Q&A Session - 2025 - Part 1/2
Some characters became solutions to problems, yes—like the frats and the HOTs. I knew I needed characters in the fraternities because it would feel awkward if you only saw a couple of characters from an alleged fraternity or sorority. While they started as background and supporting characters, I wanted to evolve them and give them personalities to flesh out the game even more. I also found ways to intertwine their stories with the main characters.
To my mind his problem is he fleshes them out too much, which has the effect of pulling a background/filler NPC out of the background and into the foreground. Its an easy temptation to fall into, you get all these ideas in your head about them and make notes about them and then you end up with a lot of material of which 90% shouldn't ever be used because if you do, they're not in the background anymore and your story bloats and becomes unmanageable.
This sort of a mental note to myself btw, maybe I'm projecting cause I tend to overdevelop characters and settings myself. Its why I absolutely cannot write a short story, everything turns into a novella cause I just can prune enough. I'm hoping to attempt my own VN, and so I pay attention to this kind of stuff as a reminder for myself of things to be careful of.
Zoey doesn't fit into that mold, and for her to have the desired effect, I needed her to show up late in the game. I think Zoey is interesting. Some players absolutely hate her because they see her as a big problem; others love her because of the backstory. For some, her story is too relatable in a bad way, and for some, it's the opposite. I love it when a character makes players split into different camps for different reasons. I enjoy reading those discussions.
I see Zoey as a problem because of the way she's being inserted. Also, not so much the way she behaves, but rather the way how she behaves is handled. One thing I noted is that often the "main" LIs often seem suddenly absent if Zoey is around. This includes whoever the MC is currently in a relationship with (I've only done one full play thru of this with Josy/Maya, so feel free to correct me if I'm talking out of my ass on that) which struck me as very odd. The fact that Zoey is realizing she really did love the MC in the past and thinks she's in love with him now conflicting with the MC's current relationship seemed like a core issue that sort of got side stepped. I'd have rather seen some scenes where Zoey is reacting to seeing the MC with their current LI, the LI reacting to Zoey, possible arguments or jealousy, etc. Instead it felt like Josy/Maya were pushed off the stage entirely to give Zoey scenes with the MC, and it felt very forced and contrived. Zoey has tons of red flags for me as well. It seems like she still has the habit of running away when things don't go how she wants. Okay, there are people like that in RL, its realistic. But if Zoey wants to be a LI for the MC, stick around girl, stop running off crying every time the reality that she screwed shit up, the MC has moved on with their life and is now in another relationship hits her in the face. If she really wants to be friends with the MC again, if she really did love him as she claims... fight for it. But she doesn't, she runs. And where it leaves off currently in Season 3, not only did Zoey run after her attempt at a kiss got rejected, but she disappears for a month and has apparently ghosted the MC again. Red flags don't get any bigger than that. If the MC has a single sane brain cell, cut ties with her, push her away HARD and get that toxic shit out of your life dude or you're begging to have your current relationship threatened, not to mention losing what little peace of mind the MC has left in this every day is another crisis story.
General rip... enough with the parade of women who can't communicate how they feel. Its become a cliche in itself.
Most characters develop themselves because that's how I write the dialogue; I type and follow the flow. I start a scene knowing the topic to write about, and the dialogue that comes out of it is often very spontaneous. Characters will say things that fit their persona without much afterthought. And it happens that new ideas fall out of it - be it other scenes or choices. But I can't point at a character and say, "You're not who you're supposed to be". While they write themselves, somehow, they stay within their defined boundaries. But they can absolutely surprise me with what they say and do. You, as a writer, might understand this, but it could sound like bullshit to non-writers. I think you'd have to try it for yourself to see how it works. Just like a player can be immersed in the role of the main character, I, as a writer, become immersed in all the character's roles when writing them.
I get this entirely, I do the same. Most good writers I know do this (all of them come to think of it). The problem I see with DPC is that he tends to do this the way you would for a kinetic novel. That is, you develop the MC as a single character and then think how that one character would react. But that's actually not the case in a VN. The MC is multiple characters. In the case of BaDIK the MC is (or should be) at least three characters: A DIK, A Neutral, and A Chick. Now, how would each of those three react. Sometimes DPC manages that, most often it didn't feel like it and so we have more limited options than if feels like we should have. That said, its hard to develop that way, to break yourself out of a single perspective like that. You create characters beginning with a thumbnail description and then flesh them out more and more until in your mind they become people you know... and that's when they sort of take on a life of their own and start telling you the writer what they would or wouldn't do in a situation. That's when the story and dialog really flow well as a writer. Works fine for NPCs, but for the MC, takes more work and multiple perspectives which for me at least, is challenging.
