Ren'Py Developer Update - June 2022
Added 2022-06-30 21:26:12 +0000 UTCThis month's article is the June Developer Update. June was another great month for Ren'Py development, culminating in the release of Ren'Py 8.0 and Ren'Py 7.5. This month's article covers some of the changes that lead up to this release, the release itself, and what you can expect in the future. It also talks about how you can preview a feature likely to be available in 8.1, a way to play cutscene videos in the web browser.
Thank you for supporting Ren'Py.
Comments
Thanks for these great improvements! As for requests, I would like better integration with Google Play features like achievements, ads, sharing, etc. Ren'Py 8 looks awesome; I'm so glad we're moving to Python 3 (even if it means some of my code won't work with the new version).
Andrea Landaker
2022-07-06 20:36:07 +0000 UTC👍 I fully agree that even more mobile support would be much, much appreciated! Visual novels seem to do well on phones in particular because people already like to sit and read in bed on their phone, so it's kind of like that! By far I get more downloads for the phone than anything else, so any support there is much appreciated.
DCS
2022-07-04 00:21:22 +0000 UTCOne thing I can immediately think of would be a tool that's currently not at all a part of the RenPy ecosystem, but would offer huge speed increases to developers. Any time that a writer does a branching story line, they are completely on their own for finding a tool to map the choices and branches, and then on their own again to translate that map into RenPy scripting. If there was a simple tool - Perhaps written in RenPy itself - that allowed a writer to create a visual map or tree structure that shows each story component with simple conditionals and branch/return logic, and then could output that entire logic tree into a script - it would vastly simplify script creation Deliriously great would be a tool that loaded existing RenPy scripting into a map which could then be edited.
DV Enterprises Development
2022-07-02 06:26:43 +0000 UTCI'm having a hard time thinking of stuff that'd make them easier to develop. Most things are already about as easy as they can be. The only thing I can think of is I wish the documentation was clearer and had more code examples. I can recount countless times where I looked at a function and had no idea what it did, or how exactly to use that code. Without a strong base in python or familiarity with renpy's language, it can be really hard to have any clue how to do tons of things. A lot of the time I relied on asking for code examples from kind people on the discord, or finding code snippets from people on the forums. I realize that this is just kind of a big part of programming, but it's kind of a part that sucks.
KuroOneHalf
2022-07-01 02:50:06 +0000 UTCRe: What would help make visual novels easier to create? A feature that would really help with development for me is an update to allow for improved styling and screens. I develop not only for multiple platforms (e.g. mobile and desktop) but I also try to support accessibility features where I can such as multiple fonts and text sizes. Sometimes something like OpenDyslexic at maximum font size just cannot fit in the same layout as a regular font with a smaller line spacing. Couple that with modifications for smaller phone screens and I find I often have a series of if/elif/else on my screen to change styling, relocate UI elements, or even use entirely different screens depending on the player's settings. The existing variant system helps with this somewhat since I can declare variant "small" on styles without cluttering up the screen itself, but it doesn't help with the sort of rearrangement I need when the font or text size changes. This can be solved in whatever way you see fit of course, but one possible solution I envisioned for it is the extension of the existing variant system which would allow me to declare my own variants and the conditions under which a variant is used. For example, I could have a variant for the "large font, mobile screen" case, and a variant for "large font, desktop" case, which I could then use for screens and styles like the existing variant system. This would give me much finer control over how I update my UI to accommodate different screen sizes and accessibility features. And then some other miscellaneous things on my wishlist include: - Improved mobile viewport support - in particular, the fact that buttons in viewports which are draggable eat the touch input instead of dragging is very unintuitive and can greatly limit the design options on mobile where players don't have access to a mousewheel. I'd love to have inertial scrolling too, but that's more of a bonus. - Post-choice menu callback - ideally, with the caption of the choice the player made passed to it (or better yet, the whole choice itself so I can access args). I like to record the contents of the choice in the history screen, and roll forward breaks this if I add an action to the choice menu when a choice is made. I'd also love to use this to do other things, like have the main character say the choice text exactly as it was written rather than copy-pasting that line below the choice. Thank you immensely for all the work you've put into Ren'Py! The recent features in the 7.5/8.0 will definitely help with development and I'm really looking forward to trying some of them out. I really appreciate your dedication to improving the engine, as it's a big reason why I continue to pick it as my engine of choice.
Fen
2022-07-01 01:08:34 +0000 UTC
