ACT Patreon Active [HentaiWriter] Future Fragments

[kvier]

Unfortunately once you've beaten the maze, there's no way to go back to it; we'll have something for the full game though where you can replay areas

While an in-game solution is nicer, I'd be happy with a save game from right before the maze. (Or instructions on how to edit my save)

Obviously if you don't want to share that that's fine

 

[fedefyr2]

Am i the only one who cant find path 3? Its the last one im missing, cant find it at all!
EDIT: nevermind

 

[Shadowknight502]

HentaiWriter Yeah, I figured there wasn't much chance of that long hair thing going through at this point. Oh well, figured it couldn't hurt to ask anyway. Here's hoping that in this sequel Faye wears her hair down and plays somewhat similarly to this. Sounds like good times ahead, for me at least.

Truth be told, I hadn't intended to get much into the story. I watched a few moments of the intro before skipping right to the game. I considered skipping the tutorial but figured that the game had changed a fair bit since I last played and a refresher couldn't hurt. It was longer than anticipated, but the voiceovers prevented me from skipping due to the sheer unexpected quality of it (I wasn't kidding earlier when I say that Vie in particular won me over. I can't even properly explain why. Somehow the combination of that voice and design just work for me.)

I'll stop myself here before I drag this on too long but as a final note, Talia's speaking her thoughts at the end of each terminal is a bit of a godsend. Summarizes it nicely while giving me better insight as to her character (also saves time when I'm particularly impatient and don't want to to read through the whole thing.)

 

[HentaiWriter]

HentaiWriter Yeah, I figured there wasn't much chance of that long hair thing going through at this point. Oh well, figured it couldn't hurt to ask anyway. Here's hoping that in this sequel Faye wears her hair down and plays somewhat similarly to this. Sounds like good times ahead, for me at least.

Faye's hair would still use the same sprite, as the "sequel" takes place during this game; it's essentially the B-side to Future Fragments, where you get to see Faye's story which will tie up some loose plot ends and introduce a few extra twists to things you thought were a certain way during FF, but they in fact weren't

Gameplay-wise, it'll be fairly different; Faye is much more skilled than Talia, and fights using melee attacks rather than projectiles, but most importantly she has much more versatile movement abilities.
Additionally, the gameplay will be of a higher emphasis with story being a lesser emphasis (as you'll have heard most of it during Future Fragments anyways), and the gameplay in general should be faster-paced and more intense.
If Future Fragments was Megaman + Contra + Blackthorne, the sequel will be Super Metroid + Metal Gear Rising, if I had to compare them.
Not to say that there'll be NO storyline, but just that it'll take a back seat to the gameplay, whereas in FF we're trying to balance it 50/50 between gameplay and story, the sequel will be more like a 75/25 split (again similar to how Metal Gear Rising had a neat storyline, but it wasn't the densest story).

Truth be told, I hadn't intended to get much into the story. I watched a few moments of the intro before skipping right to the game. I considered skipping the tutorial but figured that the game had changed a fair bit since I last played and a refresher couldn't hurt. It was longer than anticipated, but the voiceovers prevented me from skipping due to the sheer unexpected quality of it (I wasn't kidding earlier when I say that Vie in particular won me over. I can't even properly explain why. Somehow the combination of that voice and design just work for me.)

Yeah, she's great, heck, all the voice actors are, they've all done amazing jobs and I can't wait to get more voice lines for them for the Earth Level that tutorial area won't be in the final game, either; we'll normally/intuitively teach you stuff in the full game, of course, instead of having to sit through that long thing.

I'll stop myself here before I drag this on too long but as a final note, Talia's speaking her thoughts at the end of each terminal is a bit of a godsend. Summarizes it nicely while giving me better insight as to her character (also saves time when I'm particularly impatient and don't want to to read through the whole thing.)

