[HN Gopher] The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine
___________________________________________________________________
The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine
Author : Tomte
Score : 205 points
Date : 2025-02-21 20:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.renpy.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.renpy.org)
| riffraff wrote:
| Curious, I discovered this today as I played a visual novel built
| with it: Doki Doki literature club (free on steam).
|
| Interesting read/play, but not for everyone.
| autoexec wrote:
| you can download it without steam for free (or donate if you
| like) at https://ddlc.moe/
| teddyh wrote:
| Review by "Yahtzee" Croshaw:
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krq6-1ht_kk>
| Frotag wrote:
| Honestly I wouldn't recommend DDLC to someone new to VNs. It's
| hilarious but it parodies the dating sim genre by amping up the
| defining tropes to 11 before it then (minor spoiler, see
| footnote [2]). So you kind of need familiarity with the genre
| to understand some of the jokes. One of the more famous dating
| sims is probably Katawa Shoujo which is also free under a CC
| license.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katawa_Shoujo
|
| .
|
| .
|
| .
|
| .
|
| [2] does a 180 and makes fun of the plot holes
| riffraff wrote:
| Ah Interesting, I have only played one or two dating sims
| many years ago, what are some tropes which are specific to
| dating sims rather than those also found in romance-based
| anime/manga?
|
| I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be
| specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up
| anything else.
| Frotag wrote:
| (spoilers ahead)
|
| > So you kind of need familiarity with the genre to
| understand some of the jokes.
|
| >> what are some tropes which are specific to dating sims
| rather than those also found in romance-based anime/manga?
|
| It's been a while since I've read DDLC but familiarity was
| probably too strong a word. Having expectations about how
| the story _should_ develop and then having those subverted
| is a good chunk of the fun [1]. So skimming at least one
| dating sim vn is probably enough context. And anime /
| manga also cover most of that context / japan-isms that
| DDLC mocks (eg the school setting, the childhood friend /
| council prez / spoiled imouto archetypes).
|
| To your question though, the VN-specific jokes are mostly
| about the route system and world building. I guess these
| still fall under the umbrella of "bad endings" and "save
| then go back" but imo it's a huge umbrella that's worth
| exploring.
|
| So like you mentioned, DDLC toys a lot with the concept of
| multiple routes / save files. In most VNs each route starts
| the same story before branching. You don't normally expect
| this "common route" to change between tries but in DDLC it
| does in multiple ways. But more uniquely, DDLC also
| questions why these romantic endings exist in the first
| place and arrives at the conclusion that the romantic
| interests are psychotically obsessed... by the design of
| some god [2]. This also pokes at how some VNs just rewrite
| the world between routes to avoid distractions from the
| chosen love interest, as in big events that are inevitable
| in one route just don't happen in others.
|
| I also thought the choice system (the poems) in itself was
| a fun joke. Like most VNs have screens that let you vote on
| which route to read, one choice per route. After N screens
| you get placed on the route you picked most. DDLC
| exaggerates this by giving you 100s of screens each with
| multiple choices per love interest. Kind of like "Are you
| really really sure? Is this your final answer?"
|
| Speaking of DDLC, I should really reread Totono [3]. It's
| another VN-parody but less gimmicky and a bit more serious
| / emotional.
|
| [1] https://github.com/Bronya-
| Rand/DDLCModTemplate2.0/blob/v1.1....
|
| [2] https://github.com/Bronya-
| Rand/DDLCModTemplate2.0/blob/69aa2...
|
| https://github.com/Bronya-
| Rand/DDLCModTemplate2.0/blob/v1.1....
|
| [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293820/YOU_and_ME_a
| nd_HE...
| riffraff wrote:
| thanks for the extensive explanation, much appreciated!
| optionalsquid wrote:
| > To your question though, the VN-specific jokes are
| mostly about the route system and world building. I guess
| these still fall under the umbrella of "bad endings" and
| "save then go back" but imo it's a huge umbrella that's
| worth exploring.
|
| I'd also include the (sometimes literally) faceless
| protagonists in this. For the uninitiated, it's a fairly
| common trope in romance VNs that the face of the
| protagonist is obscured, supposedly to let the player
| self-insert. In DDLC, if I recall correctly, you mostly
| see the protagonist's hands and in one image his back.
