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ACT Patreon Active [Anon42] Crisis Point: Extinction


Yunguy1

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Honestly, the easiest way around the whole "swaying away from forced and beastiality" issue would obviously be setting up a different version outside of Patreon. When an artist has to rely solely on Patreon and then Patreon starts specifying their guidelines for H-artists, it's a major obstacle and also causes issues with development almost entirely. [ Because now Anon has to make a Patreon version without all of that. ]
 

ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat

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Sadly that would still require remaking animations, man. Even if it was only armor pieces layered over her existing outfit, and not a full suit, it would need to be animated for every single one of Alicia's actions, which would take a long time. We're not planning on adding in any upgrades that visually change Alicia because of it, we just don't have the necessary art/animation muscle.
...Not really. Just copy and paste the sprite sheets you already have and make a few small changes. I'm not even a sprite artist, and I'm confident I could even do that much given a single day. The only thing you'd have to completely make is a small transformation sequence. That's gotta be some weak-ass muscle if you can't even do that ;)

But don't pull a LibraHeart and copy and paste Alicia's sprite for your h-animations.
 
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Anon42

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What if the boss spit her out in some closed off room, as if to keep her trapped there to enjoy her more at some other time? Still get the vore but can do away with the danger part somewhat without just leaving her free to go wherever.
Maybe, though it would be very strange to go from the sprite scene to her being released into some room and then back to the game proper. The only way to make that feel less out of place would probably be extending the scene past when she's released into the room, which would take some more effort, but definitely isn't a bad idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

Mistah F. - I think I see what you mean. Shouldn't be too hard to fix it, though it'll probably wait until after we're done with the rest of her animations.

EveryOne sad about us ditching noncon - Sorry you feel that way, but we don't really have a choice. Patreon has been taking down pages of creators even after they change their page description, all it takes is one person noticing your game isn't following the rules and poof. That said, the content that is no longer allowed on Patreon is all stuff I'm not particularly fond of to begin with - noncon included - so even if they hadn't done this now, that kind of content would likely not exist in any future work I do. I don't blame anyone for being upset, but the forced changes are allowing me to rethink some things about how Hentai and Gameplay intertwine, and also do more content that I'm personally interested in. That's why I've said I'm not terribly upset about it as far as changing my content goes, though I still think it's a bad move and I feel for every creator affected more severely than me.

Slam Sector - I get where you're coming from, but the change has barely created any problems at all. I did lose a few patrons, but the overwhelming majority of patrons were fine with it and very understanding. As far as the game itself goes, the only real technical hurdle to come up so far has been the boss Game Over scenes, everything else has been extremely easy to design around, and I actually like the new systems a lot better. Like I mentioned earlier in this post, patreon IS taking down creators for content that is only in their game and not listed on their pages - there is no "possible interpretations" here, things are about as cut and dry as they get. Bestiality, incest, non-con, and loli/shota are no longer allowed on Patreon, period. The only choice is to find something else, risk my livelihood, or pivot.

Deathwing9000 - I understand your concerns, but like you said, nobody but my team knows much at all of the story so far - believe me when I say that the changes here had literally no effect on our story, like, at all. The story is one of the reasons why it's so easy for me to pivot to consensual sex instead of non-con, it was almost written in to the game already. You are right though, the game over scenes will have to have some dialogue changes to make Alicia consent more. They almost all end with her liking it at the end though, so the changes probably won't be too intense. As for the BE state, we have plans for that, don't you worry.

Yunguy1 - "The easiest way" is to make two versions of the game? No thank you. It takes enough time and resources to make one version in the first place, I don't want to slow the game down even further by making two versions of all of the content. I agree that it sucks when Patreon starts dictating what we can and can't create, but there's unfortunately no alternative and there likely won't be a viable one for a long time.

ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat - It's really nowhere near that simple, man. You do realize that in Alicia alone, there will be at least several hundred unique frames of animation? And that aside from JUST putting together the sprites, we also need programming for properly displaying those sprites in-game - which we did NOT plan for ahead of time which makes the job much more difficult, and the designs of the upgrades themselves - which need to be designed in a way to not clash with the potential alternate outfits we have as a Patreon goal? You don't seem to have a proper understanding at all of the kind of work needed to make a game, what kind of credentials do you have that would make your opinion of that workload more credible than the person who's literally making the game?
 
