Once More, With Feeling

Nekochan: The new quest is broken. I can't get the key to work on the thing.

No Moshing: Oh, okay. I can check on that. Do you mind re-playing the quest again, or do you want me to skip you ahead to where you don't need the key anymore?

Nekochan: Is it okay to skip ahead?

No Moshing: It's 11PM on Christmas Eve. What could possibly go wrong with the one little room?

Version December_3:
 

http://www.4shared.com/file/pMW7eEOH/HaremCollector_December2013_3.html

http://www2.zippyshare.com/v/64662364/file.html

https://mega.co.nz/#!Gdh1iSwJ!MMaOCByhDH7oWFci1BxHrBbyJARhR66AoU47OKFXyp0

Harem Collector December 2013

4Shared Download

ZippyShare Download

MEGA Upload

List of Changes:

-"Harem" Menu option re-enabled, but is probably buggy somehow. You have been warned.

-Westcastle Outer District has been re-designed to be less total shit and have a bunch of semi-interesting stuff to see.

-There is a new Adventurer's Guild quest guest starring Gargan in Westcastle. Go check it out.

-Once you reach 15 Fame, you will now be invited to become a Journeyman of the Adventurer's Guild! You even get another little party and everything!

-There have been some small bug fixes, but not nearly as much as I'd like there to be.

-Merry Christmas and happy fapping from me and the entire Harem Collector team!

Edit: Fixed the most pressing bugs and uploaded a new version. The opening, the Christmas present code, and new quest should all work properly now. Also, I only uploaded it to Zippyshare because I don't have enough time to upload it three times.

Fixed

Character (and other stuff) Inspirations, Part II

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Article Share!

There is a really awesome article on the Escapist on why game developers should respect their fans. I really enjoyed it and felt pretty good because it vindicates my own philosophy, so I decided to share it with all you guys. Enjoy.

Player Design Rant: Stat Balance

I've repeatedly run into a problem with the RPG Maker engine that is causing me to rethink part of Harem Collector's design and balance. It might result in me changing the way that buffs work entirely.

RPG Maker uses eight basic parameters that you're probably all familiar with from HC's status and equip screens. They are:

Max HP (I've renamed to "Health" or "<3")
Max MP (I've renamed to "Mana" or "8)")
Attack
Defense
Magic Attack (I've renamed just "Magic")
Magic Defense (I've renamed to "Resist")
Agility
Luck

Most of these seem pretty self-explanatory, but in reality they are severely limited in how they function inside the engine. Attack, Defense, Magic and Resist only do anything because I edit the individual damage formulas of the various skills and attacks- they have no function outside those damage calculations. Which is fine, I have total control over what they do and can easily balance them with respect to one another. Max HP and MP are similar- they only count down how long it takes for a character to die or be unable to cast any spells so I have full control over how they're used.

The odd ones out are Luck and Agility, and it's these two stats that cause me no end of balance related grief. Agility determines initiative within combat rounds, the likelihood of escape in combat (which I don't use) and the likelihood of being surprised/having a preemptive attack (which are only calculated in random battles, which I also don't use). Not exactly the kind of thing battles are won on. Luck is even weaker, only being used to resist debuffs and added states. A high Luck can even be undesirable in this regard- it adds a resistance chance to all states, including Martyrdom, Stealth, the various Rages, Resistance Bonuses, and positive states from items such as Sugar Rush and the elemental weapon bonuses from things like Contact Poison and Alchemist's Fire.

This leaves me with something of a conundrum. For example, why would you ever cast a Cold spell if you had any other option, elemental weakness notwithstanding, if all the added Agility debuff does is make a given enemy act last in a round?

I've tried to address the weakness of Luck by adding a damage bonus equal to the attacker's luck to all attack damage formulas, but that doesn't seem quite enough. What I'd like to do is tie some of the game's ex- and sp- parameters into your Luck and Agility, specifically granting extra critical chance and critical evasion to Luck and extra hit rate and evasion rate to Agility, but I have no idea how to begin doing that. Help in this regard would be appreciated.

Anyway, just wanted to rant about a problem I have with the engine- and something you should be aware of if you're going to use RPG Maker yourself. 

Harem Collector: Fairy Side Explained

Hi everybody, first of all let me say thank you very much for last week's outpouring of support and general good feels. I am constantly shocked and amazed at how the h-game community defies pretty much everything anyone has ever said about the internet. You guys rock.

Secondly, you should know that the backers-only release for December will be on the 18^th, which means the public release will be Christmas Day*. If general holiday stuff conspires to keep me busy all day on the 25^th, then the public release will be on the night of the 24^th, and I'll keep you updated if that should come to pass.

Thirdly, there's going to be a bit of holiday present goodness in it for you all, because a long-requested character will finally get a sex scene with the Hero. Post your wild speculation below, so I can amuse myself at your expense.

Finally, I will now answer the burning question that some of you have: What, exactly, is Harem Collector: Fairy Side?

MagicWhiteLady has been a good friend of mine for a very long time, and has been very supportive of HC despite that the sex in HC is not generally the sort of thing she finds attractive. Not only is she lending her art and web design skills to Harem Collector and Bad Kitty Games respectively, she also proposed to me the idea of a spin-off game, set in the same universe as Harem Collector but more relevant to her interests. That's Harem Collector: Fairy Side.

Fairy Side will take place in the Harem Collector world, but in a different country with a different group of characters. As the title suggests, the protagonist is a changeling, a lesser kind of Fae creature with the ability to shapeshift. This ability of the protagonist's is what provides the main gameplay difference between the two games- the changeling can determine her own gender before any given sex scene, showing you something different depending on whether you choose to have her be male, female or a futa.

I'm collaborating with MWL on some of the writing and game design, so expect the same sense of humour and nifty mechanics that are Harem Collector's hallmark. You won't have to play both games to get the full experience of either one, but if you're the kind of person who loves game lore you'll definitely want to play both. Please direct all other questions to MWL herself, because as of right now the project is in a pre-production sort of mode and I don't know all the details.

Oh, and just in case you're worried, both games are going to developed side by side, so there will be no change to the amount of time and work I'm putting towards the original HC.

*If the timing of this offends you for whatever reason, look at a calendar doofus- I came by it naturally.

November 2013 Public Release

Links:

http://www.4shared.com/file/FfQ-DuEj/HaremCollector_November2013_Pu.html

http://www62.zippyshare.com/v/41709254/file.html

https://mega.co.nz/#!CMYBDQDC!PIEPTSK5WVqBeAk5O3yxQVbHAgRJR_fYin914xkZqAE

 First of all, a couple important pieces of news:

One, the donation button has climbed the sidebar. This is because as of very recently, I'm established a game company (Bad Kitty Games Co.) and decided to start doing this as part of my living. I am going to start using donations as part of my income, and the more money you donate the more time I'll be able to spend working on Harem Collector and less time working a job that my mother approves of.

