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Making Female Agent Great Again (Patreon)

Published:
2020-07-31 10:56:52
Imported:
2026-06

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Here's my plan for how to fix Female Agent.  The details aren't 100% finalised yet, but I wanted to share this today, so patrons can make an informed decision about continuing to support the project.

Please let me know your feedback here and in Discord.

Comments

Vysirez

To be honest I had seen some of this coming for a while. Not to be too critical, but the game has been in development for a few years now and you have yet to progress into actual game content. I don't really object to well developed systems and backstory, but when we are talking years of work without actually getting into what was supposed to be the main content of the game, I feared you would burn out and we would end up with a very complex game system with no content. I would have dropped my support a long time ago, but you did stay active and a dollar a month isn't a lot to me so I could keep aware and support a bit. I hope a refocus will help you and you are able to move forward. What exists in the game so far is very interesting, so I do hope to eventually see some game content.

Avenging Angel

The only thing I think I could comment on is that having 'creating plot outlines' as the solution to slow writing seems to me to be the best of the three solutions proposed.

deamonmaster

Regarding the Slow Writing problems, the "Alpha female" backstory is the one I ALWAYS use. I don't want to be a Star Athlete, Rock Chick, or Geek Girl. I want to be Socially Dominant. I would pick it and the "elite" social class because I love playing "High Class" "Ace" characters in games like this. So my vote is against any option that ends with those options being removed. Regarding the Avatar, I also prefer option B, especially if option A would result in a smaller maximum Bra size. Regarding community input, I really think finalizing the game mechanics is something you need to do at this point, but temperarily reducing the number of nationalities is something I wouldn't care overmuch about Regarding admin problems, that is something you have to figure out yourself.

Lu-Tze

Trimming some stuff seems like the way to go. Finish the game then add stuff later, step by step. I admit that I'm bummed that hypno content is being cut for the moment but I understand that it's necessary. You still have my support, I want to play this game. I just hope that this is a real turnaround moment and things start to move forward again. Also, please watch your health. This isn't worth ruining yourself for.

CB67

Keep up the hard work man, you and the team have made an amazing game so far. I know some of these changes will be difficult I have a couple points you wouldn’t necessarily need to change with regards to the avatar, but keeping it to one nationality etc would be better overall🙌🏻 can’t wait to see what you can do moving forward tho into the more open universe of female agent!

Cofi

This game has always stood out to me as the one that created the strongest connection between me and my character. That also make everything that happens much more impactful. At the same time it's useless if nothing ever happens because the story doesn't progress. No matter what you cut, you will cut something someone loved. But at this stage even having two choices of everything would be enough: enough that you have to have a solid system to write the impact of the choices, but not so many that writing the impacts of the choices slows things to a crawl. You can always add the rest back later with community writers or freelancers or whatever. Having only one day off honestly still sounds like too little. It's an improvement, but you have to remember that what you are doing is mostly creative work. You can shovel coal for 80 hours a week, but nobody can do much more than 30 hours of creative work a week. After that it's just unproductive. You gain more by going for a walk and experiencing the world than by forcing yourself to work when you're mentally spent.

Ruth

This was nice, you keep doing the refreshed you boo 😘 the laid out plan sounds good, I'm sad it's come to this but it's all for best 😊

Joe

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I play this game more than any other. I love the concept, the writing, the realism and really just can’t wait for it to progress. I’m on board with whatever gets that accomplished in the most efficient manner possible. It sounds like your plan will achieve this goal, so I’m all for it. Can’t wait to see the new avatar AND some new kinky content. My tastes are the kinkier the better. TBH, it’s the prose that makes it hot; the avatar only helps me visualize a bit and adds about 15% to it (for me at least). Take care of yourself, Crush, mostly for my own selfish reasons because I want this to be completed, but also ‘cause, you know, human emotional shit.

kyznec789

About Slow writing, Maybe simplify the backstory Streamline the story - if it means less content, than i dont like it Create plot outlines yes About Avatar problems, really liked avatar in game, need to see new images, hard to tell without them About Barriers to team/community input, Finalise the game mechanics - yes obvios, Create content templates - definetly, not only for community, for yourself Temporarily reduce nationalities from five to one - also yes About Bad admin, as already said, you have to figure out yourself.

