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

[lenis0012]

Not sure if sarcasm or not, as the font we use on this forum is poor in conveying feelings and emotions.
But since ep 5 we have mostly fanservice and pixel-hunting free roams. The story barely progressed.

I was being serious haha. the pixel-hunting is a bit annoying, but the freeroams can be skipped if you dont like them.
I usually just check my phone for rooster and texts, then I explore around to interact with characters and eventually progress through the freeroam. I don't particularly care if i miss one or two minor scenes.

The story is definitely progressing though, A lot of backstory of the DIKs was added, about Rusty, Tommy and the other guys. New events surrounding cathy, your new leadership-ish role in the DIKs, power conflicts, and the new direction of trying to save the future of DIK. Almost everyone's story progressed in a significant way. Sage is single, Quinn is dealing drugs, Bella has the hots for you, a little of Jill's backstory was revealed, and the first real romance scene with her got added in.

The episode is centered around picking up the pieces after everything that went down with Hell Week, and I imagine that this sets things up nicely for next episode. Tying up many loose ends.

I'm looking forward to where the story goes next. Only DrPinkCake knows, and if Acting Lessons is anything to go by, he isn't afraid to create some massive drama.

 

[Gladheim]

30-50% completed mmm

 

[felicemastronzo]

The lack of hype in this thread about how DPC basically said that with a bit more than 1 month of development, with a high estimate, the update could be already 50% done is outrageous..

we do not want to delude ourselves ...

however, always not before the end of March it will come out, if he completes it first he will add / improve something.

 

[Razrback16]

another time ... another 10 gigabytes ....

I don't really mind the size of the game or updates, just wish a torrent was there for the updates as the host sites fail quite a bit. If the uploader could do a torrent, then folks can pitch in to seed for each other.

 

[horusxcaen82]

yeah I agree with the others about not letting the hype get to me, 30-50% is great if true but, I dont want to be disappointed if a delay happens or something.

 

[Razrback16]

The lack of hype in this thread about how DPC basically said that with a bit more than 1 month of development, with a high estimate, the update could be already 50% done is outrageous..

Hah, ya that is definitely encouraging. It hasn't even been 2 months since Ch 6 released and we're already 1/3 to 1/2 done with Ch 7...that's pretty awesome. I like that speed of development a lot better than 5-6 months for completion.

I personally feel like the free roam events take more time than its worth. I prefer an approach without or smaller free roam events maybe it will take less time and make things easier to be released quicker. Just my opinion love the game either way this is just one of few critiques I have of this game.

Agreed completely. Some of the free roams are cool, but I personally prefer them to be a lot shorter - thinking like the free roams in our dorm to start the game where it's just a few brief changes of scenery versus say Episode 5 with the Prep Mansion or Episode 6 with the DIK mansion...just too much "busy work" IMO. I'd prefer to just have the visual novel story continue progressing.

 

[felicemastronzo]

I personally feel like the free roam events take more time than its worth. I prefer an approach without or smaller free roam events maybe it will take less time and make things easier to be released quicker. Just my opinion love the game either way this is just one of few critiques I have of this game.

the first time takes a lot of time, especially if you are interested in finding all the renders, but from the second time on they are done really fast.

certainly in the sixth chapter between the game of restructuring the DIKs' home and that of putting the books in place for Bella (the latter, among other things, cannot be skipped even excluding the minigames) free roams have become more intrusive

 

[sbarabaus]

I personally feel like the free roam events take more time than its worth. I prefer an approach without or smaller free roam events maybe it will take less time and make things easier to be released quicker. Just my opinion love the game either way this is just one of few critiques I have of this game.

i think the free roam events are brilliant when you have a clear goal to reach, like your infiltration missions at the preps house

they're still cool when you can tour the HOT house or during the DIK party, because the mansions are crowded and they feel alive

they're kinda wasted when you're just searching for renders, and feel annoying when some parts of the mansions have a counter-intuitive navigation system that doesn't help

 

[godkingxerxes]

the first time takes a lot of time, especially if you are interested in finding all the renders, but from the second time on they are done really fast.

certainly in the sixth chapter between the game of restructuring the DIKs' home and that of putting the books in place for Bella (the latter, among other things, cannot be skipped even excluding the minigames) free roams have become more intrusive

You can skip the books for Bella.

 

[horusxcaen82]

i think the free roam events are brilliant when you have a clear goal to reach, like your infiltration missions at the preps house

they're still cool when you can tour the HOT house or during the DIK party, because the mansions are crowded and they feel alive

they're kinda wasted when you're just searching for renders, and feel annoying when some parts of the mansions have a counter-intuitive navigation system that doesn't help

I agree I loved exploring all the areas, specially on the DIK route in the HOT House.

 

[ename144]

There's not a lot of specifics to report on this week. I've been working hard on dialogue/code and trying to keep a steady number of animations in the render queue.

