Category: Harem Collector

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Where We’re At (and Anime Hooker Thoughts)

So I just played the demo for Octopath Traveler, just an hour ago. Was really struck by something- it’s not often you see any JRPG heroine who isn’t a virgin, nevermind a literal whore. I’m interested in seeing where the game takes Primrose’s character development. Not in like an SJW-type “dere shuld be moar sex workers in vigeo james” kind of way, it’s just that characters like Primrose are extremely rare in Japanese media, I don’t have a lot of precedent for how the devs are going to handle it, and I’m legit intrigued by her backstory. I also like the problem solving abilities that make NPCs more important to the game. Didn’t play as the warrior guy yet because he looks dumb and his face is dumb. Also that combat system is soooo boooring.* Either way, the demo comes with an official NoMoshing rec and I’ll be keeping an eye on it for the future.

Anyway, last week I let it be known to all that there might be a delay in rolling out the public release. That still might be a thing, but it’s looking pretty good for a functional manor release for next week. I reserve the right to delay, of course, but the backer rollout happened with only a handful of issues. We got Alina’s love quest all tied up (heh), the new manor stuff is trucking right along, and my mental health is on the upswing mid-release for once, so it’s looking good. Started trying out a new depression management technique, and at least so far it’s looking pretty good in that regard.

Anyway, don’t want to bother you all too long with my shitty problems and unwelcome opinion sharing, so I’ll sign off now. As always, happy fapping!

*I appreciate the irony that you long-time HC fans will find with that statement.

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Furniture system ramble

Conash here, I thought this week would be a good time to talk about the furniture system I’m working on because oh boy, this is going to be a big one. Originally when I came on staff about…. Roughly this time last year actually, when me and NoMoshing were discussing the various projects that I’d be working on this was the one that I knew was basically going to be the last big scripting thing out of everything he mentioned… Well technically second to last since we’re looking at redoing the affection system for the next update but that requires that we get this furniture system done first but details!

Anyways, the reason this sort of system is going to be a rather big project is that unlike most everything else I have to more or less design the entire process from scratch. See while I can piggy-back off of a lot of the existing code when it comes to say making new windows or changing up how abilities or elements work RPG Maker doesn’t exactly come with a home decoration system, and I didn’t come across any custom scripts for this sort of thing in the time that I went looking, and while I’ve heard there are some out there I’ve already figured out how to get everything working that fits into the game well enough that I’d rather not worry about trying to integrate a different system into the game. Still, there’s a reason several RPG Maker games will go with some kind of linear ‘house upgrade’ system or signs where you can add specific customization, the RPG Maker system lends itself easily to more simple event based changes like that, I however am a bit of a perfectionist and refuse to use something that won’t give you guys a more hands on approach to decorating your houses or would just ugly it up with a bunch of random signs.

My plan, while probably not the most original out there, is to give you guys the ability to essentially choose a room and a piece of furniture (that’s allowed to go there, we might not allow some pieces in certain rooms) and then be able to freely move it about the room with some green/red transparent squares over them during movement so that you can see where you can or can’t place something. Once you’ve placed it wherever every time you visit the map it’ll be there…. Man saying it out, this sounds incredibly basic from a player level but let me tell you, I’ve got a lot of work still in front of me to get this to all work right. So far I haven’t run into any issues but I’m sure I’ll find one or two ways to crash the game before I’m done! Haha…..

Anyways yeah, that’s about it for the furniture system, hope I didn’t bore you all to death with that!

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Extreme Makeover, Manor Edition

So, this month we’re working on the manor revision, as well as setting up a few things in preparation for the relationship system overhaul that is currently planned for v0.31.

The manor revision is pretty basic- chances are, if you’ve been following along games made by amateurs in RPG Maker before you’ve seen something like this before. We’re tightening up how the manor is laid out, reducing the total number of maps, and making things much more compact. It should be easier to move around and involve fewer screen transitions to get where you need to go. Further, the maps will be smaller in general- no more running through that massive, empty front hall.

Finally, we’re adding a Kamidori-like furniture system. You’ll be able to buy new furniture, rearrange things, and make the layout of your manor however you like. All rooms will have a type- for example, the Chapel will still be the Chapel- but what you put in those rooms will be up to you. Right now, we’re setting it up so that you can place things like trophies, banners and that sort of thing, but eventually you’ll have a wide array of options so you can decorate to your heart’s content.

