Reading the discussion about development time got me curious.
Has anybody worked with RenPy before? How is it to work with? Are there better/worse engines for a VN?
How advanced of a programmer do you need to be able to do a game like this?
What is the main reason for the 10+ months to develop a new episode? Writing? Programming? Rendering?
Not here to criticise anyone, just want to learn and get a better understanding of things.
I often look at the source code of VNs and I change it in some occasions. It's quite basic compared to things we do for web development, for example. DPC code is more complex than usual in the part of all the mini-games, he had to invent them. The standard part concerning the plot is really basic, there is nothing fancy there. Even the sex scenes are really plain in the code, not much variety there. Coding those is quite fast.
The variables that he uses are not that intricate and there aren't so many, they are manageable, I've seen more complicated VNs on that aspect. But BaD is still among the VNs with a more complex plot. Most VNs are more linear.
His planning has saved him from going nuts with creating too many crossings. That's clever.
But you have to consider that with the extras like minigames he did create the code from zero, he had to test everything and that part of code is not simple. The most time I suppose is spent posing static images and animations. Rendering animations also takes a lot of time, but it does not block him because he has many PCs. Animations delayed the release last time because he did everything else and he had to wait two weeks for the queue to complete.
The plot is all planned since the start (he wrote that) but when developing an episode he usually changes something and create new scenarios. That's normal. So you have to consider the time to project and write all this new ideas.
I don't know much about other rendering engines, but coding Python for Renpy can be easy for the standard stuff, while it can become more complex if you want to do make. BaD is probably the most complex VN with all its extra features. Renpy is not that flexible and it's limited. Unity and especially Unreal are complex and you can make "real" games with them.