I have posed a total of 131 animations and I also have re-worked a few episode 6 animations with a new technique I picked up.

At the moment, 94 animations for episode 7 are complete. I'm a bit unsure about the total animation count for this update, but I have several lewd scenes left to pose animations for.

I think it's safe to say that both the animation count and duration will be bigger and longer than for episode 6. For the static render count, it's too early to tell.

The episode will have a focus on both story and lewd scenes, but a bit more balanced compared to the story focused episode 6.



Poll news

The winner in this week's poll was option #4.

It will be featured in episode 7.

Right now, there's an on-going poll for a 2D wallpaper

You must be registered to see the links

.

A final reminder for Vice Presidents and tiers above it, submit your render request before the end of December

You must be registered to see the links

. 4 entries will be handpicked and produced for January's batch of custom renders.

Due to the holiday season, the next status update will be posted on January 1, 2021.

I will of course be working between now and then, with the exception of a few days, and you will see more posts from me before the end of the year.

Cheers

Dr PinkCake

Happy new year!

I hope you're feeling well today and that 2021 brings good things for all of us.

Let's kick off the new year with a status update!

It's been two weeks since the previous one and there's been considerable progress. I did take a few days off, but I've been working a lot as well.

PCs have mostly been rendering animations but also some static renders.

I've been doing bits of everything, and I will have to focus on writing and coding in the near future.

I've reached a point in the development where the PCs will intermittently be idle and not rendering.

Earlier, I've mentioned how manual labor will be the new bottleneck, as I've upgraded my GPUs, and that's exactly where we are right now.

It's a good thing, really. It means that I can produce the content I want without having to worry too much about rendering time.

I haven't posed every animation in the update yet, so the PCs will soon be working hard again, but I need to write more of the script before I know for sure what remains in terms of animations.

So, the current state of the development is that:

149 animations and 1340 static renders have been produced.

9 licensed songs, 2 CC0 songs, and 7 sound effects are added thus far.



Despite the high animation and render count, I have a lot of manual work left on this update.

As you can see, I have been focusing hard on posing animations, which means that other areas of the development have been left for later.

Writing, coding, and posing static renders will be the time-consuming tasks for development starting now.

I cannot accurately estimate how far along I am with the script, but the main script has 6125 lines of code, best compared to episode 6 with ~11000 lines of code.

I have also made good progress on an updated feature that I vaguely mentioned in the past and will reveal it a bit later in the development.

This week I started on a huge and fairly complex free roam event, and it will take a long time to fully code and complete it.

All in all, great progress has been made and the episode will be a meaty one once it's completed.

I estimate that the overall progress for the update is early to mid-development (30-50% complete); I can't estimate it better than that.

I have some other good news for today.

I'm not sure how many of you have noticed this, but there's been an increasing amount of lag in the game as it is growing in size.

It's been most noticeable during animations with choices.

After spending some time debugging this and even getting insight from RenPy Tom, I'm really happy to announce that I've fixed it for the entire game.

This fix will roll out together with the next update.



Poll news
There was a poll for 2D art that ended during Christmas and the winning combination was a frontal shot of Sage in lingerie + nude. I have ordered this art piece for episode 7.

There will be more polls to come during January.



Have a nice weekend and a great start to 2021!

Dr PinkCake

DPC was clearly not idle over the holidays. He went into the break with 37 animations in the render queue, but came out of the break with a whopping 55 shiny, new animations added. That suggests he was rendering nearly 27.5 animations a week, way above his previous average of ~17/week. His overall rate is now around 18.6 animations/week. We even got an update on static renders, though it only works out to ~83/ week since his last datapoint. That gives him far less impressive 167.5/week overall average on statics. To put it in graphic form:

Spoiler: New Year, Same Charts!

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As you can see, his progress on animations is quite literally off the charts; he could easily blow past Episode 6's total by next week if he has more in the queue. Static renders, on the other hand, are still months away from matching Episode 6. Obviously that's a result of where he's been devoting his time more than a render limit on the statics; he often exceeded 200 statics a week back in Episode 6, and the new GPUs can only help that (though the benefits are probably hard capped by the time it takes him to pose). If he returns to a 200 static/week pace, he could match Episode 6's static count by around March 12.

To that end, DPC also mentioned he thinks Episode 7 is between 30 and 50% complete. It's been 8 weeks since Episode 6 launched, so that means we have between 8 and 18.7 weeks left. 8 weeks would correspond to February 26; 19 more weeks would be May 14. (If you're curious, my March 12 hypothetical would indicate we are 44% complete.) It's unclear if DPC was including time to debug and playtest or purely time to write the episode, so we could potentially need to add two weeks to that time table.

So, for those who were wondering when the next update will be, you have the answer: sometime between 2/26/21 and 5/28/21. Mark your calendars now!

