(Future Fragments) Clarifying our release date and what we have left to do

Trust me, you supporting us once for $5 makes a difference, everyone that supports us makes a difference; you'll definitely be able to play the full game too, we're on the last level and everything should be done around May 2020 if all goes well. We're nearing the finish line and we definitely want you to get to be able to play it at release :D

The Future Fragments Team

I only pay 5 dollars, It wouldn't even make a difference if you had them or not anyways, but I really want this to become a full game, it has been years since I've been supporting you, in fact this is the only reason why I have a patreon account. But I'm pretty sure I won't be able to play the released game (time doesn't stop, and we have to grow eventually...you know what I mean) This is not a complaint by the way, I will try to support you to the end.

Some people really need some freaking patience. You continue doing your amazing work I can't wait for next year.

Hey, so to respond to your critiques (feel free to give us critique for sure!) - Enemies in levels prior to v0.41, and after v0.33, do turn around and react when you shoot them; however, enemies in this level just start up their attack patterns and slowly move towards you, due to them being able to move through walls, so having them instantly move towards you like other enemies would be pretty hard to deal with. - The enemies and robots fading away with that red fade, without any extra animation is actually intended. ;) There has to be a reason they have such a simple looking animation compared to everything else, right? - The robots, if you kill them using one of the gravity pillars, do explode; as for why they don't explode when Talia hits them... well, see above. :P - The four enemy room in v0.42 is intended just to show animations; all of the demos besides v0.27F are purely for demonstration purposes, and none of them have finalized maps. Think of them as demo showrooms just to show off new art/programming/features; the full game will have completely different maps. - There is controller support in all versions from v0.27F onwards; just plug it in and play :) you can also reconfigure controls using the ESC key at any time, too. - The items are there for tests as well in the demos; in the full game, you'll only be able to get 10 powerups per level, for a total of 50 across the game. We won't be making them permanent upgrades though (that's for Faye's game) but you can swap the powerups whenever you want in the current builds, and in v0.27F you can swap them at the Save Pad. - The props and other visuals for v0.41 aren't complete yet; the visuals for the entire game actually have a lot of extra special effects we'll be adding once we sweep back over the game. Did you go through the portal in v0.41 to see the backgrounds in the Spirit Realm? - We definitely intend to make more games after this, as well as Faye's game, the sequel to Future Fragments, of course :) Glad you enjoyed it for the most part, means a lot when people give us a lot of critique like this!

The Future Fragments Team

Hey, I just played the demo for the first time, I haven't really had time to follow these updates so well. Love the game, it's awesome. I'm not sure what you guys have planned exactly, but I have a few comments to make if that's ok :D First off, when you shoot an enemy in the back, they just keep walking away from you, kinda silly, one would think that if you get shot in the back you would turn around and say HEY! stop that please. The death animations as for the demo 0.27F, the enemies just fade away, there's no death animation, robots don't explode. I tried the four enemy room in demo 0.42, and it seems like everything hurts you in there, wtf ... impossible. More than four enemies, right?! What I learnt in that room is that I really want to play this game with an Xbox controller. Will there be controller support? That could make the gameplay feel smoother for me. I also noticed that you added a zoom in feature for the sex scenes which isn't included in 0.27F, great feature! Really. In the four enemy room you cannot really see the sex because it's blocked by the dialogue box but once you zoom in on the action, it's all fine. More thoughts: Too many items at once? I walk through 2 big rooms and I already have like 7 items? It's too hard to chose from them all :D Could there be a way to make these permanent upgrades? Or will you be able to hold and use more than three items later in the game? Last thought: The beginning area is kinda brownish and the background is a bit boring. Can you add some computer screen or a window or some other gadgets in the background to make the area feel more living? Or is it intentionally empty? Maybe the background in later areas in the game will be more vivid?! Oh man, I cannot wait to play the full game on Steam! Take all the time you need to make the game the way you want it. Don't rush things. It feels like 90% of all adult games are visual novels so I'm SUPER HAPPY that you are making this game. I hope you'll continue after this project is done with more games! Lastly I wanna say that the dialogue is great, the voice acting is awesome (I hate reading when there's a lot of text xD), but as for the demo I don't want to spoil too much so I actually skipped most of the dialogue, I want the full experience when the game is finally out. Keep up the great work everybody!

