The Preferences Screen

I thought I'd do some posts on detailed mechanics of the game and the way Renpy works.  I want to start with the preference screen and what all this stuff means.  The preference screen can be entered at any time by clicking "Pref" at the bottom of the screen.

Display is a standard Renpy option, and pretty self explanatory if you ever play games.  Window plays in a window, full screen plays in full screen.  Pressing the "F" key will also toggle back and forth.  In window mode it is easy to accidentally resize the window resulting in black bars on the sides, and they don't go away by pressing F twice.  They will go away by using the preferences window and clicking "Window" again.  The default size of the window is based on the size of the images.  All images are rendered 1920x1080, so that is the default window size.

Rollback Side is a standard Renpy option that is useful in mobile games.  One advantage of Renpy over online HTML games is the ability to go back.  On a PC, you can use the scroll wheel on a mouse or the B key on a controller.  On a touch screen you can set it as the left side of the screen or the right side.  By default it is set to disable.

Skip is a feature where if you are replaying a section, you can press "Tab" or the "Skip" button on the bottom to skip ahead.  The three choices are toggles to when to stop skipping, like "unseen text" refers to text you haven't seen before, or "after choices" refers to when you reach a point where you have to make a choice. 

The next three are custom settings I created for the game:

Avatar is set to on by default, and will display a representation of the player character at the bottom when they say something that is not a part of a choice.  Some may prefer not to see this, so you can turn it off.

Stat Display is set to on by default.  It lets you see the game progress in the lower left corner of the screen.  The game can be a real challenge if these stats are not available, so you can turn them off for what equates to "hard mode".

Text Font lets you select between two fonts. Palatino is a serif font that looks really pretty and often used in other visual novels.  Deja Vu is a sans serif font designed to be easier to read by people with dyslexia and other reading handicaps.

Text Speed is a slider to adjust the speed at which the text scrolls on the screen.  The default setting is 100 characters a second, which means most screen will take about a second to load.  Part of the reason for this is because it is really easy to double tap the screen and miss dialogue when it displays instantaneously.  Slide this slider all the way to the right to make it display instantly if you want to.

Auto-Forward Time is a setting related to auto mode. You can turn auto mode on by clicking the word "auto" at the bottom of the screen. The text will turn red when it is on.  In auto mode the screens will automatically advance without you having to click them except when there is a choice to make.  The game stays on each screen based on how many characters there are to display, so longer text will stay up longer.  If it is too long, or too short, you can adjust the speed with this slider, right =  longer. 

Music Volume, Sound Volume, and Mute All are pretty self explanatory.  My game plan is to add 8 songs: an opening title song, credits song, and dance music when Ariane is dancing in the street, which happens at least a couple of different times, one of which is already in the game.  Sound will be either ambient loops like forest and bird sounds when you are hiking to the lake, or waves crashing on the shore when you are on the beach, or sounds of people and vehicles when you are in town.  There may be some sound effects for certain events, like a bell ringing when you enter a store.

Sometimes sounds are actually music. For example there is an ambient motor hum from the moment you get on the yacht, till when you leave. This uses the music channel to mix the motor hum with the rushing water sounds you hear on the bow or stern of the yacht, or the ambient chatter at the bar.  I use a similar trick to mix lake sounds and bird sounds at the lake.