Anime Future Fragments (action/platformer/RPG) Public Demo Inside!

[Excidium II]

Keep up the good work.

Also don't be afraid to give more technical updates, some people like knowing about it not just seeing animation gifs.

 

[A horse of course]

Anyone played the up-to-date Patreon demos lately? Is there much new content since the public Ice Level demo?

 

[catfood]

Get this gook shit off this forum.

 

[HentaiWriter]

So it's been a while since I've posted here; the game's been going pretty well actually, with monthly demos with large jumps of progress in each one.

To go through all the additions to the game's engine and gameplay mechanics would honestly be almost impossible, but there's a ton of additions to it.
We also switched to instant charge on the Patreon, so you can just grab the demo the minute you pledge, etc.

Also, after polling my Patrons about it, they're okay with me posting occasional art here, and full text updates a week or a few days after I've posted them on Patreon.

So here's last week's update!

=======================================

PROGRESS REPORT

FrougeDev is just continuing work as usual on the new editor, cutscene editor, and so on!
Triangulate, being done with about 90% of the art for the Electric Level, is now working on some polish stuff as well as future things for the Earth/The End levels, and cutscenes with me too!
I've been doing odds and ends all over the game, preparing cutscenes and working out the designs for the Electric Boss and maps, as well as setting up the Japanese stuff noted below and preparing more storyline integrations like the ones listed below!
Rtil is currently focusing on Internal Interrogation for the next month or so, then he'll be doing double duty between this and II! (We don't currently have any CGs for him to do, which is why he's focusing on that.)
Fuyarinpa is currently focusing on Reclaim Reality, but within the next month or two he should be back on doing music for the Electric Level! (We don't currently have any music for him to do, which is why he's focusing on that.)
Stenzo K. is done with SFX for now as he's working on another project of his own, but when we get to the Electric Level, he'll be able to start up SFX again!

====================

JAPANESE TRANSLATION

We've been in talks with a few Japanese translators over the last month or two, and after running a few tests with them, we've settled on someone; they don't have a specific "NSFW alias" yet, though.
Starting with v0.18 however, they'll be translating parts of the game, starting off with the more general stuff like powerups, menus, so on, then moving onto databanks, and finally cutscenes and the like.
If this is received well, we might be doing the same throughout the game's progress with other languages, possibly doing a poll to see which language we'd begin incorporating next, etc.
Eventually, we'd like to have the game, at a minimum, in "EFIGS" + JPN languages, meaning English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, the industry standard for the 5 most common languages games are translated to, plus Japanese, of course.

====================

TIDBITS OF LORE

I haven't done a lore post in a long while, so I figured I'd add a few random bits of trivia in here, real short blurbs and stuff. I really wish I could share some of the really neat storyline elements we have planned, but to give those away would kind of spoil the surprise!

• The WORM facility that Talia is in isn't the "main" WORM facility; this is because there is no "main facility". Across the globe, there's roughly ten thousand or so of the facilities that Talia's traversing.
• Each of these facilities can range from the size of a large, single building, to the size of a large county (not country).
• The facility that Talia is in is the size of a small suburbian town.

-------------------------------

• The Ice Boss's speech/thoughts aren't actually "broken" like it's displayed in the demo. Something else is causing that effect.
• Rebels defecting to the WORM or vice-versa isn't an uncommon occurence, nor are double or even triple agents. The rebels aren't universally the "force of good", and the WORM aren't universally the "force of evil".
• Contrary to the WORM's outlawing of sex between its members, the Rebels have sex like crazy, partially as a means to increase their numbers. However, sex is mainly discouraged if it's just for pleasure, and is encouraged mainly for causing pregnancy.
• Technology in the year 3000 has advanced far enough that the Rebels are not starving; food replication devices exist at a basic enough level that they're not even close to running out of food or water.
• However, the devices work by feeding them materials, and then the machine works by disassembling the material into its base forms, saving those base forms up, and when it has enough, reconstructing it into the desired food. As you can imagine, this results in pretty poor tasting, boring food, but it gets them by.

-------------------------------

• The Save Pads in the game work on a similar principle as the food replication devices mentioned above to reconstruct human bodies as a whole.
• The logical result of both devices is that the resources of the planet are being rapidly drained. There's only three reasons that the planet hasn't been completely drained of resources; first, just solid management of resources in general with these devices helps quite a bit, as nothing is wasted, and anything not used is saved for later production.
• Second, supplies gathered from nearby asteroids and/or interference from alien races like the Celodst bringing supplies to the planet has refueled and staved off the planet's resource drain greatly.
• Third, and the most morbid; dead bodies are everywhere due to the constant fighting. So when you die and are respawned on a Save Pad, someone else's body was likely broken down and used to recreate you, and likewise, your dead body was likely used to recreate someone else that just died. (This is why you don't see piles of dead bodies lying around.)

