Iron Waifu Week 1 Commentary and Art Stuff

So Iron Waifu is off for another exciting year! Already there has been one solid upset- Princess Quinta, the biggest loser of Iron Waifu 2016, has finally gotten a victory in over Violet, not bad for the first match-up of the month!

I won’t comment on today’s match because I don’t want to put my thumb on the scales, but I like Princess Quinta and I’m looking forward to doing more for her… as always, these things take time. Later matches this week include Kyrie vs Serade (tomorrow), Elaiya vs Gargan (Friday), and Evanie vs Yeon (Saturday).

As for other news, I’ve decided to release publicly the wallpapers SacB0y did of Nerys, which you can find here. Every harem girl is going to get a wallpaper set going forward, and while the two most recent wallpaper sets will remain backer-only, the rest will eventually be released for the public. Expect Alina’s wallpapers in a month or two when the backers receive Orange Kid’s set!

Speaking of SacB0y, June will be the last month for Yamamaya artwork (for now). As I said, next up is Orange Kid, who should be done just in time to start the Iron Waifu update this fall. After the Iron Waifu’s solo and applicable group sex scenes are in the can, then it’ll be starting on Therese and… oh boy.

Therese will be a nice meaty chunk of art to do. Not only are there her existing 3D CGs that will be getting new art, but also a “mind controlled” version of her opening scene and sex on-demand stuff, not to mention a “random nightly” scene for each version of Therese… That’s six months of work at our current rate, provided that there isn’t a demand to have SacB0y do his own version of “A Knight to Remember”. Whew! Hopefully we’ll get up there and be able to afford a faster pace by then!

Anyway, have fun voting on Iron Waifu and such, and I’ll see you again next week!

Iron Waifu and Yamamaya bug

Hey everyone! We’re nearing the end of April so I’m sure that many of you know what that means! Time for another Iron Waifu Grand Tourney! I’d also like to spend part of this blog post talking about a bug many players have found in one of Yamamaya’s scenes and how to fix it, so stay tuned for that!

For those of you who don’t know, this is a tournament that we run every year for the duration of May to pick the best ‘Waifu’ in Harem Collector. The winner of the tournament will be the central focus to an update in autumn of this year, though what content they get exactly varies as we try to keep it to content that we already planned to add into the game. This year we decided to post what each prize the participants could win also in the same thread up above so I suggest checking that out to see what sort of goodies your Waifu could win, or if maybe you’d rather try to void in your second favorite Waifu instead because you prefer her prizes! Ultimately though, as with previous years you’ll need an account on the forum and we’ll be having these one-off matches everyday between the girls. Hope to see you all there!

Now, many players have reported that one of Yamamaya’s optional scenes currently crashes the game. This was caused by when moving from the old 3D images of the scene to 2D images NoMoshing rewrote the scene to fit better, but for some reason his changes didn’t save. This became a problem since there were originally 6 3D scenes but only 5 2D scenes, which means that if the game tries to load the sixth scene it WILL crash the game (unless you have 3D images turned off since the game still thinks they’re 3D scenes). While this bug has been fixed for the 0.34 release and onward, I wanted to take a moment to help share a fix that moonblack pointed out to me on the forums. See if when in the Harem Collector folder you head into the ‘Graphics’ folder, then create a new ‘Pictures’ folder than add in any image and title it ‘Yamamaya2-6’ it from then on load that image and you can play the scene without any crashes. To that end, we’ve decided to include a copy of the final image of the scene properly named so that players can use it for the scene to help ensure that they get a relatively seamless experience with the scene. Hope you all have fun!


 

Iron Waifu Approaches….

May is coming, and with it, the legendary contest known as… IRON WAIFU!

I’m feeling pretty stoked, and I’m excited to see people discussing the upcoming contest in advance. However, things are going to be just slightly different this year, so I figured I’d run down some of the changes.

Previous winners will NOT be re-admitted to the contest. If you were hoping to vote again for Therese, sorry, but she, as well as Alina, are retired permanently from the contest. They’ve already won, after all.

Oh, what’s that? Therese hasn’t had a full art revamp done yet? Well, never fear… Therese will be the first harem girl to get new art following this year’s Iron Waifu, so she won’t get left out for long.

