“I’ll Do My Best, Master!”

First off, thank you to everyone who expressed their support and sent offers of help last week. I’m glad that the response was so overwhelmingly positive, although I don’t really want to have similar blog posts in the future. MWL and I now have a tentative plan so it’ll be easier to make progress on the game and move past this difficult time.

So, today we’re going to talk about Elaiya.

I’ve been planning Elaiya’s Love Quest for awhile now- she, along with Doll, were the two characters whose Love Quests were fundamental and I had elements of the quests in mind from the beginning. It’s going to be interesting when the next release happens and you can compare Meline’s quest to Elaiya’s because Meline was never intended to have a quest to begin with. Newer fans might not be able to recall, but back in the day when Meline reached 101 Relationship points, you just received the reward right there.

 Anyway, I have the plans, and it’s going to be the most complex Love Quest available. There are branching bits in case you’ve met certain NPCs, the dungeon is going to be non-linear, and there will be two boss fights, one of which will be a solo duel with just Elaiya. The duel will allow Elaiya to use her “Stealth” Technique to take cover and avoid being hit.

So, I’m looking forward to getting you guys this quest and being able to explore Elaiya’s back story and experience some new challenges.

With regard to balancing Elaiya, well, she’s gonna get nerfed. Not right away. But eventually her “thing” will be to have medium damage but a higher critical rate, and her signature skill Barrage (and, eventually, Improved Barrage) are going to be about making more attacks to roll the dice on more criticals. Plus, a bit more damage from those extra attacks in a turn.

Meline’s Quest is coming along, but it needed a lot of art (sprites, faces and CGs!) done and is waiting on that.

Anyway, figured you could use an update on where I was on that stuff, I might have to cut Diadira from the April release, but I’m hoping to have these two quests done.

Website Launch and Harem Collector February Release!

Check out our website and get the latest version of Harem Collector!

The hard work of weeks and weeks finally pays off!

New Stuff in February Version of Harem Collector

-The Southport Docks can now be entered (though there isn’t a lot there yet) and there is a new quest waiting for you at the Southport Adventurer’s Guild.
-The Northmarket Slums have been redesigned.
-There are now at least 20 Dark Seeds in the game and a corresponding Dark Seed reward.
-There are two alchemists in the Westcastle Alchemist Guild for you to invest in and reap the rewards from. Note: The related quest “Hero Baker and the Philosopher’s Stone” cannot be completed yet!
-A, S and D can now be used to set your speed directly, without using the shift key.
-The CTRL key can now be used to auto-forward text.
-There is a new random sex scene that features Randi, which will trigger if you complete a quest in the Eastfort area.
-Serade and Gargan now have CGS for their scenes!
 -The Carriage Hire was re-added to the Northmarket Wealthy District
-You can now sell armour! And use the Harem/Followers menu without crashing the game!
-Menu healing has been re-enabled, and you can only use menu skills from people in your active party!
-Luck and Agility buffs and debuffs now also affect your evasion, hit rate, critical chance and critical evade!
-A mysterious new place, the Village of Huntervale, can now be visited!
-Raina will now be present in your manor after the Journeyman party, and can fight alongside you and be gifted! (Note: In order to have her in your party, you cannot use a save made after the Journeyman ceremony).
 

The Monster Girl Situation

So, I frequently get questions about what monster girls will make it into Harem Collector. I often respond with “maybe” or “wait and see” but here’s the thing- I’m not interested in the vast, vast majority of monster girls, from the encyclopedia or elsewhere. But hey, some of them are nice, and I’ve already said that there will be a slime girl at point.

There are many problems with implementing monster girls, though- they need to exist as 3DCG mods, and I need to find or commission a sprite to match. Because of this, I’m not going to be going the extra mile to put a given monster girl in the game unless I feel very motivated. Very little of this applies to Fairy Side, though, MagicWhiteLady might have her own priorities.

So, let’s run down- I’ll list off the primary monster girl varieties and tell you the chances that they’re going to appear in a Harem Collector game. If I don’t mention one here, the answer is probably “I don’t care one way or another, so my apathy probably means no”. If there’s something specific you’d like to inquire about, stick it in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

Alraune, Mandragora, etc: I don’t plan to. I don’t have anything against alraune but if I’m going to put a plant-girl-type in the game, it’s probably going to be a dryad and pass on the predatory aspect of the alraune.

