Release Dates

Sorry I’ve been incommunicado since last Wednesday. I’ve been busy and haven’t had a lot of time to work on the game.

Anyway, just wanted to announce that I’m deciding to roll out a new version of Harem Collector in the coming weeks.

Testing Week starts September 24th
Backer Release is October 1st
Public release is October 8th

I’m cutting Doll’s love quest and the elf village out for now, because Meline’s love quest ended up taking four times the amount of time I’d initially budgeted for it and I want to do a release sooner rather than later. Hopefully, following this release, I’ll be able to get on that two-month schedule I talked about holy shit last May.

Oedipus Excuse

So, I’m still chipping away at Meline’s Quest. I’m about three days behind where I want to be at this point. I lost one day to a massive spam attack on the forums, one day because a bit of code turned out to be more complicated than I realized, and another because I needed a break and worked on some other features of the game. It’s pretty much the home stretch though, shouldn’t be more than a day or two.

While writing dialogue a Monday, I had something of a “Eureka!” moment. Meline and the Hero were discussing their parents. Now, I had known for awhile what their backstory was- Father was a travelling bard and adventurer, a lover-in-every-port type who floated in and out of their lives, while Mother was a hard-working baker and businesswoman who pulled herself out of the slums and made a name for herself. Dad stopped showing up when the kids stopped being cute enough to fuss over, while Mom died of some nonspecific anime disease when the kids were 14/18.

It occurred to me that this actually fit with their behaviour. The Hero idolizes his father enough that he, too, wanted to become a debauched adventurer. At the same time, he did not like how his father was never around. This is how the Hero glommed on to the idea of having harem- it lets you have a wide variety of lovers while still being a part of their lives. Meline was also influenced by this aspect of her family life- but without her Dad around, and seeing her Mom die when she was so young, Meline’s reaction was to become very attached to the one family member she had left.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Back to work!

Progress Quest

Work is proceeding, albeit somewhat slowly. I’m still working on Harem Collector at least a little bit every day, thought sometimes progress can get a bit rocky. One method I’m using that seems to work, is that whenever I hit a wall on creative/design stuff, I try to find something mundane and repetitive to work on. For example, yesterday, when I started losing steam at the end of the day, I began catching up on the shovel’s functionality. Several hours of work later (hard to say how much exactly because I had to stop and make dinner and spend time with the wife, but more than two), a job that’s been sitting on the back burner for months is all done. Yay!

I want to get Meline’s Love Quest done by the end of the week. It’s about 66% complete at the moment, and just needs some dialogue, a boss fight, I have to place encounters and treasures on the map, and then I have to calculate how much experience the quest will give out (For now, as I’ve said elsewhere the balance/rewards of the Love Quests will probably change radically when the game gets the big final rebalance).

before the next release, I want to get a few more things done. Doll’s Love Quest, a smaller side quest (about the same level of complexity as, say, Every Day I’m Smugglin’ or The Pusher’s Lament) and the Elf Village/first elf plotline quest will be done before the game releases. I am also hoping that I can find time to improve the Lumberhill zombie attack sequence, extend Elaiya’s love quest (it works just fine, but it is awfully short and deserves more), and make better endings for both the Virgin Gynocides quest and the It Came From Below the Equator quest. I will only proceed on those “extra” things if I feel confident I can deliver all that in a timely fashion.

Little bits that need doing: adding a relationship track for the Blacksmith, write more party banter, add more roaming encounters to the world map, continue filling in the various towns, finish the functionality of the Stats and Collectibles book. These things might get picked away at if I feel I need a change of pace.

As for the future, I want to have all party members in the game by the end of the year, including the quest that finally gets Kyrie into your harem, the quest that wakes Gargan up. I’m also going to be giving the manor a makeover in that time- basically a similar treatment to what I’m already doing to many of the town maps in the game. Hopefully I can make the manor feel as large and luxurious while making the maps more focused.

Anyway, I’m off to continue work for today. Let me know what you think in the comments, on the forum or wherevs. You know what to do.

Under the Knife Again

Nekochan is back in surgery tomorrow. She took a sudden turn for the worse last week, and now has to have her retina put back in place.

Yup, that’s about all I have energy for today.

Picking Up the Pieces

So, good news! Nekochan has been given the all-clear to go back to work and do more stuff around the house. She no longer requires constant care, although there are some restrictions on the physical activities she can do (thank god for hentai) and she does have a “trauma cataract” that will be removed in a few months when she’s 100% recovered from the retinal rupture surgery.

I’m hoping there will only be the three week delay on Harem Collector, but at this point I’m not putting my chips down. I don’t know when the next release will be, but I’m going to make sure there is a nice, big, meaty chunk of content for everyone to sink their teeth into. I’m talking new characters, new quests, new investments, new towns, LOTS of new hentai, the works.

As always, I’ll keep everyone posted here, and I’ll start tweetering again as soon as I have a full workday to tweet about. Adios!

Volunteer Appreciation Month: MagicWhiteLady, Boinky, and Scrambler

So, today’s entry is about art. Artists. People who create pleasing shapes in a visual medium.

Boinky is the creator of the sweet title page in Harem Collector. That’s the official-type Harem Collector logo, too. We have a whole deal thing.

Scrambler occasionally sends me little item sprites. I was surprised to find that I haven’t credited him properly yet, despite the fact that his rusty sword icon has been in use for awhile. Well, it’s in there now.

