VN Ren'Py Being a DIK [v0.11.1] [DrPinkCake]

[El_Magnifico]

Yikes. I went to try out season 3 after I played some of season 1 years ago, and the amount of work needed to just play season 3 is just ridiculous. The way the dev decided to do this game is really stupid, and his sales will suffer as a result.

His numbers of pledges on patreon and sell on steam say otherwise. He has never earned that much money.

 

[Badjourasmix]

Yikes. I went to try out season 3 after I played some of season 1 years ago, and the amount of work needed to just play season 3 is just ridiculous. The way the dev decided to do this game is really stupid, and his sales will suffer as a result.

Just looking at his patreon and his sub numbers I think he will be fine lol.

 

[-d2d-]

I finished playing the whole thing recently so I not familiar with the dev's release cycle. How long does it usually take for the dev to release updates?

Prevous game (Acting Lessons) completed
10 Dec, 2018

Season 1 (7831 Renders)
Episode 1- 07 Feb, 2019
Episode 2- 04 May, 2019
Episode 3- 16 Aug, 2019
Episode 4- 10 Jan, 2020

Season 2 (13,673 Renders)
Episode 5- 29 May, 2020
Episode 6- 13 Nov, 2020
Episode 7- 23 Apr, 2021
Episode 8- 19 Nov, 2021

Interlude- Riding the Waves (794 Renders)
4 Mar, 2022

Season 3 (18,018 Renders so far)
Episode 9- 16 Dec, 2022
Episode 10- 08 Dec, 2023
Episode 11- 07 Mar, 2025
Episode 12- TBA

 

[Badjourasmix]

Season 1
Episode 1- 07 Feb, 2019
Episode 2- 04 May, 2019
Episode 3- 16 Aug, 2019
Episode 4- 10 Jan, 2020

Season 2
Episode 5- 29 May, 2020
Episode 6- 13 Nov, 2020
Episode 7- 23 Apr, 2021
Episode 8- 19 Nov, 2021

Interlude- 4 Mar, 2022

Season 3
Episode 9- 16 Dec, 2022
Episode 10- 8 Dec, 2023
Episode 11- 7 Mar, 2025
Episode 12- TBA

Yea looking at how the time between updates has been increasing we will definitely not get another one this year. Thank you!

 

[Chillout1984]

His numbers of pledges on patreon and sell on steam say otherwise. He has never earned that much money.

Plus recently he had an influx of new players thanks to the anti-censorship promotion on GOG. I won't be surprised if a large part of the people who got the package already had season 1 (and probably also 2), but I'm pretty sure there also were more than enough players that played this game for the first time and want to play season 3 as well.

 

[ZenoMod]

Yikes. I went to try out season 3 after I played some of season 1 years ago, and the amount of work needed to just play season 3 is just ridiculous. The way the dev decided to do this game is really stupid, and his sales will suffer as a result.

While I am the first to criticize some of DPC's choiches (like minigames and free roams), saying that his going to lose money is a tad unrealistic...



even if all his pledgers were subscribing the lower 1$ tier... he would still be making a gross income of 13k $ per month just working the way he likes.

Yeah, there's the Patreon share and the taxes to be subtracted, but... it's unrealistic that every subscriber just pledges 1$ so...

 

[Badjourasmix]

While I am the first to criticize some of DPC's choiches (like minigames and free roams), saying that his going to lose money is a tad unrealistic...

View attachment 5187369

I actually like the free roam events and the minigames. They just become a hassle when you have so many paths.

 

[hechne]

I firmly believe that Bella is unaware that her old friend was MC's mother. She may even be unaware that Lynette is dead. Lynette's friends being unaware of her death would explain why they have not been part of MC's life. Even if Bella is not one of those friends, Miranda's and Viv's absence requires an explanation. They may not know that Lynette is dead, or they know she is dead but not how it happened, or they may know she died at childbirth but not know the child survived. If Miranda and Viv (and Bella) knew that Lynette's son survived they would have been a part of his life.

Miranda and Viv have their own lives to live and if they weren't close with Neil then I don't see much reason for them to hang around. Maybe they helped Neil early on but then life got in the way.
Would be very contrived if they somehow didn't know Lynette died or somehow missed that her child survived.

In any case as Bella is unaware of the connection she must have other reasons to keep the room locked and these reasons are shocking for Maya to see from the door. However, I don't see that I need to accurately predict what these reasons are as there surely will be enough space for a picture of Bella and Lynette. I do not need to explain why Maya is shocked because there is no reason why she and MC couldn't be shocked by separate things. And of course what shocked Maya may also be shocking to MC. There may be a great many shocking things in there. What I'm saying is that the thing that shocks MC the most is Bella having a picture of his mother. I most definitely am not saying that the picture is the only thing in there.