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Slam Sector

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I say "possible interpretations" with two specific examples in mind. Tentacle monsters, which are arguably a form of beastiality, and non-con, because there's still plenty of patreon campaigns running that involve girls getting assaulted by monsters. If I were to guess a reason why the second one doesn't count as non-con, it would be because the girls never seem to actually express a denial of consent, they just kind of roll with it and have what you might call "adversarial sex." I can understand why you wouldn't want to risk your own campaign on what may just be inconsistent rule enforcement, though.
 
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Anon42

Anon42

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I say "possible interpretations" with two specific examples in mind. Tentacle monsters, which are arguably a form of beastiality, and non-con, because there's still plenty of patreon campaigns running that involve girls getting assaulted by monsters. If I were to guess a reason why the second one doesn't count as non-con, it would be because the girls never seem to actually express a denial of consent, they just kind of roll with it and have what you might call "adversarial sex." I can understand why you wouldn't want to risk your own campaign on what may just be inconsistent rule enforcement, though.
Ahh, I get what you mean now. Yeah, their enforcement of some rules has been pretty inconsistent so far, likely because of how sudden the changes were - they came directly after Visa changed their own guidelines to ban the exact same things, so it's more than likely Patreon had to suddenly crack down on it or risk losing their main payment processor. Either way you've got the right of it, I'm not really against making these changes on a personal level and if it keeps me safer, then I'd rather err on the side of caution. I don't plan on removing tentacles unless I'm forced to though, I don't think they'll be a problem
 

Deathwing9000

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Ahh, I get what you mean now. Yeah, their enforcement of some rules has been pretty inconsistent so far, likely because of how sudden the changes were - they came directly after Visa changed their own guidelines to ban the exact same things, so it's more than likely Patreon had to suddenly crack down on it or risk losing their main payment processor. Either way you've got the right of it, I'm not really against making these changes on a personal level and if it keeps me safer, then I'd rather err on the side of caution. I don't plan on removing tentacles unless I'm forced to though, I don't think they'll be a problem
Out of curiosity then... would you have thoughts of releasing the game up to this point for those who want it the way it was supposed to be and still continue on the game to comply with Patreon's new set of rules and regulations?
 

ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat

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ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat - It's really nowhere near that simple, man. You do realize that in Alicia alone, there will be at least several hundred unique frames of animation?
Ok I'll give you that much. The only sprite sheets I've ever really looked at are sprites from Metroid games so I didn't expect the number to be that high.

And that aside from JUST putting together the sprites, we also need programming for properly displaying those sprites in-game - which we did NOT plan for ahead of time which makes the job much more difficult, and the designs of the upgrades themselves - which need to be designed in a way to not clash with the potential alternate outfits we have as a Patreon goal?
Wait, what? You act as if you'd need 5000 lines of code just to tell the game to look for a different sprite sheet per animation...

You don't seem to have a proper understanding at all of the kind of work needed to make a game, what kind of credentials do you have that would make your opinion of that workload more credible than the person who's literally making the game?
Ok first off the workload comment was sarcasm. Second off, instead of going 'YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW ITS LIKE TO MAKE VIDEO GAMES!!' Why don't you help me understand what doing something like I suggested entails coding-wise and sprite wise instead of telling me 'Oh it's just difficult' which tells me nothing and makes me respond with something like I said previously? That way not only can you give me a better grasp of your situation, but you could also show inspiring game makers what they'd be in for.
 

Yunguy1

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I probably should've watched my wording in my previous post. But shit that sucks when there really is no other alternative. :/
 
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Anon42

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Out of curiosity then... would you have thoughts of releasing the game up to this point for those who want it the way it was supposed to be and still continue on the game to comply with Patreon's new set of rules and regulations?
I'm definitely willing to consider it. Maybe I can release an older Patreon version like v.24 or something, so it's not the MOST recent but it would have all of the content that's being replaced, for those who haven't seen it. I'll have to think more on what to do there.

ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat - Metroid has a pretty low animation count, though their animations are smooth, but one of the biggest things is H-scenes themselves. They add a lot of animation and spriting time, since each regular enemy gets at least 2 H-scenes. No, we wouldn't need 5,000 lines of code, but it's not as simple as just telling the game to read a separate sprite - if we were going to do something like this, the ONLY reasonable way to handle it would be to create overlay sprites that are drawn on top of the existing sprites depending on what upgrades you have. If we created entire sprite sheets for each potential combination of upgrades, the game's filesize would shoot up like crazy from the sheer amount of frames that each only had minor differences, which is absolutely unacceptable. Because of that, the game would need a system to read what sprite is being drawn, then read what upgrades you do or don't have, then draw the new sprites on top of (or under) the existing sprites with proper layering, which could get strange depending on what the design of the upgrade pieces were, especially if we end up getting the alternate outfits goal and adding those in. On top of that, overlay sprites are pretty easy to mess up, and if something is positioned off by even a pixel, it looks horrible - there's a lot of room for human error there. As for your last comment - if you come into my topic saying things like "You're wrong, I don't even know how to sprite and I could do that work in a single day, you must not be very good" - then yeah, I'm gonna get offended. I'm not some soulless corporate drone, I'm a real person making this stuff, and even if you meant it as sarcastic, it came off as exceedingly rude. To be frank, it's not worth the time to try and explain the intricacies of exactly how much time it takes to animate something - there are thousands of places on the internet that you can learn about that kind of stuff from people who know a lot more about it than I do, so if you're interested I suggest you seek those out. All I can speak for are my personal experiences, and art is one of the things we're already struggling with the most. Keeping up with the demand of animation for a game of this scale takes a LOT of time, and in my case, I'm not that good at it. All the visual upgrades we've been making are because I stopped doing the artwork myself and hired other people who are better at it, and that kind of talent takes money. When it comes to game development, there's ALWAYS features that would be nice to add, but unless you draw the line at some point then your game will never be finished. Upgrades that change your visual appearance are great, but they are a non-essential for this game, and I made the decision to not add them for a reason - I'd prefer Crisis Point actually gets finished someday instead of staying in development forever to 'just add that one more feature' ad nauseam.

Yunguy1 - You're fine, man. There are some upcoming platforms that are a lot like Patreon, such as Drip, the main problem is that we're not sure any of them would be any more welcoming to adult creators, and none of them have the kind of market share that Patreon has. With all the mistakes Patreon is making lately, it's very possible their competitors will gain some traction, but only time will tell - and odds are EXTREMELY high that even if something else does eclipse Patreon, it'd only be a matter of time before they cracked down on adult creators too. Our business is not a popular one.
 

ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat

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Metroid has a pretty low animation count, though their animations are smooth, but one of the biggest things is H-scenes themselves. They add a lot of animation and spriting time, since each regular enemy gets at least 2 H-scenes. No, we wouldn't need 5,000 lines of code, but it's not as simple as just telling the game to read a separate sprite - if we were going to do something like this, the ONLY reasonable way to handle it would be to create overlay sprites that are drawn on top of the existing sprites depending on what upgrades you have. If we created entire sprite sheets for each potential combination of upgrades, the game's filesize would shoot up like crazy from the sheer amount of frames that each only had minor differences, which is absolutely unacceptable. Because of that, the game would need a system to read what sprite is being drawn, then read what upgrades you do or don't have, then draw the new sprites on top of (or under) the existing sprites with proper layering, which could get strange depending on what the design of the upgrade pieces were, especially if we end up getting the alternate outfits goal and adding those in. On top of that, overlay sprites are pretty easy to mess up, and if something is positioned off by even a pixel, it looks horrible - there's a lot of room for human error there.
Oh alright. That makes A LOT more sense. You'd also have to tell the game to throw one sprite on top of another and then another depending on the amount of upgrades, which may also kill performance because of the extra data it'd have to pull. I will value this information and hold on to it for later, thank you.
 

djaxis

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*sigh* i usually don't drag myself out of hiding for much, but all this crap going on with patreon is driving me furious. "mad" doesn't even begin to cover my emotions on the topic. when as a race did we just curl up and die in a corner? what point in our history was it that decided this battle was already lost? when did a pair of breasts become worse than mass murder? oh yeah. at least in the usa mass murder is considered acceptable by our overlords. freedom of expression should be absolute. period. freedom of consumption should be as absolute. no boundaries, no arbitrary limitations. even the slightest limit will always be subjective and we've backed ourselves into such a controlled state that there is nothing but subjective control. if real people are involved then of course there should be meaningful regards to safety but in the realms of fiction, anything should go.

mental health and the ever spiraling down the drain attitudes to anything sexual are so problematic simply because we make them so. the freedom to create should never be overridden by the freedom to consume. i understand you don't mind the changes anon42 and they really don't sound severe, but you're still losing. you lost the moment you decided to stay with patreon and everyone else is making the same decision to lose. every time we bow to the might of our ever censoring overlords we are losing what makes us human. we dance around payment processors and pretend that if we don't talk about it they won't notice and everything will be fine.