-------------------------------

• I've brought this up in a few livestreams before, but for those who didn't catch them; every game I work on, the title for the game has a triple meaning.
• The first meaning is the obvious meaning, generally something you're introduced to at the start of the game; in this case, Talia is looking for the Future Fragments.
• The second meaning is usually a silly/wordplay one; in this case, she's looking for the Future Fragments suit, and what makes this suit up are fragments of a suit from the future.
• The third meaning is the true meaning of the game's title, and usually outright the actual ending to the game or the major "reveal" of the game. This, obviously, I can't reveal, but it's present in Future Fragments too, so have fun speculating!

====================

FIRE SHOT EFFECT

We talked about this a bit in previous updates, but the image above is a WIP of the Fire Shot you'll get from defeating the Fire Boss; when hitting an enemy or a wall/obstacle, it explodes, dealing damage in an area around it, setting any enemies on fire as well in that same area of effect, causing damage over time.
(The final effect will be larger, around 1-2 tiles from the point of impact, etc.)

====================

The next demo, v017a, will be out March 31st, and will have a number of improvements
http://www.patreon.com/futurefragments is where you can get it as well as the current demo, v0.17
(For the record, the last time I posted here, we were on v0.13)

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Any idea how much it will cost at release?

 

[Severian Silk]

Will there be any nudity in this game?

 

[HentaiWriter]

Any idea how much it will cost at release?

Around $20-25, depending on the site you get it on (DLSite will be more expensive because they have insane %'s for how much they take from the creator's profits).

May seem expensive, but given there's over 70 sex animations, plus 5 huge levels, 50+ cutscenes, 50 powerups plus 4 elemental boss superpowers, 12+ endings, 25 game over CGs with variations, full voice acting for all CGs and cutscenes, a 50+ song soundtrack, multiple runthroughs of the game (think semi-playing with another character), etc. we figure it's fair.

If you pledge on Patreon though for $10 or more, you get the game at launch, so it's at least 50% off sale price. (Plus, you also get your name in the game's backgrounds and plot by association.)

Will there be any nudity in this game?

Yeah, lots and lots of it.

 

[GarfunkeL]

$20-25 isn't expensive at all for an actual game. Too bad I hate fighting games. Good luck with the project.

 

[A horse of course]

Will Evulchibi be doing any more art? The two he did for earlier versions were god-tier.

 

[A horse of course]

meh

 

[HentaiWriter]

meh

Sorry it doesn't meet your tastes but yeah, Evulchibi's stuff was great, but we needed someone faster (it took him roughly a month to produce one CG; if we added in variations and that we needed 25 of them, we would have had to extend the game's development by another year+.) His style was also really western, which clashed with the style presented in the game. On top of all of that, he took a break from doing art period a few months back, so there's that, also.

 

[A horse of course]

I prefer the western style. Your gnome looks like a weird mix of weeb/western stuff, and frankly if I wanted animu style I'd just go straight to dlsite for the latest "whore ten-year-old gangbanged by pigs" title. But since the jap market is bigger I guess that's the route you've gone.

 

[HentaiWriter]

I prefer the western style. Your gnome looks like a weird mix of weeb/western stuff, and frankly if I wanted animu style I'd just go straight to dlsite for the latest "whore ten-year-old gangbanged by pigs" title. But since the jap market is bigger I guess that's the route you've gone.

Not really going for any particular one market only, we're aiming to go for all of them; it's why the game is getting translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese (six most commonly translated-into languages for games).
It's fine that you prefer western style, but even if his style fit, the other reasons (1 month per CG, he stopped doing art entirely as of current) means we wouldn't have been able to get Evulchibi on. That, and the CGs are only a small part of the game as a whole, so hopefully you can still try the game out come the next public demo sometime in August to see if it's enjoyable regardless of the CG style.

 

[HentaiWriter]

PROGRESS REPORT for the week of March 19th, 2017

FrougeDev has finished work on the improved editor, and is now adding a few more bits and pieces into this month's demo, before he goes fully into the cutscene editor and the Electric Level mechanics!
Triangulate, being done with about 90% of the art for the Electric Level, is now working on some polish stuff as well as future things for the Earth/The End levels, and cutscenes with me too!
I've been doing odds and ends all over the game, and now I'm tweaking the maps for the Ice Level just slightly for this final Ice Level demo!
Everyone else is still in the same status as last update.