|
| This trope leads to some fairly weird looking haircuts or
| (more commonly) to graphics where protagonists simply
| have no eyes. Perhaps fittingly, this also sometimes
| applies to characters that are so unimportant that they
| get labels such as "Student A" instead of proper names,
| if they even get sprites at all.
|
| DDLC takes it to the logical conclusion that it is the
| player that matters, not the paper-thin player stand-in
| Frotag wrote:
| Ah good catch.
|
| I also remember expecting the story to comment on how,
| like most dating sims*, there's no male characters (or
| really any characters in DDLC's case) except for the MC
| and being disappointed it didn't. Well I think there were
| allusions to an abusive dad but again I don't think
| anyone had dialogue lines outside the MC + LIs.
|
| * There are dating sims targeting other demographics like
| female MC + male LIs but DDLC was parodying the ones for
| males.
| debugnik wrote:
| Interestingly, DDLC Plus, the paid rerelease with extra
| content, was rebuilt in Unity, presumably to support consoles.
| snvzz wrote:
| vndb[0] is a non-profit VN database, and a good starting point
| to find reputable VNs in English (original or translated) to
| play.
|
| 0. https://vndb.org/
| TheDong wrote:
| This was used to make 'Analogue: A Hate Story', which in my
| opinion was an interesting visual novel to read, with some more
| unusual interactive elements as well.
|
| It feels to me like 'Hate Story' and its sequel ('Hate Plus')
| really pushed the bounds of what a visual novel engine can easily
| do.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's an extremely popular engine for visual novels, to the
| point where it's fairly safe to assume any given VN is made
| using Ren'Py. For example, last year's Slay The Princess.
| TheDong wrote:
| I don't know if that's a given.
|
| Needy Streamer Overload was the big visual novel of 2024 I
| think, which was Unity.
|
| The most popular modern-ish visual novels I know of, like
| Fate Grand Order, Dangenronpa, and Ace Attorney, aren't
| Ren'py.
|
| I feel like Ren'py is in the minority for modern popular
| visual novels, and it's definitely in the minority if you
| include re-releases of older visual novels.
|
| I'd expect it to be in the vast majority for independent
| visual novels.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| As somebody who has read a large number of visual novels (VNs), I
| consider Ren'py one of the better engines as a consumer:
|
| - It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper
| backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how
| many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine
| themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic
| features.
|
| - It is performant. You'd be surprised how poorly many VN engines
| run really poorly. Fast-forwarding past already-read text is
| often capped at a surprisingly slow rate, with your CPU pegged at
| 100%, due to how inefficient many engines are
|
| - It is easily moddable, as you just need to plop a
| (pseudo-)python script into the game folder, so you can easily
| tweak or turn off annoying bits of UI
|
| A number of localization companies have also ported (typically
| older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle
| with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in the
| original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine licenses,
| and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines. Examples of
| companies having done this includes JAST USA, FAKKU, MangaGamer,
| and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpasoft. In other words, the heavy
| hitters of VN localization.
|
| The other main contender for best VN engine (in my mind) is the
| KiriKiri engine, which I believe is also open source, but which
| lacks the large, English-speaking community that Ren'py has
| built.
|
| Despite that, Ren'py does have a bit of a poor reputation in the
| older VN reading community, more specifically among readers who
| mainly read localized, Japanese VNs, due to its association with
| low-budget, originally English visual novels. Typically the same
| people have only heard of DDLC and Katawa Shoujo, when it comes
| to originally English visual novels
| jandrese wrote:
| One thing Ren'Py does well that many other engines do poorly is
| forward compatibility of saves. When VNs are released in pieces
| over time it is important to make sure the saves carry forward.
| Nothing kills momentum like "you will need to start over from
| scratch after every update".
|
| As far as competitors go, the list is not very long.
