VN Ren'Py Radiant [v0.7.1] [RK Studios]

[Ayhsel]

When I initially played 0.1, the game felt good. I'm not sure if I felt the same after playing 0.2. I'm a bit conflicted because there are a lot of good things in 0.2, but there are also bad things that didn't exist in 0.1.

I think the biggest problem with the game so far is that there are too many things happening, and I don't think the writing is good enough to tie them all up together nicely. So we ended up with a somewhat awkward situation now where we have a mix of a lot of good and also a lot of bad.

To go deeper, we can look at it this way:

Spoiler

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I feel like the key theme here is that the dev wants to offer potential love interests that are not the three girls. But instead of writing it in a way where the MC get to interact with them to give them a reason to like the MC, the writing starts straight away with all the girls already liking him which makes it feel weird because we have no idea why it's happening.

And on top of that, Glenn is an extremely weird character. Do we need antagonist in the game? Maybe. But there needs to be a reason why the character is an antagonist for it to work. What we got so far is that he hated MC for the sports car and the house that used to belong to his grandpa. With all due respect to the dev, what in the bloody donut kind of reasoning is that? Surely MC paid money to buy the house and not just friggin steal the house from dude's grandpa, right? So why is he pissed off? And there's nothing illegal about owning a sports car whatsoever. It's also weird that Glenn hates MC for "intrusively large house" but that very same damn large house was his grandpa's ... like wtf is exactly the problem? Then not only that, Glenn apparently also has an intrusively large house of his own because he had no problem taking photo of MC's pool area from above the wall/fence.

I don't know ... I feel like the foundation of the game at 0.1 was really strong, but then it took a few completely wrong turn in 0.2 that now we're kind of stuck in the middle of nowhere. My half-empty glass thinks that it's going to be hard to steer this back onto the right track in 0.3.

I agree on some of the things you mentioned, but remember that this is a situation for devs in which they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

More specifically, I totally agree that this is mainly a story about the triplets, so to include to many alternatives seems that is going to make the game too broad and it will be too hard to focus. This is specially true in the fact that MC wasted his first two days sleeping and on a date with the new girl at work instead of spending time with his just discovered daughters. Don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily a problem in writing, there are people like that. But I really dislike that in MC. It feels like he really is a selfish bastard.

About Glen I agree in that as an antagonist he is kind of cliché. But I cannot agree on your comments that his motives are weak. There are douchebags all around the world and you see people acting like that for way less. Moreover, he was barely presented, so things can be more complex. How needed he is for the story we cannot know yet.

In my opinion, there are way too many LI: the triplets, two girls at work, the mother of MC's victim, the model and I would not be surprised I am missing someone.

I would have enjoyed it way more if there was way less "a wild horny girl has appeared" and there was way more focus on the relationship with the triplets without turning into a fuckfest with them this fast.

The triplets are the main selling point in this novel. And the focus of a more dramatic approach than the standard "horny dad decides to fuck everything that moves". That was the structure of the first episode: fall in love with awesome girl, crush and go to coma to discover your family is dead, meet your daughters in a very emotional moment for them, realize the girl you have been dreaming of is dead, meeting the mother of the child you killed... everything speaks about drama here.

In the end, though, for the story to develop it needs time. This second episode could be a jump to what is coming. I disliked how fast the triplets are becoming love interest, but other than that, the story needs time.

Hope and wait.

 

[Morgan42]

I have to be honest, I had ZERO faith this was getting updated.

Glad I was wrong

 

[Buf0rdC@x]

if you can fap to text then this is pretty good

 

[1200]

Watching some replies here is starting to be bad for my health honestly.
To keep things clear, this chapter 2 got 758 renders, which is more than ch1 had.
The animations for the sex scene were over 2000 images. It took me over a week just to animate everything, and took a entire month to render. I do have staff that helps rendering, but they have 2 other games to render too.
I put most effort into Radiant, but I have staff members to manage and teach.
I manage my staff to work on my older game Tale of Eros, and I work on Neko Paradise when I have free time.
Each month I have animations to make for Tales from the Unending Void too of Perverteer.
Not to mention I'm also still in learning process.
That's why chapter two was way better in quality than the first one, because I improved a lot in the process of learning.

If I would only, but only work on Radiant with Sir Dammed, without the need of taking time to still master Daz, 2 months and half would be a possible update schedule perhaps. (I've been learning Daz for almost 2 years now, Daz kinda needs 5 years to master normally, some people use it for over 5 years and haven't mastered it yet though. "cough")
Though I'm managing to get my own game updates out each 3 months normally and also with Perverteer's game each 2 or 3 months.
Sometimes I even help other developers with Daz problems everytime I can, so that you players, can get to play the games and come here and complain about us or me taking too much time.
Honestly if I wasn't here, I'm sure a lot of people would have a lot more to complain about. Not to mention, the adult visual novels will be hitting higher standards because developers are forced to, just so they can compete, which is a good thing for players.

