Blog

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

 

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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?

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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 13th and the Bugfinder Monument is current up to the July release.
-Numerous other bugfixes have been implemented.
-Herobrine has been removed.
Enjoy your playing!
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.