Haha... it’s in my nature to just write and write. I simply can’t help it.
It’s not that hard if you actually want to create something. I knew absolutely nothing about any of this a year and a half ago. I’d played a ton of AVNs, and one day, since I had some free time and needed money, I decided to learn and make something different.
I’ve had a programmer’s mindset since I was a kid... Asperger’s, plus a logical personality. Terrible combo for social life, but great for coming up with ideas and learning stuff. I started learning Blender, but after a month I realized it wasn’t what I needed, so I switched to DAZ, focusing on learn about optimization because of my serious hardware limitations.
Learning RenPy was easy. When I was little, I learned to program in Basic and made some simple games just using the manual from my Sinclair Spectrum 48k.
Obviously, I don’t know everything, there’s always something new to learn, and you pick it up as you go.
For many people, the really hard part is the writing. But if you’ve got the soul of a writer, that’s already more than half the journey done. So if you’ve got some time, don’t hold back.
About game development announcements, most people keep those almost exclusively for their Patreon supporters, and there’s a good reason for that: Patreon itself.
Patreon it’s one of the strictest platforms when it comes to content. I usually post previews of what I’ve done, but Patreon doesn’t allow certain things in public posts that aren’t for paying subscribers. I’ve mentioned it over there more than once. A lot of times, it’s not that we don’t want to share with everyone, it’s that we risk getting a warning or even having the page banned. In open posts, you even have to tone down the language if you don’t want problems.
So, we’re stuck with that choice: either make open posts for everyone but totally watered-down, or just play along and share the good stuff only with the paying crowd. In the end, it’s just Patreon’s way of forcing creators to follow their system so they can have more control and make more money.
The other option is to make double reports, one public and one for Patrons. But my reports are usually pretty long and weekly, and I can’t afford to waste extra time... actually, I shouldn’t even be writing this xD