I don't intend to hold the game hostage for your donations or anything like that- work will proceed on Harem Collector regardless because I have a lot of fun making it. But your money will give me more time to devote to making the game bigger and better, and enable me to send gifts to some of the volunteers who have made HC so awesome.

As always, donors get the newest version of the game one weeks earlier than everyone else, plus Nekochan's exclusive Harem Collector Player's Guide, plus an optional credit in the game, plus the inside track on everything else going on at Bad Kitty Games.

Two, I've received a couple emails asking whether I'm going to put up an Amazon Wishlist  or somesuch so interested individuals could send me Christmas presents. While I appreciate the thought, I'm not going to do that. What I really would love as a holiday gift would be a TV Tropes page for Harem Collector and those are free. If you absolutely want to spend money on me, just donate it.

Three, early in the new year we'll be launching the official Bad Kitty Games website, which will serve as a hub for all things Harem Collector, Dungeon Assault and BKG-related. To coincide with that, Magic White Lady will be doing the first release of Harem Collector: Fairy Side, a sister game to Harem Collector involving a whole bunch of gender-bending and futanari that you have asked for and will soon receive. Contact MagicWhiteLady for more information.

Finally, the changes:

-There is now a gallery mode where you can unlock all your various sex scenes across all playthroughs!

-All characters now join the party at one level below the Hero.

-Florine's item shops now have an option to sell all vendor trash.

-The inventory screen is now broken down by category.

-Alina no longer keeps track of quests for you- there is a quest log available in the game menu to do that for you.

-New sex scene CGs for Elaiya, Doll, Lilac and Violet, plus you can down demand sex from Alina at any time.
-Meline's skill Heretical Censure has been modified to prevent overlap with the Guilt Trip-style prayers.

-The Northmarket Wealthy District map has been revamped. Let me know what you think!

Edit: Even newer version with less annoying!

Stabby Things

Well, that was fun- serious business followed by a post from Nekochan! This week I get my amateur history buff on and talk weapon design.

Hero's Greatsword

The hero's weapon is actually based on a zweihander- that is, an actual zweihander and isn't just an anime-style BFS. The blade is just over four feet long, but only about an inch and a half wide, and at that size the blade almost looks delicate. It's too long to draw from a sheath of course, so the hero just carries it over one shoulder like you would a polearm. The hilt sweeps upward slightly, and the grip is about ten inches long. The dtraw doll charm dangling off the pommel in Meline's Halloween pic is accurate.

Therese's Sabre

While I refer to Therese's blade as a sabre in-game, it's actually an Eastern European design referred to as a szabla. The blade is just over thirty inches and curves sharply back. The last five inches or so of the blade is double edged and thicker than the lower part, which adds weight to the tip. The grip, true to sabres, is for one hand and features a full hand guard. The hilt is decorated with a pair of feathered wings wrought in silver- the symbol of Therese's order.

Yamamaya's Axe

Yamamaya's original axe, the flint axe, is really simple- literally a sharp chunk of flint about the size of a PS1 strapped to a five foot long shaft of ash wood. With the Orcish axe blade added in place of the flint, it more resembles an actual axe more, in the old bronze age style. That is, the blade doesn't feature a beard at all- it's literally a steel wedge about eight inches wide with a blade about six inches long. No subtlety or utility beyond just wrecking shit.

Elaiya's Pistols

Elaiya's guns are actually wheel-lock pistols, though I think in the game they are referred to as flintlocks. Similar to the case with Therese's weapon, I went with the more widely-known term to give a better impression to the player. Due to magic, the guns actually work more like super-high-tech electronic guns- each charge and ball is held in series in the barrel, and the striking wheel is enchanted to touch off each charge in sequence so the weapon functions like a modern semiautomatic autoloader. Between battles, Elaiya loads each gun and winds the mechanism.

Of course, one function of adding the fairy dust to Elaiya's powder is that her powder bag is self-replenishing, so her guns never run out. Magic is also probably the reason that A) the blacksmith is able to make depleted uranium balls, B) how the depleted uranium balls never run out and C) how Elaiya is able to carry a bunch of depleted uranium with her.

Kyrie's Wand

Kyrie's wand is probably the simplest weapon in the whole team. What makes it interesting is the materials, which, of course, have to be all cool and magic-y. So her wand is a slightly tapered 16” rod of meteoric iron, about 1/2” across at the base. It's polished so that the odd lines and striations of the meteoric metal stand out, and a grip is made by cross-winding a strip of Sphinx-skin leather around the lower five inches. Yeah, I know Sphinxes have humanoid bits, but let's face it- the Harem Collector world is full of plenty of weird already. Just roll with it.

Meline's Staff

Meline's weapon probably started life as some kind of walking stick or something she picked up at the market in the belief that an angel-powered magical girl should have a staff. Other than acting as a weak focusing tool, it probably wasn't anything special- until you add the Channeler's Orb you get from Larelle. Now topped with an actual purple magic crystal thingy, Meline's able to more effectively channel mana for her prayers.

Some of you might be wondering how a magical doohickey gotten from Larelle (who uses magic spells) is able to help out Meline (who channels angelic power in response to her prayers). The answer is: shut up, because you're making wizards look bad. Magic and prayers are clearly entirely two different things, and shouldn't be compared even when they are suspiciously similar.

Doll's Mace

Doll's weapon, like Elaiya's, is going to be another one where I say “because magic” a lot. The first stage of Doll's weapon isn't actually a mace per se, but rather a cudgel- a simple piece of hardwood you beat people with, about 2' long. With the addition of the studded skull, which is clearly magically reinforced and not going to just shatter on her first really solid hit, it actually has a legit striking surface. Doll isn't particularly fearsome, but I think having this badass-looking, metal-inspired weapon makes for a good visual joke... whenever she actually gets official art.

It wasn't planned that way though. The process went like this:

1: Finish the Zombie Bard and realize he needs to drop an upgrade.

2: Realize Doll is the only character at the time who really needs an upgrade.

3: Try to figure out what a zombie could drop that would upgrade a mace.

4: Make the Iron-Studded Skull and knock off early to play Arkham Asylum.

Larelle's Knife

One of Larelle's “things” about her character is that she's actually a lot more robust than the other magic-user-types in the game, and one of the things I wanted her weapon choice to reflect was that she was prepared to throw down on occasion. Add in the sinister side of her personality, and I came up with the ritual knife.

The knife blade itself is a sharply angled spike of metal, like a rondel dagger, about 6” long and etched with runes. The hilt and the inlay of the fuller are inscribed with a brambles and skull design. Larelle probably dug it up out of that tomb she was in, and started using it because it looked cool to her Hot Topic sensibilities.

