Situation report
Added 2020-06-16 22:42:23 +0000 UTCHey guys! Sorry for the delay in writing this report. It's taken me a while to grasp the problem and come up with a solution. I'll describe things as plainly as I can.
SITUATION
I was aiming to finish and release the "bed branch" of the Dubai scene on Sunday (two days ago). For much of last week I just basically switched off my phone, and stopped checking in on the forums, so I could focus on it 100%.
I knew this wasn't ideal behaviour on my part, but, in my defence...by Friday it seemed to be working. I'd managed to add the following to the game:
- Two options for pre-bed foreplay sections (one on the bed, one on the rug)
- Interaction with the room service waiter when he arrives
- An oral sex foreplay section when Max goes down on the agent (who we call "Kate" in the game code)
- A missionary position section with four broad outcomes (Max and Kate come simultaneously; Max makes Kate come; Max comes prematurely; Max *nearly* comes prematurely and has to slow down)
- A conclusion for the mutual orgasm outcome (Kate cleans up the cum shot if necessary, then we move to the next scene)
- A conclusion for the Max premature orgasm outcome (Max tries to finish her off with his fingers, and either succeeds or fails. If he fails she can optionally fake an orgasm to save his ego.)
- A conclusion for the "Max adjusts his pace" outcome (Kate can either encourage him to take it nice and slow; tell him to just fuck her hard, either because she's really close or because he can make it up to her later; or finger herself to help him out.)
- A second missionary section for the "Max made Kate come" outcome. The object is now Max's orgasm: in a new mechanic, Kate has a range of options based on her Vaginal Sex skill level ranging from "Let him fuck you" to "(Vaginal Sex +3) Squeeze his cock with your pussy, play with his nipples and talk dirty about where he's going to come". This section has two outcomes: Max comes or he doesn't.
- A conclusion for the "Max comes" outcome (including a porno-style money shot if Kate talked dirty about it in the prior scene).
- A continuation if Max doesn't come. He or Kate (depending on an initiative roll) can take off the condom or switch to doggy style.
- Part of the doggy style section.
SIGNAL #1
On Friday, while working on the doggy style section, I had an urge to revisit its start (i.e. the bit where Max and Kate switch from missionary to doggy style).
I took a look, but couldn't really work out what was bothering me about it. Sure, it could be improved β but my writing can always be improved, and I figured you guys wouldn't thank me for perfecting a transition between sex positions instead of getting a release out.
So I ignored it, and cracked on, working on some spanking content for the doggy scene.
SIGNAL #2
Saturday was a real struggle. I felt blocked and reluctant to write, even though it was the day before my intended deadline. I put this feeling down to general anxiety about publishing the scene, and ground out as much writing as I could.
Time for bed. For reasons I didn't understand at the time, I ended up staying up real late just replaying Female Agent from the start, over and over.
I was trying to figure something out, but I didn't know what it was.
TRUCKER PILLS
Sunday was tough because I'd stayed up so fucking late. A friend of mine (who's a pharmacist) gave me some trucker pills to get through days like this.
I took a triple dose because I was serious about getting it published before I went to sleep. Sleep it off tomorrow, I told myself as I chugged them down.
SUNDAY 1900
Things weren't going great. I remembered that weird feeling from two days before, and decided to rewrite the doggy section intro. Maybe fixing the beginning would help me wrap up the rest?
I tried to improve it...but I wasn't sure what was wrong with it. Why was this one section bothering me? It wasn't especially worse than the rest of the scene. But something was gnawing at me.
Did it need a new decision point? More internal monologue? Some kind of power struggle between Max and Kate? More dialogue? Less dialogue? Sexier description? I kept trying: I didn't know why, I could just sense it was important.
THE BREAKTHROUGH LINE
About an hour later, I just tried deleting the whole section, and replacing it all with one single line:
Moments later, you're on all fours.
It probably sounds trivial, but this was a breakthrough moment for me. I tested this line out in the engine, and immediately learned a few things:
- The pace felt much better. This one line developed the scene faster, and was more interesting, than everything I'd written for the past hour. It also fit better into the context of the rest of the game, which is something I couldn't have appreciated if I hadn't sat up all night replaying it from the start
- It was way sexier than the previous incredibly detailed account of two people switching positions
- It felt more authentic. Changing positions in bed just sort of happens most of the time; you don't notice or remember that your left hand grabbed her right hip, then your right hand curled under her left knee...it's not fucking Twister
- It was quicker to write. Much, much quicker. π―
That last realisation was fascinating β if a little bit scary in its implications.
YOUR FEEDBACK
It's real easy to swallow trucker pills, but it's hard to swallow the feedback you don't want to hear. Although everyone prefers the new sex scene to the old ones, many of you have raised serious concerns about how long the process took.
