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

[Lagunavii]

Plan B is more than likely something akin to scorched earth putting himself and the Hots in the firing line too. I mean up to now it's just the rats he's going for not every group on campus.

 

[Roger-a-Dale]

This is what makes me think that he knows all about what Quinn and Burke have been up to because revealing that and who all the customers were for both the girls and the drugs would be the nuclear option as it would take out more than just the DIKs who are the primary target.


I don't think that what Tybalt was given is a threat to the Preps, I think it's something for them to use against the DIKs, something that shows their misdeeds that could further get them in trouble because Magnar knows Tybalt would report them for it.

No, Magnar can't have uncovered all that Stephen has been doing. He'd know he had stumbled into something dangerous. He'd then either take the information to the police or pretend he never found out about it hoping like hell he hasn't made himself a target. Trying to use it to get some petty revenge would be an insane risk for minimal gain.

 

[Darkwen]

Plan B is more than likely something akin to scorched earth putting himself and the Hots in the firing line too. I mean up to now it's just the rats he's going for not every group on campus.

Plan B you what else has a B ...Bailey

 

[johnnai]

Will the update come in first half of 2026?

 

[Lagunavii]

Will the update come in first half of 2026?

It's possible, but unlikely given what we know at the moment.

 

[Darkwen]

You must be registered to see the links

Happy Friday, everyone!

Warning! Today's post is a behemoth. If you're only interested in the normal weekly development content, you can stop reading after the development news section.

I will talk about the Steam/GOG news and try my best to clarify everything about the new 4K mode.

Development news
I've had a great week creating art. It's been smooth and fast, and I've been happy with my daily progress.

There are 21 scenes left to create for the free roam event. They vary in length, with some very long and others short. Some of these scenes are missing writing. I estimate I'm 65-70% done with the free roam event.

Way earlier in the development cycle, I mentioned a special feature that I had implemented. This week, I created the art it needed, tested it in-game, and made some tweaks to improve it. I had a lot of fun with the feature, and I think you will enjoy it too.

The 92-second-long cutscene animation is now 75% complete. The render speed has been very good this week.

22 animations and 478 statics are in the render queue, and two of my PCs are now rendering static renders because I want that part of the queue to deplete faster so I can show you some fresh previews.

I will continue working on the free roam event next week, too. We'll see how far I get. I might reach the point where I need to write more scenes for it.

Steam/GOG news
If you missed it, or couldn't see it because of regional settings - I know, it sucks - here's a recap of Wednesday's news for Steam and GOG.

The title of Episode 12 was revealed: "Smoke and Fire".

The overall Season 3 development is at 90% completion.

The overall development for episode 12 is at 60% completion.

Here are the new screenshots you may have missed.


View attachment 5520992
In this case, I've rendered the same image with 100, 1000, and 10,000 iterations of ray tracing. You can see that it becomes clearer as the iteration count increases, and the noise (grain) dissipates.

To get a beautiful, clear render, you need a very high signal-to-noise ratio, and there are several ways to achieve it.

1. You can render with a high iteration count.
2. You can downsample your final image from a higher-resolution image.
3. You can apply a denoiser after rendering.

In my art, I use methods 1 and 2. I don't use method 3 because of reasons outside the scope of this text.

By removing method 2 - the downsampling - from my process, I could achieve a 4K mode without re-rendering.

When you downsample an image, you reduce its size by a factor. In my case, I reduced the 4K images to full HD. In this example, you can see how the noise is reduced by downsampling from 4K to full HD. You will lose resolution, but get a sharper signal and less noise.

View attachment 5520991


Dr PinkCake

At long last DPC has confirm what we all at some point have wonder Dalli is indeed DPC

 

[Roger-a-Dale]

Will the update come in first half of 2026?

At the absolute best just around the halfway point. Ep 11 took 15 months and was released at the beginning of March. Ep 12 managing the same 15 months would be June 2026. Technically in the first half of the year but only just. And that is optimistic. Most of us expect September give or take a month.

 

[hakuna-matata]

You must be registered to see the links

Happy Friday, everyone!

Warning! Today's post is a behemoth. If you're only interested in the normal weekly development content, you can stop reading after the development news section.