Yeah, this was completely our intent; we wanted a way to show Talia's perspective on things, which may not align with the player's given the era she comes from as well as her own personal beliefs, and then throughout the game her responses to things will become increasingly more "used to how insane things are in the future", as well as like you said, providing a quick summary of the most important moments.

You probably realized this already, but Talia's reactions to databanks usually change based on what earlier databanks she's read, especially if the databanks are related to one another story-wise; some databanks change cutscenes too, and vice versa.

(For example, go initiate the Stuck in the Wall scene in P4M2 by picking to keep searching in the bottom area of that map, then go read the databank at the bottom left of P6M3; conversely, reading the databank first will alter a line or two in that specific cutscene, also.)

While an in-game solution is nicer, I'd be happy with a save game from right before the maze. (Or instructions on how to edit my save)
Obviously if you don't want to share that that's fine

So the saves in this unfortunately aren't something easily editable; that said, when I get back to busting out the Earth Level maps again early next week, I'll do a quick hackjob in the editor and jump to each of the Milk Chambers, then send you that save file if that'd be okay!

 

[kvier]

So the saves in this unfortunately aren't something easily editable; that said, when I get back to busting out the Earth Level maps again early next week, I'll do a quick hackjob in the editor and jump to each of the Milk Chambers, then send you that save file if that'd be okay!

Sure! but that feels like a lot of effort just to humor me, so really don't feel obliged.

 

[J300mer]

I didn't mean to sound harsh with the voice acting, it's just.. Difficult to enjoy, if that makes any sense. I knew about turning it off, as I said, it's just difficult to follow along with-- specifically for this game.
If it were MGQ or so on, where the main protagonists had more time invested in them over the years, that's a nice touch-- but to have a new game with VA's on the first score? It feels like it's overkill.
Again, I meant nothing rude from that in any way, that's just my perspective on the matter. Enjoying the filters and animations thus far. More yuri would be appreciated though (hehe)

 

[HentaiWriter]

If it were MGQ or so on, where the main protagonists had more time invested in them over the years, that's a nice touch-- but to have a new game with VA's on the first score? It feels like it's overkill.

This game should be about 12 hours of playtime through on the first go; to find all the content on the game, you'll probably need around 30 hours or so, and then with the sequel doubling that amount of content, I figure that's a lot of character development and time that the players will be able to get from the games Not to mention the Egomaniac mode DLC we'll be doing, too.

That said, even if the game doesn't have years of investment in it, voicework is never a bad thing IMO; if you can increase the quality and content of your game while still keeping your vision intact and the game as a whole benefits for it, why not do it? I mean, many games have voicework on their first go, even for non-story-based games

More yuri would be appreciated

For those who aren't in the Discord or on the Patreon too, there's actually been a change to the game a month or two ago too; Triangulate said he's ok with having a yuri animation or two in the game, so we will have that in the game at some point, highly likely between Talia and Faye.

Sure! but that feels like a lot of effort just to humor me, so really don't feel obliged.

Not at all, it'll only take a few minutes

 

[J300mer]

Only a couple yuri animations?
Well,
That's still good, compared to most.
I meant that knowing the characters through the game itself, not so much production, would make VA's seem more legitimate. There's not necessarily anything bad with VA's, especially JAV VA's, but English ones are a bit risky since it's a new frontier on that.
Moaning/SFX voice is one thing, but back-and-forth dialogue for the whole thing seems over the top-- considering the scale of the game and how long it's going to be in development.
If it were a game, then having things like that focused on later, it might be more cost-friendly because you could get solid feedback through the transaction rather than putting it on on the first step.
I'm one of your patrons-- Booger Brigade. Been supporting for a while.

 

[pstone]

Haven't had the time to finish the demo yet but I've enjoyed it thus far.
Since we're on the topic: I quite like the voice acting (especially Vie) and it's nice to see that you're actually putting that Patreon money to use unlike so many other projects.

