This one's for subscribers only.
You'll need to read Devlog #6 for context, if you haven't yet.
Just wanted to add a bit more to the "home situation." First of all, it's all depressing as fuck, and this is partly why I didn't want to air it out in the first place. Between the big "about me" post I made here last year where I talked about some things that have occurred in my private life/talked about "who I am," the news I gave you guys about my dog, and then the dreaded Devlog #6... it's all rather sad and depressing.
This is not what I'm about. I'm an unserious, laid back, happy person and I have been for as long as I can remember. Anyone who talks to me over on Discord will quickly realize that the only time I ever get serious is when I'm arguing about video games, lol.
Anyways, some good came out of this situation. Between the "sick break" I took, followed shortly by the "mental health break," I have to say that I am feeling a renewed passion that I haven't had since way back in the Polarity days. I am currently working at a rate 3x faster than I was over the last couple of years, and this time I won't waste the "momentum." I won't make anymore empty promises, but I will say this:
2024 is going to be a good year for Radiant fans.
I also wanted to talk about something interesting/cool for a change. Someone recently asked me how I got into the dev thing, and this is something I haven't really talked about much. So yeah, let's talk about that! This will be especially new for those of you who haven't been around since the "Polarity" days.
First, a story: throughout my uh... angst-filled youth... I was fascinated with the idea of "sex, but in video games." You see, there was a time when "newgrounds" was where we went for all of our ero-games, and most of them were just dating sims made in Flash. I also played all the high budget porn games like Leisure Suit Larry, Bonetown, Bonecraft, and when I was a bit older: Illusion games like Artificial Girl. Needless to say, erotic video games have been apart of my life longer than most people's. The first one I played was Ganguro Girl, and that was roughly 22 years ago.
Okay, story over.
Fast forward to 2017. I had just gotten a new phone and thought to myself, "Hey smartphones play video games, right? I wonder if there's any good ero-games for Android?" So I searched and found two games: "Dating my D," and "Good Girl Gone Bad," the former of which was my introduction to the AVN industry and what got me obsessed with adult visual novels. I'm not saying this to brag, but something I'd noticed while playing the games is that despite many of them being really good and enjoying the hell out of them... I considered myself to generally be a more talented/above average storyteller, as writing was something I had been doing as a hobby for ~13 years at the time.
The wheels started turning and before I knew it I was obsessed with "making the game that I wished all the other games could be." I taught myself how to code using Ren'Py (some credit goes to Kthulian, the dev of Ataegina, for answering all of my stupid questions). I taught myself how to make okay-ish 3D art. Next thing I knew, I was releasing Polarity.
This leads us to Radiant...
Not too long before Radiant came out, I was in a pretty tough spot financially due to spending what little savings I had on funeral arrangements. At roughly the same time, my job took a pretty sharp nosedive and profit, after expenses, was nonexistent. I was essentially making nothing, with the only exception being what little I was bringing in from developing Polarity (~160USD per week, give or take, which was not even enough to cover my bills).
Some members of the adult-games community banded together and donated to me, thanks largely to a concerned friend who ignored my demands to not ask anyone to help who I'll just refer to as "Hobo." If it wasn't for this, I would've been evicted from my house and my life could've taken a completely different trajectory (thanks, Hobo). This same friend recommended that myself and Alorth work together. Hobo was a fan of Alorth's art, and he was a fan of Polarity's story. I'm sure you all see where this is going: Alorth and I started talking, I pitched him the idea and sent him some of the rough drafts I had for Radiant, and here we are.
The day I released Radiant Chapter 1, I had been awake for close to 35 hours just... going nuts with the code. Polish, polish, polish, timing, transitions, music, sound effects, I wanted the game to have it all and sleep wasn't going to get in the way of the sweet relief of releasing the game. Once it was finally out, I went to sleep. Seven hours later, I woke up and my life had literally changed radically: I went from being a broke bastard who didn't even having working water in my home to having hundreds of you crazy degenerates flooding me with funds and support. It was the single greatest feeling of my entire life! So yeah... thank you guys for allowing me to do this. I don't think many of you realize just how much this game means to me, and why I will straight up sacrifice my own income, my own ability to make money... if my heart isn't in it and I don't think I can truly do justice to the story.
Bringing this up was not the point of writing this, but I do hope this sheds some light on why I won't always just... brute force the script and churn out small, quick updates for quick cash/more subscribers when I'm going through some shit in my private life. I want every single update of Radiant to be amazing, and I won't half-ass it. Ever. Anyways, once again... thanks you guys for even... enjoying my creative work enough to support us and give us the chance to make Radiant. I have said it before, but I can never say it enough: I am truly proud of it. I will be even more proud when the project is concluded. The future of Radiant is very bright. The next few chapters are some of the most content-packed, debauchery-filled, horny chapters of a video game many of you will play in your lifetimes and it only goes uphill from there. I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am! Anyway, this is long enough, I'm outta here! Love you guys.
SirD.