When I see people talk about certain stuff, that sometimes makes no sense to me. Shows that there is a big lack of information to the user. While I explicitly have open posts a lot of information about me.
We never hid anything to supporters and all cards are played in open field and view.
The only thing that had to improve was communication in certain points, which is a issue we will fix.
-----
The game characters, some want the triplets, some don't want them and prefer the other characters.
Each player has a different preference and our plans won't change no matter what people say.
The game is meant to be enjoyable in a wide range of player base and will be kept with that intention.

Polishing the game to this quality of chapter 2, making the new characters for Radiant which includes some for other chapters too. Took almost a entire month, including new hardware installation during the process and a lot of moving things around my house. I lost a lot of time. Not everything is just about production. And I will mention again the learning process, to work with the polished characters and everything.

So at the end, even if I hadn't been sick and in the hospital two times. getting in those 7 months 4 or 5 updates out of other games and still managing to get chapter two out now which huge visual improvement and a animation which I haven't seen any yet with that quality made in Daz (the application most use for AVN's), it was still a impressive undertaking which a lot of people fail to see... at least here. Probably because of the lack of information which I talked about...
And the reason I even end up in the hospital, is because I'm too ambitious and overwork myself.
I end up working all day and sleeping 6 hours or less sometimes wich isn't that healthy of course, but I just can't stop.
When it comes to making games I'm like a workaholic, I feel the need to keep on working on something.

Of course the plan for the upcoming releases is not something ridiculous as 7 months. I personally plan to not take more than 4 months at best, but you just never know what happens in life. So lets keep the expectation to one year just to make sure we don't disappoint anyone here with a delay. I really hate to disappoint people after all I swear.
And to make sure I don't lose unnecessary time anymore and not feel stressed out I will un-watch this thread and keep my leave.
Anyone is welcome to talk with me on discord, I'm a nice guy and I swear I won't be mean.
Have a nice weekend everyone.

To be clear, taking on that many projects is kind of on you. Like, I understand you have the best intentions, but the information we were given was mainly incorrect release dates, so to say we were lacking information seems kinda unfair aswell

 

[Squark ⚧❤️]

so no release on subscribe star only on patreon and f9 zone whats the point of supporting on subscribe when we can get it on f9 zone.

To show your support, what else is SubscribeStar for?

You do realize that they did not release it here right? this is pirate forum and update was emm... let's say, filtered here. It is like downloading an illegal movie with torrent.

Primarily why I wait for the releases on the developers' Patreon.

 

[juan palote]

Honestly I don't think you will ever get actual constructive criticism here. It happens in a lot of threads once the narrative that the dev is milking his supporters is established, it doesn't matter what you say people won't change their minds. For what is worth, I really enjoyed the update and the animations looked great. I am also a big fan of neko paradise.

I dont know, he got constructive criticism if he read the posts, specially the one about the Officer

 

[moudy]

These are all problems that I thought we could run into after playing the 0.1, but this update kind of cements the issue. The Dark route just doesn't fit in with the MC's natural voice used in the shared lines. Either the shared lines need to be a lot more neutral, or the Dark route texts need to be less childish and more disciplinarian in tone.

This is exactly the problem I have with the update. The Dark/Lust/Pure paths have no influence on the story what so ever. Having to just take the slap from Nat no matter what you choose and she just gets away with it got me really dissapointed. I follow the dark path so I would at least want to yell at her for doing that or slap her back, but no she just slaps you and goes on about her day like nothing ever happened. This does sound like a minor detail, but when there are dosen of these in the update, it gets kinda frustrating and you start to wonder, why even bother?

 

[Maviarab]

More specifically, I totally agree that this is mainly a story about the triplets, so to include to many alternatives seems that is going to make the game too broad and it will be too hard to focus.

Completely agree.

This is specially true in the fact that MC wasted his first two days sleeping and on a date with the new girl at work instead of spending time with his just discovered daughters.

Yeah...just bad....

About Glen I agree in that as an antagonist he is kind of cliché. But I cannot agree on your comments that his motives are weak. There are douchebags all around the world and you see people acting like that for way less. Moreover, he was barely presented, so things can be more complex. How needed he is for the story we cannot know yet.

Forced...cliche...just pointless for the sake of trying to be clever.

In my opinion, there are way too many LI: the triplets, two girls at work, the mother of MC's victim, the model and I would not be surprised I am missing someone.

Back to your first point.