I will talk about the Steam/GOG news and try my best to clarify everything about the new 4K mode.

Development news
I've had a great week creating art. It's been smooth and fast, and I've been happy with my daily progress.

There are 21 scenes left to create for the free roam event. They vary in length, with some very long and others short. Some of these scenes are missing writing. I estimate I'm 65-70% done with the free roam event.

Way earlier in the development cycle, I mentioned a special feature that I had implemented. This week, I created the art it needed, tested it in-game, and made some tweaks to improve it. I had a lot of fun with the feature, and I think you will enjoy it too.

The 92-second-long cutscene animation is now 75% complete. The render speed has been very good this week.

22 animations and 478 statics are in the render queue, and two of my PCs are now rendering static renders because I want that part of the queue to deplete faster so I can show you some fresh previews.

I will continue working on the free roam event next week, too. We'll see how far I get. I might reach the point where I need to write more scenes for it.

Steam/GOG news
If you missed it, or couldn't see it because of regional settings - I know, it sucks - here's a recap of Wednesday's news for Steam and GOG.

The title of Episode 12 was revealed: "Smoke and Fire".

The overall Season 3 development is at 90% completion.

The overall development for episode 12 is at 60% completion.

Here are the new screenshots you may have missed.

View attachment 5520998
View attachment 5520997
View attachment 5520996
View attachment 5520995
View attachment 5520994
And if you'd like to view the NSFW trailer, it's in the attachments at the bottom of this post.

In the news, I also revealed that I've been working on a 4K mode this year. And that, my friends, is what the rest of the post will be about.

4K mode
I want to clarify what the 4K mode is and answer questions I've seen come up. It will get fairly technical at times, but I've tried my best to explain it.

What is the 4K mode?
Every render, GUI element, and animation frame from Season 3 has been reprocessed and tailored for a 4K experience. You can play the game in 4K resolution instead of full HD, and, while recommended, you don't need a 4K monitor to enjoy this mode, as RenPy will scale the game to your monitor.

The 4K mode is optional and modular. If you don't want it, don't download it.

The 4K mode requires roughly 90 GB of extra disk space and may not be suitable for older computers. You can enable the 4K mode in the settings menu if the game detects 4K files. It will look like this in-game.

View attachment 5520993
Why did you add the 4K mode?
I wanted to treat players to something special. The game looks beautiful in 4K. By making it 4K, I have future-proofed the game, so it should take longer for it to look dated.

After carefully evaluating how to make it a reality, I realized it wouldn't require much extra development time and that I could maintain a straightforward, automated development process to support both full HD and 4K modes. I didn't want to implement it if it meant a significant increase in development time.

Will it be available on Patreon?
I will investigate how to make this possible. I will be straight with you, distributing 90-100 GB of data outside of fast CDN servers that Steam and GOG use is a huge hurdle.

Some of you have already experienced the difficulties of downloading the current Season 3 version from Patreon, and it was less than 20 GB. I will investigate if and how it's feasible to achieve this distribution for patrons.

How is the 4K mode possible?
This will get fairly technical, but here's the full explanation of why I could create a 4K mode of Season 3 without re-rendering everything.

Ever since I started developing Being a DIK, I have rendered every render and animation in 4K (3840x2160) resolution. This might seem confusing, since the game you have played was in full HD (1920x1080) all this time. But once you understand my render-making process, it becomes clearer.

When you render an image in DAZ3D, you perform iterations of ray tracing. The results of each iteration are pooled, and from these calculations, you get clearer signals with each pooled iteration. You also get what's called noise, or maybe you know it better as grain. Noise works the opposite way of the signal with increased iterations. While the signal increases with every iteration, the noise dissipates. Here's an example.

View attachment 5520992
In this case, I've rendered the same image with 100, 1000, and 10,000 iterations of ray tracing. You can see that it becomes clearer as the iteration count increases, and the noise (grain) dissipates.

To get a beautiful, clear render, you need a very high signal-to-noise ratio, and there are several ways to achieve it.

1. You can render with a high iteration count.
2. You can downsample your final image from a higher-resolution image.
3. You can apply a denoiser after rendering.

