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Hey all, just thought I’d drop a little teaser here.
Check out Penelope, sporting her new look that will be in the May release:
Everyone’s first or third favourite maid, Randi:
And Larelle, who will be introduced to you in the new update:
See you next week!
Game Update
The undead quest is divided into about three sections. Part one involves repelling a zombie invasion from Lumberhill. Part two involves a more or less normal dungeon crawl. Part three is a logic puzzle right before the boss fight. I’m almost finished part one, which probably represents 60-70% of the total work.
Seriously. The zombie attack is probably the single most programming-intensive series of events I’ve put in the game yet. I hope after all that effort that it ends up being fun and challenging rather than frustrating, but at the very least it should be unique. And if it turns out that there aren’t any bugs, it will be some kind of hentai gaming miracle.
Of course it doesn’t help that I worked on it all week, realized that there was a far easier way to do it, and then re-doing it all last night. Of the thirteen combats, it took me all week to do four of them, then I managed to re-do those four and finish it off just last night in probably about four hours’ work.
The logic puzzle is about 50% finished, and dungeons are pretty easy. I’ll probably polish those off tonight, and then take the week to do internal testing (ie, getting Nekochan to do it) and adding more widgets, like shops and things. I haven’t added the bulk purchase option to all the stores yet, so I’ll probably do a lot of that too.
So, in other words, things are on time, even a little ahead. If I’m fortunate enough to receive 3DCG soon, I’ll have lots of time to figure it out and plug some CGs in for the release next week.
Something donors should note- your week-in-advance downloads won’t actually kick in until the June release. I promised everyone that the May release will be available next week, and I’m going to hold to that. The Player’s Guide is coming along nicely, though, and of course you’ll get the in-game credit.
Hmm… I think that’s basically it. Now, I’ve been posed a lot of questions deserving of more extended answers, so that’s why I’m doing another mailbag so soon after the first one. Also, it’s easier than making up content by myself. On with the mail!
Q: Is the game going to have a definitive ending? As in “The End”, game over? Or is it going to remain playable after all the content is finished? -Rose Flutterby
Probably not. There might be some kind of scene upon getting all 151 harem girls, but beyond that, no. There might even be some kind of post-game content, depending on how I feel once it’s all done. However, I have mentioned before that there will be questlines, and each of those will basically constitute a plot arc unto themselves.
There might even be more than one “ending”. I’ve been tossing around the idea of breaking up the game into six episodes, one for each continent, since they’re so self-contained. This would have the additional advantage of letting Nekochan and I do other projects between each episode. For instance, there are several other franchises I would love to do hentai parodies of. I also figured out how to use a numeric code to pass important information between each game, so you can carry over certain decisions between each game. It would also let me trim the cast between episodes. But, I originally started this project to be a single game, and there are many unexplored possibilities for each continent’s content to “mix”.
Q: Is there a reason the towns are so big? -Idan Erlichman
The technical term is called “design space”, but that basically means, I want room to drop things in when I need them. If I run out of things to need space for, I’ll just shrink the maps. But I’m always thinking of little bits to drop in, like the drug dealer in Eastfort or the sausage seller in Northmarket. Besides, not every dungeon can take place in a cave or a sewer, and towns provide a lot of opportunity for interesting things to happen.
Q: What ages are the characters? -paraphrased from Lamekill
Here is my official CYA statement on the current characters who have sex scenes:
The Hero- 22
Meline- 18
Therese- 24
Elaiya- 27
Doll- Unknown, but over 18
Yamamaya- 21
Larelle- 19
Alina- 21
Florine- 20
Violet and Lilac- 19
Randi- 23
Penelope- 18
The Item Shop Girl- 31
Anyway, see you next week for the release!
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.
Thanks to dedicated fan darkdeamon providing the critical clue I needed for my Dr. House-type realization, the To Catch a Predator event has been fixed and now should function as intended (I hope).
In other news, I’m very pleased to hear that some people are trying out the shovel and looking for buried treasure. Nobody mentioned it at all, so I was wondering if it was wasted effort.