It just seems like a very strange way to write to me. To different people, looking into the same room but being shocked by two different things and this shocking thing is a major cliffhanger and plot point.
Could there be a picture of Lynette in the room? Yes. Is that why the MC is shocked? No. After the emergency is taken care of I would imagine the MC and Bella visiting the room again after she's explained herself and then he sees the picture.
Otherwise you get to major bombs at once without time to fully digest the impact of either.

Well perhaps I should give an explanation for Maya's shock. But this is simply to show that such explanations can coexist with my theory. It is not truly relevant to Bella and Lynette having been friends. So the most popular theory at the moment is a baby room. I will expand it like this. The room has become a clutter room for things that bring back memories for Bella. She emphatically does not want to throw them away, but looking at them on a daily basis is painful for her. These may indeed include nursery furniture for a baby that Bella lost, but there is plenty of room for James's possessions and both pictures and mementos of family and friends. Things that bring up old memories. The memories themselves don't have to be painful as simply being constantly reminded of happier times would make Bella's current life feel worse by contrast. So she keeps the room locked.

Why was it unlocked at the end of ep 11? Well she probably does put up some Christmas decorations in there. I could see her doing that every year. She doesn't want daily reminders, but she doesn't want to forget either. Decorating the house is one of the times in a year she let's the memories come back. She just forgot to lock the door when she was done with the decorating.

I agree with your theory on the rest of the room, it's mementos and memories from the past/a nursery.

I firmly believe that Bella is unaware that her old friend was MC's mother.
a picture of Bella and Lynette.
It is not truly relevant to Bella and Lynette having been friends.

Why are you so certain that Bella and Lynette knew one another? I know it's a commonish theory I just haven't seen any good explanation for it.

 

[ZenoMod]

I actually like the free roam events and the minigames. They just become a hassle when you have so many paths.

As I stated before, free roams may be fun the first time but in such a huge game with so much branching they kill replayability because they don't let you use the builtin Ren'Py facility to skip already seen text and concentrate only on the differences deriving from different choiches from the second playthrough onwards.

I had a lot of playthroughts up to Episode 10 (Maya & Josy, Sage, Bella, Jill, Others... plus infinite subpaths), but since Episode 11 came out I just played ONE branch and I never find the willpower to bother with free roams again and again: from the second time they become a boring chore of forced clicks: a boring waste of time.

I would be OK with them if DPC provided a mean to fast forward them until some unread text is displayed.
I understand this is not technically easy (probably almost impossible), but also programming a free roam in Ren'Py is not easy: he's the one who chose to make things complicated.

 

[Badjourasmix]

As I stated before, free roams may be fun the first time but in such a huge game with so much branching they kill replayability because they don't let you use the builtin Ren'Py facility to skip already seen text and concentrate only on the differences deriving from different choiches from the second playthrough onwards.

I had a lot of playthroughts up to Episode 10 (Maya & Josy, Sage, Bella, Jill, Others... plus infinite subpaths), but since Episode 11 came out I just played ONE branch and I never find the willpower to bother with free roams again and again: from the second time they become a boring chore of forced clicks: a boring waste of time.

I would be OK with them if DPC provided a mean to fast forward them until some unread text is displayed.
I understand this is not technically easy (probably almost impossible), but also programming a free roam in Ren'Py is not easy: he's the one who chose to make things complicated.

Yeah I did only one playthrough with minigames on, all my other saves have minigames disabled because it's just way too much work. If the game had only like 3 or 4 paths it wouldn't be such a huge problem, but like you said, with all the main and sub paths, it's just not fun to play every path with them enabled.

 

[Roger-a-Dale]

only reason i doubt this is mc mentioned to bella his mom's death, so i think she would have said something not a lot of local died in childbirths 19 years ago. Also bella was at another collage then too

Bella was a freshman 18 years ago. She would have still been in high school when MC was born.

In the follow up post I made it clear that I believe Bella is not aware of this connection. I pointed out that since Miranda and Viv have not been a part of MC's life, Lynette's friends are not aware she had a son. They might not even be aware that she is dead.

The diary has only just gotten to the point where Lynette and Neil had sex for the first time. MC's birth is at minimum 9 months away. If they ran away together Lynette's death might not have been "local" to any of her friends. On top of that Lynette no longer lives in the house she grew up in. The new house may not be "local" to her friends either.

We know Lynette's parents hate MC's guts. How far would they go to spite him? Would they really feel a need to inform Lynette's friends that she is dead? If they more or less disowned Lynette when she ran away would they give a shit about her friends? They had both the means and a motive to keep Lynette's death a secret from her friends. No one was legally obligated to tell them about it. Apart from government officials Lynette's parents were not obligated to tell anyone of her death. The doctors were downright obliged not to tell anyone about it except government officials and her next of kin. If Lynette had made a will the people involved would have known, but she didn't so no one would.