Die Happy

good thing you are doing. you are obviously no slouch. Making lots of additions to stuff under the hood of the game some additions here and there but not an overwhelming amount of content. So seeing this change in direction is a good thing. building on top of the work you have done, trimming some fat and maybe adding stuff later back in. seems like a good way forward

Breadloaf

Here are my suggestions: Don't trim or cut any content from the Scotland missions, Dubai, or the Lifepath. However, you don't need to take those events into account for the story in Bangkok. See them as false choices for the player instead. Have the same story no matter if she's upper class, British, or a rocker, or if she won the wet t-shirt contest or whatever may have happened. It can still be seen as useful for player headcanons. Just start writing a story for when the agent arrives in Bangkok and don't think about all the possible choices that the player may have done before. I wouldn't begin to tinker again with the existing material and make it perfect, because it frankly doesn't matter that much. And I'm not sure about throwing all the artwork into the dumpster, too. That falls into the same category as previously mentioned: trying to make your existing material perfect. Think about it this way: if you redo everything with the avatar, how much time would it take to return to this same spot? How much time would you save for introducing outfits in Bangkok? And finally, how much time would it take to create new outfits with the existing system? Because if it takes 6 months of work to redo the avatar (artwork, coding...) you have 6 months of work that you need to catch up. I doubt that the streamlining will save so much time. This new plan feels a bit like your previous plans, since your thoughts about streamlining or making the parts in Bangkok easier have been heard before. So if you do decide to cut, trim, edit and rework the existing assets again I have a feeling that we'll be in the same spot a year from now. So my advice would be to write the story in Bangkok now. Don't take all the zillion different player options into account unless it's important, or some flavour text here and there. Finish the game without the grand bells and whistles in a year and a half, focusing on a pretty tight story. Then learn from your experiences and make your dreams come true with Female Agent 2.

Iain

It's time to remember the 6 P's of project management. Poor Planning Promotes Piss Poor Performance. You also have to remember that as supporters of an RPG we want replay-ability so be careful what you cut from the story. Looking forward to seeing V's new Avatar through. The whole plan to use templates to allow content contribution will help massively. You have hundreds of people looking for things they like in the game. I guarantee if there is a way to get their fetish in the game someone will write that template'd scene.

Cereburn

If you can get past Dubai and show some new locations and content that isn't backtracking, i'll keep supporting the game. I know that there is a lot of work that needs to happen before the last request becomes possible, I'll stick it out till I don't believe it's going to happen anymore. -- As to the comment about having no reason to be in Dubai - there are a number of ways to put Dubai on the way to Thailand - included Cruise ships that travel between the two places. You could also use the Thailand consulate in Dubai as a possible entry point- perhaps breaking in there to create records in their government that can't be created in Bangkok? I don't think that going to Dubai was as senseless as you thought- it also adds in some of the 007 glam factor that you'd expect fro a spy game. On the other hand, if you want to go with realism, here's a link to Thailand's trading partners from 2019 http://www.worldstopexports.com/thailands-top-import-partners/ - all spies follow the money.

Nymphonomicon

I support the new avatar idea, but not so much streamlining the backstory. I feel being able to tweak and customize the player character as much as possible is key to the player's experience in this game. Why not just simplify the character's backstory (disable lifepath customization, give the player three pre-made Kates to choose from and maybe let them name her) temporarily as you planned to do with nationality until some considerable progress has been made in developing Bangkok?

bathoz

This comment is going to be a bit hard. So, sorry in advance. But this is not a surprise. We've seen the intro (not even the tutorial, just the intro) feature creep out of all imagination. This is a section that will eventually have a "skip intro" button in front of it, if you progress the game. You've (apparently) spent a lot of time working on it because it establishes a lot of the systems you'll need for Bangkok. Except the reality is that you've actually added a ton of options at the end of development where they add the most bloat. Extra skills, extra backgrounds, extra extra backgrounds. More backgrounds. They're very cool, but anyone could (and did) tell you this would bog you down. And you haven't even reached the part of the game where you're not on rails - aka, you haven't even reached the complicated part. Now you're endless polishing a single sex scene. One sex scene. In a game that will, in theory, have multiple sex scenes per game day. I've commented before, probably a year ago, that it feels like you're scared of going forward into the actual game. Again, I repeat. The past two or three years of work have not resulted in a single solitary second of the actual game you're trying to make. This is an intro. A very nice intro. But an intro. And that's starting to be not good enough. You seem to recognise this, but a lot of your solutions just look like "I want to redo this intro again." And I've got to be honest, at that point, I'm out. If it comes out, I'll enjoy the finished product. But it won't come out. Because in two years time you'll again be at the stage where you're having to finally go into Bangkok and will shy away from it. So, in short, think about the game you're trying to make. And actually work on it.

Breadloaf

A TLDR from me: Please don't rework the existing material. Just because a variable is there in Scotland, the Lifepath or Dubai doesn't mean that you have to use it in Bangkok. Try to finish the project with a streamlined Bangkok story, then make something better with your next project. I think that reworking everything again will kill a lot of enthusiasm for the game. And if you do rework it, I have a feeling that you'll be dissatisfied yet again and be in the exact same spot as you are now, but a year or two in the future.

Kmius

I think it is important that you have realized the problems that have been affecting the progress of the game, but I really don´t think the solution is redo all over again. That approach have been tried before and you are still in the intro two years later. I think it's time to move to Bangkok, and apply all those ideas and changes in the new storyline there, instead of reworking the preexisting material (again).