Another thing that we’re doing differently this year is that we’re spelling out the rewards for each character if they win. That will be a complete rundown, including any quests, how many new sex scenes they have coming, and the like for every girl in running. As our usual policy goes, nobody is getting any extra, originally unplanned content as a result of the Iron Waifu results, so some girls will absolutely be getting more than others. Still, this whole thing is merely to determine the order in which the content gets done, so don’t be afraid to follow your heart.

Finally, we’ll be drawing the new bracket during this month’s Backer Devstream, the date of which hasn’t been set yet, so if you’re interested in seeing that happen, please remember to stay tuned!

That’s all for now, so until next time, Harem Collector fans!

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!

Iron Waifu Endgame (aka, I Was Gonna Delay, But…)

Okay, first off- the Backer Release will be out in a few hours. It was a damn near thing, though.

You see, last Wednesday I finished the first draft of the puzzle we’re using in the newest dungeon. And, after giving it a think, well, it just wouldn’t work. We’re looing at a situation where it was almost impossible to figure out without a a diagram, but then with a diagram it was just carrying out a tedious series of steps. So, Conash, epic tester Seil, and I put our noses to the grindstone and worked hard over the last week to develop a new puzzle, finish off the quest, and have everything ready to go. Next time you’re on the forum or the Discord, make sure to give a tip of the hat to Conash and Seil, because this release would not have happened with them putting in a lot of work.

Anyway, on to the meat of today’s blog post: What to expect for each of the final nine if they happen to win Iron Waifu 2017.

Alina: For all the harem girls without a love quest, it should go without saying that yes, they will receive a proper love quest. However, Alina’s somewhat of a special case. She’s already got a full complement of sex scenes, after all, minus the one from her love quest. So, of course the only proper response is to bow to a frequent fan request! For Alina, expect a love quest with associated scene, an additional random scene featuring a threesome with Alina and Therese, for the Alina x Doralice sex scene images to be done Also, her chat menu option will be made completely up-to-date, and her total art revamp will be pushed to the top.

Brigandine: Brigandine is putting forward a strong showing, as always. But what if the top NPC in the game manages to make it all the way to the top? Well, we’ll have to explore some of the things associated with her backstory. For Brigandine, expect a quest where you will accompany her on a return trip to the cursed city of Bateau-Assassinat, with Brigandine as a guest star party member. She will conclude the quest by having a sex scene with the Hero, and in the spirit of her role as a trainer, a few characters will be added to the game who will train up some of your party members’ own skills, and Brigandine will be able to point you towards them. Plus, she’ll get her art revamp, even though that’s just her face set at this moment.

Chimei: I’m pretty impressed with Chimei, all told. She’s had a pretty strong showing this year, and I’m personally cheering for her. What to expect from the mysterious slave girl? Chimei’s love quest, where you’ll find out why Chimei became a slave as her former owner will be coming back to reclaim her, will be added to the game, including a couple ways for you to translate all her dialogue for the duration of the quest. As well, we’ll add an individual random scene with her to the game. Finally, her initial cost will be reexamined and adjusted, and her art revamp will be bumped to the top.

Doll: Oh, Doll! How could I have forgotten? Doll will receive a love quests delving into her origins and why she’s an amnesiac, with accompanying scene, plus a sex scene featuring her and the Hero for the random sex scene list. Her art revamp will be bumped to the top of the order, and a fully up-to-date chat option will be available.

Kyrie: Although a pretty controversial character, should Kyrie rise to the top you can expect some big things from her. Of course, she’ll get a love quest with associated scene, where you’ll team up with her old party to take care of some unfinished business from her past, plus a random scene and her sex-on-demand menu all filled out. I’ll also run a poll to see who she should get a group sex scene with. Her chat options will also be made up-to-date and her art revamp will be bumped to the top.

Larelle: Another controversial pick, due to her vampire harem plan, but maybe you’ll have a chance to change her mind about that if you crown her as Iron Waifu? She’ll get her love quest, where you’ll descend into some long-forgotten ruins in search of forbidden magical lore in hopes of super-charging Larelle’s necromantic powers. As well, she’ll get her full complement of on-demand sex scenes, plus a new individual scene will be added to the random sex scenes. On top of that, we’ll see her chat menu option be made fully up-to-date and her art revampe prioritized.