Interestingly, the Monster Girl Encyclopedia wiki describes the alraune’s  disposition as “voluptuous”. I’m not certain if it’s “voluptuous” or “disposition” that’s the problem, but one those words doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Arache, Driders, etc.: I have a theory: Anyone who thinks that spider/girl hybrids are hot were actually born on Antarctica and have never seen an actual spider. Like, god damn. They’re literally the single most alien, horrific things ever  and some guys want to put their dicks in one, as long as it has tits. I mean, look:

Every time I see this, I throw up in my mouth a little.

Cancer: Ugh, no. A girl shaped like a tumour? Forget it, I mean, how insensi-

Oh. OH. It’s a crab.

…No.

Centaurs: Hmm, maybe. One of my earliest video game crushes was May from Shining Force 2. The question then becomes, would the girl’s pussy be in an anatomically correct position for a girl, or a horse? Probably the former, but I might change my mind. So, there will probably be a female centaur at some point, but not in the first installment of the series. Also, the chances of a centaur being in Project Norn are high.

Classic Elementals: Elementals were in the “no” zone for awhile. Slyphs and Nereids are covered by the Monster Girl Encyclopedia already, so there’s not much to say there except that they can be hot. It’s also not hard to think of a sexy fire elemental without it being a salamander or dragon or whatever.

The problem arises because you need the complete set. I want to put a set of classic sexy elementals in Harem Collector. However, the question is how to do a cute earth elemental, without being lazy doing the “plants = earth” thing. Dirt and rocks, however, aren’t terribly sexy. Or even feminine.

The solution I came up with? Gems and precious stones. Observe:

Pic courtesy of MagicWhiteLady. Hopefully that makes up for the earlier disturbing spider pic.

Demons: The Monster Girl Encyclopedia lists a number of different demon girls, with varying degrees of sexiness. If you read the lore in-game, there will obviously be demon girls of several varieties. Some of the demons are dudes though- and I know that’s mostly been what’s in the game so far. But there will be demon girls, and even in the first installment, too.

Dragons: Dragons will play a large role in Harem Collector, but I don’t know how likely they are to show up as sexy girl dragons. If I feel like it, one or two might show up in later installments of the series, but it’s not a priority.

Dryads: The chances of a Dryad showing up at some point in Harem Collector and Project Norn both are very high. I don’t have any plans at the moment, but I like Dryads, they’re sexy tree ladies, and that’s awesome.

Dullahan: I don’t see the appeal in having sex with a headless girl. So, no. Which is too bad, I can’t imagine it would that hard to implement in 3DCG given the number of guro mods.

Fairies: As you can tell from Fairy Side, the fae are going to play a big role in the setting. In terms of actual small pixie-type creatures, my main problem is the limited possibilities. Your basically have the pixie giving the Hero’s dick a full-body massage sort of thing, or bukkake.

Gazebo: YES. HELL YES. There will a gazebo girl at some point, and it’ll be AWESOME.

Ghost: I’ve said there will be a ghost girl in the game at some point, and that point is soon.

Goblin: I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do concerning goblins. I’m definitely going to stick to my policy of no loli and nothing that can be construed as loli, and that might reduce the appeal for some guys. So, this one is a “maybe”.

Golem: Depending on what part of “golem” is important to you, there may already be something in the works to satisfy you. There will be “artificially creature girls that you can also fuck” but I don’t know about anything more true to the actual golem legend, or the Monster Girl Encyclopedia version.

Harpy: They might appear as monsters, but probably not as harem girls. Those bird legs and wings instead of arms kind of weird me out.

Kitsune: Very likely. I don’t have any plans as of yet, but they’ll probably appear in part 2.

Lamia, Snake-girls, etc:  Even as I was about to say “not likely”, Nekochan is standing over my shoulder talking about how awesome Bleu was in the Breath of Fire series. She’s nagged me into including stuff before, so I won’t say “never”.

Like-Like: It might be funny to have this girl, who is just a naked girl with a mouthful of weird teeth and the disturbing shade of pink skin, that just hangs around in a dungeon nomming on shields all day. Maybe she can block a door, and you have to give her a shield to proceed, and if you didn’t bring one extra, oops, sorry Therese.

Matango: Not as such… The chances are high that a fuckable Mycon Queen will appear in a later game, but not for the first Harem Collector game.

