incompetence.
He has admitted multiple times that it is, in fact, incompetence. HW has, or at least had, no sense of time when it comes to game development. Thus he would constantly overestimate release date schedules and then have to delay that release date every single time because he couldn't meet them.

This isn't a Cyberpunk situation where they wanted to make the game perfect and kept delaying it. This is a foolish game dev who vastly and consistently underestimated the amount of time and money he needed, burning all of his good will with a lot of his audience while he was at it.
 
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dronehero

Newbie
Apr 29, 2020
31
27
Delays happen. Its understandable. Its the fact that the dev is collecting money monthly from his patreon on top of making false promises.

I just feel bad for the people who gave the dev money in the hopes they would have a game released long ago but are still paying up though I suppose its their choice that they are paying the dev for nothing.
 

sirretinee

Member
Jul 17, 2018
163
570
Why do you people invest so much time worrying about a game that you want to see fail so badly?
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.
 

Siphonapteron

Newbie
May 15, 2018
35
83
I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that you can't even check the status reports on Patreon without giving them even more money is really a bad sign.
 
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lraas

Newbie
May 31, 2018
30
46
I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that you can't even check the status reports on Patreon without giving them even more money is really a bad sign.
You can see them on itch.io or discord with no problem. They used to upload them here as well but have stopped with that a while ago when the thread got freezermanned
 

Bulbanych

Member
Oct 13, 2020
255
711
You can see them on itch.io or discord with no problem. They used to upload them here as well but have stopped with that a while ago when the thread got freezermanned
I still find it funny that HW stopped uploading progress reports here (mostly likely because he'll be outnumbered), yet he still continues to send walls of text to people in DMs if they ask something.
 

Smaild

Member
Jan 29, 2018
169
342
I haven't played this game in years. What happened? Was it finally released, or is it in the limbo of never ending games?
 

Bulbanych

Member
Oct 13, 2020
255
711
I haven't played this game in years. What happened? Was it finally released, or is it in the limbo of never ending games?
Gonna copy my comment from August 28: "Still in development. People that are watching the dev's progress reports estimate that the game should come out in 2-3 months, unless another delay happens...".
 

Smaild

Member
Jan 29, 2018
169
342
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 .
 
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OmniFurious

Newbie
Sep 7, 2021
78
112
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

Forum Fanatic
Jul 27, 2022
4,132
5,599
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

Member
Jul 17, 2018
163
570
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

Newbie
Sep 7, 2021
78
112
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.
 
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dragonsix6969

Active Member
Apr 26, 2019
753
496
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.
 
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ryukotan

New Member
Feb 18, 2019
6
54
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

Newbie
Mar 17, 2018
29
213
image-web.jpg

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.
 
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