Snowy Update, Patreon and Chapter 1 Roadmap. (Patreon)

Hi :)
(Btw the text posts are horrible, you can barely see them compared to image posts, sorry if this post is difficult to find.)

The Snowy Update

First of all, thank you everyone for your support on the newest update; The Snowy Update. Almost everyone liked it, and It felt really good, you know, finishing something and posting it.

Players were able to see my improvement over the years, and all of what I've learned. For now, I'm the only one working on events, I even learned during all these years how to do animations and tried my very very best to do them for the snowy update, I only hope to improve. I'm clarifying this because there are some people that believe I bought the animations, I only commissioned the sounds and voices! :)


I'm not an experienced dev, I never worked on a coding job, nor even had to meet deadlines on any job.  But I'm aware of this, I've made lots of mistakes, one of them being actually DOING the Snowy Update. I take really hot-blooded decisions.

Like everyone, with experience, I will learn from my mistakes and take better decisions next time.

To do the Snowy Update as fast as possible, I was working with a 2-year-old version of Renpy; That's why, if you've played the Snowy Event on release, the v0.1.2.1 version, you had probably lots of lag and problems.

After the update, it took me quite a while of time to release the v0.1.2.2; With the newest Renpy version and MOST of the reworks I did over all these years in Chapter 1. I've worked a lot on the gameplay of Chapter 1, changing every single system. Right now you can play those improved systems. They are still old, they can be better... But still, they are better than the ones from v0.1.2 and it seems to work flawlessly for most players :)
If you've played v0.1.2.1 at the moment of the release; I would suggest trying the new version, to see what I'm talking about!

Of course, porting most of Chapter 1 systems led to a lot of bugs. And those were fixed on the latest v0.1.2.3b.
But.

The Snowy Update actually helped a lot. Porting these systems BEFORE the big amount of events and new zones/content Chapter 1 brings helps me debug everything and be perfectly ready.

The only problem is that now I have to port the rest from Chapter 1, which will take quite a while. I will try to do it slowly to not make any mistakes! Event-per-event! Item-per-item!

There is some stuff in the girls' code and behavior that wasn't ported yet, too. The same goes with LOTS of fan-arts cards! Sorry for not porting them! They will be properly ported for v0.1.3.

Patreon

Patreon will receive multiple changes. I will soon be changing the design of the banner, tiers, and the welcome pages. Well, lots of stuff.

I already did some changes to the tiers' design!

Besides that, there will be changes to the benefits of the membership tiers. Don't worry, Pre-Release, Beta, and cheat codes will remain the same.

I will remove, specifically;

• Exclusive Sneak Peeks - I want everyone to see future content.
• Patreon-Only polls - I want everyone to be part of this.
• Teaser of the new girl - There won't be teasers of new girls before release, as planned early in development.

The radical change will be in CUSTOM REQUESTS.

The custom requests were done extremely fast before, as the quality was really low. Now that you've been proven of the new quality in the Snowy Update;

• Hero Tier (50$): You can request one picture of one character, per month.
• Follower Of Jimmy (75$): You can request one picture of up to two characters, per month.
• Demon God (100$): You can request one picture of up to three characters, per month or one simple animation.

These requests can be dynamic, we can talk about it. I don't mind adding one character if the request is simple! Or I can make a more complex picture if we remove a character, for example!
We can talk about it and find the best solution that would suit both of us!

Also, why is JUST one picture as expensive as 50$? The thing is, the custom request is an EXTRA I'm adding for those who support me. It is not meant to be the reason you would join that tier!
And, of course, it's because there are LOTS of people on the 20$ tier (83 beautiful living beings). I just CAN'T keep up with it.

I hope you understand ♥

Roadmap.

I want to change the way I do stuff. I'm tired of hiding stuff only for spoilers or for a surprise effect. I want to be extremely transparent with the development progress.

That's why, I will start using "Development Daily Notes" again. (a 20$ reward.)
The Development Daily Notes is a channel in Hero´s Harem Guild Discord Server. I post what I do every day, daily.

Via the Development Daily Notes, you can know what I'm doing every day, but it is STILL not transparent enough. How much do I have to do? How much I did do every day? Those are questions that are still there.