| Sugarcube/Twine works ok, but tends to bog down as the projects
| grow large because it doesn't have a good way of breaking up
| the core logic across different files. The save system is also
| a bit of a problem since the in-browser saves tend to get lost
| in version updates. QSP is just a buggy confusing mess every
| time. People try to shoehorn RPGMaker into doing the job but it
| is just so clunky and slow. Custom engines, typically built in
| Unity, are almost always massive resource hogs and lacking in
| one or more of the basic features Ren'Py provides by default.
| Plus there is just the community aspect of it, with Ren'Py
| having so many developers there is a lot of institutional
| knowledge to be had. If you run into a problem you are probably
| not the first, someone else has probably solved it already.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| I took a quick look via query.vndb.org, and the top 10 most
| popular engines in terms of releases are Ren'Py, KiriKiri,
| TyranoScript, Unity, NScripter, LiveMaker, RPG Maker, YU-RIS,
| Flash, and Artemis (from most to least).
|
| This is of course not an exact ranking, since the same game
| can have many (nearly identical) releases, but it roughly
| matches my experience
| snvzz wrote:
| Notably nscripter has a third party open source
| reimplementation in onscripter[0], which in turn has a fork
| in onscripter-en[1].
|
| 0. https://github.com/ogapee/onscripter
|
| 1. https://github.com/Galladite27/ONScripter-EN
| woctordho wrote:
| Forward compatibility of saves is harder than people thought.
| VN scripts have choices and loops, so in general they are
| graphs, and upgrading the saves to another version requires
| matching two graphs. I'd be happy to know if there is a good
| diff algorithm for graphs
|
| In practice graph matching can be helped by manually tagging
| the same nodes (labels in Ren'Py) in the two versions, but
| that cannot cover all the edge cases
|
| I'm developing a VN framework for the own use of my indie VN
| dev group, and we mostly implemented the diff algorithm for
| the 'linear' part of the graphs. You can search my handle to
| know more
| woolion wrote:
| If you take the graph of the game, you basically have a DFA
| (deterministic finite automaton), so the problem is purely
| a reachability one which is trivial. In renPy, you have
| arbitrary variables that can be used to define the possible
| transitions. So reachability becomes a problem depending on
| the automaton state X persistent variables. Unfortunately,
| that means that now reachability is now Turing-complete,
| since you need to analyze the code that interacts with all
| variables. So say you have a transition tau from state Si
| to Sj, you need to make sure the labels contain any
| persistent variable that is used to trigger tau.
|
| You can make sure to be forward compatible by (1) never
| removing states, and (2) making sure that any state x
| (value of persistent variables) has a transition.
|
| Of course, that condition (2) is often violated by assuming
| that if you are in state Si, you must have gone through
| state Sk which sets a given variable to x, and fail to
| realize that there is another path to Si that does not go
| through Sk and you are stuck. If you add new states or new
| variables to your game, you are effectively creating this
| situation for all states. Reachability is a trivial
| problem, but checking the values all variables can take is
| kind of famously Turing-complete. So if you want to be able
| to do that, you need your use of variables so that
| basically you could eliminate them by replacing them by
| having more states.
|
| Btw, the problem you mention is a notoriously painful one
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_isomorphism_problem),
| but with VNs you have labels so I think the issue is not to
| produce a diff but make it useful enough to check all game
| conditions.
|
| Let me know if something is unclear.
| woctordho wrote:
| The script graph can be thought as a DFA, but a 'game
| state' (images showing on screen, music playing...) is
| different from a node of the script graph, and there is
| not a one-to-one mapping between them
|
| For example, if the script loops through a node (and
| there is a choice to go out of the loop), and the node
| moves a character on screen to the left by 5 pixels each
| time, then there can be different game states with the
| same node. It happens in a common trope of VNs when the
| story lets you explore different places and go back to
| the original place each time
|
| In the design of our VN framework, the game state is
| determined not by the current node, but by the node
| history (and other things like 'global variables'). If
| the author changes some script in the new version, then
| all saved data with the affected node history need to get
| updated
|
| If there is no choice added/deleted, then the update can
| be implemented by simply re-running the nodes. However,
| if there are choices added/deleted, the update can be
| more complicated and involve graph isomorphism in the
| worst case
| woolion wrote:
| >The script graph can be thought as a DFA, but a 'game
| state' (images showing on screen, music playing...) is
| different from a node of the script graph, and there is
| not a one-to-one mapping between them
|
| Sure. I would say it's a pretty bad idea though, and for
| instance in JOBifAI we manually managed savepoints in
| these case to stay isomorphic to a DFA anyway, because
| it's already hard enough to manage when the game has a
| big scope.
