This month's article is now up, covering the completion of renpy-build and some changes and improvement to iOS support. It also includes a method that allows multiple functions to be called by a callback that wasn't intended for multiple functions.
Stay safe, and as always, thank you for your support.
2020-03-31 17:06:12 +0000 UTC View Post
This month's Ren'Py development update covers many of the Ren'Py-related things I've done this month, like working on the renpy-build project and Ren'Py proper, as well as judging a Ren'Py game jam held at my alma mater. It also includes a feature requested by a backer: a way of making Ren'Py log the labels that a player visits.
I think it was a productive month. Thank you for your support!
2020-02-29 22:16:07 +0000 UTC View Post
This month's article is a Ren'Py development update, with most of the progress made this month being on renpy-build. I also virtually attended Visual;Conference, the online visual novel development conference. Inspired by one of the talks in the conference, I've written up a guide to how to flash information on the main menu after the game ends.
Thank you for your continued support as I modernize Re...
2020-01-31 20:10:53 +0000 UTC View Post
For this month's article, I look back - both to the past decade, a decade in which Visual Novels have gone from virtually unknown in the West to an accepted genre, and to the last month in which Ren'Py development has been going strong. And then I look forward - to the new platforms and features coming to Ren'Py.
And then I wrote a short explanation of what a Context is, since it's about time that &...
2019-12-31 23:02:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This month, we have the first of a new kind of sponsor article. In this series, I’m going to try to focus on Ren’Py development, and the topics that come naturally each month as I create and support Ren’Py.
The reason for this change is that over the two and a half years that I’ve been writing these articles, I’ve tried to come out with articles that you can put to use immediately - generally, when the article comes out or a few days after. That’s easy to do with standalone ...
2019-11-30 17:48:07 +0000 UTC View Post
A couple of months ago, I received a request from a sponsor who wanted to see if there was a way for Ren’Py to indicate a player’s progress through a visual novel, both through the VN as a whole and through a single chapter inside it.
This turned out to be a harder problem than I thought it would be, but after an attempt last month that didn’t pan out, this month’s article presents my results. While ...
2019-10-31 22:29:44 +0000 UTC View PostI'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.3.5, the latest in a series of releases that continue to maintain Ren'Py 7.3. This release fixes the compilation of iOS projects, and adds a button that accesses the audio directory to the launcher.
As there have been quite a few changes since Ren'Py 7.3 was originally released, please check out the changelog for new features that will help you create your visual novels and games.
Downloads of 7.3.5 can be found at:
I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.3.4, a further patch to Ren'Py 7.3. This fixes two major graphical glitches, and also adds the ability to pass "[prefix_]" to image names everywhere, rather than only in styles. The graphical issues are pretty major and can manifest in reasonable circumstances, so I recommend everyone upgrade from 7.3.3 to 7.3.4.
Please take a look at the changelog for everything that's new in 7.3.3 and 7.3.4.
Downloads of 7.3.4 can be found at:
I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.3.3. This release is intended to improve performance and compatibility, fix bugs, and make available minor features that have been added since Ren'Py 7.3.2 was released.
Some highlights are:
The newest version of macOS, 10.15 Catalina, will require your games to be notarized by Apple before running. Because of this, game stores such as Steam will require your games to be notarized before they can be sold to macOS users.
<...
2019-09-27 22:01:53 +0000 UTC View Post
While most of my Patreon articles talk about how to take advantage of some of the newest features of Ren’Py, this month’s article is a bit different. I chose three very old features (ones that are almost fifteen years old at this point), and explain how you can take advantage of them.
As always, thanks for your support.
2019-08-30 05:28:14 +0000 UTC View PostSo, I'm back from my Animefest panel, and I thought I would share some of the new features I demoed there with my sponsors. Some of the things that will be added over the next few feature releases:
* Ren'Py is moving from using 2D rectangles to 3D models, internally. While Ren'Py is still intended to make visual novels with 2D art, changing how this art is represented will lead to a number of advantages - like moving the calculations required for a 3D camera to the GPU.
<... 2019-08-18 22:30:11 +0000 UTC View Post
This month's article comes from a suggestion for a sponsor for a system that checks for changes in variables, and displays messages when something changes. The article covers both how I developed the system, and how to use it in your own games.
Thanks again for your sponsorship!
(If you updated to Ren'Py 7.3.1, please see the end of https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?p=514231#p514231 for instructions on how to upgrade to Ren'Py 7.3.2.)
I'm mildly chagrined to announce Ren'Py 7.3.2. This is a patch release to Ren'Py 7.3, mostly intended to fix bugs and address issues that people have reported. As some of the bugs have significant perfo...