====================

VOICE SITUATION

So to get the bad news out of the way first, our voice actress was unable to get the voicework we needed recorded in time for this next Ice Level demo, so unfortunately we won't have it in this demo.
That said, she's promised she'll have stuff on time for the Electric Level cutscenes and so on, and there'll be a lot of them, so that should hopefully make up for this for you all!

====================

KO POSES

Triangulate has finished doing the KO poses for all the enemies in the game currently (except for the Guard Celodst and the Flying Demon, mainly because both of those have Talia off of the ground, so we're still unsure as of how to have her be on the ground after)!
For those who missed me talking about it before, as it is in-game right now, after a KO sex scene (when Talia's fully nude) she just reverts back to the normal "on her back" pose.
So, in upcoming versions, we'll have unique poses after each animation that fit the animation that you just watched!

====================

ICE SHOT EFFECT

In this week's picture, you can see the Ice Shot effect; unlike the Fire Shot, meant to deal with multiple enemies at once, the Ice Shot only hits a single enemy, but it does a huge amount of damage (over double what your normal charge shot does), and it slows the enemy down to a crawl if they still manage to live past that.

====================

ELECTRIC BOSS TEASER

Triangulate, Frouge and I have been ironing out the kinks on the Electric Boss, and we've pretty much finalized its mechanics as well as the sex scene for it.
I'm pretty excited, honestly, because each boss in the game should have a totally unique feel/set of mechanics to it, and I feel we'll definitely deliver on that with what we're doing with the Electric Boss.
As it's still a few months away before we finish implementing him into the game, doing all the art, etc. I'll only say two things for now;

1) The following things will be only a part of it (this isn't all we have in store of course);

• All the gimmicks in the Electric Level to begin with
• Lightning Bolt Generators
• Magnets
• Laser Beams
• Electrified Panels
• Glitched Treadmills
• Laser Turrets

2) The sex scene for this boss is going to be pretty unique within the context of the game, for many reasons.

====================

The next demo, v017a, will be out March 31st, and will have a number of improvements

(As an extra note too, if you wanted to check out the other two games of mine (especially if you're a yuri or a futa fan, respectively, since we're not doing either of those in Future Fragments), they're at http://www.patreon.com/reclaimreality and http://www.patreon.com/hentaiwriter.)

 

[HentaiWriter]

Version v0.17a is out!

This build is mainly a quality of life update; this month's demo in late April (or early May, worst case scenario) will be a major one, switching the game over to the Electric Level for the first time and adding a lot of new features.

That said, here's what we added in v0.17a;

If you want to get this build, you can get it instantly by pledging $5 and getting it from the activity feed at http://www.patreon.com/futurefragments

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

I find patreon-based western eroge really damn fascinating, how do you allocate those 9k per month?

 

[HentaiWriter]

I find patreon-based western eroge really damn fascinating, how do you allocate those 9k per month?

To be clear, I've got two other Patreons too; http://www.patreon.com/reclaimreality and http://www.patreon.com/hentaiwriter, both of which have separate core teams from the Future Fragments team, with myself being the only unifying factor between the core teams (the musician and sound effects people are the same between all three games, and a pool of voice actors/actresses is mixed between all three also).

The way we split money is as follows though;
- However many people are on the core team (usually the main artist, programmer, and myself as writer/designer/marketing) split the patreon income between us evenly, so for Future Fragments, myself, Triangulate, and Frouge get 1/3rd of the money each.
- However, before we get the money, we deduct two types of fees, all of which are split between us evenly.

1) On all three Patreons, we have a "soundtrack" tier where the musician for all three games gets 50% of that tier; this is to keep his rates affordable for us, and also as sort of a bonus for him for work well done.
If say, on Future Fragments, we make a total of $60 that month from that tier, then the musician gets $30 of it, which I pay him up front, and then I deduct $10 each from Triangulate and Frouge's amount that they get that month (effectively deducting $10 from each of us).
We also have a voicepack tier on FF, which consists of all of the voice actress for Talia's current voice clips she's done, as well as bloopers and unused content. The voice actress gets 20% of the money from this tier; the difference is that with the voice pack, the backer ALSO gets a copy of the game at launch, whereas with the soundtrack, they don't get a copy of the game at launch, so that's why the percentage is lower for the voice actress (and this was something they agreed on, of course).