In my art, I use methods 1 and 2. I don't use method 3 because of reasons outside the scope of this text.

By removing method 2 - the downsampling - from my process, I could achieve a 4K mode without re-rendering.

When you downsample an image, you reduce its size by a factor. In my case, I reduced the 4K images to full HD. In this example, you can see how the noise is reduced by downsampling from 4K to full HD. You will lose resolution, but get a sharper signal and less noise.

View attachment 5520991
Downsampling uses what's known as the nearest-neighbor principle. In this case, 4 pixels will merge into 1, and the result is an average of the surrounding pixels (the nearest neighbors). The signal thus increases, and you can see this as another pooled result - much like pooled iterations.

By combining methods 1 and 2, I found that the render efficiency increased. I could get a higher quality render in a shorter time than if I were to render at the target resolution using only method 1.

To achieve 4K mode without re-rendering all art, I skipped the downsampling step, accepted a little bit of extra noise, and applied the remaining post-processing to the images. By doing this, nothing needed to be re-rendered (except for some botched animations that had missing frames on my backup disks, which store the raw files).

How does the 4K mode affect development times going forward?
This has not affected any render times. I do not render longer because of the 4K mode, nor would I render faster if I didn't create it.

Hardware capabilities determine render times, and they have improved with each GPU generation. It improved until the point where 4K mode was possible with Season 3 without me planning for it.

It feels weird to say the 4K mode was a hindsight feature, but it has been a happy coincidence. It was made possible by increasing the iteration count and render quality to the point where removing downsampling didn't significantly affect the render quality.

Every script I use will now automatically post-process an image in both 4K and full HD. I have even automated animation processing with a .bat file that runs on a double-click and puts everything together automatically.

Furthermore, I have written a script to cross-check images between 4K and full HD folders to ensure they are identical, removing time-consuming work.

I haven't changed how I manually work in DAZ3D or Photoshop. The changes are made at a script level, which is why I can say the 4K mode does not significantly impact development time.

Will Season 1 and 2 be in 4K mode too?
Not at the moment. I would much rather remaster Seasons 1 and 2 from scratch in the future than introduce a 4K mode right now. However, as I have mentioned in my Q&As, my main priority is to finish the game before any of those ideas are explored.

Phew
If you're still here, I hope this has been helpful, illuminating, comforting, interesting, or just a big wall of text.

If you have any follow-up questions, you can always fire away below, and I'll try to answer.

Thanks for your time reading this!

(And don't forget the trailer in the attachment below)

Have a great weekend.

Dr PinkCake

I am super excited for this 4k!!!! I am so glad DPC takes a few extra months to develop this 4k. Seeing those eyes in 4k will make such a huge difference going forward in the AVN. I don't think I can play these AVNs without it now. Such beauty, I can see the difference in those eyes!!!! If the man needs to another 20 years to complete this game, give the man another 20 years!!!!! I just hope we get 4k cinematics and an open world.

 

[maxthruster]

View attachment 5521366

I am super excited for this 4k!!!! I am so glad DPC takes a few extra months to develop this 4k. Seeing those eyes in 4k will make such a huge difference going forward in the AVN. I don't think I can play these AVNs without it now. Such beauty, I can see the difference in those eyes!!!! If the man needs to another 20 years to complete this game, give the man another 20 years!!!!! I just hope we get 4k cinematics and an open world.

I love that nobody can read, apparently.

 

[treechild1]

I love that nobody can read, apparently.

It’s just satire. Trust me, she can read just fine.

 

[maxthruster]

It’s just satire. Trust me, she can read just fine.

The satirical parts are loud and clear. It's the parts that aren't which concern me.

 

[bonerland]

Ummmm, image three of the previews, the one with MC at the fight club thing, is that Bella top left behind the chinese girl? I cant zoom in to check

Her eyes are brown, so it's not Isabella.

 

[saynotoNTR]

For those who have Steam blocked in their region:

Episode 12 - Smoke and Fire



The year comes to an end, as does your first semester at B&R. The choices you have made, the divergent road you wander... Will you look at your journey the same after you have peered beneath the surface?

