A few people have asked for release dates, which I normally hate to do. A developers schedule quickly turns into a promise in the minds of the reader and a schedule is nothing but numbers written in sand on the beach. But I'll lay out what I think will happen.
This is all guesswork and needs to be taken as such.
-In this week I hope to move from alpha testing to private beta testing.
-If the private beta goes well it should last 2-4 weeks. It'll depend on the level of response I get from my volunteers, the number of bugs that alpha missed, the severity of those bugs and my ability to find and fix them. Then we'll move into public beta (buggy release).
-Depending on how the alpha and private betas go, the public beta may be fine and be upgrade to final within a week or two. Depending on how much slips through testing the public beta may go through several releases (ala 0.6a) pushing the 0.6b final into early next year.
After 0.6b goes final I'll probably disappear for a few weeks and then start doing some polls, help wanted posts and gathering general feedback to help develop later versions.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Beta invites sent out
Thank you to everyone who applied to help test 0.6b. Unfortunately it'd be completely impossible for me to manage the number of people who offered to help so I only took a small number of applicants to be part of the beta. No offense meant to anyone who didn't get the invite.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Beta apps by end of day 10/28
Thank you to everyone that has applied to help me beta test 0.6b. I apologize that I won't be able to respond to everyone who did but I'll be deciding who'll be part of the program Wed morning, so have your app in by the end of Tuesday if you want in. Probably only going to have 5-6 testers out of the 30 or so that's applied so far so don't feel bad if you didn't get chosen.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Help Wanted : Scripter
10/30 position filled - Thanks to Scripter9
Monday, October 21, 2013
0.6b entering alpha testing
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 haremrpg@gmail.com 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.
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.
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 haremrpg@gmail.com 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.
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.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
What 0.6b will bring
Still working on getting a handle on the code again so no ETA but I'd figure that I'd make a feature list for 0.6b for all of you. The first two are spoilers in a small sense. I've hinted and said them before but some people don't want them. They are written in a white font so you'll have to highlight them to read them.
-Climax of Terra's arc. And yes it will involve quite a few climaxes
-Resolution of Vanessa's disappearance and Ariel/Cecilia will make an appearance.
-Complete removal of the random encounter system with a random event system in its place. While this isn't used all that often in 0.6 content it will give me far more flexibility with random encounters in any zone.
-The id ring has resumed some functionality as a guide, pointing the player to the next step of the main plot. Very much in beta stages and needing feedback for when it doesn't work properly.
-Fenja has been reclassified as a minor (or inventory) slave. Essentially her quest will remain as it is but after she's captured there isn't any additional content for her. Essentially it allows me to create minor slaves at the end of an optional segment or when the character would normally buy/acquire a new slave but without the burden of really creating a character or weaving her into the plot. While there will still be more major characters introduced it gives me more flexibility in writing.
-Over 90% of people in the survey voted yes to letting me break old saves, so that will be done. Saves will be provided whenever 0.6b is released.
-Continued editing and polishing. While the Corsix edit is still a few months away, Western Corsix and before should be much cleaner. Along with a change in workflow to increase accuracy it should be far easier to read Thanks to Hitoroni on this.
-New faces. While this isn't complete, TheEye92 showed me a few issues with my workflow in creating faces that was creating the heavily pixelated look and new faces should be much smoother. Over time I'll work on going back and replacing as many of the old faces as possible.
-Donna's first two scenes on the dark path have been completely rewritten and imaged. That was some of my very early rough work and really needed to be updated. Feel free to [politely] suggest other scenes/events that could use a rewrite and I'll put them on the list.
-I haven't counted precisely yet, but 0.6b should bring on another 100-150 pages of text and another 30 scenes or so. Wow I really am developing like Valve.
-Rebalancing of characters to make combat more enjoyable and smooth. This has been going on for a few updates and has gotten to the point where old saves must be junked and new games must be created.
What 0.6b will not include
-With the exception of Donna's first two scenes, any new Celee (colonies) content.
-The ability to go back after entering Corsix. This will be the end of the current rails section, 0.6c is planning on opening up the world again.
-Climax of Terra's arc. And yes it will involve quite a few climaxes
-Resolution of Vanessa's disappearance and Ariel/Cecilia will make an appearance.
-Complete removal of the random encounter system with a random event system in its place. While this isn't used all that often in 0.6 content it will give me far more flexibility with random encounters in any zone.
-The id ring has resumed some functionality as a guide, pointing the player to the next step of the main plot. Very much in beta stages and needing feedback for when it doesn't work properly.