2) In a similar setup to the above fees, I pay up front for all external assets we need, whether that's music, GUI, voice acting, sound effects (all three games) and backgrounds and boss fights for Reclaim Reality specifically, as the main artist for RR doesn't specialize in backgrounds, and the boss fights are a different genre and fully animated each time, so it's a third artist doing those.
In the case of Future Fragments, we deduct those fees from each of us once money comes in at the start of the month.
With Reclaim Reality and Internal Interrogation, as those have yet to have demos (should be soon though, May-ish for the former, April for the latter), they're not making that much money, so to not destroy the profits of the other people on the project, I'm basically running up a tab on my end where I'm paying for everything up front to get the demos going.
Then, once the demos come out and profits (ideally) go up, then slowly over time I'd take the portion of those external asset fees out of the other people on the project's income in the same way I do with everything else, but in small amounts so they're not hit with $2,000+ in one shot per person.

Let me know if you have any other questions of course

 

[AlpineMarv]

Virgin playthrough possible?

 

[HentaiWriter]

Virgin playthrough possible?

Not sure what this means.

 

[AlpineMarv]

Not sure what this means.

Can you complete the game without getting rapez0red

 

[HentaiWriter]

Not sure what this means.

Can you complete the game without getting rapez0red

OH, yeah, you can definitely do that; avoiding cutscenes where sex is present (not with your character, but with other characters) might be kind of hard, but it would be doable if you did stuff in the right steps. As far as Talia herself though, definitely possible.

 

[HentaiWriter]

PROGRESS REPORT for the week of April 10th, 2017

FrougeDev is hard at work at the robust cutscene editor, as we'll be talking about in this update!
Triangulate is going full speed on the complex Electric Boss; with each new piece of art/design sketch he sends me for it, the more awesome it looks, and I'll have more to talk about on that once we've finalized the art on it
I've been doing odds and ends all over the game, and now I'm tweaking the maps for the Ice Level just slightly for this final Ice Level demo!
Everyone else is still in the same status as last update.

====================

THE CUTSCENE EDITOR

So with this update I figure I'd explain a bit of what each part of this cutscene editor does;

• On the left, you have the Cutscene Events. Each one of these functions as a separate "action", and all of them happen simultaneously, until "Halt Event Progress" or "Trigger Pause" is checked for one of them. A cutscene event action could be a character jumping, a sound effect playing, a camera movement, so on.
• On the bottom bar, you have more details/control for each of the events. Here you can select an Event Type (camera, characters, sound, etc. a category, basically) and if you've selected something with multiple selections available (like characters) then you can pick what specific selection you want in the Event Target Entity.
• Continuing on the bottom bar, you have the Event Parameters, and each of these are the specific controls that will change in real time based on your selection. For example, if I had Talia selected, I could input for her to 1) run, 2) shoot, 3) change facial expression to something else, 4) and stop after 2 seconds of running.
• Finally for the last two things on the bottom bar, the "Halt Event Progress" and "Trigger Pause" boxes allow me to either have all events stop until the current action with this X in it is stopped (for example, all other events stop until Talia reaches the point where she's supposed to stop running, and then they can continue on), or to have all events pause until the player presses X (like say, once a text line has displayed and sounds have played and all that).
• On the right bar you can see the Cutscene Entities; this contains all of the "elements" of a cutscene, like characters, sound effects, music, art, and so on to play around with or add into a scene.

The reason I'm detailing all of this out is because this is part of the $50 editor tier; you get the cutscene editor AND improved level editor by pledging to that tier even just once, along with all updates to it indefinitely. (Note that the cutscene editor obviously isn't done though, so if you pledge to it this month, you'll have to wait a bit before we can get it to you, but it won't be long!)

====================

SURVEY REPLIES

A number of questions were asked during the survey that I figure I should reply to, for clarification!

"Would be nice to have some more Powerups that work together in a kind of way."
We do in fact have this planned, and some powerups already work together (like the one that increases damage the longer a shot is in the air, and the one that halves the speed of your shots). Set Boosts, coming later in development, will help with this too.

"I could not change the equipment i had with the ones in my inventory I don't know if this was a bug or just something you can't do, but it feels like you should be able to."
This isn't a bug; you're only able to change your equipment while you're standing on the Save Pad for the Hub Room. This is for multiple reasons, both plot and gameplay balance related.

"yah. WTF HAPPENED TO ZOOM IN CAMERA!?!?"
It'll be coming in future updates! Additionally, if you're playing at a smaller resolution than 1280 x 720, it's available on those, too.

