Status update Episode 12
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can render with a high iteration count.
You can downsample your final image from a higher-resolution image.
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.
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
Comments (61)
Awesome news! I agree finishing the game before remastering is the way to go. Then going back through after you remaster it down the road would make it that much more. If it happens.
take my Money Dr.
Wow! So hyped! Thanks doc
It's a great game and allows you to perceive characters in different circumstances, some of them had a very superficial effect on me and turned out to be quite interesting after several plays in a different way and some remained that way even after that. Rather than rendering, I would have welcomed a slightly richer possibility of interaction and decision-making in some things so that the character does not make senseless decisions and does not have senseless reactions, even though that also happens in life. But still, some of them are too much stupid, like pissing on someone's bed no matter how stupid is the person who is harmed and the like. It is interesting that the game can bring something new even after 5 repetitions of the story in a different way.
The bed-pissing incident, as I understand it (if I'm wrong, please someone correct me), was something Tommy (or Vinny?) did in the past, not something the MC did.
Super hyped for S3. I have over 200 hours in this, simply because I love playing this over and over doing 180's in decision making. That is nice and all but I have a problem. My "True ending" that is ready for S3 is amongst my very first playthroughs. Playing so many multiple endings, I have kind of forgot the person I've decided to go with, if I am yet flirty or not with others etc. Is there any "previous choices" arriving with S3. Would be a big help for me to kind of continue where I left off years ago.
That's awesome news. And if we could one day play Being a DIK in VR, that would be a dream come true.
And the Tournament - lets kick ass guys !!! 🫡💯👊
Pinko, just wanted to say I appreciate that you used pictures of Sage as the examples, as a little reward for trying to get through this "wall of text" as you called it yourself. And thank you for the insight, was a very interesting read (can't believe I am saying this), and while I don't care much for a 4K personally, I bet it's dope for some of us
Posts like this one are reasons I still subscribe to your channel. It's fascinating. And you're a very precise, analytical writer so it makes the reading that much more enticing.
Hey brothers... in the trailer - that scene where MC is at the lake flying up in that light beam (like from an UFO) makes me wondering. Is that something I missed? Maybe during the Thanksgiving party? If not, what do you think that will be in ep. 12? MC on drugs again? Or the unexpected turning point, where all of us will find out, MC is telling the whole story to some aliens... (that would be the point where I stop playing the game... LMAO!!!). No really... my only explanation would be drugs.
I think that it's a scene with a very low chance of being triggered during the Thanksgiving party. You need to take the shrooms, go to the lake and cross your fingers. I've never seen it myself. Of course, not having seen it, I might be wrong about what exactly triggers it.
GOOD FRIDAY NIGHT 🌛, DPC AND EVERYONE!!! BRING IT ON!!! I LIKE TO READ 🤓!!! 21 scenes! 65-70% done with Free Roam events… Nice 👍🏻!!! I thought you were going to spill what that special feature was 😂. 75% for the cutscene animation!!! Keep it going 😛! Yes!!! Render away and give us some fresh previews 😋! More scenes for the Free Roam 😳… You mean it's not finished 😅? Love those screenshots 😍🥰!!! Oh.. I'm keeping that NSFW trailer 😛!!! 4K it up, baby 🥰!!! Better make sure my new laptop can play up to 4K 😅. Not me… I have Mega Pro Lite 😅… Never have to worry about downloading sizes. Thanks for the read on 4K… It was a fun read. As always, thanks for the Update, DPC! Keep on keeping on 😉!!! ALWAYS EXCITED AND EAGERLY WAITING FOR YOUR GAME AND READING YOUR POSTS 🙌🏻🔥!!! Love and appreciate everything! You ❤️, your ladies 😍, your posts 🥰, your previews/renders 😘, and your games ❤️! Always make my days better 🌈! Thank you, everyone, always, for being in my life and being a part of my weekly routine 😉! As always, take your time working and perfecting this masterpiece, DPC. Keep raising 🙌🏻 the bar and standards 😉. WAITING EXCITEDLY ⚡️!!! ALWAYS AMPED 💪🏻!!! AND READY TO PLAY 😛🔥!!! Stay safe, stay blessed, and stay in PERFECT health, beautiful people! And don't forget to stay hydrated! And you're never alone ❤️🫶🏻!!! OUR AVNS AND OUR DEVS CONNECTS US ALL 🤗!!! Have an amazing and beautiful week! I'll catch you all—ON THE NEXT ONE ✌🏻😁!!!
Never mind, found it
Hi all, I don't find the trailer. Is there a link ?
OK, who is the girl in the third picture? I seriously don't recognize her.
