Thursday pomodoro & progress report
A pomodoro is a 25-minute block of focused work. I promised to do at least 10 per week when the first funding goal was reached.
Monday: 1 pomodoro
Tuesday: 2 pomodori
Wednesday: 6 pomodori
Thursday: 6 pomodori
I had a really difficult start to the week. I just couldn’t find my mojo. At first I put it down to sadness over my dog, but I also recognised that I sometimes feel this way when a project is on the wrong track.
On Wednesday morning, I stopped just grinding away, and took time out to have a serious think about what was bothering me. A few fans have expressed concerns that the Lifepath is falling into the weeds, and a few playthroughs from a fresh perspective convinced me that they’re right: there are too many screens, going into too much detail.
I also think there’s not quite enough sexiness in the Lifepath so far. This needs a fine balance – too much sexiness in the agent’s backstory trivialises her mission in Bangkok – but on reflection, I’ve played it too safe and ignored some easy opportunities for fan service.
For instance, agents with the elite social class background spend a year in a finishing school in Switzerland. Why the hell did I get Victoria to draw an outfit based actual finishing school students:
Instead of the Hollywood version:
These realisations felt like the breakthrough I was waiting for, and today and yesterday have felt incredibly exciting again. I’ve commissioned a whole set of new avatar outfits from Victoria (including a private school unifom), and simplified the Lifepath screens to speed up character generation and reduce the sense of grind.
For example: previously each year of university was modelled – every year you chose how hard you were going to study, if you were going to get a job, what relationships you started or ended, etc.
University is now presented as a series of important choices that you make once. You decide if, overall, your agent was a bookworm, a party girl, or something in between – and then you move on. You get to decide if your agent worked her way through university or not – and then you move on. Instead of working out exactly when a serious relationship started and ended, and whether or not that overlapped with a one night stand, you just tick a box to specify whether your agent cheated on her serious partners or not.
I’ve also looked for easy opportunities to make the Lifepath more titillating. For example, if your agent works through university and chooses the job “lifeguard”, you’ll get to see her in a red Baywatch swimsuit.
I had gotten too stuck on the details and lost perspective on what makes the game fun and interesting to play. I’ll remember this always in the future.
Progress report. Victoria is drawing new outfits. Hyneman is coding a new version of the relationships table. I’m restructuring pages and rewriting content.
I have to work at my real job all day tomorrow, but have the weekend and most of next week free, and will produce either a Beta or version 1.4 with a functioning Lifepath soon (as in days, not weeks).
Thanks, everybody, for your continued support. I think problems and course corrections like this are a normal part of any big project, but I'm always conscious of the fact that you guys are supporting me with actual money and I promise never to be complacent about that. I really am stressed all the time about trying to get better updates out more quickly. :-(
Comments (9)
While I'm sure some people would prefer the increased sexual content. I think the extreme amount of mundane details would be much better in the long run. Forcing the player to become extremely invested into their character not only greatly adds to the immersion and role playing aspect of the game, but makes their choices in Thailand far more rewarding and punishing. That's why I became a patreon. I saw a game that looked like it had the potential to be a seriously detailed pen and paper style RPG; and honestly, there just isn't enough of those.
I agree, those extra details could add to increased replayability.
I am personally very happy that you always keep everbody informed. Your updates on the status of Female Agent are very frequent. For me, seeing that you are working on the project is more important than the exact waiting time until the next release. Or in other words: "It's done when it's done." Speaking from personal experience, I would like to suggest that you take a different approach with respect to promising features/releases/progress. Since you do not work on this project full time, just do not that. It's a source of disappointment for you and the patreons. It is absolutely sufficient if you keep us posted on your achievements, as you did so far. Keep up the good work!
How not to love free market! The new month has just begun, the new billing period has just begun, 60 patrons dropped out. $$$ shortage always is a good reminder whether you are going in the right direction. You have made several promises in the last 2 months - none of them was kept. Do not make them.
I'll judge what you guys did in these months when I see it, so just release it when you feel it's the right time. bye
Sounds great! I'd much rather you take the time to nail down how you want the game to play, in the end it will always be worth it to keep the quality up! Also for the future, any chance of giving an exhibitionist Kate from a lower social class the option to strip her way through school?
Crab, I'm going to lay it down that, we support you through thick and thin, butter and hot water. Your project was the thing that got me into supporting these kind of games and developers, I ain't going to over nothing. So buck up, put on your shell and go punch a lobster.
You could always do university "packages" as an option for people who don't like the customization. Examples: party girl, theatre enthusiast, bookish, etc. Then have the package make most of the screen-intensive choices, possibly while still giving different relationship options.
The good thing about Patreon is that you can get instant feedback on issues such as these. And don't fret about the updates too much: a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. Doesn't mean that you should have a development cycle like Duke Nukem Forever, but don't rush it. Even though you should probably keep in mind that this is mostly a one crab project. It's easy to overshoot and make things too complicated when you have a good idea. See this as something long term. With all mechanics in place, your second game will be developed much faster. We're paying you to work on games such as this, not to get instant gratification.