Raike

Crush, draw a line under the intro and start making the game based on your new design plans. Build Bangkok based on 1 of each of the options and leave the option for the community (or yourself a year down the road) to fill in the other options. Start the new avatar from this new point onwards, you can always go back to fix the intro pics later. Gutting an intro you've spent years polishing and has garnered you a big support base based on changes you don't know will even work after years of trying changes that haven't worked is clearly a bad plan. What happens if you put in three months of work and change your mind? You keep polishing for another year? You have to start making the core of the game NOW, make an intro to set it up when you know what exactly you're trying to set up. Based on this plan I know this project is doomed which makes me sad. I'm out.

Koopatroopa187

1) I really like the existing avatar artwork, and I really, really don't want to see it change. It's very reminiscent of Jason Brooks' Hed Kandi artwork. 2) There really is no need to redo the intro. Like another supporter said, it's an intro. You are putting way too much thought into it. Yeah, the point of the intro is for the player to connect with and invest in the character, but at the end of the day, I doubt very many players are going to put much thought into it. What you need to do is get a fucking white board, write down the core features of the game that you want your game to have and to be, and then figure out how to implement all of that into the actual game that still doesn't exist after years. If you want to polish up the intro, do it after you have actual game content.

JR Richardson

You're not going to like what I have to say. What you have put together is not going to fix anything. You appear to have an obsession with 'fixing' things which is bad for progress. I suspect it may be because fixing problems is easier for you to get onboard emotionally/mentally with than adding new content. What you have created so far is not perfect but it's good- or I wouldn't still be here. MOVE FORWARD. Finish the Dubai scene. Finish it. Don't change what's written. If you go back to fixing/polishing I am going to be gone shortly thereafter. It's been-what- a year? with no new content. Stop polishing your turds- they are already shiny enough. If you can't move forward, then you should think seriously about quitting. Right now I feel like I'm giving you money to watch you masturbate.

ultimate_elephant

Thank you for making this announcement before the month's end so I can make an informed decision. That shows some integrity. So here's my decision: I'm not paying more than a buck a month if you're reworking the prologue. This project will be three years old at the end of August. Three years. Get to Bangkok, already. The story so far is great. I like it. Leave it be. The avatar is fantastic. I love it. And backpacker Kate has enough clothes to last a month in a Bangkok brothel. No need to add more. Community contributions. Look, the reason I'm paying someone to write a sex game is because I don't want to write it myself. Admin. Sounds great. I thought you were taking a day off a week. Take two. Just write smut, man. Don't write complicated stuff that checks every variable, not now. We know who our heroine is by the end of the prologue. Some of us know her before it starts. Just write smut, and let our imaginations fill in the blanks. Ah, sod it. In November 2018, under a post you titled 'Transparency', I asked if you were dragging out the Lifepath because you hadn't figured out what to do in Bangkok. Never imagined I'd still be waiting to find out in August 2020. Decision made. A buck a month until I see Bangkok content. The wet t-shirt contest is legendary. You have a real talent for this, and the perfect premise for a game. Don't move back, move forward, and you'll get there.

snowy_mozzie

I'm kinda a lurker but I read the PDF thing: As someone who keeps jumping back and forth on my own games _and_ stories, I can really sympathise. I agree that cutting down on the things and aiming to "outsource wide" should be more important than "writing wide". Another thing is I kinda agree on the "stop polishing your turds" thing, general writing advice is to crank out the first draft over repeatedly going back to edit — accept that the first draft is gonna be shit and focus on finishing it over making what already exists not shit. Don't know how much it applies to CYOA games, but it should be somewhat relevant. Good luck!

krank404

Frankly I'm lowering my contribution to this project to $1. There seems to be no clear path forward. You can talk all you want about the convoluted story, but there doesn't seem to be any progress on the story. All the work seems to be on backstory. That is the part that you should be working on last not first. Get to the meat of the thing. Iron out the bare-bones of the story and then you can flesh out.

Aelariah

IMO cutting down character customisation is really not a good idea. Cutting the breast options to three isn't too bad, but removing the choice of body shapes altogether seems really bad. It's arguably one of the most important things in a game like this to be able to customise your character. If architecture and code makes that a PITA, then that should be changed. As for going back and fiddling with the intro yet again, no. Just leave it. It's been years, at a certain point you just need to advance. Want to come back to it later on when the game is done? Fine. But for now you need to prioritize.