Chimei's Fan

I really didn't want Chimei to have a fan at first, obviously since she had the Simple Bow for a long time, but I eventually realized I wanted Felix to be unique in being a magic-user type with a normal weapon. All the other magic-users have weapons that buff their Magic as well as a small bonus to Attack, and I wanted Chimei to join the club. The problem is that Eastern magic traditions seem to use the same tools as Western magic and staves, wands, and daggers were all spoken for. I considered using paper wards for awhile, but came up with a fan because it's a pain in the ass to think of upgrade items that would work with a stack of paper strips.

The fan right now looks like any other Japanese hand fan, bamboo wanes supporting a solid blue silk flappy surface bit (Wikipedia didn't know the technical term for that part of a fan). It's not actually constructed for use as a weapon, like tessen or gunsen, but in a binch Chimei can whack an enemy with it. BTW, Chimei's first upgrade is going to be a priority for the next update.

Felix's Slingshot

Felix's slingshot started out as a typical Bart Simpson/Dennis the Menace-style wooden slingshot, but goes to weird places pretty much right away. With the addition of the Mechanism Parts, it now has a long armguard on which rests the auto-winding mechanism for the band. Felix still have to load the bullets by hand, though- that's why it's only “semiautomatic”... for now.

*appears from inside The Box* Freedom~!

Eh okay, not really, all the fun topics I wanted to write about got veto'd. I should've filibustered. With cat ears on. Maybe a tail.

NoMoshing has abandoned you once again, leaving you in Nekochan's loving (?) care.

I joked once with NoMoshing that with the editing permissions he gave me I could start writing posts and make shit I find amusing canon. Like, let's see, Elaiya wet the bed as a child. There. That's canon now. (No, it's not.)

I wonder about really weird things in the HC universe, like how would a dinner party in the manor go? Poor Penelope struggling to make a nice dinner for like 10+ people every night (based on the current number of recruitable ladies)...Alina and Meline are fighting over seats next to the hero...Yamamaya eating all the things...Doll waiting for the hero to remember to give her permission to eat...Healbot hiding under a table to avoid all the insanity...the blacksmith locked outside because the hero couldn't be bothered to let him in for dinner...

I also imagine that Randi has secret parties at the Eastfort Condo when the hero is staying at the Northmarket manor. Invites all the soldiers. Big ones. Full of sperm. (Too obscure?)

Do you dear blog readers have any “head canon” moments you think occur when the hero isn't out questing? Or maybe while questing?

The last time I wrote a post I picked out songs that I associate with the characters that had been introduced to that points so since I have your undivided attention...Round 2!

Note: NoMoshing probably doesn't share my opinion.

First - characters who haven't gotten any love yet:

Stupid Healbot: I wish I was someone better – Blood Red Shoes Is it just me or does the drummer look like an older Healbot and the guitarist looks a bit like Alina? No? Just me?

Florine: A toss-up between two songs by Marina & the Diamonds, Primadonna and How to be a Heartbreaker 

Yamamaya: Fury oh Fury – Nico Vega

Larelle: Master Passion Greed –Nightwish I like listening to this song during her boss fight. =)

Chimei: Speaking Japanese – Shiny Toy Guns 

Didi: Wallflower – Divalola 

And now for a revision from my last list (because I can):

Elaiya: Shot in the Dark – Within Temptation

That Social Justice Thing

First of all, important updates:

-I've been shitty about replying to bug reports and stuff lately because I had some personal stuff to deal with over the last few days. Sorry about that, I'm back as of today, though I might not get around to checked the various fora until this afternoon.

-How did everyone enjoy the Halloween pinups? MagicWhiteLady wanted to make a big splash when she started being social, and worked really hard on those.

-The reason why there was a sudden update with the image archives and all was because there was a game-breaking bug in the game that I wanted to fix because it was almost impossible to avoid unless you knew what you were doing. I agonized over it for a few days before deciding the just say "fuck it" and drop the new update even though it had stuff I wanted to save for November. And, of course, it still has bugs, because fml.

-Tomorrow, I'm going to be participating in N7 Day from 12-5pm GMT. All that time I'll be playing ME3 multiplayer on my Xbox, doing silver & gold matches and hanging out so if you're interested in hooking up for a group send me an email at the usual place.

Now for something completely different....

Some of you have noticed and commented on the lack of nonwhite characters in Harem Collector. And, well, you're absolutely right to, racism is a problem and it can be pretty insidious. It was never my intention to have HC contain exclusively white characters, though, and MagicWhiteLady is working on some new sprites so other skin colours will get represented in game.

The lack of nonwhite characters in video games really saddens and frustrates me, to be honest. Not because I don't feel like I'm represented, I am white, but I don't find that heroes or protagonists with different skin tones bug me. In fact, GTA: San Andreas is one of my favourite games of all time regardless of the hero's skin colour- I'm a sucker for literary remakes and the Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favourite books.

The frustrating part actually comes from my background as a business student. I wouldn't call myself a capitalist, but I do believe that the market should be and can be fair and equal with respect to ethnicity, sexual preference, skin colour, etc. However, when the population of nonwhites in North America is on such a sharp rise, and the number of North Americans who play video games only increases every year, you would expect there would be a corresponding rise in nonwhite protagonists. After all, people as a whole prefer game protagonists who look like themselves, which is why customizable protagonists are so popular.

I know games have something of a biased outlook because Japanese produced games make up such a large part of the market, and few Japanese companies seem to create content with the non-Japanese in mind. But believe me when I say Japan has it's own closet skeletons that rarely get addressed.

Lecture aside, there will black people in HC soon, and other skin tones will also be represented in time.

Halloween Pinup - Meline

Happy Halloween!

Special thanks to MagicWhiteLady for all of tonight's awesome art!

Halloween Pinups - Felix (ugh)

Halloween Pinup - Therese

Halloween Pinup - Alina

Halloween Pinup - Yamamaya

Halloween, Part 5

Halloween, Part 4

Halloween, Part 3

Halloween, Part 2

Halloween, Part 1

Bugs Aside...

Wow, apparently I have a lot of work to do today- woke up to an inbox full of bug reports. I will be getting to them today, but I don't mind all that much considering how far ahead I am.

Right now, I'm about two weeks ahead of where I expected to be. Implementing new features has been going like a dream thus far, and I've had to do very little experimentation or reconfiguring to make them work. This is mostly a testament to JBurton's coding skills than my own efforts, though.

I won't make any promises regarding having a new quest done for the November release just yet, but it's looking better and better all the time.

The big features that are done and ready to go thus far include:
-Gallery mode
-Sell all Vendor Trash options at relevant shops
-Characters now join the party at one level less than the Hero (except for Kyrie in Ain't No Party Like a Search Party)
-The inventory now uses a script to organize it by category.

That's about half the new stuff I wanted to get done this release, and it's not even November yet. Anyway, I'm got to get started on these bugs, so happy playing!

