Harem c8m4 released Sep 6 2019

[AllenAndArth]

if it were me I would be in hiatus too, don't worry take your time, like the others said we understand your reasoning and it's understandable

[Seyser Koze]

If it amuses you, it sounds like Castro just killed himself.

Apparently being a prisoner was too much for him. Irony.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, that one won't do no harm no more.
Might be he's been a whimsy, but might also be a result of self-reflection after having that loss of freedom inflicted on himself.
Or mobbing by other inmates.
No matter what you think of him, there's really nothing funny about it.

[Zaiaku666]

As I read this news report regarding his death, I realize something scary...His mental deposition is the kind ker and others who make this kinds of games worry about getting into the hands of. Sorta like how that messed up kid went and did that heinous thing over at the elementary school. I am sure people who make FPSs wish they wouldn't get their hands on them, but in an open market they do...I don't mean to give more excuses for the a hiatus extension, but I wish people would pay attention to these people and realize that if they have the mental cognition of a six year old when it comes to discerning between reality and fantasy, then they should not be allowed anywhere near these games. And those who act as caretakers to such people should be tried right there with them if they commit a crime for facilitating said action.

[Seyser Koze]

I look at it from a legal and societal perspective, if not a moral one: you cannot realistically carry on in the fear that an unhinged individual might get the wrong message and then might go out and commit an unhinged action that might have been inspired by that wrong message. It's just not feasible to structure everything in society around the possible whims of the mentally ill - and if we did, I can think of a few sermons and right-wing pundits who've "inspired" far more harm.

To paraphrase Heinlein, doing so would be like forcing everybody to live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.

[Zaiaku666]

True. I just feel that games wouldn't get the bad rep they got if people just took the time to look at the ESRB warnings, but that would be like asking them to see the big black Parental Advisory sticker on a rap album.

[UnLimiTeD]

Did you notice that most everyone committing atrocities has shortly before eaten bread?

In any case, while logically, you can say it's not much of a connection, that doesn't change how you feel about it.
We need to respect that, though we sure all hope the game will see another dawn.

[Lucky777]

Nobody EVER "needs to respect" irrationality.

[Seyser Koze]

If ker doesn't feel right continuing, that's his call, given that it's his hobby and all. I personally don't think he needs to feel any sense of responsibility for anybody else's actions, but it's not my decision.

[ker]

Ok, the hiatus is officially over as 0.6b is entering testing. Looking for some testers so reposting my last blog post here.
0.6b changes can be found on the blog as well, http://harem-vx.blogspot.com/2013/09/wh ... bring.html

So nearly finished up with content for the 0.6b version and moving into the favorite of times, testing! I'm starting with an alpha test which is essentially me making sure that everything works if the player behaves exactly as I expect them to. There is a lot of new content in 0.6b and changes to existing content (ie the complete scrapping of the random encounter system) which I need to play through to make sure that it works at all.

I will be taking applications for the private beta test phase currently. Players don't always behave exactly as I expect so I need people to play through the content without much guidance to see if anything doesn't work or leaves the player hanging without any real guidance as to what to do now. Particular emphasis will be placed on the 0.6b new content of course, but combat balance feedback will be important as well.

I'm hoping the private beta phase will start in about 2 weeks. I will be sending out a link to download the 0.6b test content through e-mail and might try to create a thread somewhere for it. Trying to teach the testers how to access the game through the SVN really didn't work last time so I'll be sending out packages for conventional download and testing.

Requirements/expectations.
1. The free time to do so. I'm expecting to start testing in 2-3 weeks and have it run for a few weeks hopefully, but no more than 4 weeks. But during that time I do expect people to be able to put in some fairly serious testing. Plan on committing about 5 hours a week at least.
2. The patience and wherewithal to actually do testing. This isn't a public demo, this is a testing phase. The game is most certainly broken at the moment and it's your job to poke and prod every crevice finding the spots that it's cracked.
3. You must be fluent in English. I understand that people from all over the world play Harem, but for testing I need to be able to communicate easily.
4. No prepackaged saves will be available for testing and prior saves will not work so you'll have to play from the beginning.
5. Be willing to communicate bugs and give a fairly detailed report and attach a copy of a save if necessary. This isn't a demo.

If you are interested, send an e-mail to [email protected] including the following.
0. The subject must be 'Harem Testing'. If it is anything else (or less or more) I will automatically delete it without reading it.
1. A few sentences on how testing is different than playing.
2. Any experience you have working with RPG-VX
3. Any experience you have in game design or testing previously.
4. An idea of how much time you'll be able to put in over the next few weeks for testing.
5. If you are comfortable with SVN deployments let me know and I'll link you to the repo and you can join in the alpha testing. Keep in mind that fully recursive it will be over a gigabyte worth of content. I will not try to walk anyone through SVN configuration, sorry.

Beta testers chosen.