Richard Tracey

Glad to hear you haven't given up on the game. Holding back most comments/opinions until I see some of the changes in action, but I am against cutting stuff from the character creation, but I am usually in favor of too many options as opposed to too few ;) Still if it's too much bloat it's too much. I am curious now though... I've always envisioned the actual game being something of a sandbox rpg with an over-arching story that you do and many smaller subplots but not sure that's ever actually been stated! What's the vision there?

hornguy6

Most of what I have to say is a repeat of what many others have to say. The big headlines are these: 1. Reducing the elements of backstory is not necessary 2. Reworking from scratch is going to mess more things up than it will solve 3. Other than a few fancy new features, this game is exactly the same as when I discovered it on TFgamessite in *September of 2017.* You need to move FORWARD, not take another lap. So first of all, I want to say that reducing backstory elements and variables is not necessary. I think from a logistical standpoint, it's fine to leave it all as is right now. You don't *have* to have a unique option for every single backstory option. Even the things like referencing the Christchurch incident is nice, but entirely unnecessary. What I'm trying to say here is that it's *good* to have all of those backstory elements as options to be drawn upon but every single agent does not need to factor them in at every single option or event. For example, most of the Scotland events have some kind of reference to the agent's nationality. Probably at least only half of these references are "necessary" contributions to the game (One of these necessary times is during the wet t-shirt contest. One of the unnecessary times is at the front door of that same club with the bouncer). In my time abroad in real life, no one has ever commented on my accent that is obviously foreign to the country. At least not right off the bat. What you should be doing with these backstory elements is creating options where appropriate while simultaneously not forcing yourself to use them. An example I used in another comment was if a customer in Bangkok requests you to wear a sexy bikini. Every option here should be generic except for perhaps an agent with a nerdy history, who can respond with, "Like Slave Leia?" There's no reason any agent's nationality or background should provide a unique option except for the nerd background because it organically and easily springs to mind. The number of variables is not the issue, it's when you feel the need to try and reference all of them all the time. I suggest you keep the old options and let yourself be inspired by them as it comes along. Don't make it into a chore. And, as you've already suggested with cutting the nationalities down to only UK, there's nothing stopping you from adding in unique options *later.* But you need to apply that strategy in the right places. Adding options back into the foundation later means you have to go through the entire game again to reference those options. Having the options always there at your disposal but only choosing to reference them as needed will save a lot of time. When you want to build a table, you don't only buy the wood and say "I'll just buy the saw now, I'll go back for the varnish when I'm ready to apply that and then go back again for the nails and the hammer when I'm ready to put it together." No, you buy all of your tools and supplies at once so they are all on hand, all within reach as soon as you need them. Keep your foundation strong. Just cool it with trying to use all of it all the time going forward. Only put in unique options where it makes sense. Second of all, reworking from scratch is going to create more problems than it will solve. How do I know this? Because I've already seen it with another patreon project. LOK Rebirth. More than a year ago, they decided that they were constrained in their work and suddenly abandoned all of their progress up until that point to completely revamp the game. New graphics, new gameplay (3D isometric from 2D sidescroller), new everything. And since that time, they haven't had a single playable moment of gameplay to show for it. Go on the thread at F95zone and look at the later comments there. It is filled with people who are upset at the abandonment of what was there before. The number of those people is just as many if not more than the people who are excited about the prospect for the updated game. The first reason is because people *liked* what was in the game before they abandoned it. These people decided to support the project because of what they saw and then the creators up and suddenly decided to change away from what those first supporters came for. Like if you consistently went to your favorite restaurant but then found out that they decided to temporarily close because they were sourcing ingredients to make their signature dish better and new despite not carrying any of the ingredients that made you like it in the first place. And then seeing that it's still temporarily closed a year later gives you doubt that they'll ever re-open. A number of other people (with some overlap between the two groups) are upset at that project because even when it was still active, it felt like little progress was being made on the things that were important. They felt that it was just a shameless cash grab and that this last year has been an excuse for them to jerk off while the money piles in for them with very little effort. So that is another thing to consider. Whether or not that's true for you, people will see it that way. Which brings me to the final point. Thirdly, this game has not meaningfully changed in almost 3 years now. A few new bells and whistles, which are nice, but you've been stuck in development hell for a long time now. In January of 2018, you said the following version would move the action to Bangkok. https://tfgames.site/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=433940#p433940 Yet here we are more than two years after that comment and you want to re-work the entire intro instead of moving on to Bangkok. It's time to move on Crush. It's time to get to the part of the game that is actually what you are here for. Your sexy RPG that you've always wanted to play is *not* in the intro. It's in Bangkok. Get there, stop running around in the same rut over and over again. It's entirely possible that one of the sources of your stress is that you haven't worked on anything *new* in years. Just continued to polish things that are old and continualy being dissatisfied with how they will fit into the bigger scheme of things that you haven't even started to work on. And again, I speak on this from personal experience. I know what it's like to not want to get to the main part because something you feel is prerequisite is not finished properly. But I also want you to know, this is not one of those cases. When I do it, I fret and fret and fret because the next part isn't going to work until I finish this part. And then I put it off because it's too much trouble to deal with right now, essentially abandoning it until I feel motivated to work on it again. But in this case, the entire framework is there. If you started work on Bangkok TODAY, there would be nothing missing that you would need. It's time to start something new Crush. It's time to start the game you wanted to make.

