RLD Status, Updates, Gold Content and Moving Forward

 I realize it's been an excruciatingly long time between updates, and we've been pretty quiet about it as well. So what's going on?

FLASH ARCHIVES:

Creating Flash archives is a huge sinkhole of time. Basically every problem I've ever had with Flash is continually a problem in creating an archive. I can't seem to fix things that have always been broken, and I can't keep beating myself up over something that I didn't break in the first place. Jeanette's Female scenes are an asshole of monumental proportions. I've run into similar problems with Raquel, Megan, Ari & Anne. So I am removing them from the archive because I'd rather spend my time trying to get the scenes to work in Unity over broken and abandoned Flash software.

In order to get RLD out to Gold members these are the things I had to remove because fixing them is not the best use of my time.

• Support for Female Scenes
• Auxiliary Dialog
• Flash Navigation Overhaul
• Sound/Voice

The reality of the situation is that Flash is abandonware, the browser version WILL continue to break until it's unplayable because Adobe is a brat child that would rather break their things than see anyone else use them. The archives are unstable because Adobe makes Flash unstable. Any attempt I make to fix something could be subverted by Adobe randomly destroying shit.

The HTH flash archive is about as final as I can make it. Whatever is broken will remain broken.

The RLD flash archive is almost ready to leave Alpha. I've fixed what I can, removed what I can't, and anything else that's broken, is what it is and after its release, I'm considering it a wash.

I am also abandoning Flash since Adobe wants to be petty with their user agreements. If you use an Adobe product (most likely Photoshop), use at your own risk, I wouldn't put it past Adobe to prosecute anyone and everyone. Not aware of the situation? Here's an article explaining their plans moving forward: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xk3p/adobe-tells-users-they-can-get-sued-for-using-old-versions-of-photoshop?utm_campaign=sharebutton

HTH in UNITY (aka NEW CYANA):

HTH in Unity is on HOLD. RLD in Unity is my main focus right now. There are multiple reasons for this. The biggest is that HTH is HUGE and it's a HUGE undertaking to move the whole thing to Unity. The textures are very intense, so I've had to change my order of operations to work with what Unity has to create what I want AND allow people to actually play. What a concept, right?

Now when I say it's on hold, I AM actively working on it, but largely I'm still testing out new tools and techniques. I can easily say that there will NOT be any updates released for HTH: New Cyana in 2019. 

RLD in UNITY:

I've made huge progress and I'm ridiculously close to a working build that I can release to Alpha members on Patreon. RLD in Unity won't be in Alpha nearly as long as the Flash archive of RLD, because I'm not constantly fighting with Unity the way I am with Flash. In Unity I'm still learning and making progress. Whereas with Flash, I've resigned myself to the reality of it's uselessness. Basically Unity's bugs I CAN fix.

This is what I have left to do with RLD in Unity before it can go into testing:

• Additional Testing of in-game cash system.
• Additional core functions including expanded dialog
• NPC status recognition

So there you have it, all the nitty gritty of what's been going on with production.

I am sorry that it took so long for me to realize I was beating a dead horse in trying to fix flash archive bugs. I didn't want to abandon something I'd worked so hard for, but Ty helped me realize that I'm not abandoning it, I'm burying that dead horse and moving on.

Thank you for all your support and patience during everything. This Unity transition makes it the 4th time I've had to start over from scratch. So knowing that you want to see these projects move forward as much as I do, keeps the fires burning.