but a message has to be sent. sex is not unnatural and in the realms of fiction no god or government holds the power to decide what we can and cannot create. visa. patreon. none of them will ever learn and they will continue crushing us all until we fight back. with their poorly implemented price hike as even more fuel, we have even more justification to fight back. when we learn to stand, we will be humbled by no one, but until then, we will cower beneath our overlords, and be censored. the thought police will try and convince us that we're sick, our tastes and fetishes a blight upon the world.

i don't have answers nor do i have solutions, but the status quo? it cannot continue. day by day and year by year i have seen this industry on all fronts attacked and time after time it keeps retreating and keeps pretending that all is right in the world and it isn't. our most fundamental freedoms are being trampled and we act like business is as usual.
 

pewpewsmurf

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I think H content creators will have to find an alternative soon. All these recent changes and shutting down of Patreon page really kill the industry. It's like spreading the message that having fetishes even in fantasy is wrong. :/
I don't wish to end up seeing all porn related games filled with just consensual sex aka sluts. Like cmon, why would a character be willing to have sex with some monster/enemy out of no where.. that makes 0 sense to begin with.
 
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Anon42

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djaxis - Literally NOBODY in the H-dev community feels that way. Nobody is happy about this censoring, or even "okay" with it. This is an extremely low stakes battle for you, the consumer, but for us, this is literally our entire lives - very few of us have the option to "fight back" without eradicating our livelihoods. Both me AND my girlfriend would be homeless in a few months, tops, if I lost my income from Crisis Point. If you're willing to make that sacrifice for yourself, great - I'm not, and not you or anybody else gets to decide what is right or wrong for my situation.
 

ElPresidente

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djaxis - Literally NOBODY in the H-dev community feels that way. Nobody is happy about this censoring, or even "okay" with it. This is an extremely low stakes battle for you, the consumer, but for us, this is literally our entire lives - very few of us have the option to "fight back" without eradicating our livelihoods. Both me AND my girlfriend would be homeless in a few months, tops, if I lost my income from Crisis Point. If you're willing to make that sacrifice for yourself, great - I'm not, and not you or anybody else gets to decide what is right or wrong for my situation.

Can you at least release the last version before the changes?
 
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Anon42

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Can you at least release the last version before the changes?
It's still available for download on patreon, so no, I'm not just going to give it out right this moment. After a while when it's not one of the most recent versions on Patreon, maybe - but giving out the second-to-latest version for free kinda goes against the whole idea of having Patreon, and it would definitely undermine the public update we're working on if there was a free, public link to a version with way more content and almost as much polish. If I do decide to release an update with the old insect/hellhound though, I'd probably find whichever was the oldest version that had all of their relevant content (sprite scenes for Hellhound and sprite scenes/CGs for insect), then release that.
 

Sweedle

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While the Patreon changes are obnoxious, in the case of this game I don't feel it is going to cause too drastic a change to warrant this many people saying they're turned off from the product. It's annoying, yes, but game-breaking, certainly not -- the core of the game will easily stay the same. The only thing that's really being forced to change now is some theme elements, which from how I look at it, really doesn't affect the gameplay.

Right now, sure, there are forced-sex themes in the game. The enemies have a couple ways to initiate, but these are just fluff on an otherwise standard metroidvania. B.E. calls for enemies to initiate, as does you getting knocked down from being struck too many times. But these in themselves don't cause damage -- they're just additional delays. You can easily get up from being knocked down, or wait it out with B.E. If an enemy initiates a forced animation, you don't take damage either -- unless you try to skip the animation. You're free to let the animation finish, and then get up on your own without any loss (in the current game, anyway). The common "left and right spam = escape" functionality actually hurts you in this game, where-as others often require it as a means to get through the animation without greater harm.

Changing the theme element of this of course is unfortunate -- some of us really like the forced sex component (well, I'm sure a good bit of us get into this peculiar genre with things like Demon Girl and the like). For some games, forced sex is the entire theme, even if it's just a theme wrapper... And gameplay wise, often initiated badly. I'd say take a look at any of the Demon Girl spin-off games. If you're in any way competent with dodging, these games hardly pose any challenge if you consider the meta of it:
* You can lose 2 layers of clothing before sex animations take over.
* You have a fire blast that can be used 3 times to clear the screen (or auto-escape in some cases).
* You can escape 3-4 enemies with the escape button spam. This takes longer each time, but is not a challenge or even a fun gameplay mechanic.
* You can endure ~2-3 more attacks beyond that by watching the animation and taking damage, depending.