Anon

Finding ways to get more people writing is about the only particularly useful thing in this plan, aside from takings breaks which should be common sense but I get that it's not easy for everyone. In an ideal world, going back and fixing the foundation would be a great plan, but that kind of perfectionism is a dangerous thing to feed. Here's how I see it: you've proposed adminning more and writing less. I sugest instead you ONLY manage the project and hire a writer. The advantage of this is that the writer is financially motivated to keep writing, and you don't have anything to do but the only job that's really important for you to be doing so all your work motivation goes into it. But I'm no business expert, this is just how I see it.

Jorm Lome

Content is king.

Enrico

I don't know Crush.. to be honest I didn't see all this grand variety of content in the section of the story you worked till now. On the contrary I was always like "why didn't he add this here, why didn't he consider this stat there, etc..". So don't be surprised when I tell you that all this cut here and cut there to solve the problem didn't bring me onboard. I don't know if you ever visited a website called Chyoa, there you can write "story games" where you can have conditional branches between threads and bring along variables to use within the text. *Sometimes all you need to add variety, replayability, quality and content is to slightly change the text*: be it an event, a description, a dialogue, a thought.. it remains the same but the player can have a new experience each time he models a different enough character. It's just the same paragraph written differently each time because you felt that variable should have an impact. You don't need branches for this: different text bits. *And this should be half of your game, and in one year and with your support I would expect A LOT of that content*. The other half should be (have been) working templates for sex scenes/engine to reuse and personalize/enrich each time, a *limited* number of branches designed to be reconnected to the main plot, and choose wisely which variables to bring along and which to discard. You don't need to kill yourself with hundreds of story branches, keep it as simple as possible and design something that let you produce a lot of variable content quickly. That's where you really failed, imo. Good luck

Ano123

I think if you want to cut lifepath content or choices you should get feedback on what types of play through they like. If everyone plays as rock chick or alpha keep those, if everyone only takes the biggest or smallest bra size keep those. Don’t get stuck thinking you have to have a top, middle, and bottom for everything. Also, you need to ask why players make the choices they do, for example I choose rock chick to get all the tattoos and piercings, if they were available on other paths I wouldn't choose it. Overall it still seems you have been chasing perfect on the first attempt, I imagine that most people who are supporting you would accept a Bangkok section that is 10% of what you want it to be as a first pass.

Antilles

Alrighty, some thoughts off the cuff: -avatar rework sounds good, I feel like a large part of the draw of FA will be as a kind of slutty dressup game, so hopefully it won't take dozens of hours for every top Kate can wear -streamlining the backstory in some ways (social classes) sounds good, but I'm not sure cutting backgrounds is necessary. I'd more try to write around them, have 95% of a scene be exactly the same regardless of geek/alpha/etc status and then have one or two paragraphs that would be different, and even then only in certain scenes. You don't need to have a completely tailor-made experience to give players the feeling of having a completely tailor-made experience. -write long, outsource wide also sounds good! Get something made that goes somewhere first, I guarantee we'll all play it again and again as new bits get added. I also feel like this ties into my previous point as well, generalizing where possible will make it easier to fill everything out later. -don't kill yourself! Take time off when you need it and don't feel bad, just remember no matter how much you put out, or how fast, there will always be some asshole bitching about it! ...I'm not that good at motivation -Charlie Hunnam as Kate when?

Michael Costanzo

I have to be honest, I think this is the wrong approach. You've been stuck in a feedback loop, and we're all trapped here with you. As it stands now, players haven't even gotten the game yet. Everything present and playable is just the prologue. Please stop trying to chase perfection as it is hampering your progress. I think the best thing for you to do now is to Move Forward. Finish Dubai, and get to Bangkok already. Keep pushing forward into the story, and once you feel like the main story is as far as you can get it, return to the basics and fix things. But please, just move on.