LullyS

Some people just really need to learn to be patient and wait, they ain't EA or Activision or Bethesda, who have constantly been trying to milk their fans for every single drop of cash they have. While putting out barely working games and charging sixty dollars plus a slew of microtransactions on top. Been backing this game since day one basically when the first fire lvl came out I have loved the progression so far and will gladly keep supporting them

MozaTheLoza

Wish you all the best team, no matter the time it will take or how hard doing this may be, i know you will power through. Good luck!

"maybe it's best to keep your mouth shut instead of trying to silence and berate others" -*Ron Howards voice* He said as he berated them

Quartz

I love achievement hunting too! Yay for the achievement hunters, cant wait to go hunting. lol

Necromancer

Yep, you'll be able to buy it on Steam! As far as the achievements, there'll be 100 of them, and none of them will be grindy or monotonous, they'll all be skill or discovery-based :)

The Future Fragments Team

The last thing we want is for you to pledge if you can't afford it, so pledging even once is something we really appreciate; we also appreciate the positive words, too :D we're doing our best!

The Future Fragments Team

Thanks a lot for the faith in us; we definitely don't want to delay it anymore than is needed though!

The Future Fragments Team

While I really do appreciate you saying that FF is still going to be good on release, but there's a number of inaccuracies and bad comparisons in this reply. -------------------------------------- I'm the first to say our game isn't going to be the best game ever; right now I would put it at the quality of an "A" game, maybe even "B". However, on release, I definitely think it'll be an AA game (not an AAA game though), given the large amount of voice work (20+ hours), the large cast (over 200 characters), the large amount of cutscenes/databanks and variations of them based on your player choices (over 120 for each and at least 1,000+ cutscene variations), as well as all the endings (over 40), and that's just for those things. I can't think of too many AAA games (quite a few do exist though, don't get me wrong) that have a fraction of the endings we have and a fraction of the variety of player choices that actually affect said endings and future events in the game, let alone a fraction of that cast size, all voiced by voice actors working on some of the biggest series in anime, games, movies, and television (under aliases, of course). To tie that into your reply, you compared our game to Minecraft (I don't know anything about Meridian, so I can't comment on it); that's a fairly inaccurate comparison given that Minecraft has; - About 5 voice lines - About 30 songs - Probably less than 200 SFX - No storyline whatsoever besides defeating the Ender Dragon - No cutscenes whatsoever besides the above - Animations that are extremely basic, at best, done using just tweaking a model on its axis for the most part - Procedurally created worlds, meaning nothing needs to be manually laid down in terms of "levels" for the most part And so on. Comparing this game to Future Fragments is just outright an impossible comparison especially when adding in that "Minecraft was created in 60 days", when yes, it was "created" in 60 days, but it was extremely, extremely bare bones at that point. This would be like us saying we had FF v0.01 ready within 10 days and then claiming that "the game is complete" because you can run around and shoot in it. It's just not a comparison that makes any sense. -------------------------------------- For the updates on the game, definitely agreed the last few updates have been lacking for backers; unfortunately, a lot of the stuff in the game we've been doing over the past few updates has been non-tangible things to the engine and other preparatory stuff for later builds. Most of the enemies and functionality in The End as well is exponentially more complex on the code and art side than any prior level, given that enemies have nearly twice as many attacks as enemies in the Earth Level, which had twice as many attacks per enemy as the Electric Level enemies on average. Add in the portals and transforming platforms, the large amount of sex scenes in this one with the stacking scenes and long-form scenes (much more than any other level), and it starts to make sense why this level has taken so long to even get the base assets in. -------------------------------------- As for the money you noted, yes, you can hire some great talent for $65-85k a pop, agreed. The problem though, is that there's over 20 people working on this game that are getting paid, and that number is only going to go up as development goes on. I'll be doing a post tomorrow going in detail over how the money is split for this game as it's something I don't think I've done a post on before (or if I have, it's been a while), but here's a basic summary; First, there's the initial money split 3 ways between me, Frouge, and Triangulate equally. That roughly comes out to about $4500 a month. Then, anything like music, SFX, voicework, etc. is equally removed from those funds. So if we commissioned $900 of music in a month, we each take a $300 hit to those funds. On an average month, we commission about $500 of music, $200 of SFX, and our main voice actress, SilkyMilk, gets $1000+ minimum from the Voice Pack tier, as