That sort of game depends on the sex animation as the punishment for being caught too many times, and you lose HP while it happens -- but those animations are just themed elements. It could easily just be a bird fighting with cats or something. Crisis Point does not even suffer from this issue -- consenting through any of the incidental animations is more rewarding than attempting to skip them. It's just a theme flavor added to a traditional game style for those who want a sexy feel -- and while changing the flavor of that theme slightly is unfortunate, it is still the same game, really.

I've considered the role of sex in games a lot. I've often found, like mentioned above, that it's often just a theme added to it to spice it up. It may actually be a VERY basic game -- walk left and right and hit space bar to punch, maybe. But you focus on the theme, then the gameplay is secondary and people don't mind so much.

You can usually tell which a game focused on, because the second element is unnecessary. Demon Girl and all its spinoffs really don't even need the gameplay -- they're an interactive animation gallery. Crisis Point very much feels like gameplay was the first in line, and that's good -- there's an actual game here, and the sex animations themselves aren't actually necessary (but they're good, please leave them k thx).

If all you're here for is the sex animations or game-over CGs, those exist already in current versions of the game, and really, if that's all you cared about, be honest... you just want a sprite animation gallery, not a full, developed, quality game to spend the hours playing. lol

I do see the Patreon change as destructive, though, surely. I've strongly considered making a game, myself, through the years (as I have some background in doing so). Honestly, Anon42's patreon, after a year of hiatus, was still making more than I do developing software actively for companies where I live (often not having work for 2-3 months between gigs, too). It was an eye opener that maybe I'm focusing my talents in the wrong direction, and could be doing something I enjoy a lot more, instead. This basically derails me entirely if I were to start developing now and hope to survive off of it if my work looked good.

I mean, heck. I'd wanted to make a game where sex was a critical element, integrated with the gameplay and plot (eg, you'd spend half the time trying to figure out how to stop an enemy from the unwanted sex they're having with you through dialog and educated guesses, while humor and awkwardness abound). I don't really want to get too into it here (not the time or place), but something like that can't just "go consensual". The game is too invested in it, and the basis of "do not want" drives the plot, every encounter, and every character choice you make. I'm sure there's plenty of other games out there that I've never heard of, already in development, that are up a creek without a platform to operate on. That's really depressing to think about.
 
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Anon42

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( )



Hey everybody! Sorry it's been a bit since the last post, I wanted to finish all of this before sending out an update. We've got some nice visuals to show off today, as the post title states - a new title screen, and a new HUD in gameplay! The title screen is, obviously, the attached image. There might be some minor changes (especially the text font, which is very much temporary), but for the most part it's all finished up now. I'm very happy with how it turned out, looks much nicer than the plain black screen with white text from before! All of the menus will be getting a similar visual overhaul, but for this next update it'll only be the menu that's prettied up.

Aside from that, we also have a new HUD to display all of your stats and information while playing. It's got some nice animations to it as well, so I decided to so you can get the full experience. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out, and hopefully you'll agree!

That's all I have to share today. v.29 is proceeding smoothly, though it might unfortunately end up being a bit more delayed than I said originally. I got hit with some new years depression for a bit there, and it unfortunately slowed me down. I'm really sorry about that, but I'm back on the horse now and working hard to get this out as soon as possible. It's unlikely that the in-game gallery will make it into this update, it's going to take me longer than anticipated to implement, but luckily we do have the external gallery still so hopefully I'm not disappointing too many people.

Thanks for all of your support everyone, it means the world to me! I'll try and have another update for you soon!
-A42
 

kiko

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Hey anon42, glad you're progressing with the game even with those somewhat recent patreon enforcements regarding NSFW content. Loving the new UI and HUD. Reminds me of the Another metroid 2 remake HUD and I love it. And so sorry you're going through that new years depression, had the same feeling but don't let it get to you. Hope you'll continue updating and good luck.

Also since I don't have actual drawing skills I tried to do a logo for Crisis Point digitally. Hope you like it

 
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Anon42

Anon42

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Dude that's awesome, thank you so much! Character art isn't the only kind of fanart, it's honestly just amazing to me whenever people like the game enough to create something inspired by it. I'm flattered <3
 
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