Hey guys! Transparency report will be late this week (because I haven't quite finished the writing task despite working on it non-stop). My sincere apologies for this – something I was trying in a sex scene wasn't really working, so I needed to rethink my approach. The report should be ready tomorrow or Wednesday.

Hey guys!  This is not the report I wanted to write tonight, but I need a little more time editing the third and final scene before I can say it’s done.

This week on Discord, Tal (Kerigan) and Ceeve asked for clarification on what exactly “editing” means – if this is just me going through finished text and fixing typos and grammar, why’s it taking so long?

But the kind of editing I’m doing isn’t that “final polishing” kind of stuff – it’s me playing through scenes and punching up parts that aren’t landing, fixing problems with pacing, player experience, characterisation, believability, the heroine’s emotional consistency, NPC chemistry, etc.  (I didn’t know this before, but apparently it’s more correctly called “developmental editing” or “structural editing”.)

I know everybody wants me to just call this done and get it out – but I also feel like scenes 1 & 2 are maybe the best writing I’ve ever done.  The new nude scenes are fucking hot 🥵 and I think the heroine is cooler and more likeable than ever, she’s not just being bossed around like a doormat by all the NPCs, she has more spying and more tradecraft to punctuate the spicy bits.

Without being pretentious – because I’m really not trying to produce art, just a hot video game to entertain you guys, but I don’t know a better word for this – I feel an artistic urge to make sure scene 3 is just as good as what leads up to it.  Scene 3 needs a few more days' work and I have to put them in.

I’m currently working 7-day weeks on this, 9+ hours every day (except yesterday, which was more like 5hrs). I’m gonna go cook a meal now but I’ll get straight back on it tomorrow morning.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hi guys! Super quick report because I've just had my head down editing all week, and I want to keep going.

Scene editing 2.5/3 complete
I finished editing scene 2 and am partway through editing scene 3. This is a challenging scene but the improvements I made to scene 2 are making it easier to land.

Once again I worked all 7 days, no days off. No peace for the wicked!

I am aiming to get scene editing 3/3 done this week. Then it will be mainly just mechanical stuff left to do.

Ok Imma get right back to editing scene 3. 🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  It’s been a challenging but exciting week, especially over the last few days.

Scene editing 1.9/3 complete
I wanted to get the second main scene fully punched up before this report.  It’s not, but it nearly is, and I expect to be finished on it tomorrow.

I added two more nude scenes to the episode, punched up a key dialogue scene, and did some general editing and tightening up.  The exciting part is how good I feel about these scenes: they’re sexy, they’re branching, they’re psychological.  Also, in a first for Female Agent, opting out of them is possible without ending the game (and in two cases there are ‘middle ground’ paths that are sexy in different ways).  I’m so eager to get this out to you guys.

I’m sorry I couldn’t finish editing scene 2 this week: I worked on it all 7 days, with no days off.  On Discord over the weekend, Rob Stark said: “writing is like digging for gold! You have a lot of shitty ideas just like the mud you dig out, and then find a tiny piece of gold. And that’s not it; you have to keep on digging to get the story movin’.”  I hadn’t heard that analogy before but it’s true for me, it’s why I can’t exactly predict how long a writing task is going to take – I don’t know how much I’m going to have to dig to get to a bit of gold.

Art update
On Discord last Thursday PrettyShyGuy asked for an update on artwork progress.  

Our illustrator lovely Victoria has done new clothes for 16 scenes so far (they look gorgeous, of course).  My edits keep throwing up changes – for instance, the new nude scene I added last week required 9 new individual art assets to support, so those got added to her workload (and more will be coming from the new scenes I added this week).  But there are only 2-3 more actual scene outfits we need for the quick start release, she has absolutely finished the vast majority of the artwork required on this.

Why isn’t there a beta?
Several people have asked, here and on Discord, why there hasn’t been a beta release in ages.