I would like to point out a bug, too:
I'm using a gamepad (Dual Shock 2 connected via some generic USB converter) and I'm having trouble properly mapping the controls.
The two buttons that are mapped to Z and X for menu control (Button 1 or Triangle and Button 3 or Cross, respectively) refuse to give up their functions of jumping and shooting even after remapping them. This leads to the annoying effect of having my jump button always shoot as well once I configure the controls the way I'd like. I have checked that JoyToKey is not active since it is usually the culprit of these kinds of issues.

 

[HentaiWriter]

I meant that knowing the characters through the game itself, not so much production, would make VA's seem more legitimate.

Which is why we have a lot of character development planned Remember, this demo was only 1/7th or so of the story at best, and that's assuming you read all the databanks and found all the cutscenes.

There's not necessarily anything bad with VA's, especially JAV VA's, but English ones are a bit risky since it's a new frontier on that.

Which is why we're doing it and going with only the best; some of the people who voiced this, I can't say who they are because of aliases, but they're known to millions of people for their voicework in AAA stuff within games, movies, TV, etc.

Moaning/SFX voice is one thing, but back-and-forth dialogue for the whole thing seems over the top-- considering the scale of the game and how long it's going to be in development.
If it were a game, then having things like that focused on later, it might be more cost-friendly because you could get solid feedback through the transaction rather than putting it on on the first step.

Not sure what you mean about both of these; the scale of the game is rather large, which is what we've been going for for a while, and the remainder of development shouldn't take more than a year from where we're at now, at the maximum. We've already got the 4th level halfway completed, and the final level and final boss fight is all that remains. Also not sure what you mean about "solid feedback through the transaction" or "putting it on the first step"; if you mean feedback for the game itself, we can still get that in real time from backers on the Discord and Patreon (which, by the way, as you've been a Patron for a while now, how come you never voiced any of these concerns on the Activity feed or in the Discord? ) with each successive build.

(Speaking about costs, by the way: the music so far for Future Fragments has cost us as much as all the voice acting combined, and sound effects alone have cost us half as much as all the voice acting combined.)

Additionally, as I've noted before, voice acting doesn't really delay us; for cutscenes, I write up the dialogue regardless on spreadsheets because we need it to reference it easier for cutscene changes/seeing what stuff links up to what, so for the voice actors all I'm doing is just adding in the emotions on the side of the lines which takes about 5 minutes per cutscene.

As a last note, I'm not sure why you feel it's over the top; most modern games nowadays have full voice acting, and no one really seems to think that's over the top, right? So given that we want to make this a full fledged game that's aiming to compete with anything that's considered solid on places like Steam and other such websites, full voice acting should be mandatory (plus, so far the feedback on the voice acting has been overwhelmingly positive, with very few people saying they disliked it at all).

But yeah, you should join the Discord and give feedback there too, plus respond on the Activity Feed; I respond to all questions or messages in all of those places, as well as emails too. It's fine to post that here also, but just noting that as it says you've been around for years, that's one of the things you should be using if something concerns you, as we do take feedback seriously.

Haven't had the time to finish the demo yet but I've enjoyed it thus far.
Since we're on the topic: I quite like the voice acting (especially Vie) and it's nice to see that you're actually putting that Patreon money to use unlike so many other projects.

Yeah, that's the big thing; we want to put that money back in the game, not just pad our pockets with it. If we can get enough to live off of comfortably, then probably 95% of the remainder of that money goes right into assets like voice acting, music, sound effects, better computer components or replacing broken ones (like drawing tablets or a monitor or something like that).

I would like to point out a bug, too:
I'm using a gamepad (Dual Shock 2 connected via some generic USB converter) and I'm having trouble properly mapping the controls.
The two buttons that are mapped to Z and X for menu control (Button 1 or Triangle and Button 3 or Cross, respectively) refuse to give up their functions of jumping and shooting even after remapping them. This leads to the annoying effect of having my jump button always shoot as well once I configure the controls the way I'd like. I have checked that JoyToKey is not active since it is usually the culprit of these kinds of issues.