October 2013 Public Release!

Delicious Links:
4Shared: http://www.4shared.com/file/fnN9wUfP/HaremCollector_October2013_p3.html

ZippyShare: http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/47734752/file.html

Mega: https://mega.co.nz/#!iYBWCZTb
Mega Key: U-5EBUK_ceBluTJqkckuM3teFu06DmnzNVe-VfMve9o

List o' Changes

-I can't believe I almost forgot this because I'm a douchenozzle of truly epic proportion, but the new title screen was designed by awesome fan and occasional insomniac Boinky. Thanks, Boinky!

-Yamamaya's Love quest is now available.

-Ino, the enchantress, has been implemented. You can find her by taking Felix in your party to Southport.

-The game now displays a character's relationship level when you speak to him or her.

-Elaiya, Flourine, the Blacksmith, Raina and Gargan all have new faces and sprites. Shally now has a new face.

-The Eastfort item shop girl has been redesigned from the ground up, and now has a new look and a new sex scene.

-There is now an invest-able jewelry store in Northmarket that sells magical accessories.

-There are now fifteen possible Dark Seeds to collect

Sex scene changes include:

-A new threesome with Yamamaya and Alina

-A new threesome with Meline and Larelle

-A (somewhat hidden) new gangbang with Yamamaya

-CGs for Florine's handjob scene

-Doll's gangbang has CGs and has been rewritten

Things that have changed since the backer release:

-Serade is now gift-able and reward-get-able but not chat-able

-Chimei's primary weapon has been changed from a bow to a fan because reasons.

-Bugs fixed.

And before I forget, next release will be November 20th for backers and  November 27th for the public. The reason it's a little bit later is that the next update will involve heavy scripting and I want the extra week to make sure everything gets done right.

Sexual Awakening of the Human Nerd

Okay, so the October release is almost done. I've been writing sex scenes all day, so hopefully they won't be as terrible as I fear, but the nice thing is that most of them have CGs and it's pretty easy to just ignore the text in favour of looking at the pretty pictures.

I've also had the Nostalgia Chick playing the background all day (that's what I do- instead of playing music while I work, I listen to really long internet videos) and happened upon the "Sexual Awakening of the Human Nerd" things, which made me laugh. But it did inspire me to write this brief post.

Back in the day had a massive crush on Princess Daphne from Dragon's Lair. She was my first "nerd crush" and pretty much started me on the path that brought me to hentai and h-games. I played Dragon's Lair for the first time on a home laserdisc machine of all things, which dates me terribly.

Unfortunately, my mom caught me playing the opening movie over and over again while engaged in "other recreation activity" and trashed the disc. Tragic. I wouldn't experience that level of moe again until many years later when Sailor Moon got translated. Unlike a lot of guys my age, I pretty much skipped over the whole Jessica Rabbit/Disney Princess thing.

If you also want to share your first nerd fantasy/provide free market research, please share in the comments. I've got maybe a couple hours of work left on the October release, so backers check your in-boxes a little bit later.

November and beyond

Progress continues on the October release. The enchantress is fully implemented, and I'm about halfway done the content for Yamamaya's Love quest. After that, I just have to implement some more new CGs and art, and it'll be ready to go. I'm probably going to working straight through to the deadline on this, but at least nothing is getting cut.

November's release probably won't feature any new content. Instead, there will be a laundry list of behind-the-scene changes and features I need to catch up on. Among them are:

-CG Gallery Mode
-Stepbrother Mode
-Another item list shuffle and enough subsequent playtesting that it hopefully won't be a total clusterfuck.
-Sex a la carte options for all currently implemented harem girls.
-Finally getting around to finishing up Lumberhill and the post-zombie-attack consequences of buildings being destroyed.

...and many more, no doubt. If there is any new content in November, it will be Meline's Love Quest and a fucking miracle of productivity. November also won't be compatible with new saves, but I'm hoping most people won't mind as they will want to replay to fill out their CG Gallery anyway.

In December we will be back with 2+ new quests a month, churning out content.

However, January will probably not see a release, at least not a release with any real meat to it. The reasons for this will be abundantly clearly once the new year rolls around. Oooh, mysterious (unless you've been paying real close attention to some of the threads linked to the right). February will see us get fully back on track.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work. See you next week!

Missing Donor Wanted!

This is a very important announcement!

I recently received a very generous donation from someone whose email keeps bouncing my replies!

So if your personal email is different from your Paypal email and you donated over the last weekend, please send me an email here with the amount of your donation and your country of origin so that I know where I can send your copy of the backer's release next week!

Odds and Ends

Okay, first things first- in order to help the Harem Collector Wiki get off it's feet, I'm doing a special offer where top wiki contributors will receive a code for a unique item in the October release. Which is on October 16^th for backers and October 23^rd for the public, btw. So get contributing- don't matter if it's strategy, lore, or even delicious slices of trivia. Go for it!

Next up: I'm cutting some features from Harem Collector. It's nothing that anyone will shed tears over. First of all, I'm isolating the code for the party chat function and not mentioning it elsewhere in the game, so it might be back, at some point, maybe. That would have been a great feature for a game with a smaller, more intimate cast, but I think it's not worth the work it would take to implement at this point.

The second thing getting cut are the secondary weapons. They were a poorly thought-out addition to begin with, and are getting the axe without regrets.

Next up: I realize now that making incest with Meline was a very bold move that doesn't sit well with many fans of the game. Considering that enslaving Meline will be required for the ending, I'm currently planning a no-incest mode, activated during the black screen beginning segment, which will change some of the game's dialogue so that the Hero was adopted by Meline's family as a child, as well as changing the Hero's sprite and faces so as to imply he's not directly related to Meline. The canon version of the game, however, will have the incest.

Finally, enjoy some fanart courtesy of Boinky, who also contributed the new game title screen you'll see in the next update!

Harem Collector September 2013 Public Release!

4Shared Link: http://www.4shared.com/file/_NJi7qBu/HaremCollector_September2013_p.html
MEGA Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!nZ5BBQRC
MEGA Encryption Key: Eci8wyKuyDTUPnbfZizy-XOvobZaje4Ov1r3UCTtKnc

What's New in this Version: 

-Penelope's love quest is now available.

-There is now a randomly generated quest that refreshes daily.

-There is a whole pile of additional CGs. Happy hunting!

-The entire relationship system has been overhauled.

-The various flower gift items have been consolidated under a single item. Two new gift items take the place of Moondrops and Pink Cat.

-The Flower Girl now sells two new reagent-type items in place of the eliminated flowers.

-The Northmarket toy store now has useful things for you to buy.

-There is now awesome boss music.

-Favoured gifts now grant +3 relationship point instead of +2.

-The “random” sex scenes that occur after some quests now include a relationship bonus for all participants.