That's why, from now on, a PUBLIC "TRELLO" PAGE will be available for everyone to go and see my progress LIVE.


Here, you can see everything I've done, everything that's left, and everything that it's completed via small "cards" that shows a percentage or a checklist.

You can see descriptions of the changes I'm doing every-single-day, and the justification of that change, most of the time, with a picture.

This Trello page is NOT only for you to have an idea of how much time the next update is taking, or take an estimation of it; But it's also to force me to have a doctrine or a routine that helps me finish these goals as soon as possible and, to be organized, that is.

Let's just say it's a public "private" roadmap.

HERE IS THE ROADMAP LINK
(The roadmap may not look completed for now, give me some time to see what is left to do and plan everything. It will probably add stuff in the next couple of days, but for now, you can see a glance of what needs to be done)

Remember, if you have any doubts about any change, look at the cards. There will be info there.
Now, let's talk about something you all want to know;

Chapter 1.

Let's go straight to the point; Chapter 1 will be divided now. In, what I believe, will be three parts. I'm on the edge of four parts if I want to release the first part extremely fast.

Chapter 1, in its totality, was built for only one part, start to finish, and it's extremely large.
This gave me certain freedom when it came to gameplay. I did extend the Prologue gameplay content inside what could be the first part of Chapter 1; So, if I would release Chapter 1 Part 1 right now (I can do that), it will have almost no progress on gameplay, and that's no fun. I think the only change early in Chapter 1 is the GIFTS system.

Hero's Harem Guild stands over the gameplay; The gameplay IT'S important.

For Chapter 1 Part 1 to make sense, and be fun enough to feel progression in-game, it is needed lots of changes.
If I follow what I did before, new places like "The Deep Forest" would unlock just a little bit before the end of Part 1, that's not good at all, as the Deep Forest is the next step in gameplay progression.

As I said; Changes are needed, or, how I like to say it... "Re-organization".
In short; To make Part 1 I need to re-organize the events. That means creating, modifying, deleting, reworking, moving, or polishing content. And this could take quite a while!

If you need more precise information, visit the ROADMAP and check the card descriptions.

TL DR; Chapter 1 will be divided into THREE PARTS.

( Before we continue, some of these next sneak peeks were already shown before, some are really OLD (Bad Quality compared, but I want to show them in case you missed them) or they were created as a concept for myself, everything can change and some of them WILL definitely look different; Better, of course ;D )

Part 1; Valirya

Hero's Harem Guild is not a "routes" game, it is quite the contrary; Multiple stories colliding together. Every character is their own protagonist of their story, and how they interact together is, for me, really interesting.

Also, the World Building got expanded by FAR lot.


You will realize it almost instantly in this first part. You will see lots of events where Zack isn't even present or lots of interesting stuff about the world; How do the Towns work? What are the heroes actually? Demons... are they "bad"? What is a Witch? What is the AFGA, or called "Association Of Guild Assistants"? What do they want? Where is Sealed Town? Who is in charge of everything? What is the problem of the Region? How does combat work? Is there Religion on it?

Lots of stuff will be answered in this first part. Everything you know inside Hero's Harem Guild will be explained, expanded, and, of course, be better!


Guild members will start doing typical Guild activities, if you wonder what a Guild is supposed to do in Hero's Harem Guild, then you will see it in this part.

During this part, the characters will start training and learning how to defend themselves. The characters who are not really used to the outside world will learn about it, and the experienced will have other problems than their own knowledge.

Because this is the very next update, I don't mind giving in some extra info, if you want a small explanation of what to expect. There is a lot of other stuff happening to the first part of these characters, this is just the earliest. You can skip this.

• Lucy will have trouble with the decision to start training; She wants to have a peaceful life. She will not participate in the training. She discovers a change in Zack that no one else can see, after all, she is the one who looks at him the most, and that doesn't leave her mind in peace.

• Thanks to Narissa, Zack discovers something about Rebecca that changes his entire perspective about her role as Lady. Rebecca has problems with the Town's neighbors because a pair of partners stole something extremely precious. She gives an ultimatum to Zack, what kind of Hero he wants to be?