My response was always basically, "I know, I know, I'll learn how to do this faster because there's no other way."
Well...what if I was wrong about that?
WIREFRAME
I knew I had to investigate this, even though it was 8PM on deadline day.
By 10PM I'd wireframed out a portion of the scene, written in the new style. The wireframe version had all the benefits I noticed already, plus a few others.
lt felt solid β really solid β but I was finding it hard to stay focused.
I knew the pills would make it hard to sleep. But I also knew that Star Trek: The Next Generation was available on Netflix! Perfect: a bunch of meetings in space, and a crew that prefers cosplaying on the holodeck to firing their phasers. I'd drift off while Data learned a lesson about birthdays or something. I'll never make it all the way through Encounter at Farpoint, I thought...
WRONG
The next morning, I thought maybe I'd dreamed the bit about Riker fighting Napoleonic-era soldiers in order to become a god, then using his new powers to give Worf a sex slave.
But I checked, and that really happened, I was awake the whole time! What idiot gave me trucker pills
I sat at my desk all day yesterday, but didn't start to come alive until well into the evening. Realising I was at risk of turning into a vampire, I forced myself to stop early and go to bed instead.
TODAY
I didn't get much sleep, but I felt better today, and I built out more of the wireframe.
At this point I've had one full day β plus a few hours yesterday and Sunday β developing the scene in this new style. And I'm fucking psyched about it so far. I think this is going to address a lot of the (valid) concerns that many fans have tried to raise with me about the work process.
NEXT STEPS
I don't have anything to share yet (except this report, the purpose of which is mainly to let you know I'm alive and working, not off sulking like Achilles in his tent).
But I will have something ready soon (as in days, not weeks). I'll push it out to Operators as a Beta first (just so they can check this is right, and not some fever dream induced by trucker pills) then get it out as a release ASAP afterwards.
VERY NEXT STEPS
I'm fucking exhausted, I'm going to bed, I don't even need Star Trek to fall asleep. Further updates to follow.
Comments
That's a grand leap of an assumption to make. My personal thoughts is not that he's back on bed branch but rather that he's trying to crank out *something* playable in Dubai to be able to say that forward progress was made. I don't believe he would take this long without any posts just to continue to work on the bed branch since it should have been plenty clear to him that his patreons don't care about that. As strange as his obsession with this scene has been, he's still smart enough to know that he would receive enormous backlash if that was all he had to show after a month. Now of course, I could be wrong, and I hope I'm not, but I do realistically believe that I'm not.
hornguy6
2020-07-12 17:39:24 +0000 UTCIt's been nearly a month since the last post so I don't have any idea what's going on but according to the discord it is not a health issue which is good to hear. Since it's not a health problem I assume that Crushstation is struggling with the "bed branch" again and not posting out of frustration and/or shame. If that's the case, I just want to say: Please, move on from this scene already. Spend a day tying up any loose ends in the quickest, simplest way possible and just put it out. Don't worry about quality. If that's not possible, then put it on the backburner or cut it entirely. In the grand scheme of the game, this bed branch thing is almost entirely irrelevant. It's an alternate path of an optional scene. It doesn't have any big impact on the way the game plays. This scene will never be impactful enough to justify the amount of time and stress being poured into it. You and your backers will both be happier if you just put it behind you.
2020-07-11 23:19:29 +0000 UTCAre we back to....Iβm gone into recluse mode and not saying anything to anyone?
Kalon
2020-07-11 12:35:13 +0000 UTCOh good! I'm just glad he's alright.
mwarrior777
2020-07-08 01:48:53 +0000 UTCThat's something at least.
Toadsith
2020-07-07 21:52:56 +0000 UTClast announcement on discord server : Lara β‘Today at 4:05 PM :triangular_flag_on_post: Good news, Crushstation is alive and well. ο»Ώ
2020-07-06 18:16:43 +0000 UTCSo uh Mods is Sir Crab ok?
Gnu Bahde
2020-07-06 04:58:56 +0000 UTCYes, I hope he doesn't feel like having to resort to drugs to deliver. That being said, last couple of months have been really inconsistent; I feel it's better to be communicating often and building up the delivery tempo instead it being inconsistent as it would more likely alienate pledges when people don't know what can be relied on.
2020-07-01 17:29:24 +0000 UTCWhy would it distract from the main game? If Victoria or someone else is doing it, then it shouldn't be any problem at all. Just becomes an image call.
hornguy6
2020-06-30 20:27:32 +0000 UTCI said 'replace the descriptive text', because that appears to be the roadblock holding up development. At this point, I'll accept generic porn GIFs as placeholders if it makes Bangkok happen sooner.
ultimate_elephant
2020-06-30 16:34:26 +0000 UTCThat just sounds like more work distracting from the main game...
mwarrior777
2020-06-30 07:23:41 +0000 UTCNO
Enrico
2020-06-29 20:16:18 +0000 UTCNormally I'm never the one to say, "X person is dead! They haven't checked in in days!" ... but given that trucker pills were apparently on the table earlier, this feels like it is actually a reasonable question to ask. Did Crush die? Because it's almost been two weeks since he said "days" and "trucker pills."
hornguy6
2020-06-29 11:11:58 +0000 UTCI honestly wouldn't mind general sex scenes drawn in the style of the "favorite position" graphics that Victoria made. Those would be nice compliments to the game I think.
hornguy6
2020-06-25 06:57:47 +0000 UTCFor sex scenes, how about putting that talented artist to work on a few simple animations to replace the descriptive text? Just Kate with a disembodied cock and hands. I suggest this because my current all-time favourite sex game is Karryn's Prison, and the sex scenes are no more than that, with a few lines of chat. But the build-up, the situation and the exuberant sexualization of the main character make it ridiculously hot. Some will hate it, I'm sure, but this game desperately needs to move forward now.
ultimate_elephant
2020-06-24 17:57:52 +0000 UTCI'm essentially re-hashing what others have said already, but your physical and mental health should always come first. Since the game is not and has not progressed anywhere for a long time, would it be worth re-considering your approach to development of the entire game (which means more than one scene)? At this point, setting a few milestone goals could be good. That way, patreons could at least get (1) a sense that the game as a whole will actually be completed at some point in history, and (2) a rough idea of how much there is left. Because c'mon the game has been teasing about Bangkok for literally years now. Obviously these would probably be "soft deadlines" and are subject to hiccups, but I imagine it may also help keep the bigger picture in mind and gently push development along. There's no point in pushing your body and mind if it does not help the big picture.
moocha-hoocha
2020-06-22 13:21:45 +0000 UTCAs I said before, if you just provide skeletal placeholder descriptions like "Jim dick Kate vagina, both enjoy," we get the mechanics and the spy game and everything else. Then other people can write the scene for you and if it's good you can use it, but even if it isn't, we get a working game to play and bug-test.
Jumpy James Johnson Junior
2020-06-22 00:18:34 +0000 UTCI think you should consider looking for some writers to take a look at the engine and see what they can come up with, flesh out the mechanics and move onto designing Bangkok. But please, move forward. Hell, design a portal for us to stab at the writing aspect/scenes and see what comes out of it. At worst you get some unusable drivel and at best more content.
Jax
2020-06-20 21:05:28 +0000 UTCHey, buddy! Bit concerned about what you're saying - for your sake. In my experiences, stimulants make you faster but not necessarily more accurate. So you can feel like you're going fast but the decisions you're making just aren't as good. If you're doing grunt work and just need to churn something out it can work but if you're doing something creative you can run miles instead of going A to B. But everyone has their preferences. I ride the Ballmer Peak with some success but it's a fucking fine line and I don't recommend it! https://xkcd.com/323/ I strongly suggest you put a pin in whatever tasks are causing you to crunch / burn and complete another / any task. Sometimes, actually every time in my experience, stopping and coming back to something fresh is 10x easier than forcing your way through bloody and beating yourself up. I strongly suggest you stop, sit down and imagine the advice you would give yourself if you were your own employee. Do you want to see someone you are responsible for doing what you yourself are doing? Are they getting fixated or stuck in details when the business needs them to move on? Is this a sustainable mode of working? What would you be reasonably happy for them to achieve such that they can feel satisfied without hurting their self-esteem, work / life balance, and ultimately their health? Same for you.
0.5joker
2020-06-19 22:34:59 +0000 UTC"Perfection is the enemy of progress." With all due respect, you seem to get lost in the weeds with this project. The demo you released, I estimate two years ago, ending in Dubai, was enough to attract considerable interest. Since then you've iterated on under the hood details and revamped many aspects of the demo to your satisfaction. I'd caution you to consider moving on to the next phase of the project. Don't pull a George Lucas. And don't do drugs either. You may gain a short term boost but you - and to be frank, your work product - will pay for it in the longrun. Drugs are a payday loan where the interest you owe is your physical and mental health. Not worth it. Put the lid on Dubai and move on to the next part. Bangkok is a new phase of the game and may take considerable iteration before you find a balance that pleases you. You are likely to need to put a lot more work into that. You will probably receive lots of critical feedback, no matter how good the quality is. That's part of design, and it will help you create the best possible game. Don't be afraid to screw up and fail, it's cliche but true to say you will miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Always take shots on goal in life. Blaze ahead and move on to your next challenge with this game.
Taylor Hughes
2020-06-18 06:49:09 +0000 UTC