My guess is Cinderella
I really cant wait to see how amazing this will work. I hope you can figure out how to get the patreons 4k downloads
Thanks for this interesting and very technical update. 👍😊
Holy Shyte!!! After reading that I feel like Jonathan Hang now!!! So excited!!! The thirsty ghoul steps up to the spotlight!!! Ohhhh so exciting! The girls look great! I must say that Maya has really grown on me. She looks visually more striking now than she did in the beginning! Not saying she is BETTER, but more to my liking certainly! REALLY looking forward to this Doc you can’t imagine! Thank you so much for the update! Can’t wait to see what Lily gets up to! After the last episode She’s the one I wanna play most! But Ghoul has my attention! Quinn has my attention! Jade definitely has my attention!!! Thank you for your hard work Doc! Take care of yourself and can’t wait to see the finished product!!
FEEL IT 😜🔥🙌🏻🎉!!!!
Thanks for this interesting update. I love how you take us with you by explaining your work and processes. Also thanks for sharing all the content of the Steam/GOG update. Just watched the trailer... the not yet seen render with Josy (in that turquoise lingerie) is sooooooo beautiful. I have the urge to start a new J/M run :-D
Very excited for S3, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your dev updates. Really cool learning about your process - not hard to see why this game feels so full and vibrant with how much care and passion you pour into your work.
Thanks for the update. I guess to get 4k I'll have to start over and buy the game on Steam? It's hard to support creators on both platforms.
Yeayyy 4k reso
Trailer is insane - it remembered me why i send you so much money....👍💯😉😂
Dang Doc this is one heck of an update. I've been on this Odyssey with you since S1 Ep3 as have most of us and i gotta say you've never failed to surprise us. keep up the awesome work but have a beer and relax when you can! lol
I saw a picture of Cinderella, if I wasn't 100% stoked about the next episode, I certainly am now ... but I was already. If Patreon saves could be transferred to Steam, I would support buying the game there and save you the trouble.
this is amazing. I will support you thick and thin should you want to remaster seasons 1 and 2 after you finish the game. What a journey
I am speechless!!!
Thank you DPC for including the steam news, screenshots and trailer for those of us who can't access it on steam, that's very thoughtful and much appreciated!
Thanks for the trailer link, as I can't get into Steam due to there crazy AV thing ( I am not allowed a credit card due to circumstances...) and that's the only thing they accept ah well at least we still okay with patreon, keep up the good work, and thanks.
Good stuff DPC. Enjoy your weekend.
You can maybe use an external website to support the download of a 4k version (Google drive/mediafire/ect) with a password
If love to know what all you do in post after you render. I struggle in that area to be sure! Hyped for this spisode (as I am for all episodes!!)
Loving this 👏🏻🥰
Man I love your work I hope one day see the game in it's full glory when you remaster seasons 1 & 2 to be S3/S4 Quality :) The first episodes in this quality will be amazing to play
Thanks for the news, good Doctor!
Thanks for the juicy update. It is looking good.
Thanks for sharing, wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year, btw Doc if you read this my user Tigre is banned at the discord and may be because of an issue i had a year ago with a trojan that sent links for me
Try joining again. You were right that it was banned for suspicious links.
Maya in 4k lets fucking goooooooo
Interesting insight into the detail and technology that goes into rendering. Personally, I'm still perfectly happy with 2k or 1440p, but I can see the appeal. Especially with hyper realistic projects like yours. Keep up the great work DPC!
Amazing stuff Doc. Keep them coming! 🍺😎👍
Oh so it's all of season 3 not just the new episode! Now I'm even more excited!
Yep. From interlude up until ep 12, the works.
Amazing update enjoy your weekend!
Yeah. This guy knows what he is doing.
Cinderella ❤️
CindeBellaaaaaaaaaa 🤓
CINDARELLA IS HEREEEE <3
I'm honestly impressed by the speed season 12 has been developing so far, from 11 to now I was expecting maybe 30%. But 60%! That's amazing.
Ah heck yeah, more Nikita action.
I do not know who the girl is in the third screen shot, but I am curious and interested about her.
CANT WAIT TO FUCK HER
Sage is looking awesome! Probably why my MC will never choose Zoey over her. 😂
Zoey is practically the last girl I would choose, too many tats for my personal taste ... plus way too dense to figure out she loved MC and way too late to express it.
Wow. Just amazing
Predicted release date for season 3 on steam?
I've always wanted these games to have a 4K option (I get why they don't), so thank you for making that possible for this game!
OH MY GOD HERE CUMS MY BEHEMOTH LOAD ARRFHHHHHHHHH!!!