The reason is we’ve changed so much in order to implement the Lifepath that the game hasn’t been playable in large chunks.  Testers have had to follow careful instructions on how to play it and which parts work and don’t work.  It just hasn’t been in the shape where we can put a beta out to a large audience and let them play with it.

However it’s nearly in a shape where we could put out a beta without the new avatar hairs and skin colours – we could revert to the old hairs and skin and it would at least be playable.  I’ll plan to do that and get a beta out to Operators+, and they can feed back while we’re fixing the hair & skin glitch I mentioned in the Jul 28 report.

Okay, that’s it for the report and today, my brain is mush.  I’ll get an early night so I can get straight back on it tomorrow.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  Last week I worked mainly on scene editing.

Scene editing 1/3 complete
I significantly punched up one of the three main scenes I wasn’t happy with.  Some parts that weren’t landing were cut or rewritten; a lot of dialogue was tightened up to make the NPCs more believable and consistent; a totally new nude/CFNF scene was added to spice up a section that was just too long and procedural (I think it’s really hot 🥵); a section that felt like a grind was fixed by adding a new gameplay mechanic and making some passages (which exist just to give background story/lore) optionally skippable.  The whole thing got some tightening up for logic and characterisation and pacing: I’m happy with it.

The new nude scene requires some wardrobe adjustments for our illustrator lovely Victoria (who has been working on avatar art), so I’ll get those specced out right after this report and add them to her workload 😬

I also did some work on polishing skill checks and implementing placeholder code but I can’t mark those tasks finished yet.  My priority for this week will be editing the other two scenes which need to be brought up to scratch.

Why are you editing instead of just releasing
I tried to touch on this in the Discord last week, (come join in if you aren’t already, we have the coolest people).

The reason people like Female Agent is because of all the editing, they’re what it takes to get it up to its normal standard.

Okay back to it.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  Since last week’s report, I have:

Finished the remaining art specs
I finished speccing out the remaining outfits required.  Our illustrator lovely Victoria is working hard on making them beautiful for you 🥰

Wrote the unwritten small scene
I wrote the scene I wanted to add, where the heroine can voluntarily get in touch with the Malaysia station chief if she accidentally left nudes on Max’s phone.

It’s a small scene – just 240 lines of code – but there are a few different dialogue choices and I’m actually kind of pleased with the execution and characterisation.  I feel like the station chief isn’t a pushover, the heroine isn’t a doormat, and the outcome is kind of clever – or, at least, not what I thought would happen when I sat down to write it.  It’s okay!

Added the quest log
I’ve always wanted a quest log, and all CRPGs have them.  This week I added it!  I know nobody is playing Female Agent for the UI, but I did my best to make it not annoying to use (e.g. there are tastefully animated quest update alerts, a notification dot on the character sheet reminding you where to click, and the character sheet opens automatically to the quest log in this context – saved u a click).

When I populated it with actual quests and played through, it really did seem to add something?  It was satisfying ticking off quest objectives, and the log itself felt like a “story so far” reminding me of key events.  It’s also another place to execute (pithy) storytelling – I can use it to restate or summarise complex plots in tighter language.  (I know this sounds really boring, but think of it this way, it means characters on screen can now spend more time dicking down the heroine instead of explaining the story.)

Worked on scene edits
People say I spend too much time on this, but it’s the hardest work and it’s what makes it good?  (Or, at least, as good as it is, I wish I wrote better. ☹️)  Anyway I’ve been doing some good work punching up multiple scenes, and making them a bit sharper and better IMHO.

Sometimes it’s not obvious to me why a scene isn’t working the way I feel like it needs to.  For fun I asked ChatGPT to help me, but specified it had to do it in the style of a disappointed memo from David Mamet.

(I just did this for a joke to amuse myself one evening, but it actually was pretty helpful.  Thanks robot, not everything you produce is useless skibidi brainrot, just most of it 🤖)

Okay, that’s the weekly transparency report!  I’m frazzled now, but I will get straight back to work tomorrow morning.  ☕🦀