Mimics: The concept of opening a treasure chest with a girl inside and having sex with her amuses me (You received “Sexy Time”!), but that’s probably not the same thing.

Modrons, Drelb, Thought-Eaters, Wolf-in-Sheep’s-Clothing, etc.: Noah Moshing’s recipe for comedy: Take one (1) obscure D&D monster. Turn into cute girl as parody of the whole monster girl encyclopedia thing. Serve while hot.
Ogre: Ogres in HC are already pretty standard Ogres. It might be fun to have female ogres actualy be sexy later, but I don’t think the Hero will actually fuck one.

Orcs: The whole orc thing has been gone over in Harem Collector, so, no..

Owlbear: I promise you there will be an owlbear girl, but only because it’ll be funny.

Slimes: You just skipped down here after reading the title, didn’t you?

Trolls: Trolls will probably make it in, just so I can make fun of Homestuck more.

Vampires: Kind of in a weird place right now, actually. MagicWhiteLady and I both want to use vampires in our games, but we’ve yet to sit down and actually figure out what canon vampirism is. So, yes, it will happen, in what form though? Read and find out. 

Were-[blank]: [Redacted]

Yuki-Onna: Very high. Very, very likely to happen. It might not be a legitimate “ghost” but more “cute ice fairy or spirit or something” though.

Zombies: Yuck.

