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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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 16th for backers and October 23rd 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!
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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.

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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.)