I know a lot of people are tired of waiting for the next update to Harem Collector: Fairy Side, but please remember- MagicWhiteLady does a lot of work for Bad Kitty Games. She does sprite and face work for Harem Collector, designs new stuff for the website, and is working on art for merch. That’s a lot, when both of us can really only work part time. On top of that, she, well… she explains it herself here. So, even if Fairy Side isn’t your thing, don’t be afraid to slide her a donation just to support her work for regular Harem Collector.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’m exhausted as hell today, for some reason. Well, time to work.

Volunteer Appreciation Month: Kakurine, Daishi, and Eight88

This post will probably be a lot shorter than last week- it’s not that these folks aren’t awesome, but I’ve worked with each of them a hell of a lot less than I have Gurotaku.

Kakurine, Daishi and Eight88 comprise the “writing volunteers” for Harem Collector. They write a lot of the sex scenes- not the majority, I don’t think (there’s still a lot of my writing in there) but a big chunk of them, and especially newer stuff.

Some of you longtime fans might remember that my sex scenes were originally… less than stellar. You see, writing sex scenes takes a huge chunk of time, and at the beginning of Harem Collector development I was more focused on all the cool stuff I wanted to do. While I’m not as bad at writing porn as I am at 3D posing, it will still take half a day for me to scribble out one scene (before editing). In contrast, I can get a lot of actual game making done in that time. So, when people started volunteering their time to write sex scenes for me, I started paying attention.

Daishi and his co-conspirator Eight88 were the first writers I welcomed on board. They worked on scenes together, and were responsible for Doll’s gangbang scene (“Unwanted Blessings”) and Yamamaya’s first consensual scene (“Mating Season”), among others. Unfortunately, after awhile they disappeared from the internet. Recently Daishi has gotten back in touch, but Kakurine has stayed on top of all the new stuff so I haven’t needed anyone else. Sorry, dude. Anyway, regardless of the fact that they’re not actively helping the project now, Daishi and Eight88 were a huge benefit back in the day and deserve their props.

Kakurine is the current sex scene writer for Harem Collector, and damn. She’s fast, she’s exciting and she needs very little editing once I get some text back. She’s responsible for the rewrite of Elaiya’s first scene (“Let’s Make a Deal”) and pretty much all of the most recent content including “Two’s Company, Four’s a Party” and the double-secret bonus not-sex scene, among others. She has also refused any share of the backer donations, instead wanting to cameo in the game as a harem girl. So look for that in the future.

Anyway, if you’d like, post some thanks and good wishes for these awesome sex scene writers, and I’ll see you next week!

July Release Goals

Haven’t done one of these in awhile.

I’m usually pretty cavalier about planning for Harem Collector. That why so many suggestions from you guys have made it into the game- I didn’t have a plan to stick to, so putting whatever demented ideas I happened to like in the game was easy. But as time winds on and the game gets tighter and more focused, this becomes less and less possible and the more I find myself needing structure.

So, my plan for July is to have the entire first act of the game wrapped up and done. Then, over the next year, I’ll proceed wrap up the game entirely, entering post-production sometime around summer 2015. Post-production will consist of perfecting the balance of the game, tracking down any remaining bugs, that sort of thing. There will be some sort of big thank-you for everyone who’s supported the game, myself and the company, as well as (I hope) a special collector’s edition with a hard copy of the game and some fun extras.

But that’s all waaaay in the future, yes? What about what’s coming up right now, in July?

Well, like I said- act 1 will be complete. That includes the redesign of both the Eastfort Military District and including the as-yet-unseen civilian district. The Southport University and Lumberhill are both also due for redesigns. The towns will be filled in with all sorts of stuff you can explore and invest in. Finally, the event that triggers the start of Act 2 will be available.

I’m also going to work up some random encounters. Not random encounters in the sense of most JRPGs, but more like the sort of thing that would happen in tabletop play. Should be fun.

Virgin Gynocides Fixed, Maybe?

Hey, got my first piece of fanmail from China today. Well, maybe not fanmail- they were reporting bugs from a version of the game from last September’s version. Still, HC has made it to central Asia!

Anyway, just wanted to quickly brag, and also let you all know that the Virgin Gynocides problem has been fixed, I think. At least, I tested it and it seems to work.
Get the new version at the usual place: Here

Harem Collector Public Release is Here!!!

Find it here.

Aw man, that feels so good to say- the first public release since February. This has been a long time coming, but thank you for your patience.

Changes in this version:

-Elaiya’s Love Quest is fully implemented.

-There is now a 25% chance of rain (What do you expect? The country is stuck between the ocean and a mountain range. Northmarket, Eastfort, and Westcastle may as well be Seattle, Vancover and Victoria.) You can also make an offering at a shrine in the Slums to guarantee a rainy day the next day, though. Some stuff changes in the rain- but its not fully implemented yet.

-The Book of Murderation in the Manor’s study now tracks your kill counts by species. By the way, this isn’t backwards compatible- if you want it to reflect your whole playthrough, you’ll need to do another full playthrough. Sorry.

-I’m excited to announce the debut of Kakurine, our new writer helper! Kakurine has re-written the initial Elaiya sex scene “Let’s Make a Deal”, plus most of the new sex scenes appearing in this version.

-Speaking of which, there is a new random scene featuring Lilac, Doll and Chimei, plus an additional bonus scene featuring a mystery girl!

-I’ve messed around with Elaiya’s stats to make her less OP.

-Also, there are more bug fixes and such, as usual.