|
| >If there is no choice added/deleted, then the update can
| be implemented by simply re-running the nodes. However,
| if there are choices added/deleted, the update can be
| more complicated and involve graph isomorphism in the
| worst case
|
| Well. what you call 'global variables' is what I called
| 'persistent variables' above (using renPy's terminology).
| If you consider that they can get any value, your problem
| can be reduced to the halting problem. There are 2 ways
| you can get around that:
|
| - any use of these variables in conditional transitions
| segments the domain into a finite number of subdomains
| (in that case it's just a proxy for a long expansion into
| a much bigger DFA)
|
| - the variables belong to an infinite domain but are not
| involved into any state transition (for example, setting
| your name is not restricted but does not change any state
| transition)
|
| Since the halting problem isn't solvable, if you use
| these two solutions you don't need to solve the graph
| isomorphism problem. If you delete a node Si and your
| history contained Ss => Si => Se, you just need to find a
| path from Ss ==> Se. If you take the first in
| lexicographic order you even have a canonical solution.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| I think you can accommodate most changes by storing ordered
| list of IDs of visited nodes as well as variables set by
| choices. This way if you'll delete or replace some nodes or
| branches you can walk back to still existing parts.
| opencl wrote:
| The best thing about Renpy is that the text rendering actually
| looks good, which is true of shockingly few VN engines even
| today.
|
| Especially when you increase the window size or run fullscreen,
| most VN engines just render the whole game at a fixed
| resolution and upscale it up but Renpy makes the framebuffer
| match the window size and renders text at the full resolution.
| simion314 wrote:
| Agree, as a person with accessibility issues, I prefer this
| engine because it has a basic TTS support that I can mod and
| plug my own custom TTS script. I also seen people reinventing
| poorly the engine in Unity so for me text based games or visual
| novels in Unity are just a NO , because of TTS support.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| >proper backlogs
|
| Something noticeably missing from almost every other type of
| text-heavy game which perhaps wouldn't be if games developers
| were less snobbish about where they draw inspiration from.
|
| On the other hand, writers of games with metatextual stories
| benefit from their target audience not knowing how well-trod
| the ground is.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| The other big text engines are probably Inform 7 and Twine?
| They both have undo.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Text- _heavy_. JRPGs love to include 20 minutes of reading
| where an errant click means you miss a line, forever.
| ianbicking wrote:
| What does a "backlog" mean in this context?
| daedrdev wrote:
| Like you can either read a log of what characters said in a
| scene so far, or simply go backwards through the story to
| reach an earlier line and view it again.
| Shish2k wrote:
| You can rewind a conversation in case you accidentally
| pressed the "skip" button and missed some important plot
| point
| Birch-san wrote:
| I think they meant scrollback. as conventionally a backlog
| would evoke "work yet to be done", whereas in this context
| we're talking about a conversation history one can revisit.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| Sorry, as others have said, I meant a text log or "history".
| Basically, the ability to view the last N lines of text. For
| some VNs, this log also allows you to replay the voice lines,
| to jump back to specific lines/scenes, and even to bookmark
| specific lines, separately from saving the game. Ren'py is
| actually a bit unusual in this regard, since the default
| behavior is a rewind feature rather than a text log. However,
| most commercial Ren'py VNs will show the history as a log.
| tumsfestival wrote:
| >A number of localization companies have also ported (typically
| older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle
| with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in
| the original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine
| licenses, and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines.
| Examples of companies having done this includes JAST USA,
| FAKKU, MangaGamer, and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpasoft. In other
| words, the heavy hitters of VN localization.
|
| That caught my curiosity, but I couldn't find any examples of
| older VNs being ported to Renpy. Could you share any examples?