-Doll's “Defender of Life” skill now utilizes threat rating rather than a cover mechanic. In a similar vein, Martyrdom's threat increase has been greatly reduced in order to promote granularity.

-General clothing now decreases threat by an additional 5%.

-Demon Dice now have a damage bonus dependent on the user's luck stat.

-The ledger detailing your investments in the manor study can now sort your investments alphabetically, by dividend or by investment.

-Doll has a new sprite and face

-Larelle's eye colour has been corrected in all her pics.

-Penelope's face sprites should look a little less like they were resized by a thirteen year old.

-Double doors in the game should now look like proper double doors.

-The very beginning of the game now has two extra randomly-generated names and an extra hidden bonus name.

New Stuff Even If you Are a Backer:

-Improved encourage now heals a number of status ailments instead of raising the dead.

-Florine's new art has been implemented.

We have a Wiki!

Harem Collector now has a wiki!

So please contribute to it!

Oh The Things That You'll See

One of the privileges of making Harem Collector has been the sheer amount of new stuff I've been exposed to. I mean, I know this is the internet, everything ever is on the internet for our collective enjoyment, but you'd be amazed at the stuff I A) never thought about trying, or B) would never have tried without prodding.

Firmly in category A is the whole mind control fetish thing. I value Harem Collector's fans from the mind control community, and it has been really awesome to sample the games put out by MC fans that are in that sweet spot where their fetish rubs up against my dominance/slavery fetish.

...That ended up sounding really unintentionally sexual.

Anyway, if that sounds like your boat, Hypnopics has a sizable RAGS community, RAGS being an engine for making point and click puzzle games.

Relatedly is the Overlord series of games. I started Harem Collector partly because I thought Cypress_Z wasn't making Overwhored anymore, and since his game is pretty awesome I recently picked up Overlord II on a lark. It's a very enjoyable game, although it feels really rushed and cut short. Still, I got a foursome with all potential dark mistresses. And after trying to play a domination Overlord, well, with the female victim's voice clips it's no wonder that game is popular in the MC community.

Another unexpected joy that's come my way has been Oreimo. Although Meline started out as a joke character, writing for her has put siscon and incest on mine and my wife's collective radar, which eventually lead us to an anime called Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, or Oreimo for short. It's a very cute romcom anime series about a guy finding out his little sister is into dating sims and eroge, and is currently on our watch list.


But, yeah, in general making Harem Collector has been an exciting, weird trip. If you want to share anything you've discovered because you caught a reference to it in Harem Collector or any other h-game, don't be shy to share it below or in the forum threads.

Edit: Speaking of which, I just got Magic DotP 2013 for free off Xbox Gold, and if any of you guys wants to play a game or two and meet me and generally hang out and have good feels, drop me an email.

(Note: This is not the controversial post that I postponed last week. I don't know if I want to post something that comments on certain issues in the gamer mediaverse, or even if anyone would particularly care to hear my thoughts. The completed document sits on my desktop, unpublished, for now.)

Let's Talk

First of all, I'd like to welcome longtime fan Daishi to the Harem Collector team. Daishi is one of potentially two people who will contributing writing to the game, increasing the quality of the game for you  and freeing up more of my time to make more awesome game stuff.

Anyway, I was going to write about something completely different today, and I had actually wrote the entire blog post out in advance (a first for me). But after hearing Nekochan's comments on it, I want to make sure it gets reviewed by a couple more friends of mine before releasing it into the wilds of the interwebs. It might come out next week.

But this leaves me without a topic for this week's post. Mental Note: prepare a blog post to keep saved in case I have to do this again.

So, this week isn't about me, it's about you.

So in the comments below, tell me which of the Harem Collector girls is your favourite and why, let me know who like and why you like them, and what kind of sex scenes you'd like to see them in. Do you have a couple girls you'd like to see paired together? Is there a fetish you have that you'd like to see a girl used to explore?

I'll be paying extra close attention to the comments this week, making notes for possible future game content and just reading with interest what you guys think.

Game Reviews

Just a quick update- Kargan3033 reviewed both Dungeon Assault and Harem Collector the other day. He's putting together a review blog for free to play H-games and related projects, and has also reviewed Overwhored.

In case you're interested:

 Harem Collector Review

Dungeon Assault Review

There will be a more normal blog post on Wednesday, so I'll see you then.

New Release: Dungeon Assault

Link to Dungeon Assault

What is Dungeon Assault?
Dungeon Assault was made by No Moshing back in May of 2013. During one fevered night where, after too much coffee and Ancient Domains of Mystery, No Moshing attempted to use the RPG Maker VX Ace engine to replicate a roguelike experience. It was a mixed success, however.

In the game, you take control of a party of four adventurers who then delve into an ancient tomb in order to defeat the evil Succubus on the bottom floor. The order of floors, treasures, monsters, and special encounters are all entirely randomized, and getting to the bottom can become a real challenge if the Random Number God is especially cruel.

Ever since, Dungeon Assault has been a special bonus extra released in secret to financial backers of Harem Collector. Now that I'm working on something else to send them, Dungeon Assault is getting released to the public.

Why is Dungeon Assault getting released now?
 Occasionally I take on side projects to test some aspect of game development that I later use in Harem Collector's development. I've started a new one of those, and as such, it will be an exclusive bonus to financial backers of Harem Collector. So I've decided to release Dungeon Assault to the public, for the enjoyment of all.

What's New in Version 1.1
-At least .1 better than the other versions.
-The party has been changed to something a little more familiar.
-You now have the option to save your game between floors

Do you want us to give you bug reports for Dungeon Assault?
Not really. If it's a complete and utter game breaker, sure. But otherwise, I don't care all that much.

Please enjoy the game and happy dungeon crawling!

Sequelitis

Okay, first things first- Harem Collector is now hosted at Mega.


Now, as some of you might have understood from my forum posts here and there. you won't be able to capture all 151 girls in Harem Collector. The reason being is my original design document outlined a game that was too much game for one game. This being my first large-scale RPG Maker project, I had no idea of the limitations of the engine and my own limitations, and it seems to mean that the best thing for the game would not be creating a bloated, confused mess that runs the length of the entire plot. So Harem Collector is being broken down into five discrete parts.

Harem Collector
-Takes place in the Middle Kingdom, a very literally named place which appears to be a more-or-less productive, happy kingdom.
-Will involve recruiting about 30 girls total. For those of you keeping score at home, the current version of the game contains 16.
-There are four main questlines, which will include the Adventurer's Guild, playing the game of houses and becoming a proper noble, saving the elven race from extinction, and participating in magical research on a fallen empire that used to exist where the Middle Kingdom is now.