Violet: Alright, go maids! Violet’s gotten pretty far this time around, and I’m hoping she’ll continue to impress. As for her reward for making Iron Waifu? The usual- a love quest plus scene, this time going back to Violet’s homeland in order to save her parents from a magical disaster, as well as updated chat options, the art revamp being kicked up, etc. Add to that a new sex scene where she’ll take care of the Hero’s needs all by herself, plus twin sister Lilac will be going for a revamp at the exactly same time, so it’s two revamps for the price of one!

Yamamaya: Well, that was close. I mean, I didn’t even really have Yamamaya’s writeup prepared, because Nerys was so far ahead. But let’s see… First off, the usual: bumped up in art priority, up to date chat option, no problem. She’ll also get an individual random sex scene where she’ll have the Hero all to herself. She will also share her gift of love quest with her best friend! And no, you’re not going to find out who that is until the fateful day. But it would be a Yamamaya-themed update, so why don’t we also revamp all the catfolk NPCs while we’re at it?

Hope that helps narrow down your picks for the quarterfinal- and beyond! I’ll see all you guys later, just a scootch more work to do on that backer release!

Encyclopedia and Iron Waifu Thoughts

Hey everyone, Conash here! First here to share my thoughts about how the Iron Waifu Tournament has been proceeding and following it up with what I’ve been working on lately!

First off in regards to Iron Waifu two matches have really surprised me! The first one was Yeon vs Doralice, while I expected Yeon would win the amount of support and good things people were saying did certainly surprise me given how her 2016 run went. I was sure that we’d get a lot more comments about how she needed to be put into her place. The other one was Meline vs Renfeld match. While I tend to also find Renfeld interesting she hasn’t exactly shown to have the same sort of popularity as Meline, heck last year Meline came out on top of Renfeld! While last years match was pretty close and we’ve got a fair amount more fans this year, I fully expected it to go the same way this year! This is especially of interest to me because when I was rolling for the round 1 match-ups I had a rule that if anyone ended up with the same round 1 match as last year I’d re-roll (didn’t need to) and extended it to very one-sided round 2 match-ups as well, I actually came pretty close to re-rolling Meline’s round 1 match up but decided that since it was close it was fine. Can’t wait to see how the rest of the tournament goes!

On the more development end of things, I got hit by a bit of inspiration and motivation last month and managed to put something big together. Now, while we will probably be adding more categories to it, I managed to get the encyclopedia project that I’ve been working on fully functional for artifacts (unique weapons/armor), a few details are still needed and given how dependent on the HC code it is it’ll need a fair amount more testing to work out some kinks but it will mean that all those pieces of equipment that say give mana regeneration, or status protection or what have you well you’ll be able to look up what they do in-game instead of having to rely on the wiki! We’re still finishing up a few minor details on getting it working in the game but the heavy lifting is already accounted for! I hope you all enjoy!

And that’s just about it for me, at this point I’m mostly working on fixing some bugs and I hope to invest a bunch of my time into getting the wiki up to date next week given how ahead of schedule I am. Hope to see you all in the Iron Waifu tournament!

Iron Waifu Commentary (and some other stuff, too)

So, Iron Waifu 2017 has kicked off in style. The first day broke last year’s participation record, and then day two went and broke that new record! While there haven’t been any upsets yet, party members routinely beat non-party harem girls and Brigandine is really popular for an NPC, the high level of participation has been pretty exciting for us at BKG. On top of the usual suspects lobbying for their favourite characters, ShadowCluster has publicly made a case for electing Serade as Iron Waifu which I found pretty compelling. If you haven’t been following it yet, you can find the brackets and schedule here and the current match (Evanie the Sword-Saint vs Ino) here. I’m looking forward to seeing the results!

As for the game itself, work has begun in earnest on the new quest. It’ll be a pretty fun one, I think, and I’m looking forward to seeing what people think. It’s always fun making a chain of events that can go in one of two very different ways depending on the player’s actions, and there’s going to be a pretty big one at the beginning of this quest. Other things are moving pretty quickly. I’m hoping that for this month’s update we’re going to have some new status effect icons to help communicate things a little better to the player, and finally have some new CGs. So far backers have responded pretty positively to the mini-release, which is good to hear. The Banneret upgrade scene was a lot of work, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with everyone later.

Oh yeah- the Backer Devstream will be this Saturday due to some unavoidable life stuff. I’ll be distributing the link a bit later today, so keep your eyes out!