Some characters that appeared later were designed early or planned on paper early; others came in time to improve world-building. I got really tired of using 2D billboard people in the background to get a sense of having crowded parties, but early on, I had to because my hardware wasn't very good.
I very much relate to this, cause its where I'm stuck now and why I've been very hesitant about attempting a VN of my own. My computer is old and not very powerful by current standards. Seeing this encourages me though because he's right, there are a lot of tricks like billboard characters and layered renders to allow stuff to be done on an older machine. Coincidentally, one of the main reasons I'm seriously thinking of attempting at least a small VN now is the hope I could make enough to get a new PC / workstation. Four RTX 4000 Ada video cards with 24 GB VRAM each would be sweet! (And would cost around $12,000 for the computer... so...
I can dream can't I?)
The yellow rectangles show how I rendered that scene. I had to render it four times and stitch it together in post-processing because my hardware couldn't handle rendering all the characters on screen at the same time. Today, I believe my hardware is good enough to handle the entire scene at once, but not if the billboard characters were replaced with normal models. I'm guessing, but the limit is roughly 14-16 characters at once per scene. A combination of VRAM and RAM decides the limit - I have 24 GB VRAM per GPU and 128 GB RAM per PC.
I have 186 .duf files for character models - one file is one character model -but some are duplicates or young/old versions of the same character. It should be at least 150+ different characters, and I don't save every background character that I have created, either. For instance, the bar scene in episode 6 needed background characters, but they obviously don't play a big part in the story, so I didn't save their models - but I have the scene saved if I ever need to access their model again. I can't accurately estimate how many characters were designed and added for each season, but season 3 has the least, for sure. It would be a fun thing to count at some point.
Okay so as I suspected, he is using Daz Studio to render these. There's part of his problem. Daz sucks for doing renders and it absolutely sucks BALLS for rendering animations. It would help him a lot to learn to export to Blender and how to render there. Blender using its native Cycles engine will generally render the same scene as Daz in about 1/5 to 1/7th the time. Switch to Evee for renders and you can cut that time again by another 1/5 to 1/10.
Also sounds like he has the kind of rig to work on I'm dreaming of... so... if he could get there, maybe I can to.
As for the duf files... I'm chuckling and thinking "Is that all?" Just my asset library in DAZ is over 6 TB of files. What can I say, I'm a bit of a hoarder.
Lately, I have enjoyed writing Professor Hoff a lot. It's a weird choice, but I like him. He reminds me of people I worked with, and he's so different from the rest of the cast in many ways. It makes him unique and fun to write. I also loved writing the new characters in the Interlude, especially Bret. I have always enjoyed writing for Jade, Quinn, Tybalt, and Arieth, and lately, I've also enjoyed writing for Becky. As you can tell, I enjoy writing for unexpected characters. And no, that wasn't a slam on either Jade or Quinn.
I get this, and I'm liking Hoff as well. The scene with him and MC checking up about the Christmas party as the strippers arrive gave me a chuckle.
The main character isn't a blank slate, and there are limits to his actions, even though you can name and shape him. The question you're asking is quite common. Some players get immersed and believe they are the MC and get disappointed by the available choices or outcomes. They say, "I wouldn't have done that" or "I would have done this", and that's when it's worth remembering that there are limits to his character and that while it's cool that you are immersed enough to feel like the MC, he has predefined traits and thoughts that may not align with your views.
As I said above, as I see it, the problem is he wrote one MC rather than allowing for different versions of the MC that might emerge as the result of player choices, and that's why choices of actions/reactions are so limited. DPC seems to have only one POV of the MC and doesn't allow the MC to evolve into different versions of himself.
There are some mini-games that I scrapped along the way.
Didn't scrap enough of em IMNSHO.
Because drugs have always been an important topic in the game, and in episode 11, it was a central theme. Several of the characters are either using drugs, involved in the stories surrounding drugs, or affected by them. The game description has always stated that drugs are a part of the game experience, so naturally, there will be stories about drugs. It would have felt weird for me to reduce the important stories being told in episode 11 in this area. There are several heavy scenes in the episode, and I'm very happy with how they came out. It should be clear from the warnings this game comes with that the game covers dark topics. Keep that in mind if you don't wish to see any of it.
You mean like introducing prostitution and grooming someone for prostitution and then sort of ignoring all that while everyone pointedly ignores what's happening?
Says every writer, cause its true.
The plot twists and surprises are always exciting to me. I love watching players' reactions to those and seeing who was fooled and who already guessed it. I also get a kick out of seeing people trying to guess what will happen. I wish you could relate to that feeling of knowing the answers and having everyone try to guess them. It's very amusing. And there have been some really clever theories that make sense, yet it's not at all what will happen. Those are always fun to stumble upon. While wrong, it's interesting to see that a solution to the story or mystery can be ambiguous. It's definitely the form of entertainment that I get from creating this game.