Classism, Part 2

Okay, first of all, I just want to say that Guided Fate Paradox looks like an awesome game. I haven’t played it myself, but Nekochan has been glued to it and it’s actually fun to watch and looks really good. Unfortunately for me, I’m embroiled in a speedrun of Kingdoms of Amalur on hard at the moment, which is taking forever- god damn that game is big. But once that is done, I’m totally hooking up with some cosplay angels.
So, in continuation of last week’s rant: What I want the characters to do, with some special previews this time!
Buffers and Healers
I fold these two roles together, because just healing is kind of boring and uninteresting, and doesn’t give that character anything to when people are full up.
Hero
As I’ve said elsewhere before, the Hero is supposed to kind of suck. His primary job is to make everyone else in the party better, without being very good on his own- synergy with the other characters is what I’m shooting for here. That being said, he’s also not going to big weaknesses either.
Strengths: The Hero has four upgradable abilities that you can grow at your pace. Also, he gets to have sex with a bunch of women.
Weaknesses: Not having any particular strengths.
Future Plans: The hero is going to an additional mode- if you remember the test character Viel it’s, going to work in a similar way- that will allow him to double as a tank with some damage capability, letting the player switch up his role for more variety.
Felix/Healbot
Felix is an early game crutch healer who will eventually start giving diminishing returns.I’ve talked about Felix at length before…. Fun Fact: Nekochan hates Felix and thinks anyone who uses him is a pussy. I don’t agree with her, but he wasn’t originally intended to be in the game….
Strengths: He heals you. No, really, that’s it.
Weaknesses: His stats are supposed to be the lowest over time out of everyone in the game, but right now that’s a little academic because the game only supports up to level 15 or so.
 Future Plans: When I actually go and start plugging in stat lines rather than relying on RPG Maker’s automatic settings, I’m going to have Felix’s stats begin to plateau around level 20.
 Diadira (Didi)
Didi is a cosplaying pop star that the Hero sees in concert and decides he absolutely has to at least fuck. She’ll be implemented by next spring, if not earlier. She’ll be roughly a “bard” type, but hopefully suck a whole lot less that most bards.
Strengths: She is all about buffing the team. If she does any healing, it’ll be an incidental kind of thing. For example, by dropping a buff that gives the team regeneration. Her buffs are going to be tremendously powerful, affecting multiple parameters, but…
Weaknesses: …She has to sing to grant them. Singing takes up all her actions, and basically having her on the team means that when you fire up a song buff, you’re fighting with a super-powered three-man team and one meat shield that doesn’t grab aggro. The songs will be temporary, and Didi will get freed up when the song is over. To give her something of a secondary role, she’ll probably have a high Magic stat so she can make decent use out of scrolls and bombs.
Controllers
Meline
One of the more controversial-yet-popular characters, your little specializes in dealing with magical threats and spellcasters.
Strengths: Meline has a huge supply of Mana, which lets her keep casting and resist effects that sap Mana. Her biggest skill right now is Heretical Censure, which prevents enemy spellcasting and opens the enemy party up to elemental damage. She also casts fire-elemental prayers, which slows enemy healing, and radiance-elemental prayers that apply a huge to-hit penalty to enemies.
Weaknesses: She has low initiative and even lower attack.
Future Plans: I’m actually not 100% certain about this one. Her next few skills will have to focus on her ability to screw with regular enemies and not just spellcasters to help round things out, or more skills like Censure that primarily affect spellcasters but aren’t completely useless against normal bad guys.
Larelle
You know, I’ve always been a little disappointed at Larelle’s lukewarm reception. I really like her as a character and I think she plays really well. Plus, she can resurrect dead party members as zombies, and I think that’s awesome. 
Strengths: For a spellcaster, she’s pretty robust and has decent attack power. Plus, her necrotic-elemental magic kills enemy attack power, and she cast Terrible Curse to inflict an HP-drain effect that mirrors Censure’s elemental damage bonus. Also, she can raise your fellow party members as zombies!
Weaknesses: As a spellcaster, she’s supposed to pale in comparison to other primary spellcasters like Meline and Kyrie, with lower Mana and Magic power.
Future Plans: Already in the pipeline is a buff to the Zombie status that increases their threat, making them halfway decent temporary tanks. Other than that, I’m thinking of giving her a second spell element like the other casters. Kyrie would be acid and cold, Meline would be radiant and fire, Chimei would be thunder and lightning (very very frightening!), Larelle would be necrotic and psychic maybe, and force would be provided by tomes.
Chimei
Chimei is a sort of druidy nature mage type who casts very powerful evocations that use lightning and thunder. For various reasons, she’s probably the most  OP spellcaster right now, and evocations in general as well as the lightning element are going to have to be nerfed. Also, she speaks exclusively in Japanese, which is a gag I never get tired of.
Strengths: Chimei actually has really high Luck and Resist ratings, helping her resist status effects and magic damage. She also has Defense debuffs, and lightning-element magic is overpowered as hell.
Weaknesses: Because evocations require Mana and Momentum, Chimei has to make use of basic attacks and her Transfer Essence skill to generate Momentum to use her evocations. This locks her into a two-turn rhythm, where she stores energy and then casts a spell.
Future Plans: First of all, Chimei isn’t learning English anytime soon. However, be assured that nothing she says is of consequence to the plot- the Hero just ignores her most of the time. Easily 90% of her dialogue comes from TVTropes’ list of Stock Japanese Phrases anyway, and if you can’t tell from the French dwarves and the elf-latin I really like hiding little gags and bonuses behind language barriers. As for actual gameplay changes, evocation spells currently target two or four random enemies- which can be rough if you’re fighting big groups of dudes, but against a single foe they basically just multiply your damage as each strike hits the same poor guy. I wanted evocations to feel very different from spells and prayers, and that just isn’t going to work. Also, the way the lightning element works is going to have to change as well.
(Elf Ranger)
This character, who is thus far unnamed, is an elf who acts as a physical controller. Armed with a bow, by using techniques that take the form of special archery techniques and stealing some of the better ideas off of Hawkeye and Green Arrow. If I realigned the spellcasters’ elements as mentioned above, I might add evocations to this character to give her a secondary role with poison spells, but I guess that could just as easily be done with poison-tipped arrows.
I don’t really have a strengths/weaknesses workup for this character, but she’s the least developed, although she should be in the game by this summer. I’ll talk about her story and personality instead.
Basically, when you start on the elf village questline, you find out very early on that the elven princess has a huge fetish for humans and their rounded ears, but she is (at first) forbidden from having sex with the Hero. However, nothing stops her from ordering her bodyguard and handmaiden to have sex with the Hero while she watches. Said handmaiden, the ranger, is forced by her mistress to join the Hero’s harem and help him save the elven people so the princess can have sex with him, since he needs to become the saviour of the elf people before the king will allow the princess to lay him.
The ranger herself isn’t all that interested in the Hero, and only fucks him begrudgingly to please her princess, who the ranger kinda has a thing for. She has a low opinion of humans in general, but is forced to work with one and eventually even comes to accept him and then fall in love with him.
Anyway, I hope all that was interesting for you. Reply with your game balance insight/opinions. Oh, and in case you missed it, last week I enable anonymous comments so feel free to comment with your privacy intact/give me the verbal lambasting you feel I deserve/link all the rickrolls and goatse pics your desire.