• Fara is facing insecurity problems because she broke a rule to save the Guild House, because of this, she feels forced on being more honest to Zack when it comes to the Guild's structure. Everything is old and needs to be repaired; so she won't have to break the rules ever again, and she prays for her god every day to not be punished for her actions.

• Luna can't get better with training, no matter what she does, to the point she starts to stress a lot and being an annoyance to others. Zack gets bothered by this until he slowly realizes that there's way more than just a stressed cat.

• Shino starts her witch practice, and it is set to her that no matter how much she tries she can't change the way people judged her for her previous actions. If she wants to be Leticia's "daughter", she has to do almost an impossible task before the Star Of Valirya finally travels throughout the town.

• Evie receives an "Ev-book" to start writing and communicating with others herself, thanks to this, Zack and Lucy start discovering why Evie is there and her relationship with Lucy intensifies. But Evie realizes that... Book or not; Her words still hurt her. Until she meets someone like her and demands answers.

• Sunny is worried because Zack left for a lot of time and she can't ask anyone in town. Zack starts discovering why she is always at the beach, and why she never interacts with anyone until suddenly Rebecca requests the presence of the Town Commander.

• Ari trains a lot and she gets really good extremely fast. She also gets along very well with Narissa, and both Zack and Ari start discovering what demons really are.

• Elizabeth will bring family moments together, but, no matter how much she tries... She's unable to consider Sealed Town her home.

• Leticia is having a hard time during the rainy season and that brings her some horrible memories, so she focuses her efforts on the dojo. She's willing to help everyone, but the group still needs someone who could help with physical activities.

• Narissa is forced on being with Zack all day, so they must get along if they don't want to kill themselves. To break her curse, Zack needs to find Crimson Blood and some Fairy Clothes. In the meanwhile, thanks to her knowledge, Zack will start seeing in everyone in town something that he was unable to see before, he will start seeing them with another pair of eyes.

• Zack asks himself why he wants to be a Hero and starts training to meet everyone's expectations; Until suddenly he realizes that the curse didn't only affect Narissa, and now he can't do anything. If he doesn't prove he's worthy to be a Hero, The Crowned will make him leave the ones he loves and the Guild will dissolve. Powerless and impotent, he learns that the Sealed Door is actually a Quantum Vault; or how he sees it... A last chance.

Part 2: The Shadow Of The Owl

I will be quick with the next parts, not like the previous one!

This part is completely focused on the relationship between Zack and the Town's people, but it all starts with something; He meets a guy called Hunter DeWhite.

You will see lots of Jimmy, Kiuta, and Zack events being together and improving their relationship. The Town starts having some bandit problems that increase every day, and Zack feels unable to do anything. He wonders if he's the shadow of the previous Hero, despite all the efforts he's having to be with everyone else.

I'm super excited by this part, even more than the 3rd. Because I've managed to do something here that... Oh my god... I love it a lot!
With so many characters, you have to explore their stories somehow. For a lot of time, I was quite frozen because I wasn't able to progress their story the way I would like to. Of course, sudden flashbacks out of nowhere were... kinda wacky.

Somehow, I realized that most stories have someone in common, and was the best thing I could have thought of, ever!

In this part, you will see and discover the past of the town, but, on top of everything else; This second part of the Chapter 1 is heavily focused on these sisters.

(No, it's not a Lucy rework or something, she's not the Lucy you know. smh)

Part 3: The Star Of Valirya

I will be quick.

In this last part, everything that happens in the previous parts takes the characters to a specific place, where their stories collide!

This part settles the rest of the story of Hero's Harem Guild, and their characters!

The Lewd

No matter how much I talk about the story, remember that I will never forget this is a H-game. The Lewd content will NOT lower to be replaced by the story. I think saying this is needed.

2.5 years.

Komi, why it has been 2.5 years since the last update?

Good question, even if I answered that before, multiple times, I will say it again, and give a proper explanation to settle this down.

The sudden rise in the game's reputation, the game's rating, and everyone saying they love the game surprised me, A LOT.
This, slowly, made me want to have an EVEN BETTER game, so, when I started chapter 1, which was supposed to be focused solely on Narissa and Zack, settling that these two were the MC (There's even an old post about it), ending in them fighting together to defeat a bad guy who wanted to do bad stuff because; yes...

