VN Ren'Py Being a DIK [v0.10.1] [Dr PinkCake]

[shazba]

Damn, this loop about the interlude. The problem is not that DPC took a break and made a mini uptade that took half of the time for the previous update (6 months) and was the time for the first uptades (3 months).

It's that the update are starting to get ridiculous long (9 months/1 year) while they were 3 months for the first season and 6 months for the second.

I can't blame DPC for that though; he makes the same amount of money whatever the time between updates but I can blame the pigeons that keep feeding him with money and encourage his behaviour to always enlarge the time between each uptade.

I beg to differ on this one... I don't think those flashbacks or episode prologues are really important at all, if by important you mean necessary, i.e., something you can take out of the story and still understand it (clarifying what I mean by necessary to avoid semantic debacles).

But I think the Interlude is the most useless-of-'em-all since nothing that happened to Zoey will matter to the main plot or even to her subplot; even if it matters for the latter -- like the return of the disgruntled ex-friend whose mobile she flushed (because all other characters in the Interlude bar the MC are irrelevant) --, it's nothing that couldn't be solved with some lines of dialogue and nothing that could justify 3 months and 13 days of development cycle (which, according to average estimates, means US$200,000.00).

He didn't really take the entire time from the release of episode 8 to the release of the Interlude purely for Interlude development.

This reasonably pieced together timeline illustrates that he probably put about 1.5 months into the Interlude.

Here's a little table that shows the total render + animation sizes for each episode, and how that tracks across the time taken to deliver the episode.

episode	MB	Days	MB/D
1	838	98	8.55102
2	1160	86	13.48837
3	1447	104	13.91346
4	1908	147	12.97959
5	1679	140	11.99286
6	2222	168	13.22619
7	3297	161	20.47826
8	4629	210	22.04286
Interlude	1100	105	10.47619
Interlude re-estimate	1100	48	22.91667

The last line re-calculates the Interlude ratio based on my estimated timeline above, which reduces the days from just over 3 months to just over 1.5 months. And what do you know, it comes out in the same ballpark as previous episodes.

Also note that the big leap in production from episode 7 onwards correlates with him purchasing about 8 RTX 3090s.

Also note, while I don't believe he was working full time on the project at the beginning, the renders would still have been the bottleneck. He can code, pose scenes, select music and all that shit while renders are... rendering. So render time still is a fairly decent measure for overall development time.

There's no doubt the money he's making from this game is ludicrous, but if people wanna support him, good luck to him. And as the table above indicates, even for the Interlude, he has been working consistently on this game from the beginning.

The only potential issue is he just keeps adding more content to each episode. I'm happy with that since each episode more than delivers for my tastes, but yeah, the wait times...

 

[FlorenThanos Perez]

Bella is best girl, fight me

Sage is the best. It's a known fact.

 

[shazba]

Yeah... but what matters is the financing, i.e., the fact money kept pouring in from his patrons. Thus, it's 200K grand the same. That was what he was financed for during this period, and the Interlude is what he delivered. I think it was a waste of resources. I'd really be happier -- for him and for us -- if he instead went to Bahamas or delivered the interlude "Everybody Loves Dawe", as someone mentioned above. But...

... I completely agree. I'm for the total freedom of what everyone does with their money. I'm just for the freedom of critique too, so I'm doing it, but if all those people are happy with their investment, kudos to them.

Except for the last (real) episode (and I think everyone agrees that the last real episode was the eighth, since even the defenders of the reality of the Interlude must concede it wasn't labeled as an episode), which I think was too biased on the chick side (while the others were more balanced), I was also really happy with each one of them; but I bet most people would be happier with simpler episodes (since I believe they are more interested in the story than any spectacle, which most non-sexual animations are) delivered faster than the actual waiting time. I really just hope what happened was DPC really need a vacation and now he'll retake his pace and deliver, if not each four months, at least semestrally, because annual updates will be the death of it.

To be fair, DPC announced The Interlude as soon as he released Episode 8, and he clarified it in the very next status update, so if any patrons didn't feel like supporting it, they had every opportunity to withdraw, and many may have, but obviously his core supporters stuck with him.

So he told people what he was doing and they kept paying him; there's no scandal there. It's not like "he who shall not be named" taking payments for over a year while do absolutely nothing (once again though, those fools could have cancelled their subscriptions any time).

And also, if you read my breakdown of the 3 months between the releases of episode 8 and the the Interlude, half the time was spent dealing with episode 8, and Season 2 deliverables (and COVID and system mechanics that would have had to be done regardless of the Interlude's existence). Totally legitimate.

Also, the Interlude was a 1-off deviation, in the middle of a potentially 8-year project (assuming roughly 2 episodes a year, which is dubious now even). So 1.5 (or 3 even) months' deviation in an almost 100 month period really isn't something to complain about.