2019-07-02 03:07:31 +0000 UTC View PostI'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.3.1. This is a patch release to Ren'Py 7.3, mostly intended to fix bugs and address issues that people have reported. As some of the bugs have significant performance and correctness impact, everyone who upgraded to Ren'Py 7.3.0 should move on to this version.
Ren'Py 7.3.1 also adds a few minor new features, including better support for descriptive text.
Ren'Py 7.3 is the first release of Ren'Py with support for running on the web platform, inside a ...
2019-07-01 04:25:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Metadata is a word that means "data about data". In this month's article, I talk about how Ren'Py can associate metadata with save slots. Doing so makes it easier for your players to determine what's stored in each save slot.
Thanks again for making these articles possible. And as a reminder, I'm always looking for ideas to turn into new article topics, so feel free to message me with your suggestions.<...
2019-06-30 03:38:10 +0000 UTC View PostI'm pleased to announce the release of Ren'Py 7.3.0, the first release of Ren'Py with support for running on the web platform, inside a web browser supporting HTML 5, Web Assembly, and WebGL. Right now, this support is in beta, as it's limited by the capabilities of the web platform itself, but it's suitable for making web demos of Ren'Py games.
In addition to that, this release adds many new features to Ren'Py. These include:
While the biggest new feature coming in Ren’Py 7.3 is the new support for the HTML5 web platform, one of the other new features is a long-requested revamp of the support for creator-defined statements. In this month’s article, I’ll be showing you how to use this new support to add three new statements to Ren’Py - - a random statement that randomly picks one of its children to run; a...
2019-05-30 22:33:11 +0000 UTC View Post
In the 15 years I’ve been developing Ren’Py, I’ve given talks to fan conventions, school clubs, and academic settings. When I give a talk, I use a presentation framework that runs inside Ren’Py itself. Doing so makes it possible to intermix static slides with examples of the Ren’Py script running.
For this month’s article, I’ve taken that framework (which goes back, at least in spirit, to Llamaco...
2019-04-30 22:27:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Ren'Py OS is a new operating system meant for the truly devoted player of visual novels. Unlike other operating systems, which support distractions like posting to social media and playing other games, Ren'Py OS focuses on the one important use of computers - playing Ren'Py games.
This month's article &...
2019-03-31 20:41:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Ren'Py 7.2.2 is out! This is mostly a patch release, but it also includes support for the new accessibility menu, accessed by pressing 'a'. This menu puts current and future engine-level accessibility features in one place.
Downloads of 7.2.2 can be found at:
https://www.renpy.org/release/7.2.2
A full list of changes to Ren'Py can be found at:
I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.2.1, a patch release. This release consists primarily of fixes. It also adds support for generating the icon and launchimage on iOS.
Ren'Py 7.2 adds new features to Ren'Py, including:
I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.2.0. This release adds new features to Ren'Py, including:
Perhaps the biggest new feature in the nearly-released Ren'Py 7.2 is the ability to provide arguments to menus and menu items. In this month's article, I'll go into some of the more common use cases for menu arguments, and show how you can use them to customize the menus in your game, through a series of short examples.
(This is a copy of a post I made on the Lemma Soft forums.)
Looking at my post for the fifth anniversary of Ren'Py, I realized that today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the start of Ren'Py's development. So, I thought I would take a little time to write about t...
2019-01-31 03:13:41 +0000 UTC View Post
There’s a term that’s used in the Ren’Py documentation, “interaction”. It’s an important concept in understanding how Ren’Py works, but in the 15 years that Ren’Py has been under development, I’ve never quite written it up. So, for this month’s article, I’m going to try to explain what an interaction is, when an interaction happens, and what happens over the course of an interaction.
This month's article is out second Python Tricks article, and it's a double header. The first part of it talks about how one can use Python to make random events a little less random, so they feel better for the player. The second half explores a new displayable I created for the vnroom launcher, showing how you ca...
2018-12-31 21:07:02 +0000 UTC View Post
For each .rpy file you write, Ren'Py will create a corresponding .rpyc file. If you open the .rpyc file in a text editor, it won't make any sense - but to Ren'Py, it's filled with information. In this month's article, I'll describe what's inside .rpyc files, and how Ren'Py uses that information.
While this article is mostly about how Ren'Py works, I hope it will be useful for those of you who create games with it, by h...
2018-11-30 22:28:52 +0000 UTC View PostI've released Ren'Py 7.1.3 a few hours after 7.1.2, due to my accidentally having left in a test that caused the default language to be set to Russian. If you have downloaded 7.1.2, please update to prevent problems.
Downloads of Ren'Py 7.1.3 can be found at:
https://www.renpy.org/release/7.1.3
A full list of changes to Ren'Py can be found at:
I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.1.2. This is the second bug release for Ren'Py 7.1, which improves Ren'Py while fixing issues.
There have also been a few feature additions. Some of the highlights are: