HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]

Still, let me not be guilty of a couple of sins.

First, false equivalency. Many of the critiques attacked in this thread are superior to the responses that they have received.

Second, falling for the bait-and-switch. I have seen the work of perfectionists before. It tends to be complete within the scope of their vision, and they tend to take a long time to get there, getting caught up in details, deleting repeatedly and re-starting. We've largely accepted the statement that perfectionism is the sole cause of lateness here, but I am not entirely convinced of that. It may contribute, but I suspect I could find greater factors contributing to lateness if I knew the details.

boobthief said:

It is far easier to half-ass finish something but this is clearly not what this developer is doing. So it's easier to just release something on time. But they didn't. So how do you explain that?

Click to expand...

I mean, I could try explaining that it is a lot more effort to do good enough to a deadline instead of doing good enough months after a deadline. Or that I know writers that actually can do that, put in the effort to deliver good enough to a deadline.

But let me instead go with: only an absolute piece of total shit would insinuate people who do keep deadlines must have half-assed it. And that insinuation is core to your pretense of an argument that Crush not keeping a deadline must be a good thing.

I also haven't entirely got this out of my system yet. I can guarantee that nobody lives by the "you have to do better before you can complain" rule, but if someone does, then I want to sell stuff to you, including ocean-front property in Arizona.

Let's explain this: we can say that you're not a car mechanic for purposes of discussion. If you take your car to the mechanic, they can put your car out back, rip parts off and sell them, then charge you for "fixing" your car when it is missing most of the parts. If you complain, they can say "You're no mechanic, go ahead and try to fix it yourself and see if you can do better. By the way, here's my bill LOL!"

Let's say you don't like a movie. You are stuck with it and have to stufu unless you get a millions-dollar budget and make a better movie. If you can't do that, you have to shrug in silence instead of saying what you think.

Let's say you don't like a television show, again you have to stufu, either that or get in with a broadcasting or streaming company, hire a creative team, and go at it. We all know that you don't do that. It's not a position. It's not an argument. It's just a piece of poo thrown at the wall and called an opinion.

I genuinely don't understand why some "supporters" are trying to fight against the notion that "Things are going slow" when that is not just something that can easily be measured and compared to similar projects, but even the developer himself says things are going slow

Do you really want to try to use that nonsensical argument of "You need to do the same to prove that it could be better"? Well then why is the word of the one person that is doing that exact same thing not valid?

You can discuss whether or not it's being intentionally milked or not all you want, but seriously, don't be so daft to ignore even the words of your oh so beloved crab.

Yeah Crush has a progress tracker now, which I think was suggested here. Not sure if he has a legit coach or not but he needs one if he's really unhappy with his progress.

Its kind of wild to look back 100 pages and its all the same complaints. The amount of pointless systems and overhauls and content removals are out of this world. I didn't realize how bad it was til looking through earlier posts. At least we are in Bangkok now, but there is a severe lack of choice in every aspect...The rolls seem to achieve nothing of note fail or pass. The night raid goes off without a hitch no matter how badly you try to fuck it up.

philyb said:

Its kind of wild to look back 100 pages and its all the same complaints. The amount of pointless systems and overhauls and content removals are out of this world. I didn't realize how bad it was til looking through earlier posts. At least we are in Bangkok now, but there is a severe lack of choice in every aspect...The rolls seem to achieve nothing of note fail or pass. The night raid goes off without a hitch no matter how badly you try to fuck it up.

Click to expand...

At this point, I see this more as a quasi-interactive erotic novel than game. Making the story line truly multi-linear is going to be near impossible. The best I can think of would be making it a sand-box-ish game.

One thing has to be mentioned, though. Slow development or not, Crush was the one giving a date for the new release. Several to be precise. He missed them. All of them. Not just by a few days, or a week or two, but by months. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he got COVID and took a few weeks off, but that doesn't excuse the abhorrent time management.

For months nothing got done. The deadline(s) passed and the closer we get to Christmas the faster the development gets. All of a sudden he only needs like one more scene to write in order to release the next version of the game before or during Christmas.

What a shocker. If only people could have predicted that. I like the game or more the idea of the game, but at this point it has become a joke. The writing is and always has been good, but he should consider writing a novel and releasing it in 20 years time, rather than making a game. Then again, no publisher would pay him for that period of time. Makes you wonder.

But hey, it seems like we're getting animated faces of some sorts. Not saying that's a bad thing, but the graphics have never been the issue. If he doesn't want to include other writers, fine. Then again, at some point they changed the engine to do exactly that. However, he should at least consider bringing in one or two more people to help him sort out the basic framework, a storyboard if you will and how to connect different parts of the game like the college stuff and the current events. At least he could concentrate on writing that way. Or bring someone in who does the coding and all you do is provide the text. I mean, he hired a graphic person to do that stuff, so the possibility exists.

Reposting Crush's Release Schedule for the lulz

Marlin Brandy said:

Reposting Crush's Release Schedule for the lulz View attachment 2237206

Click to expand...

May I have my free Big Mac pls?

Deniz31 said:

May I have my free Big Mac pls?

Click to expand...

sir, this is a Wendy's

This is being overly cynical of me, but I wonder if he actually has a plan for those other episodes (WHite Russian, Big Mac, Booth Babe).

Again: I'm being overly cynical but it sounds to me like he just set those names because, for lack of a better term, they sound cool, but he doesn't have any actual plan about them. Kind of like a movie director that says "hell yeah I want an intro with an attack helicopter sweeping over some field" but that's all they have.

asdfasdf12341234ACSACA said:

This is being overly cynical of me, but I wonder if he actually has a plan for those other episodes (WHite Russian, Big Mac, Booth Babe).

Again: I'm being overly cynical but it sounds to me like he just set those names because, for lack of a better term, they sound cool, but he doesn't have any actual plan about them. Kind of like a movie director that says "hell yeah I want an intro with an attack helicopter sweeping over some field" but that's all they have.

Click to expand...

Besides that, what is the actual meaning behind having 'side quests' in a linear part of the game?

If y'all remember we still far from entering open world. I'm implying that by having 'side quests' inside of linear part of the story, some players may refuse to take them for whatever reason, effectively nullifying all the meaning behind them. I didn't understand this decision the moment He announced it, and to this day I still can't wrap my mind around this decision.

Perhaps he means something else, time will tell.

Skyrima3 said:

Besides that, what is the actual meaning behind having 'side quests' in a linear part of the game?

If y'all remember we still far from entering open world. I'm implying that by having 'side quests' inside of linear part of the story, some players may refuse to take them for whatever reason, effectively nullifying all the meaning behind them. I didn't understand this decision the moment He announced it, and to this day I still can't wrap my mind around this decision.

Perhaps he means something else, time will tell.

Click to expand...

I think I remember seeing (in one of the patreon updates) that those episodes are "side quests" because they are skippable. They're supposed to be something you can just ignore - for example, that Dubai "hack this guy's phone" is also a sidequest, you can choose to do it or avoid it entirely.

asdfasdf12341234ACSACA said:

I think I remember seeing (in one of the patreon updates) that those episodes are "side quests" because they are skippable. They're supposed to be something you can just ignore - for example, that Dubai "hack this guy's phone" is also a sidequest, you can choose to do it or avoid it entirely.

Click to expand...

If that's the case, does it mean He will spend minimum 3 months working on something that's basically optional? Optional means some players will not see it at all.

And while sidequests always have an ability to just hang indefinitely in an open world environment, linear story is a different case. It seems to me there's literally no reason for majority of players to refuse this quests, if that's true, then why they're optional?

So I just have to ask: Is this really a sound decision?
You could move them to an open world, which is long overdue(openworld), or highlight their significance for the character, and therefore making them mandatory, instead of optional.

Overall, seems like a waste of time and effort. But then again, we're not a developers, what do we know. /me does a Japanese bow

I don't think anyone can argue that the game is developing incredibly slowly and there have been far, far too many dead ends and start-overs, in some cases overwriting good gameplay mechanics. But that being said, I just played the latest version after not having touched the game in probably over a year, and just approaching it from that standard alone, I like what was there. If this had been the game in 2018, I don't think there would be nearly as many complaints.

I doubt Crush checks in here any more but I think moving forward the best route would be to just embrace the VN aspect and abandon any attempts at making it open world. To be honest I have no idea how an open world is even possible given what's present in the game. But there's a solid VN here and I think working it out fairly linearly is probably the best route moving forward. Working in avatars for other characters is also a pretty good development so glad to see that will be implemented moving forward as well.

Davkin said:

At this point, I see this more as a quasi-interactive erotic novel than game. Making the story line truly multi-linear is going to be near impossible. The best I can think of would be making it a sand-box-ish game.

Click to expand...

It's kind of the nature of the engine. You can get lost forever trying to build gameplay systems in twine when you could probably just brute force write the content in half the time.

I think crush is just trying to rough out the story at this point, after which could lead to picking spots within it to make it more open ended and/or conducive to gameplay loops. It's never going to be an 'open world' game, but you could have portions where there's goals and looping day cycles like so many of the twine games do. Say to earn x amount of dollars or earn enough trust or corruption to get deeper into the job at the club.

The old content during the training period of getting drunk and picking up guys at the club was actually a pretty entertaining gameplay loop.

Yes if I was going to implement a great deal of choices (and actually track them), I wouldn't choose Twine as the best engine for it. It can be done in Twine, but I would lose my mind recalling how much easier it is with some other options. I think this is one reason (not the only one) that a lot of Twine games bog down in development hell. Compare it with some other, vastly more complex games, and you can see that some of them are written with relatively robust languages that have a lot more going for them.

If I was going to make a perfectly linear game however, or one that had very few choices, then I would consider Sugarcube, especially if I had not already learned languages that more than one notable purpose.

asdfasdf12341234ACSACA said:

This is being overly cynical of me, but I wonder if he actually has a plan for those other episodes (WHite Russian, Big Mac, Booth Babe).

Again: I'm being overly cynical but it sounds to me like he just set those names because, for lack of a better term, they sound cool, but he doesn't have any actual plan about them. Kind of like a movie director that says "hell yeah I want an intro with an attack helicopter sweeping over some field" but that's all they have.

Click to expand...

It's not being cynical. He said in the discord he has a rough idea for them but nothing set in stone.

Leiafanman said:

I think crush is just trying to rough out the story at this point

Click to expand...

I am not sure "rushing" is the right word After all, he is 3 months behind schedule and should have released multiple episodes/side quests or whatever you want to call them by now.

However, I agree that it seems like he is rushing it. People have been asking for Bangkok for years and never got it and then all of a sudden he was dishing out story instead of mechanics. Then again, he introduced mechanics that serve no purpose. I could even get behind the idea of this becoming a VN rather than anything else, but it literally takes him months to get the writing done. Not exactly great when your game relies on writing. Then again, he seems to be dishing out scene after scene within just a few days, now that Christmas is almost here. I am shocked