Agent Tygress

Just want to chime in and say Hullo, Crush, been a while! Also; I'm hearing a general theme of DON'T REWORK IT JUST MOVE FORWARDS, which I have to say I generally agree with. I can certainly understand your wanting to cut down on some of the available options (as moving forward would be prohibitively difficult unless you do so) so I think you can safely ignore everyone who told you to just stop whinging and DO IT already (not really a helpful comment, quite frankly), but I DO want to emphasize that eliminating entire scenes / movements from the intro doesn't strike me as a good idea. People LOVE the intro (I've played through it three times, once with the full knowledge that it wouldn't really go anywhere) and cutting out content that's already created your Patrons love seems like a bad idea. This isn't to say you shouldn't reduce the number of options for clothing / avatar (TBH I don't give a fig about the avatar) / body shape, etc. But cutting already written scenes? What could you gain from that. Also, I want to disabuse you of your notion that every scene has to advance the plot like a scene in a film. A film has two hours, a game like this people are prepared to play A LOT longer. It's OK that lots of the scenes don't really have a point / advance the plot or do much of anything but give us the chance to live in our favourite secret agent's skin. Living in her skin is what most of us are really here for anyway. Throw in all the unnecessary scenes you want, they're great, but don't get rid of wonderful content you've already created. Honestly I don't even care if you decide to stop supporting some of these options. If I'm playing the game and suddenly find I'm reporting to the CIA instead of MI6 it really doesn't matter to me. Do what you need to to trim this beast down to the point where you can move forward and do that, but don't go rewriting the past, ultimately that's not what we're here for.

ultimate_elephant

Totally agree that scenes don't have to advance the plot. This needs to be a sex game with spy thriller trappings, not the other way around.

John Jameson

I'm gonna echo a lot of what people are saying here and that it's better to move forward with your story. Take these great ideas and ways to streamline your development and push it toward the main story of the game. Let's just call the current game a prequel and retrofit it to the new engine and story later. Instead of creating a in-depth backstory like you have now, make a character creation and let's move into the meat of the story/game. I don't think anyone wants to see a rehash of the existing story with less options. At this point I still don't see the mechanic of how this game is moving forward and that's the biggest problem to solve. One suggestion I have about approaching multiple backgrounds is to just have it as a + skill which doesn't require any specific writing. For example if the agent has an athletic background, + to any physical checks or for alpha female + to charisma. There's no need to bring up the fact that the agent was a college runner which is why shes able complete this athletic feat. Last thing I'd add is you need to start having expected delivery dates, even if it's internal only. You need to focus on setting goals and meeting them. Based on what you wrote it sounds like you're not taking into account your own perfectionist attitude. You might want to add in alphas and beta releases for your tiered supporters. That way you can get feedback earlier and also build in time for you to add polish you think is lacking. Good luck to you, I'm a $1 supporter so I'll stick around for another month or so to see how this turns out and hopefully I'll up my support once you restart and show progress.