Anyway, link: http://www.mediafire.com/?h13e181zm0ocq2e
In the version above, the problems with the bounty hunter quest should be fixed. I haven’t found the source of the bug concerning the “To Catch a Predator” event, but I’m done a quick fix that should stop the event from appearing for people who import their save to the new version.
I’m actually really concerned about the “To Catch a Predator” bug, because if the bug that’s causing the game over to cue up is a repeating event, then anyone’s game can become completely unplayable at any time. All information on what you were doing before the problem occurred is helpful- there’s no such thing as too much detail here.
Bug testing is ongoing, and as always I’ll keep all y’all updated as I figure things out.
Ugh, I got nowhere near enough done for this release. But, you guys have been really supportive of all this, so here I bring you the changes:
-The hero’s default name now picks out of a random list. “Ferdinand” was never meant to be the guy’s actual name, and was just a shout out to the most awesome Heartache 101 which is well worth your time to check out even if it doesn’t have any H.
-Certain names you can apply to the hero and Doll now have in-game effects. Good luck finding them all.
-A chest near the starting point lets you “test for content” or “test for balance”. Testing for content gives you a huge pile of money in the form of vendor trash, as well as items that let you advance time at will and full restore your party between battles.
-Certain location and character names have been changed. Amelia has been changed to Meline, so as to avoid confusion with Alina. The cities have been changed to Northmarket, Eastfort, Westcastle, Lumberhill and Southport, because I’m creative.
-While the Undead Assault quest remains unfinished, you can now visit the city in quest and see the pre-zombie assault version of it.
-There are two new harem girls to enslave, with ensuing sex scenes.
-Doll and Yamamaya now have completed relationship tracks.
-In Eastfort you can now purchase a condo for yourself to stay in while adventuring on the eastern side of the map. Also, the stables are now fully implemented and you can enjoy fast-traveling at need between Eastfort and Northmarket. And I just realized I forgot to remove that feature when doing the clock shop quest, so now you can cheat on that in case you’re allergic to XP.
-You can also purchase an additional storefront in Eastfort for Florine to expand her enterprise into.
-A whole pile of other, little things that you may or may not discover.
A number of things from my to-do list are incomplete. There is no hidden dungeon yet, by the way, so don’t bother looking.
Using the time turner will let you see the ragged edges of the game, which I have yet to expand into. So be aware there might be any number of strange bugs that come from advancing time so much.
Oh yeah, and if you don’t have it already, you’ll want to grab the run time package for RPG Maker VX Ace
The next update is scheduled for May 15th, so please be patient and stay tuned for more quests, girls, and goodness.
The next release of Harem Collector will be delayed until the 24th. IRL has been running roughshod on me right now, as I’m sure the college students among you will understand. As I mentioned before, I attend college part-time on top of a full-time job, and all my free time has been spent on preparing for my exam and finishing my last course. The last straw was having my exam scheduled on the day I initially wanted to release- there was no way I could put the polish on a new release while studying.
However, this won’t mean that the May release will be pushed back- so hopefully from here on I’ll be able to stick with my “first Wednesday after the 15th” release plan.
TMy primary focus when I have has time to work on the game as been the Undead Assault quest. This quest will be far more involved than the Clock Shop quest, and I’m considering increasing the quest reward money. Expect an experience more on par with the Blacksmith Quest in terms of pure content.
The Undead Assault quest will also have the hero use his dungeon for the first time ever. Which, I’m happy to say, is much more interesting writing than the more vanilla sex scenes I’ve done so far.
Each dungeon character will present a choice, one of three options. The slave collars are 100% effective (on humans, at least), but how much of a given slave’s mind remains their own is inversely proportional to the resistance they offer to being a slave. Basically, a character who very strongly doesn’t want to be your slave and offers a great deal of resistance will be completely broken by the collars, becoming something just above a mindless drone, completely obedient but unable to make decisions for themselves.
When you encounter such a character, you have three options on how to deal with them. One is to pop the slave collar on anyway and assuming total control of the character in question. This offers unique scenes and lets you benefit from the character immediately, but locks off the relationship track and any associated sidequests. Option two is to break them the old-fashioned away, sexually torturing them until they ask to be collared. With this option the character in question keeps their individuality and volition, the relationship track is available, but it takes awhile to torture a character until they break. Each character will also have preferences when it comes to torture- some respond better to humiliation, others to pain, and on top of that there are Satisfaction bonuses to be had by trying different options each time.