Now if only he was better at writing plot twists, so far in my admittedly limited experience, DPC over uses foreshadowing so much he gives everything away. Nick being blamed for everything and throwing the rest of the Frat under the bus didn't even remotely surprise me, I'd been waiting for it to happen. Even Magnar being revealed as an evil genius master mind didn't surprise me.. though I was hoping that was NOT going to be the way it turned out. I don't think that plot is going to turn out as very believable and am hoping it doesn't go Austin Powers "Dr Evil" silly.
Then again, to be fair, I'm an ass when it comes to this stuff. I've a knack for figuring things out well ahead of what happens which is why not many of my friends like watching movies with me... 5 min in and I'm telling them how it will end. Plus I nitpick over all the plot holes, everything they got wrong in settings, details, etc. So... maybe I should just shut up on this and leave it alone.
Limited 3D models sometimes make you compromise in some areas. I could only find one pair of skis to use, and I didn't want to have to scrap that part of the cabin trip. I always write the scenes before making the art because I don't want to limit my ideas. And sometimes you have to do the best out of what's available. The suspension of disbelief makes it work. It's been the same with the lack of seat belts in cars, which DAZ assets don't come with. The ones I have in episodes 10 and 11, I had to draw in Photoshop.
Which is why ya need a 3D modeller who can modify or make assets to spec.
Long story short, I wish I had planned some of the environments in greater detail early on. If I ever make another game after this, environment design would be higher on the list of priorities early on in development.
Again... ya need an asset creator. Happen to be one, I specialize in architecture, crap at making clothes though. Works cheap... lot of us out here like that.
That one was indeed animated. It's the same with Madame Rose's idle choice screen. I would make more of those, but they require at least 60-120 frames to be rendered, as opposed to 3 frames for a simple blinking sequence. I'm already creating a lot of animations, so I have to limit some areas where I could use them.
Limitation of using Daz Studio for renders. With what sounds like a beast of a rig and using Blender, he could turn out a lot more of that.
Example: My current computer is a bit over 8 years old. I have an old 1080 Ti graphics card with only 1 MB of VRAM. I rendered an animated intro for a friends podcast that has 7200 frames, includes a total of about 140,000 tris of mesh in all models (for comparison that's about one character in Daz Studio) done at 24 frames per second (standard for movies and all you need for video, 60 fps in video is a waste) rendered at 1920 x 1080 px. On my sad old computer using Blender the whole thing rendered and compiled in under 30 min. In other words, use the right software, and the right settings and on his beast of a PC, it should be possible to do an animated party dance scene with say 15-20 characters and render it and compile the video in half a day or less. Short animations like the eye blink and stuff would take less time, and using spot renders (where you render just they eyes, layer that over a background image, then compile the images in a video editor to create frames which takes WAY less time and processing power) would dramatically increase speed.
Ya know... I really should get over my hesitation and do a my own VN. The more I think about this stuff the more I'm talking myself into it.
No, I actually removed those after a couple of episodes after seeing how players played the game. I didn't want the experience to be a min/max hunt for relationship points and felt it was better to keep those things under the hood. Interpreting the girls and their signals is, to me, more fun than outright having it stated that they liked/disliked something you said. You can often tell what they think from their faces and dialogue. I think it better emulates life. And whenever relationship points and choices affect the story, the limits are often lenient enough.
But it is a min/max hunt. The DIK <> Chick meter affects way too much about paths and LIs, so when I did my first serious play thru I was constantly tracking my choices to keep my score on this Neutral so I could follow the paths I wanted. IMHO, that meter affects many of the LIs WAY too much, overriding how the MC has treated them individually, which is what I think should be the main thing. For example, Josy and Maya, get 6 points of DIK score at the wrong time and you're locked out of their path even if the MC has worked hard in their choices to be very supportive, caring and affectionate with them individually while being an asshat to others. I've come to hate that stupid meter.
There's no intended canon route in the game. I feel that would be insulting to any player who prefers another route, and I never considered one branch better than the other. There are simply different ways to experience the game. That said, I think every player will have a route they feel is canon for themselves. I will probably have a route that I prefer slightly more than the other, too. Time will tell which one that is, but I wouldn't impose what I like more on players by calling it canon.
Sure feels like there is. To me it felt like the Josy/Maya route was the primary / default LI path, and then Sage and Jill got added on, then side chick paths after that. They're introduce earliest, you cannot avoid going on a date with Josy (no choice NOT to ask her out and just remain friends), and so that whole ball gets rolling. Granted you can't avoid asking Jill out either, and I find that annoying. This is where to me it starts to feel more like a kinetic novel than a VN, too much of the MC being forced down paths for... reasons.