-Fenja has been reclassified as a minor (or inventory) slave. Essentially her quest will remain as it is but after she's captured there isn't any additional content for her. Essentially it allows me to create minor slaves at the end of an optional segment or when the character would normally buy/acquire a new slave but without the burden of really creating a character or weaving her into the plot. While there will still be more major characters introduced it gives me more flexibility in writing.
-Over 90% of people in the survey voted yes to letting me break old saves, so that will be done. Saves will be provided whenever 0.6b is released.
-Continued editing and polishing. While the Corsix edit is still a few months away, Western Corsix and before should be much cleaner. Along with a change in workflow to increase accuracy it should be far easier to read Thanks to Hitoroni on this.
-New faces. While this isn't complete, TheEye92 showed me a few issues with my workflow in creating faces that was creating the heavily pixelated look and new faces should be much smoother. Over time I'll work on going back and replacing as many of the old faces as possible.
-Donna's first two scenes on the dark path have been completely rewritten and imaged. That was some of my very early rough work and really needed to be updated. Feel free to [politely] suggest other scenes/events that could use a rewrite and I'll put them on the list.
-I haven't counted precisely yet, but 0.6b should bring on another 100-150 pages of text and another 30 scenes or so. Wow I really am developing like Valve.
-Rebalancing of characters to make combat more enjoyable and smooth. This has been going on for a few updates and has gotten to the point where old saves must be junked and new games must be created.
What 0.6b will not include
-With the exception of Donna's first two scenes, any new Celee (colonies) content.
-The ability to go back after entering Corsix. This will be the end of the current rails section, 0.6c is planning on opening up the world again.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Thank you.
I've been reading through all the comments to my last post and want to take a moment to thank everyone for their warm wishes and personal story. It reminded me of something that I knew but had forgotten in the news. There is nothing wrong with having dark fantasies, even sharing them with a loved one. Losing the distinction between reality and fantasy is a threat to everyone but finding proper outlets for them can give you safe outlets for them. I have decided to continue developing Harem.
If memory serves me correctly I had included a readme in 0.6a and I'll end the conversation by quoting something I had said long ago. (if not, it will be in 0.6b).
"This is dark fantasy. If at any time you watch a scene and think 'That's a good idea' you should stop playing and get some therapy. Or at least a good hooker."
Since making the last post I've been doing a great deal of writing, nearly 60 pages worth of content in just a little over a week. But I've still been out of the code for months and it is going to take me some time to review what needs to be done to even get a timetable for 0.6b. I'll post updates as I get a grip on the situation.
But delay might give me an excuse to do something that needs to be done. Never let a crisis go to waste as they say. My understanding of VX combat has grown tremendously since starting Harem but an issue with the game is that character stats and progression are fixed by the save, not by the game. So character from earlier saves don't behave quite how they should. While people have tried to help me create scripts to get reset the characters, they've created issues of their own (for example Ralph renaming himself mid-game). Wiping the slate clean and forcing new games would make the game much easier from a code perspective. I would provide 'typical' saves from the end of 0.6a packaged with the 0.6b release for the people who wouldn't want to replay everything. I will post a poll for it in the next few minutes.
Note : Even if we do this now, I can't guarantee that it won't happen again in the future. I have been learning the engine continuously over the last two years and I doubt that process has ended.
If memory serves me correctly I had included a readme in 0.6a and I'll end the conversation by quoting something I had said long ago. (if not, it will be in 0.6b).
"This is dark fantasy. If at any time you watch a scene and think 'That's a good idea' you should stop playing and get some therapy. Or at least a good hooker."
Since making the last post I've been doing a great deal of writing, nearly 60 pages worth of content in just a little over a week. But I've still been out of the code for months and it is going to take me some time to review what needs to be done to even get a timetable for 0.6b. I'll post updates as I get a grip on the situation.
But delay might give me an excuse to do something that needs to be done. Never let a crisis go to waste as they say. My understanding of VX combat has grown tremendously since starting Harem but an issue with the game is that character stats and progression are fixed by the save, not by the game. So character from earlier saves don't behave quite how they should. While people have tried to help me create scripts to get reset the characters, they've created issues of their own (for example Ralph renaming himself mid-game). Wiping the slate clean and forcing new games would make the game much easier from a code perspective. I would provide 'typical' saves from the end of 0.6a packaged with the 0.6b release for the people who wouldn't want to replay everything. I will post a poll for it in the next few minutes.
Note : Even if we do this now, I can't guarantee that it won't happen again in the future. I have been learning the engine continuously over the last two years and I doubt that process has ended.
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