Joe McLeod

Hey Crush, thanks for sending this report to everyone. Hope you're doing well and it's great to hear you aren't planning on giving up on FA. I generally am on the side of the people who think that everything you've done so far is fine (despite it's complexity), and that the number one thing that would move this project forward is having the plot move forward (ie the whole game moves forward/gets longer) instead of filling or even redoing more details and systems in the intro (the game grows sideways/gets wider). Taking a look at your brain-shaped flowchart, honestly, is depressing, and I can't imagine it isn't depressing for you either, because it looks like what you're proposing is to redo the past 2 years of work for the next 5 releases, and then to make the release after that, the 6th from right now, the *intro* to Bangkok. I understand the appeal of starting fresh, but I think if you want to start fresh, you should start fresh with the intro to Bangkok and figure out how to link up the current intro with Bangkok later. Realistically I think you can't expect more than 4-6 releases a year, and this plan is therefore essentially suggesting that the intro to Bangkok won't happen until a year from now. I am not so sure that I agree with you that development in general is too slow -- my job is similarly to produce large unified bodies of work, directed pretty much entirely by myself, and I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you're just not doing everything fast enough, and that if you could do everything faster that would put everything back on track and keep the project ticking along as you want it to. That is usually not true though, because there are upper limits to what is possible, and if you stop and take a look at progress from a more objective metric, I think it's clear that you're maybe closer to the upper limit of productivity than you think. I took a brief look at the changes between versions 1.51.06 and 1.6, and there's a additional 22,569 lines of code, and 1,829 more images, and I imagine there was substantial re-writing and re-creating images, as well as all the normal administrative stuff which goes on when working on a huge project with a team who aren't even all in the same place. Frankly, I would call that decently productive for ~10 months by that measure, and by this measure I would say development seems to be going at roughly the speed I would expect for a small team who are doing something for the first time. However, this measure isn't really the one you or any of us are interested in, what we actually want is for the game to proceed and get to the next gameplay stage, or the 1.7 release, and that is making the game development seem too slow. Frankly I don't think there's much you can do in some ways to speed up the work if you keep developing as you currently are, focusing on getting a great foundation before starting on the meat of the game -- From what I can tell, you've been pushing yourself at an unsustainable pace and beginning to feel the negative side-effects of doing that. I've been there, and trust, it ends up resulting in less productivity in the long run than working at a sustainable pace, a big project like this is definitely a marathon, not a sprint, and you're only like 3-4 miles in. I think the only way to (seemingly) increase the "speed" of development is by working smarter, not harder. I think this means prioritising things on the to-do list which will actually appear to progress the game, and pushing back things which are less important. The MFAGA plan seems to almost get this, and I'll post some detailed point-by-point commentary below, but I think you're still missing the main realisation you need to have about developing FA, which is that you're working super hard and making lots of progress, just not on actually advancing the story or the game, which is what we (presumably including you) are all interested in. Finally, I wonder if as part of the rescue plan, it might be a good idea to take a step back and make sure the overall plan for the development of FA still exists and is what you want it to be, in terms of both story and mechanics. You've focused lots on mechanics this past year, which as been great, but are you possibly being held back by not having a similar plan for the story? I think you are maybe shooting for Skyrim with FA, when a more reasonable target may be Mass Effect, where there you can really see how it was storyboarded and developed in chunks. Is there a similar overview of the FA story anywhere, even if it's in your head? I presume the main plot of FA is about catching the big bad, but writing that story is going to be really difficult unless you are able to detail questions like: What leads does Kate catch in the case when working in the HCC? What happens after she follows up on that lead? (and what are the possible branches, though you may want to limit yourself to a max of 2-3 initially) What is the major obstacles does Kate encounter, and how many ways can she resolve it? (again maybe just 1 or 2 ways of resolving it initially) What are the endings, and how do the leads/obstacles determine which ending occurs? (maybe start with 2 possible endings, and add more later) I think unless you can make a story flowchart like this for FA, it will be pretty excruciating to further develop the story. Honestly, the story and your writing are the major strengths of this game. All the RPG mechanics are definitely cool, and I think they will add a huge amount of fun and repeatability to the game, but honestly if this were just a simple CYOA story with a couple of variables to track decisions and maybe 1-2 stats (The eWardrobe by brickdoorway is a great example of this, though the content matter may not be everyone's cup of tea) I would still eagerly wait for each update. You've created something really special here, the quality is leagues better than most similar things I've seen, and you can definitely make it into something unbelievably good, but I think that means accepting that you can only work so hard, and development will only proceed so quickly. Picking things to develop that feel like they are moving the project forward and keeping yourself excited is a crucial way to keep up motivation and productivity. That said, if you can't keep doing this, or need to take a break you definitely should. Either way, thanks for creating this man. Detailed responses to rescue plan stages: Slow Writing: Convoluted story: Surely, having a clear storyboard from the start to the ending(s) of FA would resolve this? You could split story segments into "high priority" things to develop, and leave short "transition" paragraphs. For instance, Dubai is kind of a neat idea, but you could have left a placeholder couple of paragraphs describing Kate's stay there on her way to Thailand, and then gone back and filled in a more detailed story later. I think cutting Dubai and/or bits of Scotland at this point is going to be a huge motivation killer for you and the team, as well as lots of patrons. Better idea is to leave them as they are as placeholders, and just take a different approach to develop things going forward. You can always go back and clean up the intro to your liking as part of a later release. Complex backstory: I think the issue here is not *having* loads of backstory options, but rather trying to make personalisation happen for all of them, all the time. Instead of removing the option of supporting more personalisation, which is probably much harder to add as the codebase gets larger, I think a better idea is to try and limit the number of versions of a scene to say, 2 or 3, and then writing the 2 versions of that scene where customisation makes the most sense. For instance, in encountering a Vietnamese mob boss, it probably makes sense to have 2 versions of the scene, one for Australians and Americans, and one for other nationalities. Unlike these large differences, smaller micro-personalisations should theoretically be straightforward with simple variable storage in Twine. Meandering Plot: I think it is natural to have some bridging or joining scenes to increase immersion. As for your example, I found the scenes on the motorway in Scotland really helped increase immersion. Not every scene can have drive the story forward or have dramatic consequence, for a game of this size it's important to have humour/slice of life scenes as well. Mass Effect is a good example of this. And instead of storyboarding each individual scene, I think using a master storyboard to prioritise scene writing is likely to be much more effective. Avatar Problems: I agree with everything you've suggested to resolve these. Barriers to team/community input: Unclear game mechanics: I actually disagree with this. I think the mechanics are as clear as they should be right now given we're not actually at the stage of implementing any "normal" gameplay. Spending more time on this seems like putting the cart before the horse. Mechanics are very likely to change over the course of game development, I would wait until the gameplay loop is actually implemented before refining mechanics any more. No templates: I templates are a good idea, but should be very low priority. Again, it's a "sideways" development, which helps create a better foundation for future development, but doesn't actually push the development of the game forward at all. I would say you should definitely wait until after implementing the normal gameplay loop before moving on to this. As for writing long, and outsourcing wide, I think that is a great idea, but I think it's an even better idea to just focus on writing long for 2-3 releases, and then go back and widen after you've already found the path forward. Dirty Code: I write lots of code for my work, and I have to say that cleaning code is one of the highest-effort lowest-reward things you can do, especially early in a project. A good clean codebase is something to strive for while you develop, but only so long as it's clean enough to work on. Otherwise, additional cleaning is likely to kill motivation and not actually result in any tangible improvements. As for managing your personal life, dude, it's essential you take R&R. It doesn't really matter if it's one day a week, or 3 half days, or 6 hours a day, but finding time to R&R is the only way you'll ever finish this. And as you're the team leader, admin is similarly essential. Don't feel guilty doing it!

