I just wanted to thank Holgar, Alan, and all the people who put in so much time and effort to make the RnD engine and so many excellent levels for it. I've played the game since I was a little kid, and even to this day, it has a unique charm to it.
But more importantly, RnD was my first stepping-stone into game creation. From a very young age, I wanted to make video games. I asked my dad to teach me how to write code, but despite his patient effort, I just couldn't figure it out. I eventually gave up, still longing to code but feeling that it was beyond me.
A few years passed, and I still played RnD. I would make all sorts of silly levels. After one update, I discovered these weird "Custom Elements." I was too afraid to touch them, but my older brother eventually discovered how powerful they were.
So I had these Custom Elements to play with, and I made a few things with them. But I wanted to be able to do more; I saw all these cool levels that had custom graphics and sounds and everything! I wanted to figure out how to do that. So I began to look around, and I found ConfEdit.
It took a long time to figure out how ConfEdit worked, but I eventually started to pick apart other levelsets. Based on what I learned, I tried to cobble together an element with my own artwork. It took some trial and error (I had a lot of question-mark-elements for a while), but I was thrilled when I saw my own creation alive within RnD.
And then I went from there and made a bunch of little levelsets. I'd come up with some cool mechanic, and then I'd make a level or two with it. Unfortunately, my dedication to each project would only last a few weeks, and then I'd get tired of it and start dreaming up some new thing to build. Looking into my (very old) directory of unfinished levelsets, I made: a levelset about RC vehicles, one about batteries, one which was a LoadRunner clone, one with LEGO bricks, one about being a Yam-yam, etc.
I didn't get a lot done with each levelset, but I really learned the importance of committing myself to a project and seeing it through. I also learned how to work with GIMP. Most importantly, though, with my new-found enthusiasm, I jumped back into coding, and, with my dad's help, I mastered C.
Eventually, I "outgrew" RnD and moved on to Anura; my greatest achievement with Anura was Mathemagicians. And now, at the present, my brother and I are working on our first commercial indie game! (But I won't talk much about it here; I don't want to advertise.)
All that is to say: Thank you, Holgar and co.! I would not be as good with code if it weren't for this game. I hope that, once my current project is done, I might make a few levels or contribute to RnD's source code or something.
Either way, I'm thrilled to see that the project is not dead!