Miranda and Viv (and Bella) would have to actively search for her to find out about her death. Some of the information should be publicly available, but what would inspire them to even start looking? Why would they suspect that something had happened?

A much bigger question is why didn't Neil try to contact Lynette's friends himself. Well maybe Lynette's parents told him they would see to those matters and then lied to him about how they took the news. Would Neil suspect them of lying about that? If he were to think back on it now he might, but would he have at the time?

 

[Bloke1998]

Bella was a freshman 18 years ago. She would have still been in high school when MC was born.

In the follow up post I made it clear that I believe Bella is not aware of this connection. I pointed out that since Miranda and Viv have not been a part of MC's life, Lynette's friends are not aware she had a son. They might not even be aware that she is dead.

The diary has only just gotten to the point where Lynette and Neil had sex for the first time. MC's birth is at minimum 9 months away. If they ran away together Lynette's death might not have been "local" to any of her friends. On top of that Lynette no longer lives in the house she grew up in. The new house may not be "local" to her friends either.

We know Lynette's parents hate MC's guts. How far would they go to spite him? Would they really feel a need to inform Lynette's friends that she is dead? If they more or less disowned Lynette when she ran away would they give a shit about her friends? They had both the means and a motive to keep Lynette's death a secret from her friends. No one was legally obligated to tell them about it. Apart from government officials Lynette's parents were not obligated to tell anyone of her death. The doctors were downright obliged not to tell anyone about it except government officials and her next of kin. If Lynette had made a will the people involved would have known, but she didn't so no one would.

Miranda and Viv (and Bella) would have to actively search for her to find out about her death. Some of the information should be publicly available, but what would inspire them to even start looking? Why would they suspect that something had happened?

A much bigger question is why didn't Neil try to contact Lynette's friends himself. Well maybe Lynette's parents told him they would see to those matters and then lied to him about how they took the news. Would Neil suspect them of lying about that? If he were to think back on it now he might, but would he have at the time?

Well I feel like an idiot, I thought bella was like 5 years older lol

 

[-d2d-]

Well I feel like an idiot, I thought bella was like 5 years older lol

Bella is 36 years old

 

[hechne]

In the follow up post I made it clear that I believe Bella is not aware of this connection. I pointed out that since Miranda and Viv have not been a part of MC's life, Lynette's friends are not aware she had a son. They might not even be aware that she is dead.

We know Lynette's parents hate MC's guts. How far would they go to spite him? Would they really feel a need to inform Lynette's friends that she is dead? If they more or less disowned Lynette when she ran away would they give a shit about her friends? They had both the means and a motive to keep Lynette's death a secret from her friends. No one was legally obligated to tell them about it. Apart from government officials Lynette's parents were not obligated to tell anyone of her death. The doctors were downright obliged not to tell anyone about it except government officials and her next of kin. If Lynette had made a will the people involved would have known, but she didn't so no one would.

Miranda and Viv (and Bella) would have to actively search for her to find out about her death. Some of the information should be publicly available, but what would inspire them to even start looking? Why would they suspect that something had happened?

A much bigger question is why didn't Neil try to contact Lynette's friends himself. Well maybe Lynette's parents told him they would see to those matters and then lied to him about how they took the news. Would Neil suspect them of lying about that? If he were to think back on it now he might, but would he have at the time?

Lynette and Neil eloped, they didn't go into witness protection, she could've called or written to them and vice versa. Might be more likely Lyn had a falling out with her friends prior to, or due to eloping with Neil, that would at least explain the radio silence
What motive would her parents have for covering up her death? They disowned her but why would they lie about her being dead. Just to spite Neil who might not even have been close with them? To prevent them from being a part of MC's life, which they might not have been anyway?

 

[\\_Tremolo_//]

His numbers of pledges on patreon and sell on steam say otherwise. He has never earned that much money.

Meanwhile his credentials:

 

[just1guy04]

This is one of the first adult visual novels that made me love the genre. Amazing storytelling!

 

[EEMNHMQI]

Also bella was at another collage then too

She was, but she could've easily applied to a college that was in another city/State

This is one of the first adult visual novels that made me love the genre. Amazing storytelling!

Which path(s) did you go for?

 

[just1guy04]

Which path(s) did you go for?
[/QUOTE]
I played seasons 1 & 2 on steam and tried multiple paths to unlock the achievements,

Spoiler: Preferred path

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[Prosper]

So is the next update in 2027 or what?

 

[Badjourasmix]

So is the next update in 2027 or what?

Looking at the release dates for each update, the longest wait time was 15 months. Last update came out in March of this year so the next one will probably come out around the summer of next year.