Classism Part 1

So I spent most of Monday working on Fairy Side for MagicWhiteLady. Because we haven’t been able to get together to collab on dialogue and such, MWL is doing all of the game text as I type. But I was able to refine some of MWL’s ideas and made sure that, if nothing else, it’s a thing you can play through. The structure is there, and MWL is bringing the fun.

Also: I changed up my avatar. Wooser likes meat, girls, and money, and so do I. But don’t worry, I still fight for the greater good, Tau-chan has just been moved to my wallpaper. Exciting stuff.

Maybe I should actually talk about my game?

Okay, so I’ve been putting more thought into game balance lately and I’m personally wondering what characters people use, who gets teamed up with whom, stuff like that. I want to have the gameplay be pretty deep… or at least as deep as RPG Maker can get. Even if I can’t hit “deep”, “challenging but rewarding” would be a great secondary. So your feedback is important in this regard. Also, it might go into skills that appear on these characters in the future.

I also want to avoid nerfing the characters if I can. I’d rather maker under-used characters better than take away something that is already good.

So, here is sort of how I envisioned how each character would work.

Damagers

Elaiya 
Pretty basic, glass cannon physical damage.
Strengths: She shoots for high damage, lets off the occasional burst fire. As for her other skills, Stealth keeps the heat off for awhile, Kneecapping will (next update) deal some damage with an evasion penalty for high-evasion enemies, Assassin’s Strike lets you gamble on an insta-death move.
Weaknesses: Enemy tanks with cover and lots of HP kind of ruin her day, since they can soak up multiple Barrage shots. Enemy damagers with multi-target abilities as well.
Future Plans: Right now my rough plan is for her Love Quest to result in an upgraded three-hit Barrage. The individual damage of her pistols will probably come down as I start running numbers and figure out what works for weak damage, and her crit rate will probably get nerfed. Maybe in favour of an “Aiming” self-buff that cancels Stealth but gives more crits.

Yamamaya
Yamamaya is a bit more complicated. She should bring to the table less (but still good) damage compared to Elaiya, but in a more robust package. Add in some racial immunities, and she can Rage if the player decides they’ve figured out the enemy boss and she can safely bash away without input.
Strengths: Racial immunities to most “mind”-type effects, highest Health on a damager. Her Techniques gives her some more options- Shockwave causes Thunder element damage and can deafen, while Strong Attack gives her a good go-to attack power when you don’t want her to Rage.
Weaknesses: She also hates enemy tanks, but slightly less than Elaiya because multi-targeting is less important to Yamamaya’s style. Turning on Rage can quickly bite you in the ass if the battle turns south on the player.
Future Plans: Strong Attack will probably get some kind of -Hit, +Damage change in the future and become a “Wild Swing” type ability just to be more flavourful and interesting. In general, I want her to be the “safe” damager with less risk, but less reward.

Kyrie
Kyrie is an uncomplicated nuker mage. She also adds a bit more enemy control- her acid spells cause -Defense and her ice spells will cause -Evasion and -Hit in time. But her power is limited because I want restoring Mana to be pretty expensive in this game.
Strengths: Lots of damage, multi-target spells, some debuffs. Also, Ice Armor stacks with other defense buffs. She can also take some damage to self-buff her Magic.
Weaknesses: Reliance on Mana, almost as weak as Elaiya, and nothing really spammable for mid-dungeon fights.
Future Plans: Getting her in the harem, for one. Despite being one of the first characters designed for the game, she remains elusive. Also, she will get some kind of “acid snow” multi-target ultima-type spell for obscene damage + obscene Mana cost.

Gargan
For the more discerning, cerebral player, Gargan provides good damage and can also do secondary tanking.
Strengths: Fairly sturdy. Uses Cape Stun and eventually Throw to inflict the Stun effect, and on the following turn can Stun Break* for extra damage and to ignore defense. Coup de Grace allows late-game Gargan to set up an insta-kill on a stunned enemy… if he has enough Momentum. Finally, Counter lets him/her secondary tank while still inflicting damage.
Weaknesses:You actually have to plan and be careful to use Gargan most efficiently. Even still, an enemy immune to Stun (mechanicals, catgirls, etc) will shut him/her right down into a less-efficient tank.
Future Plans: Get him/her in the party after a quest to cure his/her curse with mixed results. Also, decide on a pronoun for him/her and a way to make him/her cool with being a her that doesn’t cause my social justice-oriented friends to riot.

