Author: NoMoshing

Hey everyone! I’m really busy today with non-development stuff, so the test release will probably be tomorrow. I’m not concerned about the delay, as there’s only a handful of things that need testing, so things are still on track for next week.

Anyway, please let me know in the comments or the forum if you have an opinion on where I should focus for the May update. I could do a new quest or two for some of the questlines, or maybe address some hanging plot threads, or maybe just work more on dialogue and side stuff. Please let me know what you think!

So, I’m calling it: Testing week starts next week on the 9th, backer release for the 16th, public release the week after. It’ll be a fairly quiet release- most of the big advances were spoiled in the February update, so the only real changes are some chat dialogue, some additions to the Nonhuman District, and the new random quest baddies. Also, I’ve gone on a murderous bug-slaying rampage, so the game should run a lot smoother with many, many fixed issues. There are even some minor art updates- Bronwyn and Elaiya will have un-collared face images when you first encounter them.

The Elaiya face set thing was kind of a comedy of errors, too. When I exported the file, somehow the transparency was lost, and I accidentally re-imported the broken file before I could try moving the file from the Harem Collector directory manually. So on top of having to take off Elaiya’s collar, I also had to re-do the transparency on her image, which ate up a lot of time.

The new website is coming closer and closer to completion. There have been a lot of delays with it, but I’ve since learned to try and relax about it. Nobody comes here for the site itself, so it’s best to wait until it’s 100% ready to go rather than constantly set arbitrary deadlines.

As always, thanks for your support, and I’ll see you next week!

McBlackjack and I have been talking X-Com 2 all morning, so blame him for the late blog post.

Anyway, work progresses. Have been working on updates to the random quests this week. I’m up to level 24 so far, with Werewolves and Vampires being your two new antagonists. Level 26 is supposed to feature Rogue Golems, but since there aren’t any good default golem battlers I’m torn on whether to proceed with that or wait for art from Gusbus. Feel free to chime in if you’ve got an opinion on that.

I’ve slowed down more than I like simply due to stress. While I’m feeling better now, last couple weeks have been pretty harsh. I’m hoping to catch up now. Unfortunately, stress or no stress an early March release was simply far too optimistic. No way I would have gotten anything significant done in a week.

Anyway, that’s it for now. See you next week!

So, I’m working on the March release now, and while I’m hoping to get it out in early March (maybe the 9th?) I also want there to be a significant improvement over the February release. So, I’m going to keep getting out the new chats, hopefully having Elaiya, Florine and Meline finished by then. Maybe I’ll do some new random quest enemies. Of course, filling out the Elf Improvement quest and the Eastfort Nonhuman District are also top priorities.

Other than that, just have to keep on keeping on, like always.

So the recent “February Update” was the result of a leak. I wanted to give patrons a small update, where they can see what I’ve accomplished in the month between releases, and see what their money is being used on. It was very rough and unfinished, because it was meant to be a “snapshot” of upcoming changes rather than a fully-fledged update.

Unfortunately, someone leaked the mini-update. And I’ll be honest, I’m pretty angry about this. Something that was rough, that was meant to be a quick update for backers only, now has to stand to public scrutiny as an example of my work. Something that was meant to be a reward to backers for supporting my work is now public. So, I don’t know if I’ll do mini-updates again, and I’m concerned about the one week early updates for backers, because they will probably be leaked, might already have been leaked, making that entire practice pointless as well.

So, open letter: Screwing patrons like this, by leaking patron-only content, is a great way to disincentivise patrons from supporting game development. If patrons choose to leave  the campaign because of this, or if would-be patrons choose not to support the campaign because they can get all the benefits elsewhere, that negatively impacts my ability to work on the game. Now, I’m sure that many of my patrons would continue to support the campaign anyway just to help development of the game, but this doesn’t help.

What’s worse, is that the leaks happened to mirror sites that run their own ads. Someone else was profiting off my hard work. Off something that everyone can have for free, so long as those who want to support my work let me make a decent living.

This whole rant was probably pointless. Oh well, at least it make me feel a bit better.

Good, I’m finally done with medical stuff. Last night I had a final sleep study and I’m feeling good, like usual.

As of right now, I’m thinking that it would be best to wait for a March release. While I’ve done  dialogue and bug fixes as promise, I’ve also endeavored to do some side quests. One is particularly difficult to contract, and I’m looking forward to seeing how long it takes the,  onlooking public to figure out where to find it. Of course, patrons might get some direction as to where this quest starts.

I expect there to be to be fair bit of new content, and since it seems new characters are a challenge to implement, I’ll sideline for now + get on with implementing one of the vacation spots.

Sorry for the stilted prose there, guess I’ll have to plan better next time.

Apparently I’m so creatively bankrupt that I must resort to a listicle… or I’m just lazy. Or maybe I genuinely want to share behind-the-scenes information with you guys? OR maybe a little of columns A, B and C. Well, on with the show.

#1: The Golden Tomb Puzzle

The various knights in the golden tomb were supposed to be based on the typing of my competitive Pokemon team, and the swords that defeated each knight were supposed to be based on the types that were supereffective against them. There was no way for this to work out so that each type had only one, exclusive counter, and non-Pokemon fans would have had to resort to trial and error anyway, so eventually it was warped into the version of the puzzle that you see today. I’m actually really proud of how the Golden Tomb puzzle worked out. It worked almost 100% correctly right from my first attempt, and I think it’s a fun, creative alternative for boring ol’ locked doors.

