Category: Bad Kitty Games

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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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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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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.

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GOAL!

Thank you very much to everyone who donated! We did it!

I’m amazed at how quickly you guys pulled together. It’s been less than a week since I put up the donation button!

Because I was able to buy 3DCG entirely from donations, I went ahead and paid the express shipping myself, and went and bought some extra music packs for RPG Maker. The software should arrive within the week. If everything proceeds smoothly over the next ten days, the May update should be pretty exciting for everyone.

Again, thank you all very much. I’ll work hard and do my best so that your trust and generosity is rightfully rewarded.

Oh, and in case some of you still wanted to donate to the project and get the donator-exclusive Player’s Guide and the early downloads, I left the donation button up. I’m not 100% sure what I’d use the extra funds for, but all donated funds will go to either Harem Collector or future projects.

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Donations, Updates, Sorrow

Well, okay, that poll was a dismal failure. Never doing that again. I have no idea why it kept resetting, but that was terrible. So I have no idea what ended up winning, so instead here’s a regular no-bullshit update post.

First of all, there is now a donations button on the side column. I didn’t want to do this, but it seems that 3D Custom Girl is impossible to find a reliable download for, I now have a fuckton of adware on the PC I share with my wife, and I’m not really comfortable with pirating software that people worked so hard on anyway. The cost to purchase and ship it to my country is about $120, which is outside my “money I can afford to spend on porn” budget. So I’m hoping to raise that much so that way I can finally implement hentai in the game. If for some reason, people get really excited and donate waaaaay more than I need for that, I’ll look into getting some of the DLC for RPG Maker VX Ace and using it in the game as well. If less than 2% of the people who downloaded the March update each give $1, we can reach this goal and improve the game for everyone.

What was donating get you, other than porn and a warm fuzzy feeling? Well, you’ll have access to new versions of the game one week earlier than everyone else. You’ll get a donator credit. And, you will also get a .pdf Player’s Guide, detailing all the little secrets, fun facts and such in the game, updated with each new release. This will contain every secret in the game- even the stuff I only tease at in forum posts.

Actual Game Stuff

The most exciting thing I’ve implemented all week: You can now tap the shift key to toggle between three speeds in game. Basically, RPG Maker uses six speed settings. Setting 4 is the default for player movement, and you can hold down the shift key to “dash” at speed 5. In the March Update, I set the player’s default speed to 5 and removed the ability to dash, and I planned to add the ability to “walk” at speed 4 by holding the shift key, for greater precision during puzzles where movement is necessary. And yet, people still complained about the player not moving fast enough.

So now, you can use the shift key to toggle between three speeds- setting 5, which is default for Harem Collector, setting 6, for fast travel, and setting 4 for when you need precision.

Other than hammering away at the undead quest and squashing bugs, I’ve also added in two other things. One, using the shovel now returns a message no matter where you use it. You’ll be notified if you’re digging on a valid square and there isn’t anything there, and the hero will complain if you try to shovel on cobblestone paths or indoors.

The other new thing is that there is now a reason to visit the world’s churches- within, a priest (or nun) will offer to Bless your party in exchange for a donation (cost is linked to your level). Bless is an extremely powerful buff that lasts for awhile, but because it’s only available via churches there is some preparation and strategy required to get the most out of it.

Anyway, happy playing, and hopefully soon I’ll have good news regarding the 3D Custom Girl situation.

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Porn!

That’s right friends- the big news or next update is that there will be actual porn in the game. I’ve found a solution that I’m satisfied with, and there may be new h content as early as the April release. I’m going to be using a third party 3-d engine to do poses and models. Of course, that depends on a few things- among them my ability to alter existing models while keeping attractive faces, and another being my ability to match clothes and other characteristics to the sprites used in game. We’ll see how it goes, and details will be forthcoming as they are available.

However, this does mean I’ll probably have to abandon Mediafire as a hosting service. If anyone can provide suggestions as to a hosting service that doesn’t mind adult material, please do so.

However the bad news is that might be the only significant change for the April update. Fixing the aesthetics of play is hard, going through each and every event to check sound effects, change sprite movement speeds for cutscenes,  deal with message positions…. Because of this and various other things, the next update might just be a general “polishing up” of the game, with the new h scenes, but we’ll see.

As always, stay tuned for more information.

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What Won’t Happen

So, one question I’ve gotten a lot of is, “When am I going to be able to nail Reccette and Tear?”

Well… you’re not. It’s best to think of the gift shop as just a nod to one of my favourite games and leave it at that. Don’t expect there to be any sex scenes with borrowed or parodied characters, even if they do appear in the game.

The biggest reason I have for doing this is simply that I have more than enough original content I want to put in the game- I also don’t want to deal with the requests that that sort of thing would draw. I don’t want to wake up one afternoon and find a couple hundred requests for adding everyone’s favourite Final Fantasy character, for example.

The other reason is that, well, Reccette is eleven. I wouldn’t mind seeing hentai of her being sufficiently advanced in age (that actually sounds pretty awesome), but I’m not interested in loli. Adding to that is the legality issue. The country I’m in is considering some fairly invasive laws where that sort of thing and the internet are concerned, and it’s just not worth the risk.

Other things I can almost guarantee won’t see in the game: furries*, vore, water sports, guro, gay sex**, hermaphrodites, bestiality. Not because I hate on those things, but just a general lack of interest and a disinclination for other people to write for Harem Collector. It hasn’t come up, but if you do want to request something like that, it probably won’t happen.

To end on a positive note, I’m working very hard to ensure that the girls you meet are all of different types and varieties. If you have a moe or personality-type fetsih, that may very well come up. Monster girls are also going to happen. On the to-do list is: yandere, preggo (hell, I have an entire quest line in mind that’s preggo-themed) , spectrophilia,  aphrodisiac use, dominant female, S&M torture, mother-daughter incest, vampire girls, nuns, kidnapping, humiliation games, and much much more. So, if you’re a fan of any of that stuff, well, it’s coming, sooner or later.

I don’t really want to be a killjoy, but I figured if you’re following this game because you think Amelia is actually ten years old and you’re waiting for the pics, or you really want to have Tifa show up as an enslave-able character, you should know that it won’t be happening.

*Kemonomimi is a go, obviously. I feel bad for furries sometimes, because of the much wider acceptance of kemonomimi. I can imagine a lot of furry fans being like, “Oh come on, why are you stopping there?” But, there it is.

**Beyond, of course, the occasional “And let us never speak of it again” joke like already exists in the game.