The biggest issue is that he actually knows his episodes are getting too long; he addressed that when he started on Ep 9 (third paragraph in), and he planned to keep it under control, but failed significantly. His passion for creating what he wants outweighs his desire to please his fans. The only thing that will reel him in is if the patrons start leaving in serious numbers with the expressed reason being the updates are taking too long. But I don't see that happening.

That said, given how long we've waited for the Halloween event, I'd expect it should be a spectacle.

 

[Lightaces]

No... Oh, no... After a clear explanation on why one shouldn't engage in semantic debates, the guy goes and starts one... Some people just don't know how to do it differently...

I'm not starting any semantic debates. And update is an update. End of story. It has been ALMOST eight months since the last update. It will be around nine months, going by the reports DPC gives. If you don't like the story he is telling, don't play it. I'm guessing it's not like you are paying him anything.

 

[Lightaces]

It hasn't taken a year for an update,

So you do understand how facts work. Good to see.

It's all the same story. Feel free not to play if you don't like it.

 

[Lightaces]

It's been a year since the last update and 8 months since the spin off. There is a reason it is called the interlude and not episode 9 and that is because it isn't really BaDIK but more a spin off of a BaDIK character.

No, it has been almost 8 months since the last update. It's all one story.

 

[Lightaces]

They may not be counting interlude, and I wouldn't really blame them. It looks to me like making that unnecessary (personal opinion) interjection has thrown a wrench into the actual overall progress. It may not be related at all but the changes in his development prosses since then don't seem like a coincidence to me.

I know what they are saying, but their underlying point is basically that DPC is just skiving off with his Patrons money, which is nonsense, and to make that point they are misrepresenting facts. It's one story, and the story teller gets to decide how to tell it.

 

[anonnyscouse]

Using the money DPC makes to bash the game while on a piracy site is rather stupid. Yes some people here do subscribe to his patreon, or buy the game on steam or GoG but the majority don't. If the people actually paying the money don't have a problem with the update schedule and the quality of the game (including the interlude), which given the fact he still has a fuckton of subscribers on patreon, and the comments on his updates on there, they don't, then you have no right to be outraged on their behalf.

 

[shazba]

Using the money DPC makes to bash the game while on a piracy site is rather stupid. Yes some people here do subscribe to his patreon, or buy the game on steam or GoG but the majority don't. If the people actually paying the money don't have a problem with the update schedule and the quality of the game (including the interlude), which given the fact he still has a fuckton of subscribers on patreon, and the comments on his updates on there, they don't, then you have no right to be outraged on their behalf.

That's not how humans work though.

If a patron isn't happy, he withdraws his support; let's his money do the talking.

If a pirate isn't happy, he whines like a little, entitled bitch!

 

[ename144]

I know what they are saying, but their underlying point is basically that DPC is just skiving off with his Patrons money, which is nonsense, and to make that point they are misrepresenting facts. It's one story, and the story teller gets to decide how to tell it.

Nonsense. I've never said that DPC is mooching money from his patrons. I'm critiquing the story he's written, and IMHO the way he structured the Interlude was a huge mistake because it focused on an irrelevant side story at the worst possible time. Insisting that everything must be fine because the Interlude has DPC's official stamp of approval is missing the point entirely. Yes, it's DPC's story to tell, but that doesn't invalidate our opinion if we think he's telling his story badly.

My point is that the Interlude is by definition *not* a normal episode. So determining whether or not to count it as 'an episode' is going to depend on context. If the topic is whether DPC was sitting on his ass instead of working on the game, the Interlude clearly counts as work. But if the topic is whether the long wait between Episode 8 and Episode 9 has been bad for the game, I think it is entirely reasonable to claim the time spent on the Interlude doesn't count (or indeed, may have made the problem worse).

 

[Melissa fan]

No, it has been almost 8 months since the last update. It's all one story.

If it is all one story then why is it not called episode 9?

 

[DEVIL18]

Sup bois
I was thinking about replaying the game from the beginning before the next update, should i download the latest version or not? And which mod should i use? Scrappy or sanchos?

 

[shazba]

Sup bois
I was thinking about replaying the game from the beginning before the next update, should i download the latest version or not? And which mod should i use? Scrappy or sanchos?

If you download the latest version you’ll lose some of the original songs as the artists have had them pulled, that’s about it.

No need for mods, if you want a girl, just choose her whenever you get the opportunity, you can’t go wrong. If you want all the girls, well, you can’t have them all, unless you install a mod that will probably break the game in the long run.

If it is all one story then why is it not called episode 9?

Because it isn’t episode 9. Episode 1 wasn’t called episode 9 for the same reason.

 

[Melissa fan]

Because it isn’t episode 9. Episode 1 wasn’t called episode 9 for the same reason.

It was still called an episode.

 

[TheOneWithThePorn12]

I dont really get complaining about DPC since its quality content and we all know what we are getting.

much better than the devs that fuck over everyone, or get burnt out or just dont talk about what they are actually doing.

 

[shazba]

I dont really get complaining about DPC since its quality content and we all know what we are getting.

much better than the devs that fuck over everyone, or get burnt out or just dont talk about what they are actually doing.

Some people were raised wrong. Every time they screamed their mommy gave them whatever they wanted right away.

They don’t understand that DPC is not their mommy and he doesn’t even give a fuck about them.

If they were in a burning house, he wouldn’t even piss on them, but he might shit in them…

Plus, he was the one that set the house on fire in the first place!

 

[felicemastronzo]

That's not how humans work though.

If a patron isn't happy, he withdraws his support; let's his money do the talking.

If a pirate isn't happy, he whines like a little, entitled bitch!

this is a very extravagant idea ...

I don't think that complaining is considered an aggravating factor in the case of piracy crime, just as in the same way praising it is not a mitigating factor.

guilt has to be overcome in a different way

 

[The Dick]

To be fair, DPC announced The Interlude as soon as he released Episode 8, and he clarified it in the very next status update, so if any patrons didn't feel like supporting it, they had every opportunity to withdraw, and many may have, but obviously his core supporters stuck with him.
So he told people what he was doing and they kept paying him; there's no scandal there. It's not like "he who shall not be named" taking payments for over a year while do absolutely nothing (once again though, those fools could have cancelled their subscriptions any time).

Oh... Don't get me wrong... I'm not accusing him any conning or scheming... I just think it was not only a bad storytelling decision but also a bad development & business decision, and since it's funded, a waste of resources... Of course his reputation is too high too be tarnished by that and probably he'll still have quite a following until the end of his épopée, but I think he's becoming indulgent and this proposition from the link you mentioned above -- "I know that the interlude will speak for itself and be both satisfying and worth playing for any fan of the game" -- proved to be untrue (unless it's a circular definition, like, a fan of the game is one who found the Interlude satisfying).

Also, the Interlude was a 1-off deviation, in the middle of a potentially 8-year project (assuming roughly 2 episodes a year, which is dubious now even). So 1.5 (or 3 even) months' deviation in an almost 100 month period really isn't something to complain about.

When you quantify like that, it seems to be nothing, but a pause of an year without an episode is a lot subjectively speaking: people start to lose interest, people start to complain, people forget about the story, people move on with their lives and so on...

 

[shazba]

When you quantify like that, it seems to be nothing, but a pause of an year without an episode is a lot subjectively speaking: people start to lose interest, people start to complain, people forget about the story, people move on with their lives and so on...

If you look back through this thread, the vocal community has changed quite a few times. And this will continue until the end. None of this matters. We like to make a big deal about it because we’re currently interested, but in the end, none of us will give a fuck, except DPC who will be very well off.

 

[The Dick]

I'm not starting any semantic debates. And update is an update. End of story. It has been ALMOST eight months since the last update. It will be around nine months, going by the reports DPC gives. If you don't like the story he is telling, don't play it. I'm guessing it's not like you are paying him anything.

Oh, yeah.. you are... either that or being cynical... I've been clear that what I'm talking about is "an update of the game we play as the MC known as Tremolo (though you can baptize him as you like) and we -- impersonating this Tremolo guy -- interact with such characters as Quinn, Sage, Lily, Jill, Josy, Maya, Bella, the DIKs, and others", which didn't happen. In fact, this that-has-been-described has a name -- it's called an episode -- and by the words of your own Lord, Mr. Dr. Pink Cake (courtesy of the link given by Shazba):

"As you saw from reaching the end of Season 2, Episode 9 is not the next update that I will release. [...] I have planned for a special part of the game that I have chosen to call 'Interlude - Riding the Waves.'"

Thus, you can't deny that we're almost an year without an episode, otherwise you'll be committing the heresy of contradicting your own Lord!

And you're bringing the semantic debate -- arguing about the meaning of the signifier "update" instead of what I'm talking about. It's like I've said "I'm about a year without eating apples" and you go "oh, no! You ate a pear seven months ago!" Dude... I'm not talking about pears... And don't blaspheme against your Lord... He said the Interlude is not an episode... Bow down and abide...

And by the way... I paid for the Season 1 on Steam, for the walkthrough, I liked it a lot so I bought what was released on Patreon (up to episode 7 back then) and supported until the release of episode 8. When I didn't like the way it turned out, I stopped my support, because that's how democracy works: I like it, I pay; I don't like it, I don't pay.

It's one story, and the story teller gets to decide how to tell it.

Yeah... And the audience decides how to appreciate it... And the critics decide how to criticize it... That's how the world works... "My body, my rules" as they (no pun intended) say...

It's their [SIC] work, and it isn't up to you to decide what matters.

Again... You're wrong... It's up to him decide what matters for him, but it's up to me decide what matters for me, though I think I'm freer in that decision since I'm not the owner of a business. Any sound businessman must also consider what matters for his clientele, and when he doesn't -- when he acts like a spoiled obnoxious indulgent child, not giving a damn about what his clientele think and thinking he's an "artist" whose "art" must be appreciated by all no matter what --, that's when things start to go south and people go bankrupt. Maybe now he's too big too fall, but tomorrow never knows...