we're paying her up front for the $25,000+ of voicework she'll need to do for the full game. This takes our $4500 a month down to $3944 roughly. Now add in taxes (where I live, it's around 10%, so another $390 or so), rent/bills/utilities/food/gas (between $1500-2000 in a given month for each of us depending on where we live), and we're left with about $2000-$1500 each month after that, assuming nothing goes odd or wrong. However, that's *on average*. There are some months that we commission far, far more music or SFX than this, and there are things like buying computer parts or tablets or etc. for repairs, things like daily life things that need repairs (like my car that I dropped $800 on repairs on last week). By no means am I saying we're underpaid nor am I saying we're ungrateful for the money we're getting; we're incredibly happy and honored that people would even want to support us with half as much as we're getting, let alone the amount we're getting. Hold on, though; you're probably wondering though where those other 14 or so people went that I was talking about, right? Those are the other 14 or so voice actors we paid for roles for the Electric Level, and the voicework for this game is going to be where a significant amount of the money goes. Once we've gotten down all the scripts and such and start commissioning voicework, that cast is going to swell from about 14 VAs to probably around 40, and we're going to be commissioning a gigantic amount of voicework, which will easily cost tens of thousands of dollars. That means that we'll likely have to go into debt on our credit cards to be able to afford this large amount, even after future-proofing our payment to SilkyMilk for doing the bulk of the work, and even after saving up that extra money we're getting a month that doesn't instantly go back into the game. So by no means are we rolling in cash or anything like that, which leads me to my next point. -------------------------------------- You claim that an average game takes 2-6 months to develop (which tbh it definitely doesn't for a 3-6 person core team unless we're talking 24/7 crunch time for 6 months straight and even then it'd be a stretch), and than an AAA game takes 1-3 years. The problem with those statements is that you're assuming that you're getting an AAA staff count for those games, which means for instance the many roles I do, which include; - hiring voice actors and other roles - money/legal stuff - marketing - rewards and manually sending out emails - networking - game design documents (for art, music, writing, gameplay, characters, the game world etc.) - continuity/keeping all of that stuff together - managing everyone - storyline, writing, dialogue - making action cutscenes - level design There would usually be a separate person for each of those jobs. Instead, there is just me handling every one of those. Similarly, Triangulate doing work at an AAA job wouldn't be doing; - animation - lighting - background and foreground tiles - parallax backgrounds - spritework - special effects - game over CGs - endings He would instead only be doing one of those. The amount of work each one of us does is fairly large, and as a result, we end up with what takes a fairly long time to do stuff because if we were to hire AAA staff with the quality that Triangulate or Frouge provide in their skillsets but diversified so that there's a different person for each of those roles like on an AAA team, we would be looking at a budget of probably $300,000 per month of work minimum going by professional rates. The reason we're doing so many things ourselves as well instead of say, hiring other people to work with us, besides the obvious budget problem, is simply because we've actually *tried it before*; we've hired on multiple programmers and multiple artists and multiple writers for FF before, if you've been around long enough to remember those cases. Every single time ended up being bad because either 1) everyone involved in that area was writing over each other's work/efforts and causing confusion, or 2) people had to be taught by Frouge or Triangulate or myself exactly how the art/programming/writing needed to be implemented, and this was taking so much time and work that it was just faster to do it ourselves as this core 3-person team. -------------------------------------- So there's a lot off with the calculations and comparisons here, but you're free to have your opinion about what is and isn't good about how we're doing things; I just wanted to clear the record about why we're doing these things and how we're doing it and what we're doing it for. To wrap all this up, we are still trying to get the game done ASAP, but we're not going to just cut the game off and push it out the door half-baked. We've came this far and to kill the quality now by pushing it out incomplete would be an insult to you, the backers who pledged your hard earned money to us, and to us, the developers who spent years of our lives working on this game we feel this passionately about. And as always, if anyone wants a refund for any reason, they're absolutely entitled to ask it and we'll refund it in full, no questions asked. (As a final note, on that survey, only 2 people made any mention of delays, out of 450 responders who left an opinion on the survey. I made this post because if even only 1 person has an issue with something, I'd like to address it, no matter how tiny the minority opinion.)