As a distant third option, you may still give gifts to your prisoners and earn their affection that way, but come on- if you wanted to play one of those squishy feeling hentai games, you wouldn’t be here.
In case you missed it, here’s the latest version with the fixed starting position
Okay, so what’s going to be new in the April version? Here are a few of my goals:
-The Undead Assault quest should be complete. That’s my #1 priority when it comes to quest building.
-There will be a new quest available in the Thriex Adventurer’s Guild
-The final quest that you receive when romancing Penelope
-A funny little quest that will automatically be activated based on your household income, if I have time.
-Continue filling out empty town space
-Finish the relationship tracks for Yamamaya, Lilac, Violet and Doll.
-Finally implement Therese’s return
-Fix the aesthetics of play. What I mean by this, is to go back and ensure that for all similar sort of events, the sound effects and positioning and such is the same. For example, making all Tutorial dialogue boxes appear in the middle of the screen, making sure all shops display your current Sil when you go to purchase something, etc.
-Add a multiple purchase interface to all the shops. I know the way I’m doing shops is weird and that only using the default shop interface would be easier, but I like the way I’m doing it, and I think it has a lot more character. A few people have requested an option to buy multiples of things that you would want to buy in bulk, like potions, and so I’m making it a goal to provide exactly that.
-Add a hidden dungeon I concepted a few weeks ago. It would just be a fun little challenge dungeon, not attached to any quests, but with some kind of sweet reward at the bottom.
-Add a monument or something to credit all the amazingly patient bugfinders who have contributed to making Harem Collector the best it can be.
-Maybe I’ll bow to public pressure and segment the city maps.
Just thought you’d all like to know where I’m at in terms of design. There will be more time between the March and April releases than there will the first release and March, so I intend to make the most of the time and deliver an exciting new release on the 17th.
http://www.mediafire.com/?86j9ape96agdvl0 <- Latest version with the start square in the right place.
BTW: It’s highly recommended that you don’t import saves from the old version to this one. Too many fundamental things have changed in the game’s archive.
So, what’s new? Well…
-Bitch’s Sixth Tit microbrewery investment is fixed
-A new party NPC
-Three new sex scenes
-The blacksmith-related “A Forge Too Far” quest is fully complete
-The Adventurer’s Guild quest “Check Out My Package” quest is fully complete
-Grab your shovels because now you can dig for buried treasure!
-Fingers feeling cramped? Not anymore! Dashing has been disabled in favour of raising the main character’s walk speed.
-Satisfaction Book is about 95% complete. The only thing left to do is make the Instant Gratification menu context sensitive.
-A ton of new shops and investment opportunities
-A heaping pile of squashed bugs
Oh yeah, and if you don’t have it already, you’ll want to grab the run time package for RPG Maker VX Ace
The next update is scheduled for April 17th, so stay tuned for more Harem Collector goodness.
I just finished the blacksmith quest! Spent about two hours last night implementing a five-minute long love letter to one of my favourite games as part of that quest… it’s awesome, you’ll find out on Friday, etc.
Yeah, things look like they’re on track for Friday. the blacksmith quest is done, the weapon upgrade process is implemented, and that’s all done and set to go. I’m going to spend most of tonight putting together the Thriex delivery quest, which is fairly straightforward compared to the blacksmith thing.
However, there are two big jobs I need to complete that are going to drive me crazy. One is the relationship systems. Each girl requires a lot of writing to get this done, and it’s a pain to have to write for like five girls at once. Hopefully, it’ll be easier when I’m implementing one or two girls at a time.
The other thing is that I realized I want is that there should be a sound effect when you get the relationship up message when you give a girl a gift. It’s just copy and pasting a sound effect step into every girl’s gift process, but I have to go and do this twelve times for every girl I’ve already completed. So, yeah, that’ll be a good hour of work.
Anyway, keep in touch guys. I kind of want to do a “mail bag” Q&A type entry at some point, so please email me at nomoshingsgames@gmail.com, post a comment, or drop me a line on the Hentai High forums, so I can answer your questions!