I would have enjoyed it way more if there was way less "a wild horny girl has appeared" and there was way more focus on the relationship with the triplets without turning into a fuckfest with them this fast.

Seems to be the concensus, rabid fan-boys aside.

The triplets are the main selling point in this novel.

They were the only real selling point.

In the end, though, for the story to develop it needs time. This second episode could be a jump to what is coming. I disliked how fast the triplets are becoming love interest, but other than that, the story needs time.

Don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily a problem in writing

Only time I disagree. It shows a HUGE problem with the writing but then I'm not a fan of Damned's writing anyway. First release was good (albeit with numerous issues, the renders alone saved it imo)...this episode....personally I'll give it one more update to see if they/he salavage it before I forget it altogether, as cute as the girls are. Quality renders unfortunately do not make up for nor compensate for a very poor story and immature writing.

 

[Lilsmkr]

what a 2nd game?

Bad memories

 

[Ayhsel]

Only time I disagree. It shows a HUGE problem with the writing but then I'm not a fan of Damned's writing anyway. First release was good (albeit with numerous issues, the renders alone saved it imo)...this episode....personally I'll give it one more update to see if they he salavage it before I forget it altogether, as cute as the girls are. Quality renders unfortunately do not make up for nor compensate for a very poor story and writing.

What I meant is that without knowing what is coming it is hard for me to criticize the writing. This was, after all, an episode 2, there is not much to take a stand. If the book I am legend taught me something, is that a story can be mediocre and the three last words can totally change the feeling of it. So I'd rather give the benefit of doubt.
I think it was clear on my comment, though, that it was not to the level of the first release. Too little focus on what matter: the triplets and more drama. But again, sometimes for a story to develop you need to give it time. We'll see what happens.

 

[Havik79]

Fucking hell, is there a way to speed up these hours long transitions, like when you go to bed and it takes forever to move onto the next part of the story, I haven't seen loading times like this since ps1.

 

[fortuna95]

Well... "tl;dr version" review after this update:

Renders: A
Animations: B
Lewdness: C
Story progress: D
Amount: E
Waiting time between updates: F


It would be great update after ~3 months, but not half a year.

 

[Maviarab]

What I meant is that without knowing what is coming it is hard for me to criticize the writing. This was, after all, an episode 2, there is not much to take a stand. If the book I am legend taught me something, is that a story can be mediocre and the three last words can totally change the feeling of it. So I'd rather give the benefit of doubt.
I think it was clear on my comment, though, that it was not to the level of the first release. Too little focus on what matter: the triplets and more drama. But again, sometimes for a story to develop you need to give it time. We'll see what happens.

Agreed we shall see.

I'm fixed on my opinion of the writing though (as said, the initial demo releases had numerous inconsistancies and issues) so to me...it's at least showing that the writing is consistantly not very good. Not that my comments really mean anything, I'm not contributing the ridiculous amount of money they are making but as they so often state they like feedback, there it is. They have taken this in completely the wrong direction and the writing needs to be much, much stronger to do justice to Alorth's talent.

 

[derive]

Great game, but I hope we're not waiting another 6 months for the next update.

 

[iC4v3M4n]

I think Officer Glen is the guy the MC kicked his ass at the prom. I think his name was Chad. But I can be wrong.

Nah the high school the MC went to was on the other side of the country, and officer glen stated the house the MC lives in now once belonged to his grandfather, so hes a local. Also the MC has been in coma for 10 years, following him across the country after all that for getting punched in the face once in high school would be some next level obsession/stalker shit.

 

[3D Reaver]

3. Brooke idolizing MC is an acceptable reason for her to like him. But for him to like someone who worked for him on first day feels really forced.

i agree with most of you're saying besides this. there is a very good reason for the MC to like her...shes hot and very willing.

 

[aibadeahi]

I rather the former tone of the game, more realistic and deep than average harem bullshit plots showed in this chapter( i know it , this is an unpopular opinion )

Art is better this time, the writing is no doubt way worst.

Let's see how they handle the next 2-3 updates. So far it seams they bite off more than they can chew.

 

[Havik79]

Great game, but I hope we're not waiting another 6 months for the next update.

One of the devs works on this and 3 other games, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[derive]

One of the devs works on this and 3 other games, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Which games?

 

[zeph19]

Of course, that doesn't have to be how you play him.

Well, it's your immersion and if your MC has a different mindset from mine, that's fine. If he's not up for any bullshit in his life right now, it's reasonable to be strict from the start. My MC will end up in the same path as yours, because Maddie seems to want to continue being a cunt and the nice guy approach didn't work with her.

I like the solution that whatever stat is highest, that's the path you are going for, without the thresholds. Seems that's what they're going for, so we have the freedom to do what we want right now, pretty much.