Thank you to everyone who applies in advance. Please understand that I am intentionally keeping the number of testers fairly small so I can manage the team and with the number of e-mails I'm likely to receive from this, I won't be able to contact anyone but those I chose. If you don't get a response, sorry.

There will probably be a public beta after the private. 0.6a's release took a few attempts and some people got frustrated with the number of bugs in it, so I'll be releasing a 0.6b bugged version publicly then following up with a 0.6b final when it's ready. Essentially saying that if you want to play it early there may be some growing pains.

[phoenyxz]

thats good news thanks for continuing the game ker ^^

[Mariotx]

Yes can't wait

[Lucky777]

Ayup.

[James3167]

*Jumps for Joy!*

I knew you had it in you. You were visiting Hongfire forums even though you had not posted ever since your leave notice. Thank you for your kindness and time Ker, I would help you but I only have Ace and the XV2Ace program is not working out too well (tells me that your ini file is not from VX >.<). I could try help you with 3DCG (I finally got it working a few days ago, only about a year after your told me what you used to make the images, hehe (still need to get a deeper understanding of exporting the images to MMD)) if you are ever in help of finding a mod (although by the looks of it, it's you that helps others find the mods they are looking for). Even though I love Harem Collector, this Harem game is one of the first RPG Maker games I have played (either first, second, or third; I would place my money on second if I had to) and the only one still in production.

[AllenAndArth]

cool, it's already in testing phase, I would try to send an e-mail, I really want to play(even if it's just testing), I visit the blog everyday, unfortunately time is an issue for me for now, so I can't help sorry
Still I'll be waiting with tears of blood in the eyes, on another note, it's good to know that the hiatus is over, harem is one of the first games I've played and one of the bests too, the dark path is awesome hands down, the perks for him aren't that good compared to the light path, but I still like dark more

[ker]

*Jumps for Joy!*

I knew you had it in you. You were visiting Hongfire forums even though you had not posted ever since your leave notice. Thank you for your kindness and time Ker, I would help you but I only have Ace and the XV2Ace program is not working out too well (tells me that your ini file is not from VX >.<). I could try help you with 3DCG (I finally got it working a few days ago, only about a year after your told me what you used to make the images, hehe (still need to get a deeper understanding of exporting the images to MMD)) if you are ever in help of finding a mod (although by the looks of it, it's you that helps others find the mods they are looking for). Even though I love Harem Collector, this Harem game is one of the first RPG Maker games I have played (either first, second, or third; I would place my money on second if I had to) and the only one still in production.

Hmm. The mod collection isn't something I really could use. I regularly dig through those even when I don't feel like doing anything porn related. Having a poser is something I've considered in the past. Essentially I would send you a written version of the scene, a few hard-saves of involved characters in various states of dress and whatever backgrounds I think are necessary and then you'd create the images and send them back to me. Image creation can take an hour to a few hours per scene and it'd help my workflow if I could off-load any of that. Of course this is all in the future, there's no content creation going on during a testing phase so no images will be needed until 0.6b final gets released. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in though.

And my only knowledge on MMD is a program called MMD exists, is somewhat related to 3dcg, and is better for videos than 3dcg. But considering I don't use videos I've never gone further than that.

[ker]

Thank you for the honesty. It's far better to have someone say 'no, can't do it' then have 5-10 testers volunteer and then only 1-2 actually do any testing which is kinda the norm.

cool, it's already in testing phase, I would try to send an e-mail, I really want to play(even if it's just testing), I visit the blog everyday, unfortunately time is an issue for me for now, so I can't help sorry
Still I'll be waiting with tears of blood in the eyes, on another note, it's good to know that the hiatus is over, harem is one of the first games I've played and one of the bests too, the dark path is awesome hands down, the perks for him aren't that good compared to the light path, but I still like dark more

[AllenAndArth]

Thank you for the honesty. It's far better to have someone say 'no, can't do it' then have 5-10 testers volunteer and then only 1-2 actually do any testing which is kinda the norm.

cool, it's already in testing phase, I would try to send an e-mail, I really want to play(even if it's just testing), I visit the blog everyday, unfortunately time is an issue for me for now, so I can't help sorry
Still I'll be waiting with tears of blood in the eyes, on another note, it's good to know that the hiatus is over, harem is one of the first games I've played and one of the bests too, the dark path is awesome hands down, the perks for him aren't that good compared to the light path, but I still like dark more

that seems kind of annoying, really! But, unfortunately that's how it rolls, i'm just happy that the game still on, it's an amazing game, I don't mind waiting

[UnLimiTeD]

I decided to volunteer.
But as I wrote in the mail, no VX, just Ace.
Should the subject include the ' ' ? Because I didn't.

[Zeus Kabob]

Huh. I sent an email that I thought fit the requirements, but I haven't heard back at all. Does that mean I'm denied, or are you waiting on sending out any communication by email?