Harem Collector Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
-Takes place in Kellos, a heavily militarized empire that exists to the east of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household, including Meline for certain but at an appropriate time I'll run polls to see who else will be going.
-There are, again, four main questlines. One will involve joining a resistance group to overthrown the current power structure. One will involve joining a cult that worships Dragons as opposed to the Angels. The others are still up in the air at this point.

 Harem Collector Part 3: Collect Harder
 -Takes place in the frigid, lawless country to the north of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household again, including Yamamaya for certain.
-Main questlines will include: ruling over Yamamaya's tribe as her mate, bringing law to the lawless and founding your own kingdom, as well as other things.

Harem Collector 4: Goblet of Fanservice
-Takes place on a tropical archipelago to the far south of the Middle Kingdom, across the ocean, where the Hero will be placed in charge of his own colony by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom.
- Again, about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his existing harem, will will be determined at an appropriate time.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve a case of colonists versus natives. The archipelago will be inhabited by a civilization of alleged "savages" that the Middle Kingdom looks down on but who in fact have a perfectly good civilization already, and the Hero will have to balance the demands of his backers in the Middle Kingdom versus the political realities of deal with the native society. Of course, this whole thing will be played for laughs.

Harem Collector 5: The Fifth One (I've run out of subtitle jokes)
-Takes place partially in the dwarf-inhabited, magitek-powered country to the west of the Middle Kingdom, and partially in another dimension entirely.
-This game will involve batting cleanup. I'm sure that very few of the other games will involve exactly 30 girls, and are more likely to go over than under. This game will involve however many are left.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve an attempt to colonize the setting's analogue to "heaven", which by this point the Hero will have extensive dealings with to the point that the invading country hires him as an consultant.

In terms of the series in general:
-The sequels are spaced apart in time, there being about two years between each. Yes, the Hero will engage in a bit of Wife (Slave?) Husbandry, attempting to win the hearts of girls that will join the harem "officially" in one of the sequels.
-There won't be a lot in terms of importing saves. The games don't involve any moral choices of real significance, and each sequel will assume that you've completed 95% of the content in previous games. IE, questlines and harem girls will be considered to be "fully completed", but things like hidden bosses and bonus dungeons won't be referred to.
-The Hero will keep that shitty, rusty greatsword from beginning to end, and by the time you close out the series it will be a weapon of truly immense power.
-Similarly, while the hero will "let himself go" a little between games, he will start each sequel a little stronger and with a full complement of skills that will get added to.

While the original Harem Collector will take longer, I'm hoping to keep the development cycle for each game to about a year. Game development involves a lot of of what us business types like to call "cumulative advantage". That is, the longer I keep at this, the greater my skills and resources will become, and the better and more-quickly-produced future games will be.

I've also mentioned before wanting to take "time off" between installments of Harem Collector to work on different projects. This is true, and I intend at least to do something slightly different after finishing up Harem Collector 1. This thing, let's call it Project Norn, is a hentai parody game (of course) inspired by the SMT: Persona series. So you have that to one day look forward to.

If you think I'm getting ahead of myself, fear not. Most of what I've outlined is from the original HC design plan, just getting properly spaced out and formed into discrete games. My focus remains on Harem Collector part one, and I intend to make tthat the best game it can be with my current abilities.

Mysteries

Why isn't there a blog post today? It's just one of those mysteries. Like what happened to Amelia Earhart, or why Mindless Self Indulgence hasn't provided music for a Saint's Row game yet.

...Or maybe blog post day is being moved to Wednesday so that downloads and blog posts are collected in a single "Harem Collector Update Day". Who knows?

Harem Collector August 2013 Public Release

Public version 3!

If you are importing an old save, it is extremely important that you speak to the demon standing outside your manor before doing anything else in game.

Edit: Before I forget again, the next release is September 18th for backers and September 25th for the public.

So here it is, that big update I promised. What's new? Well...

-There are two big, new quests! One is started from the Eastfort Adventurer's Guild, the other begins automatically when you complete a quest after having seven harem girls.

-The first-ever freely explorable combat zone/quest area, called the Giant's Path. is now open north of Eastfort.

-There is a little quest that occurs within the Giant's Path.

-There are now unique sprites and faces for Lilac, Violet, Yamamaya and Chimei. Kyrie now has a new face but I'm still using the old sprite because it's cute.

-Healbot now appears in the manor, in the reading room to the right of the master bedroom. You can chat with him to give back his old name.

-Speaking to Larelle or [REDACTED] in the dungeon should now not cause the game to freeze, die and/or email all your porn to your mom anymore, no matter what you do.

-There are five new sex scenes and a bunch of new CGs

-Having certain combinations of party members in certain places will now trigger bits of party banter.

-Chimei can now be purchased from the Slaver's Guild market.

-The total number of Dark Seeds in the game is now up to ten, and the guy who collects them has a new reward for you.

-There is now a Trophy Trader in the Northmarket Slums who will swap your trophies for other trophies, for a small fee.

-Part of the counter in Florine's item shop has been cut away so you can sell your vendor trash/buy stuff and then proceed through instead of exiting out the same you came in and going around.

-All skill use now clearly gives the skill's name, to help you prepare or counter effectively.

-Tomes should grant skills to the person equipping the tome again.

-Experience point rewards for all enemies have been increased by 10%, and the experience curve as been dropped.

-The Necromanceress should now use Murder of Crows less frequently.

-The Health value of the Electric Blue Slime has been increased.

-The fucked up music that occurs in Lumberhill, the manor and the Eastfort condo has been fixed.

-The Backer Monument is current up to August 13^th and the Bugfinder Monument is current up to the July release.

-Numerous other bugfixes have been implemented.

-Herobrine has been removed.

Enjoy your playing!

Free Enterprise

First of all, game status update: Everything is coming together really well and I'm really excited about this month's release. It is the biggest chunk of new content since the original February release itself. I can't wait to get it into your hands! But there's a little bit of stuff to get done today, and it should drop for backers pretty early tomorrow. If I have time to give a character a makeover in the week between the backer release and the public release, let me know who you think it should be in the comments or , you know, the usual away. Your choices are Yamamaya, Florine, Elaiya and Doll, I believe.

Anyway, I had a really cool idea for an MMO yesterday and figured I'd fling it into the interwebs because it's really beyond my capabilities as an alleged "programmer" but I think it'd be a cool idea. I used to own an old Windows 95 game called Free Enterprise. It wasn't particularly spectacular as far as gameplay is concerned but you played an industrial manufacturing entrepreneur making, well, anything you wanted out of a huge list of items. My business was always "Zombie Self-Defense Technology Inc" or something because you could make chainsaws. But, you had to pay attention what was in demand for your location (you got to pick any of a number of cities in the US) or else you'd be in trouble.