| woctordho wrote:
| Many examples can be queried from VNDB
| https://query.vndb.org/8e75036b2dcfe441
| optionalsquid wrote:
| Examples include 'Love Duction!' (2014) published by Sekai
| Project/Denpasoft, 'Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows Refrain'
| (2011) localized by MangaGamer, multiple re-releases of
| late-90s/early 2000s titles published by JAST USA such as
| X-Change (1997-2004), Water Closet (2000), and Heart de
| Roommate (2003), and 'True Love 95' (1995) published by FAKKU
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Can you recommend some good VNs for a newbie?
| optionalsquid wrote:
| Much like books, that depends on what kind of stories
| interest you. Though it'd be advantageous for you if you
| enjoy romance, because that genre is heavily over-
| represented.
|
| But if there are no titles that have already caught your
| interest, then my personal recommendation is to start with
| hybrid games such as VA-11 Hall-A, the Danganronpa series,
| the Ace Attorney series, WILL: A Wonderful World, and 999.
|
| VNs are at their core a reading experience, frequently
| involving more words than what you'll find in the entire
| Lords of the Ring trilogy, but hybrid games like the above
| allow you to dip your toes in the VN genre without it purely
| being reading
| woctordho wrote:
| Reddit has it
| https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/recommendations
| dataveg wrote:
| Misericorde volumes 1 and 2 on Steam and Itch - both renpy
| based I believe. Fantastic example of an immersive novel, a
| murder mystery set in a 14th century abbey.
| woolion wrote:
| I agree as for my own VN I started working with a custom-made
| engine until I completed the rollback-feature requirements;
| after seeing the scope of it, I checked renPy and found it
| basically did everything right already.
|
| In many ways I felt that the engine was designer for beginners
| rather than developers in a way that are antagonistic to each
| others. No real debugger, no support for libraries, leading to
| re-implementation of basic stuff, etc. I had a love-hate
| relationship with it. Pseudo-python is the right term for it.
|
| In the end I was happy with the Steam features it already had
| to make distribution easy, although I had to actually patch the
| engine as the Steam session ticket function was broken.
| jandrese wrote:
| They have a database of over 4,000 visual novels built with this
| engine, but that barely scratches the surface. If you know where
| to look there are many thousands more projects built on this
| engine.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| The Visual Novel Database (VNDB) alone lists nearly 12,000
| titles that have used Ren'py:
|
| (Warning: This site contains a lot of text and images that are
| not safe for work. And it records a lot of works that many
| people will probably find distressing)
|
| https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=N1802fwRen_7Py-741&s=26y
|
| But as you say, that's barely scratching the surface. You can
| probably find many more on itch.io and in other communities,
| that nobody have bothered to add to VNDB
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| That's weird, I don't think those old TypeMoon and Key visual
| novels used Ren'py. Maybe Ren'py is able to read files made
| for other engines like NScript or KiriKiri and that's why
| they show in the search?
| optionalsquid wrote:
| Fan-ports of VNs to Ren'py are not uncommon, in part
| because Ren'py supports mobile devices. For example,
| https://vndb.org/r99153
|
| But you can exclude those by only searching for official
| releases:
|
| https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=N1803fwRen_7Py-741Ng01&s=26y
| Frotag wrote:
| For context, visual novels are basically ~novella sized stories
| that come with visuals like static backgrounds + a few dozen
| renders per character. The character renders tend to be mostly
| the same, with small variations in facial expression, pose, maybe
| outfit.
|
| All that to say, you probably won't like VNs unless you like
| reading. Don't expect much gameplay / animation. That said, the
| more famous stories tend to have multiple endings determined by a
| handful of choices you get during the story. On occasion, some
| games go for sandbox-style gameplay where you roam the map to
| grind out currency to unlock visual novel scenes.
|
| In terms of genre I'd say at least half are dating sims, with the
| rest being some kind of adventure or mystery story. I'd also
| guess at least half are nsfw / r18. Renpy VNs tend to be made by
| indie devs from everywhere but Japan, which has a VN industry
| with in-house engines.
|
| Writing quality tends to be what you expect from indie authors /
| devs. That is, filled with tropes, tending towards the wish-
| fulfillment types. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, you'll be
| surprised what you'd be willing to overlook if the premise / plot
| seems interesting.