There's still some oddities with Playstation controllers compared to Xbox ones, which is something we have to fix in later versions; worst case scenario, it may not be possible because while an Xbox controller matches up pretty well with just about anything made for Windows, Sony's stuff, especially through a USB converter, isn't designed to do so as cleanly and so a lot of issues come from that. It's still something we plan on fixing though; for now though, sorry!

 

[pstone]

It's still something we plan on fixing though; for now though, sorry!

In that case: Is there a way to simply disable gamepad support without having to disconnect it? I have noticed that my control settings aren't actually being saved so I don't think there's a file anywhere I could edit to make all the buttons do nothing.
After all, JoyToKey almost always works but only if the game's built-in gamepad support doesn't interfere.

 

[HentaiWriter]

In that case: Is there a way to simply disable gamepad support without having to disconnect it? I have noticed that my control settings aren't actually being saved so I don't think there's a file anywhere I could edit to make all the buttons do nothing.
After all, JoyToKey almost always works but only if the game's built-in gamepad support doesn't interfere.

We didn't put in a way to disable gamepad support while it's still connected, unfortunately; we'll add that to our list of things to do for future builds!

 

[Shadowknight502]

Ha, it's funny to see that I'm not the only one who was charmed by Vie. Sequel featuring Vie, when?

 

[HentaiWriter]

Ha, it's funny to see that I'm not the only one who was charmed by Vie. Sequel featuring Vie, when?

Unfortunately, while we have a sequel with Faye planned, we don't have anything with Vie planned for a full game, just simply because of how the plot of FF plays out, as well as her being so powerful that making a "game" around her (where you have consequences or the possibility to fail) would be almost impossible, unless we did one of those things they do in fighting games where suddenly Superman is as powerful as the Joker, haha.

Depending on the success of FF though and the sequel, we're not going to count out anything yet; maybe we'll even do a little minigame with her on the side, something like that.
I can say that she's getting at least two sex scenes in Future Fragments, and they won't be just simple animation loops, either, they'll have multiple phases.

 

[J300mer]

It's mostly sales that would become a big concern. Patreon is one thing, but selling the game itself on the market is what will get a bit more of a global stance on the production itself. English VA's for ecchi's are a new stretch-- the only other one I can think of is titles like Crisis Point-- but that's another story.
Its just hit-and-miss in my eyes. Great animations, Understandable plot. Not really anything negative to say about it. The filter effect is a nice touch as well.

 

[gettagmk2]

Looks promising! Can't wait to see the final product!

 

[Shadowknight502]

HentaiWriter Heh. That's actually really good to hear, but I wasn't being serious about that suggestion. I was just enjoying the fact that someone else seems to have been charmed by Vie as I was. Here's hoping she gets a fair bit of screentime in the actual game as well. She's a really fun character.

 

[Papanomics]

Was Faye's VA feeling sick during this recording? I had heard her before and there was a bit more edge to her voice. Almost sounded like she had or was recovering from a cold. Since I played, the Databanks weren't voiced, I think that was an excellent idea. Vie is visually the most interesting character so far, and I find Talia the least interesting sadly. I am pretty excited to play as Faye in a possible sequel, but yeah hopefully there is more Vie and many more enemies. This has come a long way.

 

[x421]

played the public demo posted here and i am really impressed. the game puts more effort in gameplay elements than others, voice acting and h-content is really good too.. hope you guys get a smooth development because that looks like its gonna be a rememberable one. so other than a missing scene/cg reviewer in the gallery, i am aware that the game has quite refined sprites, but some alternate costumes or torn clothes that reflect the damage taken would be a nice addition.

E: oh and before i forget to mention this one: a bit sad theres no aphrodisiac-effect or something similiar, games like that offer a great platform to enable some more options, like reduced movement speed/jump heights, and also different h-interactions.

