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

[ename144]

The Interlude is similar to the other flashbacks we get in the game:

• Episode 4's prologue with Maya, Josy camping.
• Episode 5's prologue with the formation of the DIK fraternity.
• Episode 6's prologue with Quinn, Rox and Buddy.
• Episode 7's prologue with Jill and Lana
• Episode 8's prologue with Bella and James

Each of these prologues provide past insight into different characters, particularly after a specific event involving those characters occurs near the close of the preceding episode.

The Interlude follows that pattern (given that one of the final scenes in episode 8 is Zoey returning to see the mc).

The difference of course is that we have some influence over Zoey's decisions during the extended prologue (and even her personality), and of course the Interlude is a lot longer than any of the previous prologues.

I do expect episode 9 to have an actual prologue, of Sage's past with the Burkes since that was the big reveal at the end of episode 8.

But I feel the Interlude is as integral to the overall story as each prologue so far has been. Meaning it's details of past events of characters that are important to the story.

If Zoey becomes a staple character for the remainder of the story, then the Interlude serves its purpose.

If Zoey ends up just having a cameo in Episode 9 only to fuck off for good afterwards, there's likely to be a riot. Both camps will be pissed. Camp Zoey will feel cheated, and Camp anti-Zoey will be able to proclaim that she was a total fucking waste of time.

Only time will tell.

Peresonally, I expect all the relevant information from the Interlude will be rehashed during Season 3 proper, if for no other reason than because Zoey and the MC have to have something to talk about. What won't be covered is all the fluff DPC added to pad out the Interlude - stuff like Jonas or Jenna. That's a big part of why I'm so down on the Interlude. We'll see if I'm right.

After finishing my latest runs I notice something. Normally in EP7 I always pick the Josy hangout then go back check out the Maya one and then go back to Josy but this time I did a save for Josy and a save for Maya. If you go to Josy she wears MC sweater in EP8 but if you go to Maya its a grey sweater. If you get the grey sweater Maya joins in more at the water park and you cream pie her at the party with red sweater you cream pie Josy and at the party Maya makes you pull out but tells you she getting pills. Other then Maya joining in more nothing changes on the Josy side other then which sweater she wears.

So what does this mean if anything? Red or grey sweater Josy still love's MC that seems pretty clear and Maya still buys pill by the end. Both girls have strong feelings for MC I think what the sweaters for Josy and Maya's involvement and where she lets you cum is a progress marker and hint for solo path later on. It show which of the two girls you chose to spend a little more time with in EP7.

EP8 I believe does the same thing at the party watch if you get Josy's screen in 8 she will wear MC sweater in 9 even if you got a grey in 8 and Maya will let you cum inside her in 9 even if you didn't in 8. As long your getting screens with both girls the throuple is in play but when you have to pick Josy or Maya the one you pick the most wins in the end.

I did some testing when Episode 8 came out, and as I recall hanging out with Josy in Episode 7 isn't enough on its own to get her to wear the MC's old sweater; I also needed to follow Josy instead of Maya in Episode 5 and have sex with Josy in the gym in Episode 8. Whereas to make Maya comfortable having sex with the MC I only needed to hang out with her during Episode 7.

As for what it means... this is purely my own speculation, but I think it harkens back to the concerns each person had at the picnic in Episode 5 when the throuple started. The MC was worried about dating other girls. Josy was worried about moving too fast emotionally. Maya was worried about not being able to keep up sexually.

It seems to me that each of those fears need to be addressed if the throuple is to succeed, and we are given the opportunity to do so. The MC's concern is the most obvious: we need to pick Maya and Josy at the crossroad. Maya's concern seems to be addressed if we hang out with her in Episode 7; she's a lot more skittish otherwise. Meanwhile Josy is clearly falling for the MC hard, but the way she wears her sweater suggests she falls extra hard if we don't slow things down by skipping a scene or two.

As I said, this is just a guess and I have no idea how DPC would ultimately arbitrate things (especially with Josy), but it does seem to fit what we've seen so far.

 

[Darkwen]

Peresonally, I expect all the relevant information from the Interlude will be rehashed during Season 3 proper, if for no other reason than because Zoey and the MC have to have something to talk about. What won't be covered is all the fluff DPC added to pad out the Interlude - stuff like Jonas or Jenna. That's a big part of why I'm so down on the Interlude. We'll see if I'm right.



I did some testing when Episode 8 came out, and as I recall hanging out with Josy in Episode 7 isn't enough on its own to get her to wear the MC's old sweater; I also needed to follow Josy instead of Maya in Episode 5 and have sex with Josy in the gym in Episode 8. Whereas to make Maya comfortable having sex with the MC I only needed to hang out with her during Episode 7.

As for what it means... this is purely my own speculation, but I think it harkens back to the concerns each person had at the picnic in Episode 5 when the throuple started. The MC was worried about dating other girls. Josy was worried about moving too fast emotionally. Maya was worried about not being able to keep up sexually.

It seems to me that each of those fears need to be addressed if the throuple is to succeed, and we are given the opportunity to do so. The MC's concern is the most obvious: we need to pick Maya and Josy at the crossroad. Maya's concern seems to be addressed if we hang out with her in Episode 7; she's a lot more skittish otherwise. Meanwhile Josy is clearly falling for the MC hard, but the way she wears her sweater suggests she falls extra hard if we don't slow things down by skipping a scene or two.

As I said, this is just a guess and I have no idea how DPC would ultimately arbitrate things (especially with Josy), but it does seem to fit what we've seen so far.

My MC follow Josy in EP5 but she only wears the old sweater if MC hangs out in EP 7 and EP8 sex, in the my save were MC hangs out with Maya in EP7 he still follow Josy in EP5 and had sex with Josy at the start of EP8 but she wears the grey sweater. You do make good points of course to what it means will have to wait

 

[NebulousShooter]

My MC follow Josy in EP5 but she only wears the old sweater if MC hangs out in EP 7 and EP8 sex, in the my save were MC hangs out with Maya in EP7 he still follow Josy in EP5 and had sex with Josy at the start of EP8 but she wears the grey sweater. You do make good points of course to what it means will have to wait

I know people dislike it, but I think the ep5 when she cries and confesses being afraid of losing both is the most meaningful encounter to me. Maybe the pool date at the hots as well, since she sees you are ok being seen with her in public.

Random thought, do you think Tommy will legit care when he finds out, more than a random hissy fit? Like another fight, or being on the outs with the MC going forward? I hope its just played for laughs and everyone moves on.

 

[anonnyscouse]

Random thought, do you think Tommy will legit care when he finds out, more than a random hissy fit? Like another fight, or being on the outs with the MC going forward? I hope its just played for laughs and everyone moves on.

If he just finds out about Fuckface and Josy being an item (not knowing about Maya being involved) he'll get pissed and probably start another fight. If he finds out about the throuple it'll probably be "Shit is my stepsister actually cool?"

 

[Darkwen]

I know people dislike it, but I think the ep5 when she cries and confesses being afraid of losing both is the most meaningful encounter to me. Maybe the pool date at the hots as well, since she sees you are ok being seen with her in public.

Random thought, do you think Tommy will legit care when he finds out, more than a random hissy fit? Like another fight, or being on the outs with the MC going forward? I hope its just played for laughs and everyone moves on.

And the pool date to me that's the first time she accepts that she "with" MC. Tommy didn't want to see Josy and Maya kiss I don't think he's going to like it but I think it depends on how he finds out if Tommy walks in on them fucking I think he'll freak the fuck out which Iwant to see happen

 

[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.