 

[lemonfreak]

DPC was clearly not idle over the holidays. He went into the break with 37 animations in the render queue, but came out of the break with a whopping 55 shiny, new animations added. That suggests he was rendering nearly 27.5 animations a week, way above his previous average of ~17/week. His overall rate is now around 18.6 animations/week. We even got an update on static renders, though it only works out to ~83/ week since his last datapoint. That gives him far less impressive 167.5/week overall average on statics. To put it in graphic form:

Spoiler: New Year, Same Charts!

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As you can see, his progress on animations is quite literally off the charts; he could easily blow past Episode 6's total by next week if he has more in the queue. Static renders, on the other hand, are still months away from matching Episode 6. Obviously that's a result of where he's been devoting his time more than a render limit on the statics; he often esceeded 200 statics a week back in Episode 6, and the new GPUs can only help that (though the benefits are probably hard capped by the time it takes him to pose). If he returns to a 200 static/week pace, he could match Episode 6's static count by around March 12.

To that end, DPC also mentioned he thinks Episode 7 is between 30 and 50% complete. It's been 8 weeks since Episode 6 launched, so that means we have between 8 and 18.7 weeks left. 8 weeks would correspond to February 26; 19 more weeks would be May 14. (If you're curious, my March 12 hypothetical would indicate we are 44% complete.) It's unclear if DPC was including time to debug and playtest or purely time to write the episode, so we could potentially need to add two weeks to that time table.

So, for those who were wondering when the next update will be, you have the answer: sometime between 2/26/21 and 5/28/21. Mark your calendars now!

Will 2021 have 26 or 28 months?

 

[Gh0st_Harambe]

DPC was clearly not idle over the holidays. He went into the break with 37 animations in the render queue, but came out of the break with a whopping 55 shiny, new animations added. That suggests he was rendering nearly 27.5 animations a week, way above his previous average of ~17/week. His overall rate is now around 18.6 animations/week. We even got an update on static renders, though it only works out to ~83/ week since his last datapoint. That gives him far less impressive 167.5/week overall average on statics. To put it in graphic form:

Spoiler: New Year, Same Charts!

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As you can see, his progress on animations is quite literally off the charts; he could easily blow past Episode 6's total by next week if he has more in the queue. Static renders, on the other hand, are still months away from matching Episode 6. Obviously that's a result of where he's been devoting his time more than a render limit on the statics; he often esceeded 200 statics a week back in Episode 6, and the new GPUs can only help that (though the benefits are probably hard capped by the time it takes him to pose). If he returns to a 200 static/week pace, he could match Episode 6's static count by around March 12.

To that end, DPC also mentioned he thinks Episode 7 is between 30 and 50% complete. It's been 8 weeks since Episode 6 launched, so that means we have between 8 and 18.7 weeks left. 8 weeks would correspond to February 26; 19 more weeks would be May 14. (If you're curious, my March 12 hypothetical would indicate we are 44% complete.) It's unclear if DPC was including time to debug and playtest or purely time to write the episode, so we could potentially need to add two weeks to that time table.

So, for those who were wondering when the next update will be, you have the answer: sometime between 2/26/21 and 5/28/21. Mark your calendars now!

I dont know that a year have more than 12 months

 

[Kellermann]

the winning combination was a frontal shot of Sage in lingerie + nude.

 

[ename144]

I dont know that a year have more than 12 months

Bah, you non-Yanks with your consecutively ordered date formats and your consistent metric systems. You suck all the fun out of arbitrary historical conventions!

 

[AchedCroissant]

Will 2021 have 26 or 28 months?

He use the murica system

 

[Holy Bacchus]

Bah, you non-Yanks with your consecutively ordered date formats and your consistent metric systems. You suck all the fun out of arbitrary historical conventions!

Why America does the MM/DD/YYYY format, I'll never know, because the whole rest of the world does DD/MM/YYYY which makes so much more sense.

 

[Dashxp4k]

Why America does the MM/DD/YYYY format, I'll never know, because the whole rest of the world does DD/MM/YYYY which makes so much more sense.

Because

 

[Gladheim]

Why America does the MM/DD/YYYY format, I'll never know, because the whole rest of the world does DD/MM/YYYY which makes so much more sense.

Even the yards, gallons, miles, pounds, feets, farenheit, are obsolet and useless in science. At least they drive by the right, not like another english colony

 

[ename144]

Why America does the MM/DD/YYYY format, I'll never know, because the whole rest of the world does DD/MM/YYYY which makes so much more sense.

It's not hard to work out, Bacchus. We typically describe the date as February 26, 2021; therefore we abbreviate the date as 2/26/21.

It's only when you step back to consider the abbreviation in its own right (or recognize that our typical convention is itself a shorthand) that you might suspect we Americans are a bit silly. Fortunately, we live exciting, fast-paced lives that permit no time for such troublesome introspection.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to work out whether I'm using pound as a unit of mass or weight.