Hi guys, happy easter!  This week I finished multiple scenes and today moved onto the last section of the Lifepath that needs tweaking and sexing up – university.

We already had a template for this – version 1.11, playable here – but I view this version as a cautionary tale.  It’s too long, too detailed, too on-rails.

I created a much much faster version of university for the new Lifepath – but tester feedback unanimously assessed it as too quick, too perfunctory, not sexy enough.  (If you think that would be hard to hear about your lovemaking style, imagine being told it about your porn 😭)

I started work on it today and am making really fast progress with it, but have to stop early because of a stupid family obligation.  i don’t want to have a nice time with people who love me, i want to write Female Agent all the time for you guys 🥰

Okay that's seriously the whole report because I need to stop working and run out the door. I'll get straight back on it tomorrow. 🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  This week I cracked another really, really fucking difficult scene.

You are probably getting sick of me saying that I'm working hard, so here are some metrics.  Since last week's report, I wrote 12,897 words across 2,453 lines of new code.

This is like writing 15% of a novel in a week – actually a lot more if we counted rewrites, edits and failed drafts 🤪 Rest days: 0.  No peace for the wicked.

This was one of the most difficult scenes in the whole Lifepath, and when I loaded it on Tuesday morning I was fucking dreading working on it, really.  I knew there were big problems with:
– Hotness
– Lack of player options and input
– Characterisation and believability
– Long term characterisation of the heroine - sexy scenes don't work overall if they just undermine or diminish her in the long run

Hotness was the big issue, the problem I didn't know if I could solve.  But I knew I had to, so I just played through it again, drinking coffee and trying to understand the player experience.  I knew the scenario described was sexy, it just wasn't coming out on the screen.

I ended up having to do some really deep work into the psychology of it.  On the surface, the scene is about nudity – but nudity isn't sexy without a context.  Even sex isn’t.

Allow me to illustrate with a personal anecdote.  When I was young (like 18 or something), after a heavy night out my girlfriend was in my bed, and my best buddy had crashed out on the floor beside us.  She and I got frisky, we realised my buddy wasn't asleep but we didn't really care, and me and my buddy ended up double teaming the little slut 🥵 it was absurdly hot.

But the thing that made it hot wasn't the shit I used to write about, it wasn't the fucking or the thrusting or the orgasms or whatever.  It was partly all that, yeah, but it was mostly about what it meant – what she was willing to do, and why, and how she got there with like eye contact and little shrugs and the different way she started to move when she knew she wasn't just fucking, she was being watched fucking and she wanted to look good.

So this is where I went when I tried to fix this scene: really deep into character psychology, and a lot of complex issues around voyeurism, shame, social pressure, arousal, acceptance and I think some really old sexual fantasies about ownership and obligation and belonging and permission that echo today in kinks like BDSM and polyamory.

I'm really, really pleased with where it landed, and some of the lessons I learned are definitely going to improve future scenes in Bangkok (in the club).

I don't wanna oversell it – I'm sure that a lot of people are going to play the scene and not understand at all where all the effort went.  For them, they'll say this is wasted time and for them, they'll be right.  But I can only write for myself and hope some of you will like it, too.  By that metric, this has been a really, really, really fucking good week.

Okay, sorry for the essay, I'm just excited.  I already started work on the next problem scene today, I'll try to fix this one faster – not everything should take a week.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  I’ve had another very busy week writing.  I finished one of the five “problem scenes” remaining: which was more complicated than expected, because I realised that I needed an extra scene before it to make it work (this is now also completed).

It’s really hard to explain what I’m doing without spoilers 😭 but over the past few days I fixed some scenes that weren’t quite landing because I didn’t know exactly why they were there.  I thought in a lot more detail about how they fit into the heroine’s overall story and development in Bangkok and the answers just clicked into place; things are feeling a lot more narratively coherent to me now.  I’m really excited about it.

Short report because I worked until 1930 and I’m starving.  I need to eat, get an early night, and get straight back to work on it tomorrow.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hi guys!  This week I’ve been working on the university section of the Lifepath, and also the general structure.

