Others Completed Future Fragments [v1.0.6] [HentaiWriter]

[limenghan]

I choose the easy mode, but he is still too difficult for me, after death will return to the place of birth, I hope I can in the first place can use cheat mode to enjoy the game rather than by complete achievement can unlock, hope you can give is not good at action games people a friendly choices rather than embarrass them, by the way, As a former sponsor of your game, I think I have the right to suggest this to you

 

[HentaiWriter]

I choose the easy mode, but he is still too difficult for me, after death will return to the place of birth, I hope I can in the first place can use cheat mode to enjoy the game rather than by complete achievement can unlock, hope you can give is not good at action games people a friendly choices rather than embarrass them, by the way, As a former sponsor of your game, I think I have the right to suggest this to you

So while it won't be in at launch, there will be a setup for bosses where if you lose to them an excessive amount of times, you'll get a pass to instantly defeat them.

 

[limenghan]

So while it won't be in at launch, there will be a setup for bosses where if you lose to them an excessive amount of times, you'll get a pass to instantly defeat them.

This is a little disrespectful, but it doesn't help me at all. I'm just asking if I can use someone else's save when the game launches if I can't finish it.

 

[MortimerScharf]

This is a little disrespectful, but it doesn't help me at all. I'm just asking if I can use someone else's save when the game launches if I can't finish it.

What's disrespectful? Adaptive difficulty has been around since the late 90s. This game is giving you a pass if you can't even beat a boss on the easiest difficulty. I don't get why some people get all butthurt from told to "git gud".

 

[HentaiWriter]

This is a little disrespectful, but it doesn't help me at all. I'm just asking if I can use someone else's save when the game launches if I can't finish it.

As far as using someone else's save, we aren't going to have compatibility for that built into the game, but we also aren't going to make it impossible to use someone else's save either, if you want to put in the effort to do so.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Oh steam. How long are your business days...

Just for context, the one-level demo took a little over a week to review; NextFest is running now, and the game is 7x the amount of content the demo was.

 

[abletothink]

Just for context, the one-level demo took a little over a week to review; NextFest is running now, and the game is 7x the amount of content the demo was.

You seem to be pessimistic about the review process. Do you think you'll be rejected and if so why? To me your game looks competently made and polished compared to a lot of the broken trash that gets put on there. Also how is the fulfillment for the Patreon backers going to work? Will we be able to get the game day one?

 

[HentaiWriter]

You seem to be pessimistic about the review process. Do you think you'll be rejected and if so why? To me your game looks competently made and polished compared to a lot of the broken trash that gets put on there. Also how is the fulfillment for the Patreon backers going to work? Will we be able to get the game day one?

99% likely we'll be rejected, because the build we submitted has no endings in-game yet (they're recorded, written, with music and CGs, just not in game yet since the way we get endings in is different than cutscenes currently, so they have to be hard-coded which eats up time for the programmer unlike most of the cutscenes which I normally handle myself).

Per Steam policies, the game needs to be "playable from beginning to end", so if there's no endings...

As far as the fulfillment for Patreon backers works, it's possible you'd be able to get the build day one; it depends on two factors.

A) If you want the game on Steam
B) If Steam is willing to give out keys en masse the day of launch

Steam has to manually review key distribution stuff when you ask for a large amount, whereas other platforms don't, so if they let me get a bunch of keys, then great, if not, then...

That said, the game is likely to have a few issues day-one, so you're probably not missing out if you don't get a key the immediate day of, to be fair.

Once it launches, we're estimating about a month more of development time to finish off anything else that we'd need to get done for the core game, so the launch will be effectively a "soft launch" so to speak.

 

[dragonsix6969]

99% likely we'll be rejected, because the build we submitted has no endings in-game yet (they're recorded, written, with music and CGs, just not in game yet since the way we get endings in is different than cutscenes currently, so they have to be hard-coded which eats up time for the programmer unlike most of the cutscenes which I normally handle myself).

but deus ex this did not stop from being released, he-he.

 

[abletothink]

99% likely we'll be rejected, because the build we submitted has no endings in-game yet (they're recorded, written, with music and CGs, just not in game yet since the way we get endings in is different than cutscenes currently, so they have to be hard-coded which eats up time for the programmer unlike most of the cutscenes which I normally handle myself).

Per Steam policies, the game needs to be "playable from beginning to end", so if there's no endings...

As far as the fulfillment for Patreon backers works, it's possible you'd be able to get the build day one; it depends on two factors.