In case you are a Pokemon fan and want to take a guess, none of my competitive team shares a type with another ‘mon on the team. I use 2 RUs, 1 BL2, 1 NU, 1UU, and 1 NU that mega-evolves into an Uber.

#2: Speaking of Pokemon…

Some of you long-time HC fans might remember Viel, the trainer-type character who was supposed to be included in HC1. She was eventually cut, but I use the name Viel for all my Pokemon game characters. So if you see a “Viel” from Canada as a passerby when you’re online, there’s a good chance that’s going to be me.

Viel was supposed to start with two monsters, a lava snail called a Brimslug that relied on fire magic and a large, yeti-like creature that had some ice attacks but was mainly a brute force brawler. By completing quests on her relationship tiers, Viel would add two further monsters to her pool, and she could switch between monsters (and thus, flavour her special attacks differently) by using a “Switch to ____________” skill.

Viel was cut because I didn’t really have a place in the story for her, but the work that went into her was used all over the place in the game. Notably, the class-change function that I learned how to do for Viel ended up being used for the Phantom Knight class.

#3: Canon Immigrants (sorta)

The only franchise that has influenced HC as much as Pokemon is Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, the whole reason why Therese is the first character to join your party is because the Paladin is my #1 favourite D&D class, and I wanted to portray a Paladin who was kind of uptight and strict but not a complete asshole. Therese isn’t the only character influenced by D&D, as Bronwyn’s fighting style is based on my first 4thedition character. I wanted very badly to play a ranger, but the party I was joining already had a crowd-control damager (a warlock) and a single-target damager (an assassin). So, I focused on taking archery abilities that had disabling or DoT effects, and built this “control-type ranger”.

Meanwhile, Larelle is heavily based on a fantasy novel I tried to write quite some time ago. The character originally was a village witch who got into the dark arts because she was bored of rural life, and eventually fell in with a group of mercenaries before falling in love with a disgraced knight. The novel was really dark and serious because I started writing it right after I discovered the Song of Ice and Fire, and I got maybe a third of the novel finished before I gave up.  Oh well.

#4: Dorfs

Speaking of that shitty novel attempt, this isn’t the first time that I’ve played with the concept of giving dwarves non-Scottish accents. In said failed novel, Dwarven society was divided into clans that formed a senate and elected a high king, but in reality was controlled by massive mining and manufacturing guilds. Each clan of Dwarves had different American accents, because early 2000’s NoMoshing had no concept of subtlety.

That’s not to say I have a sense of subtlety now, of course.

#5: Spell Names

Not all the spell names are based on Dungeons and Dragons, either. Force Barrage is a psychic power from Dark Heresy, Murder of Crows comes from Bioshock Infinite, several attack spells are based on Diablo II and Warcraft III spells, several buff spells are based on MtG cards, and Hungry Wolf Rage is a reference to my favourite Duran Duran song. The reference you’re probably the least likely to get is Strobe Edge, which shares a name with my favourite shoujo manga.

And yeah, I read a lot of shoujo manga, especially highschool soap opera-type stuff. And I have zero shame about it, so nyaaaaah.

#6 More Dungeon Inspirations

I’ve already said elsewhere that the Giant’s Path was inspired by Mt Kolts from Final Fantasy 6, but that’s not all. I find myself heavily inspired by my all-time favourite levels in different video games. The Golden Tomb is partially based on the Treasury level of Super Castlevania IV, the Count’s Manor is partially based on Spookyraven Castle from Kingdom of Loathing, and the Mycon Cave was inspired by Vault 106 in Fallout 3.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’ll have a more proper update on how progress is going next week, so see you then!

Hey there everyone, I hope you all had a good holiday.

I had a pretty awesome one myself. Just before new year I finally finished with sleep study related things, and now I use an APAP machine. It’s not exactly sexy, but I’m now waking up each day feeling like a million bucks. I think my work will definitely improve this year, which is good news for all HC fans!

Anyway, today I’m going to be talking about how I’m improving the “Chat” option for the next release.

The “Chat”s have been pretty lame up until now, mostly giving a single static conversation based on relationship level, if that. But I really want the Chat option to be as characterful and interesting as the banter system, so I’m making a few changes. First off, there are now multiple chat tracks.  The game will randomly select one of three or four topics when you select “Chat”, so there’s a good chance every time you select Chat it will be unique. I will be weighting the different topics differently for each character, which should add a little more personality to the game.

The topic which involves the most work will be the “quest” category. I’m adding some code to the game so that it will remember what the last quest you did was, and what party members you took with you. If a given party member was there, they’ll share some observations or discuss how that quest made them feel. If they weren’t present, they’ll offer an outsider’s perspective. Even non-party characters like Kevin, Alina, the maids, etc, will be able to offer their own comments on your latest exploits!

Because the game will now track this data, I can also work it into the dialogue of NPCs, and various wandering townfolk can discuss current events. This is a lesser priority, though.

An other chat option is news- characters discussing changes in the game world itself that might lead to new lesser quests or reveal new areas to explore. A third topic is gossip- characters discussing their fellows harem girls and other characters close to the Hero. Finally, there will be a miscellaneous category which will let me put in other little tidbits as they come up.

The last big change will be that the “Chat” will check the relationship rewards list the same way that giving gifts will. If you enter a new relationship tier because of a sex scene or whatever else, you can chat instead of needing to give a gift to unlock the next reward.

Anyway, I’m going to get to work on all this, I’ll see you guys next week. Have a great week and happy fapping!