Being a DIK: Season 4 will be the final season that concludes the story. It will be released and sold separately as DLC.

 

[Roger-a-Dale]

Yeah, while there's some logical sense to Magnar being the culprit - he's certainly implied to be smart enough to pull something like that off, and none of the other major antagonists fit the bill - narratively it's unsatisfying. He's a pudgy, dorky guy who up until this moment hasn't really done anything to hurt us except maybe make a couple of snide comments. There's no real satisfaction in defeating him; he has at least some legitimate grievances against the frats, even if they're broadly not applicable to the MC, we haven't had any real problems with him in the past, and he's also just a total wimp.

Tybalt will be satisfying to take down because he's a pompous, snooty creep who constantly belittles us and makes other people miserable. Caleb will be satisfying to take down because he's a huge, scary asshole who's been gunning for us since the moment he arrived. Vinny will be satisfying to take down because he's a legitimately dangerous psychopath and has done serious harm to at least one of the girls we could be romancing. Burke will be satisfying to take down because he's a fucking sex trafficker and do we really need more reasons than that. But Magnar? I have grandmas I'm more afraid of, and they've both been dead for years.

This is partially why I expect something much bigger at the end. Magnar isn't quite a red herring as a lot of what has happened was his doing one way or another, but he is just a petty nerd. Comparing that to the drugs and prostitution is like comparing a matchstick to a bonfire. But just as a matchstick can start a bonfire Magnar's schemes can set off something bigger.

Some games pull a twist where you get to a boss fight and suddenly a bigger boss appears and eats the boss you thought you were gonna fight and then you have to fight a boss that eats smaller bosses. Think of Magnar as the smaller boss.

The main reason I expect this is what happened to Riona. There has to be something worse than that in the endgame stakes. Most likely it will be avoidable, but the threat must be there. Magnar does not pose such a threat.

 

[Blue Milk]

No, Magnar can't have uncovered all that Stephen has been doing. He'd know he had stumbled into something dangerous. He'd then either take the information to the police or pretend he never found out about it hoping like hell he hasn't made himself a target. Trying to use it to get some petty revenge would be an insane risk for minimal gain.

Why would Magnar go to the police with it like he's now some fine, upstanding citizen? Especially since them wanting to know how he came about this information could put his own schemes at risk.

He's been collecting dirt on the DIKs for a while for his own nefarious purposes so it's not like he's a saint. If he's been casting that net wider and found out about what Burke and Quinn have been getting up to it's like a golden goose for him, an ace in the hole to use either as a nuclear option if his main plan goes south or as leverage if his scheme is uncovered, a way to stop any move against him or else he blows the lid off this, or even to use it to coerce an action, like getting Burke to help him disband the DIKs.

 

[Roger-a-Dale]

Why would Magnar go to the police with it like he's now some fine, upstanding citizen? Especially since them wanting to know how he came about culd put his own schemes at risk.

He's been collecting dirt on the DIKs for a while for his own nefarious purposes so it's not like he's a saint. If he's been casting that net wider and found out about what Burke and Quinn have been getting up to it's like a golden goose for him, an ace in the hole to use either as a nuclear option if his main plan goes south or as leverage if his scheme is uncovered, a way to stop any move against him or else he blows the lid off this, or even to use it to coerce an action, like getting Burke to help him disband the DIKs.

I'm working from the assumption that there is someone involved who would kill Magnar over this and he isn't aware he should be afraid of that.

 

[Beloria2766]

Just want to fuck Heather like a slut!!!

 

[Darkwen]

I'm working off the assumption that there is someone involved who would kill Magnar over this and he isn't aware he should be afraid of that.

kill him? he's a fat nerd that likes milkshakes at worse the Jocks will give him a wedgie by hanging him from a flag pole

 

[Blue Milk]

I'm working from the assumption that there is someone involved who would kill Magnar over this and he isn't aware he should be afraid of that.

I honestly doubt that. I don't think Burke's schemes are going to reach that sort of mortal danger threat.

 

[Jumbi]

Hi all,

Smoke and Fire. The man sure knows how to mess with sensitive people's heads.