The Future Fragments Team

Sorry Jon, but that's got to be the biggest ass kissing comment I've ever read. I've been donating since near day 1, I'm a developer, and yes, I know what it takes. First let's take the current monthly income of $13.5k, then multiply that by the months in a year (12) and that gives the game it's annual income of $162,000. You can hire some GREAT talent for 65-85k a pop in the US to work full time on only this 1 game. You can hire more great talent outside the US for even less. This is no small amount of money, and if properly managed, you can achieve a lot with it in a very short time. Now let's be honest, this is not a AAA game, or even a AA game. That doesn't mean it won't be good, and it's something people want and are willing to pay for to have it developed. But still, crude by many games standards being released today. Now take people like who created Meridian: A new world (Ede Tarsoly), and Minecraft (Markus Persson). Meridian was developed in roughly 2 years, and it's pretty well polished at the time of its release. Minecraft was created in 60 days, and while crude it is overwhelmingly addictive and extremely popular. These are exceptions, but still give you a decent starting point of a best case scenario of what's possible with 1 guy with talent and time. Outside of the exceptions, an average game takes about 2-6 months to develop. A AAA game takes 1-3 years. The point is, you can have a beautiful and fun game created by 1 guy in 2 years, or you can have a crude but fun game created in 2-4 months. This is somewhere in-between, albeit it has had a few setbacks like the engine having to be redeveloped and content migrated, among other valid delays. Now try and use your common sense. This was an opinion of someone whom I and many others happen to agree with, otherwise FF wouldn't have bothered to make a post about it. Maybe not for the same reasons, but I think it's generally a bit over funded for what it is. The content that has been released in demo's in the last few months has been, in my opinion, underwhelming. But it has been in the history of FF development that there are spurts of a lack of progress, then a nice boost, so I'm not too worried. So, as a conclusion: FF team, comments like that are your backers telling you the game is taking too long to develop and release. Jon, maybe it's best to keep your mouth shut instead of trying to silence and berate others, and try to understand the point of view from people who don't share yours. You're not going to get a pat on the head, a medal, or anything tangible from FF by unnecessary brown-nosing.

Diehr

So I can buy this on Steam later? :D I like Steam. Will there be insane achievements? I'm an achievement whore so some challenging achievements would be nice... not to add more work to your to do-list ... :D

LullyS

Each time you post about the comments people have left when they stop supporting you I feel like my head is going to explode - from people saying you aren't clear about/aren't meeting your goals to people like this who say that you're trying to milk money out of your patrons - it's the most ridiculous and honestly offensive thing ever! You always communicate as much as possible with us & have always been completely transparent. Plus, you're "padding your coffers"?????? Are you fucking kidding me? You're asking like $5-10 per month - do these people even know what it takes to develop a game from scratch? There's really some idiotic & short-sighted & petty people in this world.

In my personal situation, I've been on and off with pledges because you can't always have the extra cash to give away, no matter how much you support a cause. However, I recognize the time and effort this stuff takes and for someone to say you're purposely delaying the game to milk money out of your patreons is a WILD claim. They have clearly never made a game, neither have I really but, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like this shit happens over night. We appreciate the time and effort that you guys are putting into making sure this game is as functional as possible and I know it's gonna be worth the wait.Big ups to you all!

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your commitment to this game. As what Miyamoto said, a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. NGL I sometimes do get impatient, but nevertheless I'm excited to see the final product, keep it up guys.