Anand

Please take this all in the spirit of "I love you and want this game to be great". You have brought some of this up before. I remember a few months ago about getting the community involved more. That never really happened. And here we are talking about it again. You are lacking in boundaries. You allow yourself to forget the project so you can pursue your own end of the work, in my opinion, getting lost in the weeds often. It's selfish and self-destructive. You do not treat this as a job and the output shows that. Everyone loves the customization but you have made the game about the very customization that limits its development. What really attracts people to these games is the story. The plot. Character advancement. Filthy sex. Bangkok. Banging cocks. Not umpteen titty sizes or thigh tattoos. Not a choice of 40 different colleges. At the end of the day, when the MC is giving BJs in Bangkok, it won't really f*cking matter what Uni she went to or whether her mother was a Labour voter or not. People want sex. They want drama. They want tension. They want to overcome hurdles only to discover new hurdles. They want to feel turned on and sometimes feel compassion for the MC. If you're worried about not having enough shiny crap under the hood, you can always go back and clean up code or add features after we've been gang-banged by 30 lady-boys in order to get closer to our mission objective. There will always be a tiny (but vocal minority) that will ask you for endless sub-features that the mass of your patrons could care less about. It's a Pareto thing. The guys who pay most of the bills are supporting development of features that slow down the development on behalf of a tiny minority relative to the mass of people following the project. I respect you making this accountability effort, but I would like to see you bring in someone else to be the project manager so you can focus on code, or you focus only on project management and get someone else to code. If you're coding each day before your admin tasks are 100% done, you're not doing your job as the project manager and team leader. You made great graphics and laid out several problems but the issue here has never been your lack of intelligence or vision. It has been delivery. You are a very capable ideas guy but you're a terrible production guy. I hope you suss this out. The story idea has endless promise but you need to stop messing around with micro features and events at the expense of getting to Bangkok. You also need to be taking 2 days off a week and still CRUSHING (pun intended) this project.

moocha-hoocha

As I'm reading the PDF, all I hear is "This is great in theory, but can he deliver on any of it?". It baffles me that Bangkok, the supposed central pillar of the entire game, has not been thought out yet. Not really sure what I'm paying for right now.

Lexi Knight

I would not take out what's already in the game, but add parenthetical text to some choices which says "(not fully implemented)" or something. Leave in the effects that background choices (example: alpha female) already have, but in the interest of simplifying and moving things along, default those choices to something else once we get to new content. I’m contributing to a porn game, and “work in progress” features are par for the course, even on some of the deepest games out there. I mean, I love how September 11th effects USAsian agents, but I really would not mind if my American woman turns British as soon as she reaches new content if that is going to simplify writing. Similarly, on the avatar, I don’t car if every choice effects the drawing. I don’t care if every article of clothing and lipstick color is represented. In the scenes where we pick clothes, hair, and makeup you could distill it down to about 4 Bond-girl styles and let us pick one (example:femme fatale, bimbo, nerd, and nice). Same on the physique. We don’t need every cup size represented; flat, medium, and huge are enough. It’s fine to leave more precise sizes in as flavor text, but don’t let sizing slow avatar development, and limit how much impact it has on the writing. It’d nice that little details about my character come up in Scotland, but honestly I’d be okay with jut having that on some sort of info screen. I guess what Im saying is that I’d like to see you leave most of the existing work in place, but for the future, start building deep down one path before adding breadth. I am fine playing an English agent with C-cup breasts who only has two outfits through one play through of the story, if I get to play through the story. You might want to treat other options that might add a different flavor as different branches you might choose to add when you hit a block on the main path.

Dariel

TBH, i went through the story about 12-15 times at different stages of production. As is, i am happy with where things are. From Scotland to Dubai. Those are like starter missions to get the agent off on the path. NGL at this point i am just expecting a mission debrief saying smth like "you did well in the last 2 missions and we would like to prepare you further but... the target has started moving. We have no choice but to drop you in hot. Good luck in Thailand. You will need it." And that would be that. Personally i feel like you are overthinking how bad the situation on the story side is.

Ornithorhynchus

Hey man, I like your game idea, I really do. And I would like to be able to play it. But honestly, I'm sick of waiting. IMHO, there hasn't been any progress contentwise for a year at least. So, no more fancy engine tweaking and redoubling, pretty pretty please. You claim you have a story to tell. So do it. As for me, it's Bangkok or bust now, and I have the distinct feeling I'm not the only one...