The Lifepath currently has 77 planned “beats” (each one representing 1 or more passages in the game).  5 of them need the most work; another 8 need editing; 64 are done. 

This has been so much work, but it’s nearly ready.

I am not trying to write something as good as A Farewell to Arms, it's mainly just A Farewell to Clothes for our plucky heroine. But there are just a few parts that still need to be worked over, because they're still shit. But it's nearly not shit. 

I'm going as fast as I can and working on it every day. My plan for tomorrow is to fix the first pink box on the grid and turn it green. I'm gonna crash now and get back to work on it first thing tomorrow. 🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  I’ve had a really great week of writing.  It feels like I’m finally getting the pacing into the right shape (although the scene I’m currently working on feels a little overlong, but I suck at writing lean on a first draft).

I know that nobody plays the game for the pacing, but it’s a really big deal for me – the slow pacing of the Lifepath was my main problem with it in version 1.11.  I’m much, much happier with the speed and feel of it now.  I’m making good progress.

On the Discord, Bulb made some interesting comments about earlier versions:

This struck a chord with me, because I also kind of forgot how bad and hokey the old versions were in a lot of places.  The scenes I’ve been repurposing for the Lifepath have all needed a lot of work to bring them up to a standard I’m happy with.  I’m sorry this is taking so long but I do feel like this next version of the game is going to be a lot closer to the game I always wanted it to be.

I’ve been so fucking desperate for everybody to like it that the stress has been killing me.  Which is obviously foolish, I can’t make something that everybody likes.  But it is at least finally feeling like something that I like, and maybe that’s all I can do.

I want to thank everybody who’s sent me messages of encouragement and advice recently, your kind words have been so motivating.  The writing’s nearly there.  I’ll get straight back on it tomorrow morning.  🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!

I've been struggling a lot with the rewrites. In many ways I feel like I'm being pulled between the game I want to make and the game I think people want me to make.

Right now I'm trying to balance the amount of sex in the Lifepath (and also its length). There's kind of a pacing issue here, in that the heroine's background isn't supposed to be as sexy as it gets in Bangkok.

But it is supposed to be a sexy game – nobody is here just to read my Ian Fleming fanfic 😭 – so the Lifepath does have to be sexy.  The feedback from the testers, that I'd sacrificed too much sexiness in order to achieve pace, and left it feeling empty and unengaging, was absolutely right and I'm really grateful to all of them.

I've been working through the draft Lifepath with a couple of things in mind when I try to sex up the scenes.  Firstly, would I want to play this?  I feel like I just have to trust that the things I find hot and interesting will also be hot and interesting to you.

As an example: the heroine can optionally do a corporate internship at a certain point in the Lifepath. In another game, I'd find it hot to optionally put the avatar in a short skirt and high heels for this gameplay section (especially if there were a story justification for doing so).

My fear is always that things like this are too subtle, players won't even notice this was supposed to be sexy, they'll just be clicking through expecting the part where she gets gang-banged in the boardroom. Why is this part even here if the heroine isn't getting fucked?

I feel like I just need to push those doubts and second guesses aside and just keep balancing it the way that feels right to me as the player. That doesn't mean not listening to other people's ideas or feedback – some of the best things in the game (so far, and still to come) came from other brains. But I feel like I can only do a good job of making the game I want to play.

The other thing that's really helped me this week has been Questing Beast's T.U.N.I.C. principle.

https://youtu.be/j-ywPjMEtq4?si=ZGPArrUW41MgdcKI

It stands for Time Until Next Impactful Choice and is basically a reminder not to let the story go on for too long without requiring a player decision. One of the things I hate the most about Female Agent is when it turns into a fucking slideshow. I've been thinking T.U.N.I.C. while I've been playing through, and adding in extra little branches and decision points.

I'm working really hard on making the game better than it ever was (I hope 😬). The work is feeling good right now, like it's finally coming together into something that I'm happy to release. I'm sorry it's taken so long, it's because I have Writer's Suck. 😭

I'm gonna get straight back on it first thing tomorrow. 🦀❤️‍🔥