There are two reasons why we’re going to all this trouble. One is to make it so that the various player housing is yours, and you can customize it to your heart’s content. Want a massive trophy wall in your bar? Sure. Want to wave your middle finger at the Angels by setting up your chapel for Elven Spirit worship? Go ahead, fuck ’em. We’re also going to tie some functions into the various furnitures- such as making you purchase a wooden horse, a whipping post and a fucking machine separately for the dungeon, for example.

The other reason has to do with the relationship system overhaul, like I mentioned. As I’ve said elsewhere, the new relationship system will be mainly passive. The idea is that every harem girl will have separate happiness and relationship score trackers, with the relationship score ticking upwards based on how generally happy your harem girl is. While gifts can provide a temporary boost to that happiness, more importantly will be caring for your harem girl’s wants, tastes and needs. This has the added benefit of reducing the amount of “chores” you’ll need to do- since gifting will be less important, you can focus on actually playing the game rather than delivering 20+ presents to various harem girls.

All your manors, except for some that will have already been occupied, will start with low-tier furniture, and you’ll be able to buy new stuff and work your way up. Keep in mind that just because something is pricier doesn’t mean that it’s going to be better- certain girls are going to want to be in the lap of luxury, but others prefer a simpler lifestyle. Don’t worry, the happiness changes your furniture placement will affect will be spelled out for you, so there won’t be a lot of guesswork.

Anyway, that’s a lot of stuff to do! So, I’m out of here for now. Thanks for following the blog, and like always, happy fapping!

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Wednesday….ish?

Hey everyone! Sorry for the late arrival this week! Everything to do with the new quest kind of fell apart at the last second, so Conash, SacB0y and I were cramming together the mini-release last minute. And even then, we just ran out of time. >.< Several parts of the new quest- dialogue and enemy behaviour to name two, ended up being more problematic than we expected and we dropped the ball. In the process of picking that ball up again, the blog post this week was... kind of... forgotten about. But here I am, working hard on a Friday night just so this way there can be *something* up, right? So Nekochan and I had a chat the other day concerning concept art, and we determined the next three characters who are going to get their CGs finished. The order (for now) is going to be: Alina (in progress) -> Silvayuco -> Yamamaya (including Yamamaya + Alina) -> Serade -> Evanie -> Chimei

The reason for this is that Serade, Evanie and Chimei are all due for minor character redesigns for one reason or another. Evanie still needs to be given custom assets. Serade needs to look more milf-y. I personally want to put some hints to Chimei’s background in her outfit- namely, giving her some kind of miko-ish to wear, so her special abilities seem a little less incongruent. And also because miko outfits are cute <3 So there you have it! You can also expect from this that the next two love quests are going to belong to Serade and Chimei... so there's that to look forward to, in time. Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for your patience, and I'll see you all next Wednesday as usual!

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Swarm element and Wiki work

Hey everyone, we’re chugging along as usual, but it’s Wednesday so it’s blog post day! I thought that I’d take this opportunity some to talk about a new feature I plan to add to the game in the upcoming release as well as talk about the wiki some. Might not be super interesting to most of you but this month has been kinda light on new features (next month though…).

So to start off with is something that I’ve been itching to add ever since ‘Rescue Me’ was added to the game, the ‘swarm’ element. See throughout the game there area a few enemies that are swarms (swarm of bees, hopping piranhas, and crowd of fans) which does raise certain logistical issues when you consider that you can wipe them out with a single sword slash if you get strong enough. Though it’d be quite a massive undertaking to limit what single target attacks could do against these swarm enemies while also maintaining a balance that doesn’t make them impossible to defeat, approaching it from the other end of making attacks that hit ALL enemies be more effective against swarm enemies is MUCH easier to implement. As such I plan to try to finally get around to making it so that your AoE magics (and I guess the 2 techniques as well) deal more damage against these swarm enemies than a single target attack of the same value. Due to how RPG Maker VX Ace doesn’t really allow for dual-element abilities, I’ll have to go in and manually add this into the game’s code which isn’t hard, but it does mean that I won’t be able to really give the player direct feedback that their ability did extra damage for hitting a swarm. We might also give some other enemies minor weakness to AoE attacks even if they aren’t swarms, but we’ll apply that on an ‘as needed’ basis, and it will be a lot less than full on swarms. Still, keep your eye out for higher than average numbers due to this new ‘swarm’ element!

Beyond that and general enemy design though, the biggest thing that’s really been eating at me for this month is the wiki. As I’m sure any of you who use it regularly have probably noticed, it’s fallen a bit out of date as of late. While I have recently gone through and updated the updates needed page both for myself and anyone else who might be interested in earning the special wiki code, it’ll probably be awhile before I can comfortably say that the wiki is really up to date like it used to be. This is something that I’ve been meaning to correct for quite some time but it seems a lot harder than I’d like to find the time to really dedicate to writing out a new ‘optimized’ walkthrough than it was in the past. If anyone wants to help with getting the wiki up to date it would be greatly appreciated but this is more meant to apologize to those who rely on the wiki for their planning about how much I’ve let it fall behind. I’m doing my best to try to take care of it one piece at a time, but it’ll still probably be awhile before I can comfortably say the wiki is caught up with the game.

That’s really all that I’ve got to say in regards for this release. Now if you excuse me I’ve got some enemies to get back to designing!

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Stay on Target… Stay on Target!

Everything is on track for Alina’s love quest to be finished in time for the backer mini-release, although it probably won’t have a lot of testing done on by then. Still, if you want to access the love quest early, please consider supporting our Patreon to get in!

Other than that, there isn’t a lot to say this week. We’re all working hard to get more content done for HC, but most of what we’re getting done is pretty boring. No new mechanics, the art is still top secret, etc. So… have a great week!

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Plans for v0.30

Wow, I’m sleepy today. But despite that, I’m here working hard for you guys. So let’s talk about what the goals are for next release!

Priority one at the moment is Alina’s Love Quest. I’m not going to spoil anything for you guys, but I think it’ll be a worthy LQ. Although, because of it I’ll probably end up with a massive flood of “Why can’t I fuck XXXXX?” emails in my inbox.

But, you guys knew that was coming already. Alina won the Iron Waifu tournament last May, after all.

Our next big project is the redesign and update of the Northmarket Manor. The plan is to have it be more compact and easier to navigate, making it much quicker to fine who you want to find and get back to questing ASAP. We’re also going to be implementing more decorations- as some of you ma have noted, you get an Adventurer’s Guild banner to hang in your office after becoming a Banneret, and we’re introducing more stuff like that for you to customize your home with.

While we’re focusing on the manor redesign in place of a second quest, it probably won’t take as much time as quest design. So, we’re tuning up a number of other things- Nerys’ chat responses, Alina’s chat responses, adding dialogue and things to do to the vacation sequence, adding more guests to Doralice’s party, that sort of thing.

And if everything goes greta and we’re all super-productive, maybe we’ll finally get around to finishing Blow Job.

As for everyone else, Conash will be working very closely with me on the new content, so he’s not likely to be doing anythiing else. Kumiho, as well, will be make some unique furniture assets for the new manor, and maybe grinding out some more icons. SacB0y is working on the sex scene for Alina’s love quest, and following that he’ll be revising Alina’s very first sex scene.

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to it, but thank you all for your continued support and I look forward to sharing the new release with everyone!

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Harem Collector v0.29.6 is available!

Hey everyone! It’s time for the latest Harem Collector Public Release!

You can find it here!

Also, please consider participating in this year’s Halloween Cosplay Poll!

The 0.29 public release includes:

-The second half of ‘Cannibal Corps’ and Nerys’s love quest. Check out Eastfort and the elf village respectively to try them out!
-Two new collectables spread across the game, ‘Awiiabu’ toys that can be bought at Westcastle and CDs which you can buy both them and the CD players at Northmarket.
-Nerys’s on-demand, Day-end, Vacation, and Love Quest scenes are added, all drawn by SacB0y!
-A bunch of new status icons done by Kumiho!
-In battle, element icons will appear next to damage values to help make it clearer what type of damage is done
-A new ‘Battle Log’ option from the party action menu that lets you see everything that’s happened in the battle so far
-New shortcuts to help speed up battle, when selecting someone’s action hit ‘A’ for attack, ‘S’ to bring up a skill menu, and ‘D’ for guard. A new Help file has been included with the game to explain these and how to setup the Item menu shortcut.
-Both Heretical Censure and Beckon Mana have been revamped a bit. Heretical Censure no longer does MP damage but has a higher chance of inflicting Censure, Beckon Mana no longer inflicts Censure but makes the target weaker to all magical attacks instead.