 

[HentaiWriter]

played the public demo posted here and i am really impressed. the game puts more effort in gameplay elements than others, voice acting and h-content is really good too.. hope you guys get a smooth development because that looks like its gonna be a rememberable one. so other than a missing scene/cg reviewer in the gallery, i am aware that the game has quite refined sprites, but some alternate costumes or torn clothes that reflect the damage taken would be a nice addition.

E: oh and before i forget to mention this one: a bit sad theres no aphrodisiac-effect or something similiar, games like that offer a great platform to enable some more options, like reduced movement speed/jump heights, and also different h-interactions.

Yeah, we definitely intend to have a CG, Databank, Cutscene, and regular animation gallery all available in the full game.
Unfortunately though, we can't do costumes or torn clothes because all of the sprites are hand-drawn; we're not using Flash or something similar where you can just make the clothing and "drape it on" the model/skeleton, so to speak (not saying that derogatorily, just giving a comparison!)

(There's also the plot itself that prevents this; Talia has a mana shield that's created by her magic, which means when she's getting hit, she's not actually taking any physical harm to herself, but her mana shield is being depleted. When her mana shield is completely depleted, the feedback from her remaining mana being used up in one shot causes a shockwave, which destroys her clothes in the process. This is why her clothing never takes any damage until she's at 0 "HP".)

We do have a Patreon goal for nude mode, as that would be a lot easier than the torn clothes or different costumes, but that's set so high because it would be a huge undertaking both in the writing and in the art department.

Thee reason there's no aphrodisiac stuff in the game is simply because of another issue similar to above; without giving away spoilers for those who haven't played the demo, there's a reason Talia would be unaffected by that kind of stuff, and gameplay-wise, the reason we don't have in aphrodisiacs or some sort of a "lust meter" is just because it would exponentially increase the art demands to do extra h-scenes based on lust, as well as making cutscenes either A) not make any sense when she suddenly sobers up or B) having a cutscene variation for aphrodisiac versions of cutscenes would be a nightmare, to say the least

That said, there ARE going to be things that reduce your movement or jump height or impair you in similar ways, built into some levels, namely the upcoming Earth Level with the swamps and the enemies unique to that swamp area. There's also the "negative powerups" which heavily debuff you, as well.

Was Faye's VA feeling sick during this recording? I had heard her before and there was a bit more edge to her voice. Almost sounded like she had or was recovering from a cold. Since I played, the Databanks weren't voiced, I think that was an excellent idea. Vie is visually the most interesting character so far, and I find Talia the least interesting sadly. I am pretty excited to play as Faye in a possible sequel, but yeah hopefully there is more Vie and many more enemies. This has come a long way.

Yeah, she was sick during a few of the lines, but not all of them. We might get her to re-record some of the lines, something like that.
It's understandable that you find Talia the least interesting; I've spaced out her character development over the course of the game as opposed to Faye which gets hers in more intense bursts since you don't see her as often, and same for Vie.

Talia is also intentionally less "eye-catching" personality-wise, if that makes sense, because I do want the player to feel like the choices they make could possibly make sense. What I mean by this is that with Talia's personality, while she does have an established one, it's a lot easier to pass off Talia running from an enemy or begrudgingly apologizing about something than it would be Faye or Vie doing those actions all the time, because those characters have more "extremes" established to their personalities.

There won't be any shortage of Vie or Faye in the full game, though

HentaiWriter Heh. That's actually really good to hear, but I wasn't being serious about that suggestion. I was just enjoying the fact that someone else seems to have been charmed by Vie as I was. Here's hoping she gets a fair bit of screentime in the actual game as well. She's a really fun character.

Oh, she definitely will; the first two levels have her mostly in the shadows, but she's a key part of the full game's plot, so she's not going to be vanishing anytime soon

Looks promising! Can't wait to see the final product!

Thanks a lot; I have to say, I've seen your MUGEN edits around the web and they're all high quality stuff, you ever consider starting up your own game?
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