| jsheard wrote:
| > For context, visual novels are basically ~novella sized
| stories
|
| Usually, but some of them are infamously ludicrously long. Like
| 2-3x War and Peaces long.
| Frotag wrote:
| Got curious about the actual distribution so ran some queries
| on vndb [1].
|
| Looks like the median renpy novel (with 100+ votes) takes
| 250min to complete with the ludicrously long ones [2]
| bringing the average up to 503min. engine
| vn count avg 25% 50% 75% Ren'Py
| 251 503 120 251 571 KiriKiri
| 187 813 241 522 1143 Unity
| 65 871 224 452 1109
|
| [1] https://query.vndb.org/?sql=SELECT+%0D%0A++++r.engine%2C+
| %0D...
|
| [2] https://query.vndb.org/?sql=SELECT%0D%0Avn.title%2C%0D%0A
| ROU... title length
| (min) engine HEAVEN BURNS RED 12580
| CRIware Rance X -Kessen- 11085
| AliceSoft System4.X Shoujo Settai 10418
| Kamidori Alchemy Meister 8407
| Seinarukana... 6858
| Lessons in Love 6819 Ren'Py
| Sengoku + Koihime... 6744 CatSystem2
| Higurashi no Naku Koro ni 6626
| optionalsquid wrote:
| Keep in mind that several of these titles are hybrid VNs,
| i.e. games that mix visual novel narration with gameplay
| elements. This has a tendency to inflate the playtime
| disproportionately to the actual word count, though VNDB
| does require that a significant amount of play-time is
| spent reading for games listed on there in the first place.
|
| Off the top of my head, hybrid VNs on your list includes
| HEAVEN BURNS RED, Rance X, Kamidori, Seinarukana, and
| Koihime. Though as far as I know, Rance X in particular
| also has a very, very long script
| joaohaas wrote:
| >~novella sized stories
|
| _laughs in umineko and higurashi_
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| _cries in seagulls, cicadas and storks_
| cardanome wrote:
| The Spooktober Visual Novel jam that happens every September is
| a good way to both get into VN development and also find high
| quality games that you can play for free on itch.io.
|
| Some if the entries really push the limits in terms visual
| presentation and can have a crazy amounts of animations. Plus
| really talented voice actors use the jam to practice their
| skills.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| The most popular VN is a massive franchise: Phoenix Wright.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| And danganronpa
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Baldr Sky is a perfect title for those who also want some
| action gaming in the mix. Also, like many great visual novels,
| the plot takes advantage of multiple endings very well.
|
| Unfortunately, Japan stopped making visual novels somewhere
| around a decade ago. Creators presumably moved on to work on
| gacha games. Many visual novel companies are now either gone,
| inactive, or pivoted to gacha games. I wish I can see more
| games like Baldr Sky, Steins Gate, and Aiyoku no Eustia again.
| alt187 wrote:
| I really wish they'd implement proper XDG stuff, because the
| engine is great and I love VNs but all I can think about is the
| ~/.renpy littering my home.
| bbkane wrote:
| The battle for HOME was lost years ago unfortunately. Best to
| just accept defeat and enjoy the apps
| lelandfe wrote:
| Some really cool stuff has been built with Ren'Py. A (fairly)
| recent example for me is Roadwarden, a 20hr long RPG.
| programd wrote:
| I was wondering what it was built with as I was playing.
| Roadwarden is tripple-A storytelling and world building
| masquerading as a little indie title. I was very impressed by
| how much atmosphere it conveys with minimalistic presentation.
| That takes a lot of skill.
|
| Here it is on Steam, currently on sale for a criminally under
| priced $4.39
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/
| loufe wrote:
| Agreed, Roadwarden is an absolute gem and has earned two full
| playthroughs from me. It's such a compelling experience for a
| text-based game, it feels especially so as I'm not old enough
| to have a nostalgic appreciation for text games.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| If you're wondering what's up with the name, "Ren'Py" is a pun on
| the Japanese word "ren'ai" (Lian Ai ), which means "romantic
| love".
