4th Anniversary!

Good Morning!

Hero's Harem Guild is four years old today! And no, I won't announce a special Christmas update this time, like last year...

... will I?

This time, I want to show and talk about the differences between my previous workflow, quality, and scope of the game and show the actual.

I wanted to make a long post, talking EVEN about coding and how I improved. But I will mention it in this case and not show weird coding images. But I want to discuss HHG's workflow, quality, scope, and future plans.

To anyone new here, HHG's last update (Not including the Snowy update) was the complete PROLOGUE. Ten events for most girls. From 6 to 10 hours of gameplay. From now on, the following updates will be in the form of "Chapters," which I will try to make similar to anime/series episodes. But with gameplay and long as hell.

These new chapters will probably have 3 to 12 new levels for the girls.
My idea was always to make all the girls have the same number of levels, but I won't do that. From Chapter 1, you will see that some girls have lower levels than others. This is not bad; it's just that it's not time for them yet!

How it started

HHG started with 0 planning. I've learned enough basic stuff to make the game.
The concept was simple: A guy who lived in a house became the hero of HIS hometown and started a guild. SO I JUST STARTED DOING IT. That's it.

I just made some characters and started right away. Making all the characters probably took me a week or so. (Not learning how to make them, just making them)

There was no script or planning; I was dropping whatever I had in my mind and thinking in the short term.
Back then, choosing some specific options would add SPECIFIC STATS to characters.

I just created and added girls. There was no planning in their story or something.
You can see most of the actual girls, though: Elizabeth, Ari, Leticia, Narissa, Lucy, Fara, Shino, Luna, Rebecca, Evie, Maria, and Sunny.
The other two girls were never shown. The last girls from the two last rows were never "released".

Monica was meant to be a tsundere until I remembered how much I hated the anime tropes.
I didn't even remember Kanami.
Toshi might be out there in HHG's actual version but with a different name and design.

I should have deleted more girls, but this is how it happened!

The game was never supposed to have ROUTES, but it had some sort of system that was SUPPOSED to affect the girls' "personalities".

HHG WAS NOT MEANT TO BE A STORY GAME; it was meant to be only and completely sandbox. Just having fun with the girls and, based on their "stats," you would have different behavior in them.

Girls would never "meet" each other, except for some H fun. (Except for special cases like Ari and Elizabeth, that is.)

I wanted to make a quick game without thinking about the story or anything, just doing events.

But, as you know, that changed entirely.

I was already thinking about how I would make all the characters so both the MC and the player meet them; It was IMPOSSIBLE without making them come to the town from outside.
It would have been weird to make Lucy and others like Rebecca ALREADY know the MC, and, to be honest, Evie was the only one who had (a little bit) story and context for her to come from outside Oar's Rest.

In the middle of TRYING to find a situation to make this egg-shaped MC a Hero, and explaining how he, out of anyone, would have a guild out of nowhere... I got a great idea, and I...

... QUASI-ISEKAI'D HIM!

A random demon came and took him to another town.

That's it.

Honestly, from there and afterward, I started to like the characters, and I wanted to make something more complex, so I began to create a simple story and background for all the characters.

But I want to make something clear: Everything was created on the go. So, there ARE a lot of problems in the world-building and some characters.

(Btw, I believed this image was one of the BEST renders I've made back then. xD)

After finishing THE PROLOGUE, there was already some complexity in the story, and the next update was simple.

Don't worry about what I'll show now; it's just ONE of the versions of what Chapter 1 was supposed to be. You can read it. Lots of things have changed.

The MC and Narissa needed Crimson Blood to return Narissa back to normal.

The Masked Girl, Shana, was working for a bad guy who forced her to steal from the town and also killed her friend for not wanting to do so.

The MC saw it all and was about to tell Rebecca about it. But Shana knows the MC is wandering around with a Demon, so she extorts him with it.

This guy is trying to have Crimson Blood to use it and become powerful to... well... idk, maybe do bad stuff, I guess.