But you also had to manage where you received your supplies from and one of the more interesting things the game did was you could either purchase your assembly parts from other companies or, if you wanted to control the process beginning to end, set up machines in such a way so you manufactured every processed part in the process. For example, I could have my chainsaw assembly machine, but hook up to it a small gasoline engine machine, an aluminum casing machine, a chain drive machine, etc, and control the quality of the process at every step. Or simply buy engines and casings from other companies, because you can't afford to pay that many workers or what have you.

But what if there was a version of this as an MMO? Say, a fantasy MMO where everyone played merchant princes. So, I play a merchant prince who specializes in raw iron, and I have a few mines and an ore refining facility of some kind. Nekochan plays the leader of a blacksmith guild, who buys my iron and forges iron goods. Then say, Gurotaku plays a mercenary captain who has to buy Nekochan's swords, but then sells me the guards I need to keep monsters out of my mine. But Geo plays the admiral of a merchant fleet who needs Nekochan's nails to supply his shipyards, and also my raw iron to trade overseas for exotic spices.

So the essential way it works is by having players to fill roles in an economy where everyone is forced to support and work for each other, and there could be EVE Online-esque elements of people forming trading guilds and greater alliances and things. But unlike EVE Online the entire purpose of the game is the economy rather than space exploration or what have you. High level play would consist of managing a truly sprawling merchant empire, where you are invested in multiple fields.

Anyway, just though that'd be a cool idea. This idea is fair use for all, I will make no claim of ownership although I reserve the right to make my own version if I do someday become that leet.

Progress Update

First of all, thank you for all your comments last week. Even the negative comments, because in many ways for this sort of thing playing the devil's advocate is even more useful. Going forward, I can't say for certain what will happen, but don't expect Harem Collector-related merch until the game is almost completed. Even if I finish my business plan and I'm confident about moving forward, it'll be a long time before there are any significant changes. And, of course, working on the game itself is always the priority.

Progress is looking pretty good for next week's release. Oh, did I forget to mention that? The Backer release is on the 14th and the public release is on the 21st. I just finished up one of the new quests yesterday morning. It requires a little polish (and what doesn't in this game?) and I'm immediately diving into the second big quest that's going to drop. That second quest shouldn't take as long (I alreayd know how I'm doing it, and it's a variation on something already in the game) and as a big plus, Gurotaku already has the CGs completed.

If I get that second quest completed, I can focus my energies on something simple, like filling in the towns or something. Anyway, I'll talk to you all next week, when some of you will get the new version and others will get teased mercilessly by mysterious bug reports.

Edit:  Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There are now Dragon Age-style banter spots in the game. When the game drops, I'll actually release pics of their locations because I want people to find them, and let me know if they break flow too much.

Makin' Money Gettin' Paid

Okay, despite my lighthearted title, this is actually a serious discussion. So please, hear me out, and then get on that comments button or fire me off an email or something, because I really do want to hear back from everyone concerning this.

First of all, I really appreciate how much everyone is enjoying the game. I put in about four hours of work on this game a day and it's really nice to see that work pay off in terms of your support.

Those of you who have been following this game for awhile may remember me mentioning that I was laid off back in May. Since then, I haven't had any really good prospects come up. While I'm not in dire financial straights or anything (Nekochan makes more than enough money to support us both) it has made be examine my priorities and try to figure out what the "next step" in terms of my life plan is, and I'm taking a serious look at making No Moshing's Games a for-reals game company.  I would love to be able to do this for a living, and make Harem Collector (and future projects) a full-time job that I can focus on. Plus, it'd be nice to send Gurotaku a little cash for all the images he's worked on for the game.

The business plan that I'm roughed out is highly inspired by the existing plan that webcomics and webshows use. Basically, the core content (ie, the games themselves) would be free, and I would attempt to make money by selling related merchandise. Oh, and I should probably lay this out officially: Harem Collector is, and will always be completely free to play with no DLC or paid content.

I like this plan because 1) I don't have to fuck around with DRM because in-game DRM is bullshit and I don't have the resources or patience to chase pirates and 2) It's a proven business model.

There are some complications though.

First of all, the images of the characters in game are made using sprite builders and face generation programs, and I don't know how much ownership over my characters and images the creators of those programs have.

Second of all, a number of people have very generously donated money to the project, and they still need to have their financial support recognized and rewarded, even if as an official for-profit company No Moshing Games would be unable to accept donations any more.

Third of all, I don't know how many people would be willing to have t-shirts, coffee mugs, magnets or whatever of a hentai game.

So, I want to hear from all you guys, donors, fans, and casual players alike. I want to know what you think. What kind of merch you'd be interested in buying (if any). If you think this is selling out and me doing this would cause you to drop the game entirely, let me know. If you think a t-shirt featuring the hero on a throne surrounded by girls and the words "I'm A Selfish Guy" on the back is a pretty awesome idea, let me know. If you've previously donated and think you deserve your money back if I go for-profit, let me know.

Any huge changes are many many moons away, so take your time with the replies, but bottom line is that I want to hear from you.

July 2013 Public Release

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?x5pueafa2aj74bj


Changes in the new version:

-The hero has a new sprite and faces. This took hours and hours for me to change. If you want to know why there isn't a big quest or something awesome in this update, it's because of this. Fuck.

-Meline also has a new sprite and faces, though not all of her faces have been implemented yet.

- For balance reasons, Death no longer prevents characters from gaining any XP.

-Several skills have had their momentum and mana costs changed.

-The Gang Leader's stun strike has been adjusted to be 66% effective instead of 90%.

-The drop rate of monster drop-only gift items has been doubled.

-There is a new (small) quest, started by trying to invest in the Eastfort drug dealer.

-A new character has been implemented. He joins your party outside your manor.

-The first sex scene with Meline now has CGs

-The second sex scene with Alina (currently plays after the package delivery quest) now has CGs.

-Some CGs have been replaced by new, improved versions by our new official CG guy, Gurotaku. I enlisted him because I kind of suck at doing CGs and he is pretty experienced with 3DCG and helping me out.

 By the way, next will there will no be the customary "Stuff in the next version" list, because I'm deviating from those pretty frequently. All I'll say about the August update is that it's going to be big.

July Donor Release is Live

If you found it in your heart to donate to Harem Collector, the email with the link to the Donor's Pack should be in your email. If it isn't, check your spam folder, or the email you use paypal with in case it's something different than your normal email. If you still don't have it, email me and I'll rectify the situation. Same deal if for some reason you can't open a .rar.

The rest of you have to wait a week. Adios!

Game Balance By Any Other Name

So, after extensive testing, I think I've figured out what's going on with all the balance issue complaints.And by extensive testing I mean extensive- a week of playing and replaying the game, attempting events in different orders and testing different configurations of characters, items and skills.

After so long testing, what I discovered is that it's not the game itself that is broken. Rather, the game gets significantly harder depending on how many party members you have when attempting various quests. The Night of the Raping Dead is meant to completed with four party members, going through Elvo's manor all but requires three, and clearing the orc encampment is either challenging or insanely difficult depending on whether the hero attempts to solo it.