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| And at the risk of stating the obvious, Py is for Python and
| Ren is for Render
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The "Ren" part is surely coincidence, it doesn't really make
| sense.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| "Render your visual novel with Python"?
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's a game engine, not a rendering tool.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Hmmh, you're right: "Ren" doesn't stand for "Render"
| here.
| VectorLock wrote:
| If you look on SteamDB PyGame and Ren'Py are the 5th and 6th most
| used technologies, ahead of Godot. https://steamdb.info/tech/
|
| Some people point out this is mainly because of the erotic novel
| shovelware that is quite popular on Steam.
| philipov wrote:
| I just picked up Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog, which launched on
| steam this week, and was made with RenPy. It's going great so
| far. Some of the lore reminds me a lot of Martian Successor
| Nadesico.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118420/Stories_from_Sol_...
| brianbest101 wrote:
| The game engine that's probably kickstarted more game dev careers
| than most. I remember when 4chan came together to produce the
| surprisingly good Katawa Shoujo with it. Wild times
| nurettin wrote:
| I've always wondered if LLMs will slowly seep into this backyard.
| They are perfectly capable of creating the story (will probably
| be mid, barely interesting), the art (albeit easily recognized as
| AI slop) and the code (after some iterations) and with some
| tooling, even sign and deploy to websites all fully automated.
| cwiz wrote:
| They might take it with storm and we see influx or high quality
| stories that can't be distinguished from those written by nips.
| unreal37 wrote:
| GenAI is becoming popular for image generation to add visuals
| to the novel.
| woctordho wrote:
| VNs are interesting to AI developers because they're multimodal
| datasets with extensive text annotations. People are already
| working on this https://huggingface.co/datasets/Limour/b-corpus
| RototRobot wrote:
| I've made two 'games' with ren'py in the past, and it's really
| fun engine to work in and quite an amazing engine as it can be
| used for the most basic straight forward game with little
| programming experience but also scales up to some pretty complex
| stuff if you have the means.
| ge96 wrote:
| Hehe I've come across this tech from xxx games
|
| Edit: I don't have the patience for these games but yeah I've
| seen the name before
| Animats wrote:
| It's a player, like Flash.
|
| What does it do that Flash didn't?
| woctordho wrote:
| It has a DSL specified for writing VNs
| woctordho wrote:
| If you prefer JS to Python, there's also WebGAL
| https://github.com/OpenWebGAL/WebGAL
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Trying the demo of this on my phone, there are already several
| kinds of jank, and one of the lines got cut off so I couldn't
| read it. I think that's a bad sign.
| xrd wrote:
| My 8 year old daughter loves graphic novels. And she's a budding
| writer. I got really excited to show her some of the links posted
| here.
|
| Then I dug a little deeper and saw that a lot of it is very
| sexualized. I'm not opposed to that for adults but it isn't
| something I want my daughter exposed to.
|
| Anyone have suggestions for safe spaces for kids? I really love
| the idea of her creating using ren'py but I'm worried it is a
| gateway to things she isn't ready for yet.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| I'm afraid that I don't know any kids-safe spaces for budding
| VN readers or writers, but you can use VNDB to search for
| visual novels with an appropriate age rating. The following
| query returns all VNs with a release rated for 3-8 years,
| excluding any that have a release rated for older ages:
|
| https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=02N1802a48a23N19a38&s=26y
|
| Though I will caution that a lot of these are either self-
| reported by the authors or just guesstimates by the person who
| added the VN to VNDB.
|
| And I will caution that you should never trust it when a visual
| novel is described as "all ages": For whatever reason, the VN
| reading community has settled on using that term when we mean
| "no explicit sexual content". Beyond that, anything goes for an
| "all ages" VN. The search link above has a minimum age rating
| of 3+ for that reason
| ANighRaisin wrote:
| You don't need Ren'Py-like software for graphic novels unless
| you want them to be interactive. Even so, it may be difficult
| for an 8-year-old to learn python and debug something like
| Ren'Py, especially because half of its use is entirely 18+.
|
| I would recommend something like Scratch. It's a visual
| scripting language that allows kids to make amazing games and
| animations. It has all the capabilities necessary with ease and
| kid-friendly forums and comment sections.
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