Overall: The Damagers are the least problematic characters in the game- Yamamaya and Elaiya  are frequently stated to be top picks and Kyrie and Gargan bring new play styles to the table without being too difficult to understand. They just need tweaks and fixes to get them *just right*.

Tanks

Therese
Being the first additional party member, the tutorial sections pretty much explain how Therese works- Primary tank with secondary healing.
Strengths: Rough and tumble fighter who also heals. Highest Resist of all the tanks, and will be able to self-buff to stretch it even further. Can also use +Defense Prayers, and Stagger gives her a slightly boosted attack with an Agility debuff.
Weaknesses: Martyrdom lacks any of the bell and whistles of the other tank abilities- it just draws threat without benefiting Therese.
Future Plans: Her Lay on Hands is meant to be early game healing, she will eventually get the basic one-target healing Prayer at the same time primary healers get multi-target healing.

Doll
Doll is actually an old idea I had back in elementary school for a Final Fantasy class- low damage, but covers and auto-regens.
Strengths: Has innate Health regeneration. Defender of Life buffs her Health Regen while she draws threat. Vine Armour lets her self-buff Defense (and stacks with other Defense buffs), Regeneration lets her offer some low-grade heals, and somebody Shake It Off might do something useful.
Weaknesses: Lowest Attack of all the tanks. Regeneration is less useful in the face of high-damage enemies and is better for low-risk battles you can drag out to benefit from the most healing.
Future Plans: Nothing concrete at the moment, except adding something to Vine Armour to spice it up a little (like Ice Armour also granting Cold Resistance).

Raina
Raina is a pretty basic spear-and-board fighter, but has enough interesting twists. Mirrors her brother a little- Gargan is a primary damager, secondary tank who applies a debuffs and then takes it away for bonus damage, while Raina is a primary tank, secondary damager who applies a self-buff then takes it away for bonus damage. If you’re interested in how she works, go check out Fairy Side later today- Conall is functionally identical, except for a slightly different stat priorities.
Strengths: Highest Defense in the game. Has two options for threat-generating self-buffs- Phalanx, which generates threat and buffs Defense, and Deflect, which generates threat and buffs Resist. She can then Shield Bash to attack with her Defense stat before leaving her Phalanx/Deflect state.  Shield Rush is functionally similar, except costs more Momentum and has a chance of Knockdown. She can also use Pommel Strike for a boosted attack with chance of Knockdown that doesn’t cause her to leave Phalanx/Deflect.
Weaknesses: Lowest Resist of all the tanks and lacks any healing ability.
Future Plans: Get her in the party and eventually the harem. Raina is slightly more complicated in this regard- she’s going to hang around the manor and join in all the fun adventuring, but won’t join the harem until you can make her love the Hero enough to accept his philandering.

Originally this post was going to cover all the classes, but after seeing how long it is, this is going two-parter. See you next week!

*I just noticed while writing this post that Stun Break does not work as intended, using Gargan’s Magic stat instead of Attack. Will be fixed in next version.

The Fix is In

Links:
A bunch of bug fixes, but relatively light on new content.
Also: I had to change the skill and class tables, so if you transfer a save over things are going to be weird. However, there is a demon in your bedroom who will happily change everything and make it all copacetic in case you would prefer that Yamamaya wasn’t a paladin or whatever.
Also also: Mega was trolling me. Literally- the upload completion bar started going down at a certain point, and then I said “fuck it”.

Bugs Aside…

Wow, apparently I have a lot of work to do today- woke up to an inbox full of bug reports. I will be getting to them today, but I don’t mind all that much considering how far ahead I am.

Right now, I’m about two weeks ahead of where I expected to be. Implementing new features has been going like a dream thus far, and I’ve had to do very little experimentation or reconfiguring to make them work. This is mostly a testament to JBurton’s coding skills than my own efforts, though.

I won’t make any promises regarding having a new quest done for the November release just yet, but it’s looking better and better all the time.

The big features that are done and ready to go thus far include:
-Gallery mode
-Sell all Vendor Trash options at relevant shops
-Characters now join the party at one level less than the Hero (except for Kyrie in Ain’t No Party Like a Search Party)
-The inventory now uses a script to organize it by category.

That’s about half the new stuff I wanted to get done this release, and it’s not even November yet. Anyway, I’m got to get started on these bugs, so happy playing!

October 2013 Public Release!