So how did I solve it? Well, the July release will feature a new character who gets forced into your party at some point. This new character won't have a lot of dialogue and such yet, but will eventually be a fully-fleshed-out member of the cast. I'm actually looking forward to writing for this character- it's very much a horse of a different colour compared to the other cast members and should provide an interesting new perspective.

Again, for many reasons this will be a smaller update, but at least there will lots of new CGs. I've enlisted helpful fan Gurotaku to help we with making the CGs because I kind of suck at it. He has made some new CGs for the release, as well as re-made some of the older CGs that were kind of lame.

If you're a donor, you will be receiving a new version of Harem Collector sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.

A conversation

This may or may not have happened while I was working on the Player's Guide.

Me: Why don't any of the monsters in the Mourning Wood have MP? They're not going to use any of the skills you assigned.
NoMoshing: Huh.
Me: You want me to fix it?
NoMoshing: Okay.
Me: *sighs* You're already getting complaints about the balance...they're gonna think you're doing this on purpose.
No Moshing: I didn't do it on purpose, you did. You just did it.

On another note I still can't say Mourning Wood without giggling like a schoolgirl. Because I am a mature woman!

Maybe If I Shaved It'd Look Bigger....

Looks like next week will be the smallest update so far. I've been bogged down this last month with balance issues and bug fixing, and between that and the incredibly time-consuming task of replacing all the hero's dialogue portraits with new ones, I haven't had a lot of time for new content. There will be a couple thing though, so look out for that.

I had my first real "NEVAR PLAYING AGAIN" complaint in the last month. I have to say, I'm very surprised that it look five months for someone to start acting like a person on the internet. Especially given the nature of Harem Collector. Who knew that people who followed porn games were just so damn nice.

It's kind of funny that I haven't received any hate mail yet, especially considering the rape-y content of HC. Maybe it's just because of where I'm running my PR threads.

Anyway, sorry if I've taken a lot longer to respond to threads, comments and emails lately. Now that I have four threads to read, and Hongfire is less an internet forum than a manufactorium where the servants of the God-Emperor churn out an endless supply of comments, it takes awhile to catch up.

Donor release is next Wednesday and I have a whole lotta work to do, so until then, happy playing.

Plans for July Release

Work proceeds on the next version. There were so many bugs related to the item table changes that unfortunately I didn't get much progress done, but next month should feature a new quest (about the same size as One Is the Lonliest Party) and few other things added.

The big change that will no doubt be a bastard in terms of bug reports- I have a new sprite and faces for the hero and Meline I'm working on adding to the game. Also, the way the Seeker's Stone works might change if I have time, becoming an infinite-use item that makes sparkles appear where there are hidden items.

Honestly, I wish I had started making custom sprites and face sooner rather than later. The majority of my development time seems to be taken up by re-doing things I've already done, then paging through all the events in the game to make sure it all looks the same (with mixed results). Hopefully as I catch up with myself, my work time will improve.

Harem Collector June 2013 Public Release

Delicious Link

Now with slightly fewer bugs!

Ugh... what a week. In an embarrassing failure of QC, I had to release new versions of Harem Collector to the donors every day for a week. Thanks to their patience and vigilance, I can say that this version probably isn't broken.

Note that if you are a donor- there is no difference between this version and the last one I sent you save for some bug fixes that were reported by dogsoneup.

Next release is July 17 for donors and July 24 for everyone else.

Changes- June 2013 Release

-The extended opening has been implemented! Yay!

-The Southport University District is now open and available to be visited.

-A new collection quest is now available in the Northmarket Slums.

-When you run out of slave collars, the Slaver's Guild will now offer you a small quest in order to get new ones.

-For the sharp-eyed and/or obsessive compulsive among you, there is now a hard-to-find buried treasure in Lumberhill... and a clue in the Northmarket Slums.

-Finally, after first being promised in, what, March?, the Satisfaction Book is now 100% context-sensitive.

-The Content Testing chest now also drops an item that adds 100 Satisfaction on use.

-Lilac, Violet and Randi will now chat with you and accept gifts.

-Skills and Items have been thoroughly re-jiggered. Items now have a category tag in their description. Skills now have have a keyword description in their description.

-You can no longer use the Formation function from the menu. Instead, a party change menu will pen every time you leave you manor (or other estate).

-Hero no longer learns Lead the Way and Sound the Charge. Doll no longer learns Restraining Thorns. Meline no longer learns Radiant Chains. Therese now learns a new "Lay on Hands" power, and I'm not sure if they can be levelled that high yet but most mages can learn a variety of new powers now.

-What priests charge for blessings is now determined by the Hero's level.

-New CG scenes have been added featuring Larelle and Lilac.

-New faces and sprites have been implemented for Therese, Randi and Alina.

Harem Collector Donor's Pack Released!

Hey everyone, if you donated you should receive shortly the Harem Collector Donor's Pack, filled with goodness. Or if not goodness, something at least.

If a .rar file doesn't work for you, please email me (specifically contact me via email) and I'll send you the individual parts of the Pack as attachments.

I hope you all enjoy and that there are no fatal errors this time!

Crunch Time!

Just wanted to throw a quick update up here, and say that I'm currently crunching through the last of the stuff I want to have ready for the release tomorrow evening.

If a feature or change you wanted to have happen doesn't make it into the game, in my defense, they were offering XCom for free on the PSN.

I have a funny feeling in my e-peen...

I can't believe it because I sent this story to the Trenches like a year ago but they finally got around to publishing it. Just wanted to share it with you all.

Still lots to do....

I'm still pushing through the various fixes and new content. Lilac and Violet now can receive gifts and chat, though they don't have much to say at the moment. Also, with Lilac at least, you can choose to have sex with her at any time. There is no benefit for doing so, other than a short scene and a single CG image.

You can no longer swap party characters in and out at will, and the Formation option has been removed from the menu. I needed to do this in order to control the game's difficulty better. I've installed Yanfly's Party System script, and now whenever you leave your manor the formation menu will open up for you to get the slave girls you think you'll require.

The party chat feature works... sort of. The entire process is there, I just have to do the writing for it now.

As I said before, the extended opening is done, but I removed the credits from it because it was pretty tedious. For now, the credits monument will remain until I think of something else.

Unfortunately, something I did while applying mods to 3DCG causes it to have a critical failure when I open the program, but the error message is in Japanese and I have no idea what it's saying. So I must re-install the game and start over, and hopefully not lose any of my already-complete characters.

Other than that, the Lumberhill stuff might not be completed, but I don't know. There have been a couple setbacks already this week- on top of the 3DCG thing it took me the better part of Monday to figure out a not-retardedly-complex way of doing the party chat feature. I hope to meet all my content goals, but we'll see.