"The only bug I noticed was a little screen-tearing, particularly when I'm zooming through the stages."
This can be fixed by toggling the V-Sync settings in the options menu, accessed by pressing ESC.

"for the sex animation, i don't if it's really logn to do it, but it could be very interresting to add some multiple partner sex (like small celodst), but with different ennenmies, like 1 small celodst and 1 soldier, or 1 big celodst and 1 soldier, or trap + big celodst, things like that "
Once the majority of the game is complete, we'll possibly go back and add things like this for an extra layer of polish.

"Couldn't figure out the boss, and I don't know where to look up any hints. Is it winnable in its current state?"
It is definitely beatable; if you lose to it 3 times, the game will give you a hint. Lose again 5 times, another hint appears, and 10 times, the game blatantly tells you what to do. For now though, I'll just say pay attention to the fact that he stops moving if you get hit with his time warp bubble, and he's also not invincible against his own icicle drop.

"I feel like Talias voice sounds a bit fuzzy. Will that become smoother in the future?"
We do plan to redo all of Talia's voicework eventually for higher quality audio, for sure!

"have a scene where Talia initiates sex"
We already do have this in the game in the Fire Demo; the Fire Level cutscene with the Fire Grunt where she's doing it for intel on the boss, that sort of thing we could and will definitely be doing.

"So maybe if you can push a button to view the map larger and a button to turn it on and off it could improve the experience for those who want the answers and those who want to find stuff themselves."
We do have this in the game already; just press M to turn the minimap off.

"The part of the ice level when I'm jumping on the small platforms. I personally hate it and feel when ever I fuck it up that I've been cheated."
Yeah, we'll be redoing that map entirely, so no worries there!

====================

The next demo, v018, will be out April 30th, and will have a number of improvements

(As an extra note too, if you wanted to check out the other two games of mine (especially if you're a yuri or a futa fan, respectively, since we're not doing either of those in this game), they're at http://www.patreon.com/reclaimreality and http://www.patreon.com/hentaiwriter.)

 

[Destroid]

Isn't it difficult to make 3 games at the same time?

 

[HentaiWriter]

Isn't it difficult to make 3 games at the same time?

It is somewhat of a challenge, but each game has a separate team.

I'm doing the design/writing and storyline/marketing/ for each game, so the documents I write for each game as well as testing each game and team discussions etc. is something I can bounce around the games on easily, as raw text is something that can be put out fairly fast and can be changed quickly too as opposed to changes in art/programming/music/voice/sound effects and so on.

 

[HentaiWriter]

PROGRESS REPORT for the week of April 20th, 2017

FrougeDev is adding features to this month's demo!
Triangulate is going full speed on the complex Electric Boss; with each new piece of art/design sketch he sends me for it, the more awesome it looks, and I'll have more to talk about on that once we've finalized the art on it
I've been doing odds and ends all over the game, mainly designing maps for the Electric Level as well.
Rtil is currently starting work on the new Game Over CGs for the Electric Level! Progress on them will move somewhat slowly as he's still finishing off the Internal Interrogation demo, though!
Fuyarinpa has started work on the Electric Level soundtrack!

====================

BOSS BACKGROUND #4

Yes, this is boss background #4... out of NINE.

If you're wondering what in the world we could have 9 backgrounds for, well, you'll just have to wait and see, but I'll say this; those of you that enjoyed the Ice Boss's combination of puzzle and action elements, we've got a whole new action/puzzle element for you coming with this boss.

It'll also be the most "diverse" boss yet with the number of things he'll be throwing at you; we're creating six new environmental obstacles/traps specifically just for the boss!

More on this boss over time (we have him fleshed out/completed as far as the design of him goes, we just don't want to spoil too much.)

====================

ELECTRIC LEVEL MUSIC

So with the Fire Level, you had music that fit a grungy, hot environment (we are going to re-do the Fire Level music of course when we cycle back around to it).
With the Ice Level, you had music that was foreboding, yet almost mystical, with nature and so on.

So to keep with making each level have its own identity, the Electric Level is going to be high energy, upbeat, and very hi-tech sounding. Here's the current version of the music; it's unmastered, meaning the levels of the instruments are slightly off, but it's a good example of what we'll be going with.

https://clyp.it/epkklgcl

====================

As we've already shown a great deal of the Electric Level to you all, some of these posts will be kind of sparse, unfortunately, but we'll keep posting weekly!

The next demo, v018, will be out April 30th, and will have a number of improvements