MC and Shana end up in a deal; She doesn't say anything if he doesn't tell anything.
And if he uses his privileges as a Hero to help her with this guy, she will give the Crimson Blood to him instead.

MC threatens this Bad guy, who was called Blinheim back then. Telling him that he knows everything and that he will have a hard time if he doesn't leave town. So Blinheim leaves.

I will omit part of the next stuff because it's still in the game, but Sunny ends up in Rebecca's church with everyone.

Out of nowhere, Luna caught some random thieves who got Crimson Blood stolen FROM Shana, who was getting it for the Hero.

These guys worked for Blinheim, who appears again to take everything.

So they fight, and everything goes to hell and Blinheim uses the Crimson Blood to stop them all.

Rebecca gives the blood so he stops hurting them, and he leaves. (Btw, these images are from APRIL 4 -> 2021 <-)

The rest, which is not much, is the Hero training and Narissa helping him, whom the MC doesn't trust.

Not trusting Narissa is bad, so he fights Blinheim alone and starts losing until he teamups with Narissa to defeat him.

And that was ONE of the first versions of Chapter 1. It was short, but... I didn't like it that much.

There were some subplots that I didn't mention because some of them are still in the game. Like Lucy, Sunny, and Luna having problems with people using Crimson Blood, or how Shana was in that situation because she was desperate. But MOST characters didn't have a big impact on the chapter, so... I was not okay with that and decided to change it.

I hope this clarifies why I always said that the update was about to be released SOON.
Because it was. (Then, the scope of Chapter 1 became even bigger, adding characters like "Micaela" and others)

Making the game was extremely fast and easy. A girls' event would contain a maximum of 30 renders.

Most backgrounds were fast-made by putting random stuff out there.

I didn't care about lightning or anything. I just put a POV scene and take renders based on what the girl had to say.

Everything, including characters, backgrounds, weapons, or some assets, was used from the default engine. And they were quite easy to do because of this.

One of the things I didn't like was having stuff that appeared in OTHER GAMES.

So, let me show you the now...

The now.

Backgrounds/maps are now completely made by me.

Normally, this doesn't take THAT much time to make, but when you have to think about the gameplay, what to add, and what to not add... That's a problem.

ALL the new maps you will see in Chapter 1 are not anywhere else, which makes me happy! For example, I show you part of the new Oar's Rest:

As I said, the world-building and the characters' story were not polished. Now, it is. Oar's Rest received a big change: A town with an overwhelmed population, dirty, and a LOT of verticality, perfect to run between houses, perfect for the MC's backstory.

I tried to do my best to create a story around the actual story you guys know. I did my best and got some amazing ideas to explain certain situations.

For a long time, I tried to get an excuse for everything I wrote when I created a fast game for the get-go. You know, what I considered the Quasi-Isekai'd MC situation.

Sadly, some things are broken, and THERE will be plotholes. MOSTLY in Luna and Lucy's first meeting after 13 years, the reason why the MC is a "Hero", stuff like the "Multiple Jimmys" situation of "clones" being spies or Rebecca wanting to marry the MC to be a Queen. Someday, I will make the respective changes.

One would normally label girls based on their personalities, and I do that, too!
But, when it comes to their stories, to create them, every single arc of them talks about a specific theme.

Thinking about "deep" themes helped me greatly in writing their stories. All of them contain an opinion or view about a certain theme, and I love it.

For example, Evie's all about Frustration and Helplessness about her lack of ability to communicate and about death as a "premature visible method" and how to handle it.

Leticia is about pride, immutable dogmas, and regret about irreversible actions.

The MC is about responsibility and learning how to handle connections between people.

Fara is about religion, culture, and false beliefs.

The main enemy, for example, contains themes like Destiny, Family Legacy, and Peace.

Also, there are a lot of connections between them, which will generate conflict. This one was the hardest part, but I'm extremely happy with the output. Fara's connection to culture will impact on MC's trying to handle connections between people. Leticia's immutable dogmas will impact on Shino's Heterodox Persona or Lucy's Identity, and this, impacts directly to Luna's Heavy Responsibility.

It was fun to make.

Obviously, not everything is drama and hurting your little heart every damn minute. One of the reasons people like HHG is because it has lots of funny and comical moments. Those will remain. I will try not to over-dramatize some stuff.

That is only a small part. They ALL have their own backstories by now, with connections and everything! And the world is really, really polished! The Region the game is placed in is called "Valirya; The Region Of Heroes".

Thinking all this took an immense amount of time, I have "notepads" and docs everywhere. I'm still polishing some things. I want HHG to be a multiple-games thing, and I definitely want to drop some early hints or characters that will probably have better protagonism in the next games.

With all those backstories and stories... How do we show them?

I've educated myself about writing and where you want to put a flashback or when you show interesting stuff. And it's kinda difficult to know.

Should I always use flashbacks? How do I show all of them in an ordered way... so you can understand some situations while also some characters from the present do so?

Most of the time, it is shown between events. If you've seen my Trello, you know that I already added the Chapter 1 introduction, introducing the guy previously named Blinheim.

Well, I've decided to change that event to something else and leave the actual for the Chapter 2 introduction event.

In this new event, JUST after you start chapter 1, you see a small event showing a specific situation that happened 11 years ago in the MC's life.

This event alone shows specific situations of what the MC lived and how he thinks. It's PERFECT for the entire theme of Chapter 1.

In this case, I've shown the date and location of the scene. But sometimes I don't do it. And I will use those scenes as a way of telling the story ;D You will eventually understand.

I'm trying my best to add certain scenes in very specific situations to show something I want you to see. I won't over-use concepts such as flashbacks or nightmares.

I don't know what happened for me to end up talking about these weird concepts; I'm sorry. I want to write everything that happens in my mind and progress in learning how to do stuff. Let's talk about something else, like the design of characters and what I use now to make them as original as possible. I will use a recent example.

This guy is Leon. The reason the MC ends up leaving the town and his family. You will see him only at the start of the game. This was his design. The sword and his clothing were the default ones.

This is his character now; he's completely reworked, using all the techniques I've learned over the years. He also has a non-default weapon. It's a 3D model that I've bought. Some 3D models I bought are modified, but not in this case.

This is, of course, just an example. I will try to have actual characters who look old slowly become better. But you can expect this kind of new design for new characters. I'm very proud of them. There's still room to improve, but I'm extremely happy to see the differences between my work from 4 years ago and today.

The same goes for backgrounds, render quality, camera work, and millions of other things, like coding or GUI design. I'm really sorry, but this definitely takes its time. It's all worth it. I would have loved to release Chapter 1 this year.

Also, I mentioned that girls had a maximum of 30 renders per level in the prologue.
Now, they have a minimum of 40 renders, most of them having around 100, and some reaching 300 or 500 renders, with an entire 20- or 30-minute event.

I haven't posted November's changes because I did stuff that was not posted on Trello. So, this could be considered the monthly post.

December won't have a monthly post, either. Holiday season and etc. Last year, I was full of the Christmas update; I will take a small breath this month and a couple of days of the next one.

I know you guys deserve an update as soon as possible, but please understand it's exhausting.

I will probably still work on the game during these months, even do Trello updates. I cannot stay a single day without doing something. But I'll be completely inactive from time to time.

Also, just a heads up.
From now on, all H-Scenes will have sound, but they won't be added in the Beta, Pre-Release, or Public version. It might take more time, based on the time the VA would take to make them.

Plans

Finish HHG and move to another engine, like Unity, and make the exact same gameplay there.

That's it.

This will help me so I can hire people to speed up the development process. I deny myself to continue like this, slow as hell. xD
I also have some plans for something else, to have fun. But HHG is my priority for now.

I just wanted to show and talk about some stuff. It was fun opening the OLD HHG and finding comparisons. And I hope some people will see the changes and upgrades from 4 years ago to today, specifically the new audience!

It is really fun making HHG and interacting with all of you.
It will be even more fun soon.

Also! I'm mostly active on DISCORD. If you want to join our community or just come and say hi, you can join from HERE!

Thank you so much ♥