A) If you want the game on Steam
B) If Steam is willing to give out keys en masse the day of launch

Steam has to manually review key distribution stuff when you ask for a large amount, whereas other platforms don't, so if they let me get a bunch of keys, then great, if not, then...

That said, the game is likely to have a few issues day-one, so you're probably not missing out if you don't get a key the immediate day of, to be fair.

Once it launches, we're estimating about a month more of development time to finish off anything else that we'd need to get done for the core game, so the launch will be effectively a "soft launch" so to speak.

Why did you even submit it if it's not finished and you know it won't pass? I really hope there wasn't a fee for doing so. Not wanting to come off as overly critical but I seem to remember you saying you needed it out by this date for financial reasons. If you need the game to make it's money back then releasing an unfinished product is the absolute last thing you should do. The early reviews (from both Steam and websites) will be negative and it will turn people off of buying the game. Even if you fix it later it'll still have that stigma from launch. Best example is Assassin's Creed Unity which still has the reputation for being a disaster from launch even though they fixed it and now it's one of the best city based AC games.

I've been following this project for years and really want to see it succeed. You clearly put a ton of work into it, it plays fantastic based on the demos, and you've been a class act with your community interaction. Please don't self sabotage at the finish line.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Why did you even submit it if it's not finished and you know it won't pass?

I could have sworn I covered this in the topic, but looking back, apparently I didn't.

The reason why is because when you submit a game to Steam, there's a lot of little checks they do to make sure the submission is, well, submitted right; things like files being in the right place per their system, the right "filters" or "tags" on things, lots of other stuff needs to be done correctly.

When we submitted the NextFest demo earlier this year, we submitted it, only to wait around a week and be told "yeah, uh, you didn't even put your build in the right place", as there was a specific location we needed to submit it to, for that specific type of demo build, etc.

So by submitting it this way, we did so as sort of a "check" to make sure we were submitting the final build right; if we get it back and it says "yeah you need to fix this and this with your submission", then we'll know that going forward for when we submit again, reducing the potential that we get it all ready, send it off, and... we get rejected because of some small mistake on our end.

I really hope there wasn't a fee for doing so. Not wanting to come off as overly critical but I seem to remember you saying you needed it out by this date for financial reasons.

Oh no, there's no fee for submitting a build, there's only fees for when you initially get your game up on the Steam Store (like, the store page everyone can see right now).

If you need the game to make it's money back then releasing an unfinished product is the absolute last thing you should do. The early reviews (from both Steam and websites) will be negative and it will turn people off of buying the game. Even if you fix it later it'll still have that stigma from launch. Best example is Assassin's Creed Unity which still has the reputation for being a disaster from launch even though they fixed it and now it's one of the best city based AC games.

While I do agree with this, the game is going to be mostly complete by launch (like 95%); that said, we can't really push it too much farther because I've literally maxed out my credit cards, so unless someone just suddenly drops $4k on us or something (and I don't want anyone to do this, to be clear), we've got to release it at the start of November at the latest.

I've been following this project for years and really want to see it succeed. You clearly put a ton of work into it, it plays fantastic based on the demos, and you've been a class act with your community interaction. Please don't self sabotage at the finish line.

Same here, but I don't think it's as in dire straits as you might think; when we launch, we should have all cutscenes in-game, it's just that some of them may not be voiced, and there may be a few things to polish through the first month of launch.

 

[dragonsix6969]

if the game is won't not on steam where will you release it?

 

[HentaiWriter]

if the game is won't not on steam where will you release it?

If, in the absolute worst case scenario, we can't get it on Steam for whatever reason, we'll still get it on all the other storefronts we had planned for it.

 

[anonymousbruh]

do you think you'll release the submitted version on itch.io early since it's ready to go and steam is taking awhile?

 

[HentaiWriter]

do you think you'll release the submitted version on itch.io early since it's ready to go and steam is taking awhile?

We can't, actually, per Steam policies. The game has to be released on Steam first.

(That, and it's definitely not ready to go; we still have more core storyline/gameplay content we want to get in there, but as noted above, we can't go past November cause I'm maxed out in terms of finances.)

 

[Dexhellhound]

but deus ex this did not stop from being released, he-he.

lets not forget how buggy cyberpunk was as well from launch (how ever i still enjoyed cyberpunk)

 

[Iexist]

Unless the game can be finished from top to bottom ~5 hours with an average to low skill level, there's a decent chance that the Steam review team will not play it to the end. From some rumors I heard, most platforms generally don't have the manpower or time to play every game that comes their way from start to end. How much luck you're going to have depends on a lot of factors though, including how many other submissions are happening at the same time.