I thought a lot, I tried my best for it to make sense. I've made lots of events and... Surprise... It was not good. Not good at all.
All the other girls were completely overshadowed, there was not a single funny event, nah, it was horrible.

I'm a really harsh judge, not only on my own product. The prologue has a hard pass because I'm aware that has been done when I had no experience.
Now, I had to meet an expectation. I can bet everything I have that If I pushed that update, back then, HHG would have died, or, at least, lots of people would hate it.

I started being serious about the story, so I begin thinking about every character, not only about the game's story (And this is important.)

I've started looking at movies or series with other eyes, trying to find what is interesting about them, I started studying their camera angles and character position, and there wasn't a single time that I didn't think about HHG.

I was scared that HHG might have been a one-update glory and that the next parts of the game would have been horrible. I seriously thought, for a while, that I was just lucky. That's why if I'm being honest; Chapter 1 was reworked almost 5 or 6 times, the same goes with their character's design and story. Let me show you some examples of old designs:

DeWhite:

Final:

This Girl:

Final:

Micaela (She had the most number of changes):

Final:

Bonitta:

Final:

After 2 years, I was extremely confident with my work, I loved my story, I loved their characters, and I even believed that HHG looked BEAUTIFUL! I'm so so happy about Hero's Harem Guild, every day I keep doing improvements and trying to drop all these ideas to the screen in a "realistic" way.
Before, I had lots of problems with events because my ideas were ambitious as hell. See the Random Generated Dungeons, which are still NOT DONE at all and they are not funny. It was a nice idea, but... In-game, it requires lots of stuff to do.

I thought the dungeons in the story were a really important center plot, now, I have to change that. The Dungeons are not done. But don't worry, I will make a cheat code so you can access them anyways, in case you want to try them!

The reason this took so much time, and the reason I always said "Soon" when it was clearly not the case; It's because I didn't like the output of it. When I said "Soon" I REALLY BELIEVED it will get updated soon. I even remember naming it some months, before. I'm so so sorry about it. I had no intention to lie to anyone, I just really thought it was this way. This is one of the reasons I'm adding the new roadmap, so you can realistically see the progress and take your own bets.

Another topic some talked about was why I don't stop the pledges until the update is done, and find another job while I do this game, let me talk about something more private;

I live in ARGENTINA. Right now, thanks to Patreon, I'm renting a little department, I was able to buy a relatively good car to easily move around and I'm able to be stable, that is all, of course, thanks to you. So, now, let me tell you something else; Argentina is a mess, and plus I don't have anything that certificates I'm a programmer, and I never really did a single programming course. So, you could say I'm a failure, yeah.

If for some reason I would stop Patreon and "search for a job" I would have to work in a low-cost place, starting at 8 AM and finishing at 8 PM while earning just 60$ per month. Just my apartment costs 200$ per month.

Some people are not aware of this, because they live in other countries with maybe more stable economies. If I would stop the Patreon I would have to just quit doing Hero's Harem Guild because of the lack of TIME.

That's why I always leave it in the hands of people; I want someone to pledge because they want to support the DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME.

If you, even knowing all of this, still think I should pause the month's billing; Then you don't care about people's choices, you only don't believe I'm actually working on Hero's Harem Guild, and it's completely okay to be wrong! :D

I believe that, right now, Hero's Harem Guild looks fantastic and I think I should start focusing on improving my grammar!

These 2.5 years were constant improvement.

These 2.5 years were constant progress.

These 2.5 years were constant learning.

Let me give you the icing on the cake of these 2.5 years!

The Goal

My goal is to make Hero's Harem Guild the best, or at least, one of the best H-games out there. I'm confident enough to believe I'm on the right path.

I cannot wait to show everyone what I have planned and you have no idea how much I would like to transfer the ideas to my mind to a screen instantly.

Making Hero's Harem Guild will take a while. I will also focus on getting help to make this as fast as possible without losing quality.

Also, join Hero's Harem Guild Official Discord Server, I might, just might stream how I make Hero's Harem Guild, or the making of some scenes, someday! I want to be as transparent as possible, and I will try to keep up with the routine and the doctrine I want to impose on myself.
It may be difficult at first, but I will try my best.

Thank you so much for your support.

♥