Delicious Links:
4Shared: http://www.4shared.com/file/fnN9wUfP/HaremCollector_October2013_p3.html

ZippyShare: http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/47734752/file.html

Mega: https://mega.co.nz/#!iYBWCZTb
Mega Key: U-5EBUK_ceBluTJqkckuM3teFu06DmnzNVe-VfMve9o

List o’ Changes

-I can’t believe I almost forgot this because I’m a douchenozzle of truly epic proportion, but the new title screen was designed by awesome fan and occasional insomniac Boinky. Thanks, Boinky!

-Yamamaya’s Love quest is now available.
-Ino, the enchantress, has been implemented. You can find her by taking Felix in your party to Southport.
-The game now displays a character’s relationship level when you speak to him or her.
-Elaiya, Flourine, the Blacksmith, Raina and Gargan all have new faces and sprites. Shally now has a new face.
-The Eastfort item shop girl has been redesigned from the ground up, and now has a new look and a new sex scene.
-There is now an invest-able jewelry store in Northmarket that sells magical accessories.
-There are now fifteen possible Dark Seeds to collect
Sex scene changes include:
-A new threesome with Yamamaya and Alina
-A new threesome with Meline and Larelle
-A (somewhat hidden) new gangbang with Yamamaya
-CGs for Florine’s handjob scene
-Doll’s gangbang has CGs and has been rewritten
Things that have changed since the backer release:
-Serade is now gift-able and reward-get-able but not chat-able
-Chimei’s primary weapon has been changed from a bow to a fan because reasons.
-Bugs fixed.And before I forget, next release will be November 20th for backers and  November 27th for the public. The reason it’s a little bit later is that the next update will involve heavy scripting and I want the extra week to make sure everything gets done right.

November and beyond

Progress continues on the October release. The enchantress is fully implemented, and I’m about halfway done the content for Yamamaya’s Love quest. After that, I just have to implement some more new CGs and art, and it’ll be ready to go. I’m probably going to working straight through to the deadline on this, but at least nothing is getting cut.

November’s release probably won’t feature any new content. Instead, there will be a laundry list of behind-the-scene changes and features I need to catch up on. Among them are:

-CG Gallery Mode
-Stepbrother Mode
-Another item list shuffle and enough subsequent playtesting that it hopefully won’t be a total clusterfuck.
-Sex a la carte options for all currently implemented harem girls.
-Finally getting around to finishing up Lumberhill and the post-zombie-attack consequences of buildings being destroyed.

…and many more, no doubt. If there is any new content in November, it will be Meline’s Love Quest and a fucking miracle of productivity. November also won’t be compatible with new saves, but I’m hoping most people won’t mind as they will want to replay to fill out their CG Gallery anyway.

In December we will be back with 2+ new quests a month, churning out content.

However, January will probably not see a release, at least not a release with any real meat to it. The reasons for this will be abundantly clearly once the new year rolls around. Oooh, mysterious (unless you’ve been paying real close attention to some of the threads linked to the right). February will see us get fully back on track.

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work. See you next week!

Odds and Ends

Okay, first things first- in order to help the Harem Collector Wiki get off it’s feet, I’m doing a special offer where top wiki contributors will receive a code for a unique item in the October release. Which is on October 16th for backers and October 23rd for the public, btw. So get contributing- don’t matter if it’s strategy, lore, or even delicious slices of trivia. Go for it!
Next up: I’m cutting some features from Harem Collector. It’s nothing that anyone will shed tears over. First of all, I’m isolating the code for the party chat function and not mentioning it elsewhere in the game, so it might be back, at some point, maybe. That would have been a great feature for a game with a smaller, more intimate cast, but I think it’s not worth the work it would take to implement at this point.
The second thing getting cut are the secondary weapons. They were a poorly thought-out addition to begin with, and are getting the axe without regrets.
Next up: I realize now that making incest with Meline was a very bold move that doesn’t sit well with many fans of the game. Considering that enslaving Meline will be required for the ending, I’m currently planning a no-incest mode, activated during the black screen beginning segment, which will change some of the game’s dialogue so that the Hero was adopted by Meline’s family as a child, as well as changing the Hero’s sprite and faces so as to imply he’s not directly related to Meline. The canon version of the game, however, will have the incest.
Finally, enjoy some fanart courtesy of Boinky, who also contributed the new game title screen you’ll see in the next update!