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Backer Release and Boring Scripting Talk

Hey everyone, Conash here! First, backers should expect the backer release this evening. While we’re working to limit the amount of things that are put off until the public release, we’ve still got to finish up a few things. That said, this release should be relatively bug light all things considered so look forward to it! With that out of the way time for me to talk about the scripting stuff I’ve been doing recently!

First, I should probably open with the CD player. While procrastination has left it so that I won’t have it ready for the backer release, I am looking to have it ready for the public release. The CD player is something that players will buy in a store and then put in the various music discs in the game inside it, from there you can interact with it to open a list of the CDs you’ve put in it and select which one to play. We’ll have it so that it will remember your selection and start up every time you enter the house, best part is that you’ll be able to select a different track for each of your houses for a bit more customization. I plan to also display some info about the music in the menu such as who composed it, how long it runs, maybe the dungeons/quests it’s used for… But I’ll be honest here I’m not entirely sure what sort of information you would want on this kind of thing. I’m not big into music so if any of you have some suggestions as to what information you’d want on the CDs in the CD player menu please let me know!

Next a few weeks ago I talked about combat updates. Well I’ve gotten that more or less sorted out though I might try to fit a bit more in before the public release, but I’d rather not risk bugging out the backer release by working on it further. So far, we’ve got it to display the element icon next to damage if there is one to display, so that you have a better indication what kind of damage you’re doing/taking. Instead of adding in a battle log with custom speed I found a script that just lets you open the battle log to go through it entirely which I imagine will be more useful and help prevent battle from slowing down a lot so that you can see that one thing you’d otherwise miss. I also sped up Elaiya’s attack animations since they were kind of laggy. Finally, I threw in some action shortcuts so that when you’re choosing an action you can hit ‘A’ for attack, ‘S‘ for skills (for characters like Felix, Therese, and Yamamaya who have two skill windows you can press it again to toggle between the two), and ‘D‘ for guard which should hopefully help speed up battles some. I did set up a shortcut for the item menu, but due to how RPG Maker is setup the only shortcut that I really use isn’t properly setup so I plan to include a little text file on the existing shortcuts, various menu shortcuts, and how to set up the item shortcut with the game going forward. That’s all that I’ve really gotten done in regard to combat updates so far, not sure when I’ll be able to finish up the last bits of it.

Beyond that, the only scripting stuff I’ve done has been some custom enemy behavior (some of which may result in future enemies drop random items instead of up to three kinds of items only) and various behind the scenes stuff to get the Awiiabu quest working in a way that wouldn’t become a nightmare worse than the Manor Invasion for NM. Nothing that I should take a lot of time talking about either due to it being a surprise or how it doesn’t impact you directly. Anyway, that about wraps up this blog post, hope you all have a great day and are looking forward to the upcoming backer and/or public releases!

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Awiiabus and Halloween

Hey everyone! I’m sorry for this blog post being a bit late today, but I want to prioritize getting the first test version finished before writing this. Because of this and that I didn’t end up getting to work until 2pm today, but I finished what I needed to do, and now on with the blog!

So, in the next update, you’re going to have the option of collecting little figurines called Awiiabu for one of Serade’s kids as an additional way of unlocking rewards. These Awiiabu can be found… pretty much anywhere. I guess there are a lot of holes in people’s backpacks in the Middle Kingdom? We’ve scattered the first two-thirds of them throughout the game, saving the last few to be placed in new content as it comes out. But if you don’t want want to restart the game to collect them all, don’t despair! Like every collectible known to man, any Awiiabu you miss the first time around can be found on the secondary market… or an appropriately extortionate price, of course.

And what sort of things will these wonderful little collectibles grant you? New items, new equipment, but yeah, pretty much every update has that sort of thing. But I know what you’re really after. I can see it in your eyes. But I promise you, it will happen.

After a certain number of Awiiabu are collected, Serade will be grateful enough to give you… stat increases.

Anyway, August’s Poll of the Month in the forums will be the Halloween cosplay poll, so make sure you check in to let your opinion be heard. Nekochan wants a bit of extra time this year to get everything done, so we’re doing the poll a month earlier than usual. We’ve shortlisted some strong picks, though, so I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks!