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

[Train of Thought]

The plain and simple answer is: It just takes too damn long.

The game may hold an interest to me in the next year and a half. But by the time it is finished my kids will be going to freaking collage!

Waiting until 2032 for the last episode is not realistic. Nor will DPC actually finish it by that time.

Either he learns to trim, trim, trim. Or this game never gets finished.

It takes long, it will most definitely be completed though

My prediction is another 2 or max 3 episodes like this, then he is caput. If he doesn't burn out, his audience will. Then he'll fast wrap the story in any way he can and arrivederci amigos, he'll be of to Dubai or Monaco, or someplace like that to enjoy his millions.

I thought Ep. 10 was supposed to be the last one?
You forgot to switch between your accounts, Arigon

Peace!

 

[VaderExMachina]

I thought Ep. 10 was supposed to be the last one?

DPC already said he planned 4 seasons with 16-17 episodes in total, that means we're barely past the halfway mark and at this pace, we'll be lucky to have a finished game before the end of the 2020's
S1 = EPs 1-4
S2 = EPs 5-8
S3 = Interlude + EPs 9-12
S4 = EPs 13-16 (17 if there's an Epilogue)

 

[Xisorr]

ok, so November release it is. little disappointing, but at least we know DPC will deliver the goods. time to try something else.

 

[DaMeltz69]

Christ, I really wish DPC hadn't done that stupid Interlude and set development back three months.

 

[felicemastronzo]

Christ, I really wish DPC hadn't done that stupid Interlude and set development back three months.

misplaced hope

 

[BorgiaBou]

You must be registered to see the links

View attachment 2806916

I focused on and completed three scenes this week, two of which were big, and the last one was a short free-roam event.

I wrote dialogue, carried out environment design, and prepared 18 characters for the scenes to be able to pose renders. I posed roughly 270 static renders and some ambitious SFW animations.

At the moment, I've just started working on a lewd scene. So, there will be a mix of animations and static renders on the schedule for next week.

The animation queue has 18 animations and is chugging on at a good pace. If all goes as planned, I can replace another render station next week with an upgrade. So, there is likely some PC maintenance on the schedule too.

I have 15 events left to create on my episode flowchart. To explain what I mean by that, an event is the equivalent of a scene or a complete free-roam event (including all its sub-scenes). It's rather vague and the events can vary a lot in size.

I've estimated that one of the shorter scenes needs 35 renders for the writing, whereas the remaining biggest one needs ~350-400 renders. I've completed the writing for 8 of those 15 scenes and done partial writing and art for several. This is the best estimate I can give you at the moment.

Have a nice weekend.

Dr PinkCake

Christmas present release...

 

[aykarin]

For a long time I thought we will be able to enjoy the new chapter in September or maybe even in late August if we are lucky. But after reading the latest status update, I think we have no chance of getting it before October. Realistically speaking, probably late October or maybe even early November
I have no issue with DPC making each update bigger and pushing constantly for even higher quality, I don't even mind the huge free roams so much. But what bugs me is that he seemingly fell into an obsession with creating SFW animations. They are completely unneeded, especially the long ones (which often look weird), they take lots of time to pose and computing power to render while not making a significant difference in production value... :/ Unfortunately, DPC will probably keep escalating them to absurd amount and length, slowing down the development process even more.

 

[dalli_x]

Christmas present release...

Door 24 on the calendar in December

 

[Jumbi]

Christ, I really wish DPC hadn't done that stupid Interlude and set development back three months.

The interlude only took 3 months and thirteen days to be produced. Had it not existed, the only difference would have been that episode 10 would already be out most likely.

As for development cycles as short as 3 months, excluding the interlude, which is rather small, we haven't seen the doc taking as little time as that to produce an episode since episode 2's development cycle. And with the new branching system, he already warned us that we should be ready for both of these: larger episodes, but at the same time the probable subjective impression of these being shorter than before, unless you play all the different routes, of course.

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

I think the useless SFW animations are a rare consensus... Not 100%, but, if it's 80%, it's already a massive consensus statistically speaking. They're even bad for the overall look of the game because the game is one whole and not a separate bunch of episodes, so, the game will start with one aesthetics and will end with another... But I'll stop talking about that to not give him ideas about reworking the earlier episodes...

Unfortunately, you cannot change this. Cinematic animation is a new trend for top AVN creators and I see them everywhere these days. For this, we must say thanks to the new top-end video cards, which are not inferior to professional solutions like Quadro and Ada. They certainly enliven the game world more, but in DAZ it is very bad for animations, very slow rendering.
Blender can do it faster... but imagine porting the entire BaDIK asset library to Blender.

 

[Hahn1900]

You know we would be on to episode 11 if it wasn't for the Interlude.

If he didnt made the interlude the game would be on hold for a year now. Thats for sure.

DPC said it pretty blunt himself... he NEEDED to write something else out of a different perspective with some other changes oo cause he was kinda "sick" of being a dik... which is no surprise after 3 years of the development. And besides, the interlude was just about 20% of an regualr episode. Sooo well, we lost about 3 months because of that, but DPC gained the motivation again to get back into development for the main-course. So seeing it like that... iam grateful for the interlude, but yeah overall i could live without it.

And hope he doesnt do something like that again. If he needs a "change of scenery" its pretty easy to get during a regual episode of being a dik. I mena, we saw so much in episode 9 already "outside" of the MC, way too much... he can easily do that again. And we already saw it in the past too, DPC loves to creates distractions, mini games, unnecessary other stuff, and most of the time its more like a benefit for himself just to create something "different" i guess.

If he would not do all the unnecessary stuff, the game could be completed by now. But its more likely that he would have dropped the project because he gets bored or burned out. He admited at one point during development of episode 8 that he was near a burn out, and told us there already that he need to do something else before doing ep 9... this something else was the interlude. So it might not be necessary for us or most from us... but for him it was essential to go on with the project.

and to be honest, most of the kinda "unnecessary" stuff makes this game so special, cause everything feels so "alive" like he creates it... well, it would feel that way too if he would cut out most of the animations. But the minigames and other things going on during an episode, creates so much depths, no other AVN can deliver that.

 

[felicemastronzo]

DPC said it pretty blunt himself... he NEEDED to write something else out of a different perspective with some other changes oo cause he was kinda "sick" of being a dik... which is no surprise after 3 years of the development. And besides, the interlude was just about 20% of an regualr episode. Sooo well, we lost about 3 months because of that, but DPC gained the motivation again to get back into development for the main-course. So seeing it like that... iam grateful for the interlude, but yeah overall i could live without it.

seems to me a rather forced deduction.

DPC only said that it had been nice to change during the interlude (what's the difference anyway? same story, same atmosphere...). but DPC always tells us how much he loved what he had just done (a minigame, an animation, a new setting, costumes...).

 

[abcde]

You must be registered to see the links

View attachment 2806916

I focused on and completed three scenes this week, two of which were big, and the last one was a short free-roam event.

I wrote dialogue, carried out environment design, and prepared 18 characters for the scenes to be able to pose renders. I posed roughly 270 static renders and some ambitious SFW animations.

At the moment, I've just started working on a lewd scene. So, there will be a mix of animations and static renders on the schedule for next week.

The animation queue has 18 animations and is chugging on at a good pace. If all goes as planned, I can replace another render station next week with an upgrade. So, there is likely some PC maintenance on the schedule too.

I have 15 events left to create on my episode flowchart. To explain what I mean by that, an event is the equivalent of a scene or a complete free-roam event (including all its sub-scenes). It's rather vague and the events can vary a lot in size.

I've estimated that one of the shorter scenes needs 35 renders for the writing, whereas the remaining biggest one needs ~350-400 renders. I've completed the writing for 8 of those 15 scenes and done partial writing and art for several. This is the best estimate I can give you at the moment.

Have a nice weekend.

Dr PinkCake

It's so crazy that now we are only gonna get 1 update per year i still remember when this game used to take 2 to 3 months for an update then 3 to 4 then 5 to 6 then 9 months and now we only get one update a year with 3 updates in 2019,then 3 in 2020,2 in 2021 and only one in 2021 two if you count the waste of time that was the interlude we just have been getting less and less while DPC get's more money, better equipment and don't forget he also used to have an IRL job before and was still faster doing updates before and nobody ever complained the earlier updates were small with 1709 renders or with 3723 and now with the last episode with 5037 it felt like the smallest update of all definitly quantity over quality filled with useless cinematics and renders plus the fact that you now have to play updates 5 times to get everything at this rate it's gonna be one year and half next for a single update and then 2 years for an update.

 

[Crusader of Romance]

Christ, I really wish DPC hadn't done that stupid Interlude and set development back three months.

He's said over and over again that Interlude didn't set development back much. Development for Episode 9 would always be long because he switched to a new launcher and needed to test it out. He made Interlude so we wouldn't have to wait a year for the next gameplay.

 

[lipe2410]

It's so crazy that now we are only gonna get 1 update per year

Don't worry, episode 12 or 13 will be the start of 1 update every 2 years

 

[Darkwen]

Don't worry, episode 12 or 13 will be the start of 1 update every 2 years

and a new interlude: being Dawe

 

[SomboSteel]

The problem is that everyone has their own subjective opinion about what should be removed. I think there isn't much content in the game that needs to be removed that the majority of the fanbase will reach a consensus on. And this creates a dangerous precedent: as soon as DPC agrees with the opinion of a group of people and removes some content, "screamers" will immediately crawl in from all the cracks and demand from the devto remove everything they don't like. So I probably agree that let him do everything with his vision.

Yes, management is a tough thing. People have been teaching this in college for years, no wonder. DPC can be incredibly talented at creating interesting and exciting stories, can work well with DAZ, be a good programmer... but a bad manager. It is not for nothing that separate specialists are engaged in management in companies.

In the last part, you did a great job of describing the Ubisoft-type issue of open worlds. In Ep.9 there were objective problems, free-roams were somewhat...overloaded. It was ok for me, but some didn't like it. Free roams like HOTs party Ep.7 with no more than 1000 renders, I consider the golden mean.

i get what you are saying, but when it comes to DPC we can all pretty much agree that he already caters to a certain type of player since developing BaDIK (this is a psuedo-harem game where are the girls always like you even if you "dump" them, with nothing even like tangentially related to NTR, and Jill being added last minute for reasons that are speculative but ultimately i think its obvious he wanted to get a virgin character in there to cover all his bases for his target demographic).

AL was a very different beast where he wasnt making real money from it and just had a story he wanted to tell, with flaws and left field endings and all. he used to feel more like he had stuff he wanted to get out and share with others; experiences/emotions/trauma/whatever. there was some strange stuff in that story, but it was his strange stuff. and because of that i would have agreed with you 100% on BaDIK if it was made with similar zeal and principle where he was clearly sticking to his own vision.

but BaDIK has already been compromised by the lowest common denominator and i dont think thats debatable. AL was distinctively DPC, whereas BaDIK is distinctively vanilla and non-challenging content by comparison. and thats not shitting on the quality because BaDIK is quite good. if DPC's goal was to make the very best bog standard Animal House/American Pie/every other teen sex movie that has been made, then congrats to him because i think its likely mission accomplished. but after AL i had higher hopes for him as a creator/storyteller than to kinda just sell out and make the most wide reaching and non threatening AVN possible

thats just my two cents

 

[allanl9020142]

It looks like he's going to create a big and interconnected, living world by making the characters feel more alive and not just occasional extras that just exist.
Looking at his Patreon - it works, subscribers do not leave him. Personally, I prefer big episodes, I don't like short games. It pissed me off back in 2017-18 when I got a miserable 300-500 renders, albeit often.


I don't see any prerequisites for DPC to burn out, or for his audience.
In addition, the game is very famous. If someone leaves, new subscribers come - the number of his subscribers is now on a stable plateau.
This guy has been working like this for 5 years, and the only break he took was a two-week vacation. Of course this guy is a big snowflake, but he does a good job, this is his muse and he is simply obsessed with his creativity. I see no reason for anything bad other than a potential accident or illness.

Hey, man. You said this new update would be coming out in August. Meh, whatever I still haven't gotten around to finishing the rest of my playthroughs for ep 9. See you in September...? November...?

You know we would be on to episode 11 if it wasn't for the Interlude.

Do you mean we'd have ep 10 by now and he'd be working on ep 11 right now? Most likely. Or did you mean that we'd have ep 11 by now because I don't the Interlude affected things to that extent.

Still, it wouldn't really have affected much in the grand scheme of things since it looks like DPC is committed to this ... I don't know what anymore. Something like a runaway train, I guess. We'd still be looking at 1 update per year. Interlude took 3 months but ep 9 took 10 months or something. I can't remember. It's been a while. I remember it coming out (something like) a year and one month after ep 8 came out so I just subtracted 3 months. That seems like the bigger headache. Which is one of the reasons I don't visit this thread as much as I did before.

Anyway, I learned my lesson last year. Which means I'm going to go back to doing ... pretty much anything else for the next 2 to 3 months or so. October sounds about right to check in again. Any later than that and if I'm remembering right (10 months), it would mean the runaway train's getting even worse. lololol

 

[Asmerdelius]

I've been following this game for quite awhile now and am somewhat invested, loving it to date. I'm following the throuple route because IRL I experienced what we called in the 80's a "Three's Company" lifestyle from high school into college. I was involved with a pair of bisexual girls for nearly two years together and that relationship was one of the best of my life. Sadly it ended via an automotive tragedy but it is my hope DPC doesn't go in such a direction with this example. After that incident I went down the winding road of dating every girl in my local Pink Rose, manwhoring much as the MC can, even ending up one night after closing dancing for the girls, thank god it was pre-cellphones. Much later I finally settled down with someone special and had a son who I'll someday share the lessons I learned. Considering how Acting Lessons ended I hope and think we at least deserve a chance for a happy ending with Being a DIK, though with Vinnie, Nick, Dany, and Karen lurking in the shadows who can say for certain if that's even possible...

 

[SomboSteel]

I get what you're saying. I prefer BaDIK over AL because I play those games to have fun and I don't like that overdramatic stuff. Not saying one is better than another *universally*; just stating my personal preference. But, I think DPC and his BaDIK deserve merit besides the personal. I know it's a parody from the teenage high-school/college movies from the 80s up to American Pie and on; and, if it's not a true harem game, it's, at least, what I call a "Don Juan or Casanova game", so, nothing new under the sun (I like those games, but I'm trying to not be personal here). When it comes to the universe of AVNs, though, I think he was quite innovative. Back then, everyone was doing incest games and he came up with something different. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he made the first of this HS/College genre or, if it wasn't the first, the others were so irrelevant that I didn't even notice 'em (and I think I played every classic made during the Genesis 3 era and early Genesis 8 era). So, kudos to him for doing this, becoming a reference, and earning his retirement money.

And, yeah... A game like this had to have "The Virgin" archetype since it has almost all stock characters from the setting he chose for his game. But I'm not blaming him for that. I'd do the same if I were in his shoes and planning a game like this when no one else was doing it.

fair enough, everyone is entitled to their own preferences.

but for me, the reason i started donating to his patreon back in the day of AL was because it was literally unique and a breath of fresh air in this otherwise over saturated gaming marketplace. it may not have been as polished as BaDIK and it wasnt perfect, but it felt real compared to every other uninspired story on this site. he was telling a story for the basically just the joys of creating something of your own and sharing something personal, which i respected and appreciated.

and whether the audience overall liked AL, i imagine many others felt similarly to me as that game put him on the map. if BaDIK came out first with all the rough edges AL came out with, while it might have been more superficially popular it might not have helped elevate him to his current position in this genre as a genuine creator/innovator.

like i said before, if his true dream was to just make the best version of this BaDIK story ever told in AVN format then congrats. but i think if so much money wasnt at stake, DPC probably dreamed of other stories he would rather have told that might not have been so lowest common denominator. there was a glimpse of something in AL that no longer really exists in BaDIK and to me it feels like the DPC back then is just a different person than the DPC that we have now.