 

[fxvncxyxfdgxcngvydfh]

We can't, actually, per Steam policies. The game has to be released on Steam first.

A lot of titles released exclusively to Epic first and then a few months later on steam?

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

99% likely we'll be rejected, because the build we submitted has no endings in-game yet (they're recorded, written, with music and CGs, just not in game yet since the way we get endings in is different than cutscenes currently, so they have to be hard-coded which eats up time for the programmer unlike most of the cutscenes which I normally handle myself).

Per Steam policies, the game needs to be "playable from beginning to end", so if there's no endings...

As far as the fulfillment for Patreon backers works, it's possible you'd be able to get the build day one; it depends on two factors.

A) If you want the game on Steam
B) If Steam is willing to give out keys en masse the day of launch

Steam has to manually review key distribution stuff when you ask for a large amount, whereas other platforms don't, so if they let me get a bunch of keys, then great, if not, then...

That said, the game is likely to have a few issues day-one, so you're probably not missing out if you don't get a key the immediate day of, to be fair.

Once it launches, we're estimating about a month more of development time to finish off anything else that we'd need to get done for the core game, so the launch will be effectively a "soft launch" so to speak.

If you're somehow STILL not done with the game yet submitted it anyway, why didn't you submit it as an

You must be registered to see the links

to give you time to complete it while giving your player-base something to actually play?

 

[HentaiWriter]

If you're somehow STILL not done with the game yet submitted it anyway, why didn't you submit it as an

You must be registered to see the links

to give you time to complete it while giving your player-base something to actually play?

Multiple reasons why we couldn't (or wouldn't want to) do this;

- As the game has been separated by levels all the way up until about early this year, there would have been no way to have "five playable demos" in Early Access, so the game would have come off as being much more incomplete than it actually was (if Steam even allowed us to put it up there in split levels as-is).

- Early Access is something you generally need to do very early on; the way Steam handles visibility periods, wishlists, and so forth for Early Access is very different than it is for normal releases. TL;DR if we switched to Early Release right now, we'd probably cut our profits in half, at the very least, because Early Access depends on people purchasing the game in exchange for far less visbility from Steam/visibility periods (algorithmically).

- Early Access is also something that would draw us right back into the trap that we had set for ourselves unintentionally with Patreon, which is that we'd need to provide frequent playable builds, which eats up development time massively. When you do a playable build, you need to "close the game up" so to speak; everything needs to work for the most part, existing programming needs to get "snipped" so it performs cleanly, writing needs to be checked, etc. to have a presentable thing that isn't just a mess of "in-progress" parts, especially for something that's going to likely get spread around the internet. We wanted to charge forward with development as fast as possible, which is why we also stopped the monthly demos on Patreon.

- Given the way we've setup stuff, it would likely lead to a lot of complaints from people playing early access, as perception of what was complete/what was missing would likely be very deceptive without the context of how our development process is setup.

For clarification on that last note, I've got something like 100 cutscenes left to plug into the game. Now, if you played the game at this point, you'd be missing all these cutscenes and such, and think that we're months or even years behind.

However, just yesterday, while writing more cutscenes/ripping audio, I also managed to get 10 cutscenes plugged into the game.

This is because not only is the writing/audio/art done for these scenes, but the way I've been writing them is a "manual-parsing" system (where I copy-paste this info for the most part, box by box, into the game). It requires a lot of initial setup as I'm writing the scenes, but when it comes time to plug them into the game, it makes it ridiculously fast to do so.

Here's a screenshot of one scene as an example;



With this, I've got;

• Talia's emotions listed (for the emotion selector in-game)
• The NPC's general mood down (for whatever visual emotions I want to give them in-game)
• Flags set and checked
• Ideal values added and subtracted
• Choices in the cutscene
• Entity actions (movement, directional changes, damage taken/given, and a lot of other things)
• Voice filenames so I can just quickly eye what voicelines are attached to what script lines
• "Blue lines" so I know what lines are repeated between cutscene tabs, so I can quickly clone them between tabs

So hopefully all of that clarifies some stuff.

A lot of titles released exclusively to Epic first and then a few months later on steam?

If they did this, then they didn't have a store page up on Steam at the time they released to Epic.
That, or they were a huge AAA publisher/developer and had the weight to swing around to ignore policy.