Ren'Py Gripes

[Shakezula]

I'd love it if the jump keyword could pass arguments the same as the call keyword does so this type of thing can be done:

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call expression 'EndMission' pass (res='SUCCESS',StoryBranch='D4')

with the jump label instead so I don't have to call each and every mission in my storyline in a new context

is there another way to do that without invoking python directly? keep looking through the documentation for it.

right now I'm using $ renpy.set_return_stack(['game_loop'])

[trooper6]

I went looking into the documentation and there is no documentation of the cb_ prefix for callback keywords. Could that be added to the documentation?

[nyaatrap]

I think i mentioned this in the past but I think I should confirm it in SDL2:
・Is it possible to repeat joy stick, or detect joy stick pressing?
・Is it possible to repeat mouse button, or detect mouse button pressing?

[jack_norton]

One thing related to mobile: I noticed that on some old devices like my ipad mini with only 512mb RAM, big games like SOTW crash (but even simpler games that use a lot of big images), because they use too much RAM, with default config.
Setting in options the parameters:

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    config.image_cache_size = 0
    renpy.game.less_memory = True

adds more lags (obviously since the cache is 0) but avoid the crashes completely. The problem is: on newer devices, there's no need to do that, and the game could run more smoothly. On older devices, it's REQUIRED to do this because otherwise crashes.

Would be possible to do something, maybe a function to return the device memory? (I know some apps that can do this, I think should be possible in Ren'Py too). Or maybe some other solution? Thanks

[jack_norton]

So I had some small issues with the published iOS games. One is the "texts are blurry and too hard to read" problem you already know about, due to the hdpi screens.
The other is more strange: on some devices (I think new iphones) the screen auto-rotates wrongly, like this:

the problem is that the same game works fine on ipad (we tested on those tablets). So I am not sure why it does it on other devices. I need to get more info if that happens on iphones only, or even newer tablets.

[jack_norton]

OK the issue was that in the xcode project, BOTH portrait and landscape are listed. On tablets, is enough to rotate the device (without rotation block obviously) in landscape and THEN launch the game.
On phones, that doesn't work - if the device finds that portrait IS SUPPORTED, it always starts in that mode. (I know it's dumb, but you can't do anything about it since is hard coded).
I think honestly the best would be to disable by default portrait when Ren'Py makes the projects, considering that 99.9999% of games will be landscape (unless you custom code a game to be portrait... but it's super rare).
This would avoid to manually remove portrait every time you rebuild, and also probably reduce the support a lot, since I am sure many people will have this issue when they publish the games on the iphones

[nyaatrap]

Is it possible to have onlayer property on the with statement in ren'py script?
I have to use $renpy.transtion(layer="master") instead of with statement in most case. It works, but script becomes redundant.

[PyTom]

What's the use case? The with statement is different than the transition statement - it blocks until the transition is completed. I'm not sure I could do that with transitions that affect individual layers.

[nyaatrap]

Showing/hiding animation of screens are done by ATL, so my scene changing codes are like

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hide screen
$renpy.transition(Dissolve(.3),layer="master")
scene bg
pause .3
$renpy.transition(Dissolve(.3),layer="master")
show screen
scene bg
pause .3

Another usage is expression change:

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sayer happy "talkA"
$repy.transition(Dissolve(.3), layer="master")
show sayer angry
extend "talkB"

Though for this usage, renpy.transition is better than with statement because it has no pause.

[nyaatrap]

It's related matter but I'm sure many users wanting it - could ren'py have facial expression change of sprites with dissolve transition? With statement never works in ADV mode, because if say texts are also transitioned then it becomes smooth-less and ugly. It's a basic function in other modern VN engines, but Ren'py hasn't it. Putting renpy.transition before all expression change works, though the code is redundant.

[PyTom]

"if say texts are also transitioned then it becomes smooth-less"

This should be fixed in 6.99.6.

[Shakezula]

Just started trying out the imagemap tool, it's a huge help but it's still very time consuming. I'm developing a game that has the design of a point and click along with a fairly interactive inventory/stats HUD, so what I'm going to try to do now is put a block in my [no prediction] screens so that if developer mode and autoreload are enabled, a thin border is drawn around each hotspot shown in that map, allowing me to simply adjust the values in the edtor and save, letting the game redraw the coordinates accordingly.

I said all that to say, I imagine a stock developer option that did something similar with Shift+I style inspection would be appreciated by plenty.

[trooper6]

Just started trying out the imagemap tool, it's a huge help but it's still very time consuming. I'm developing a game that has the design of a point and click along with a fairly interactive inventory/stats HUD, so what I'm going to try to do now is put a block in my [no prediction] screens so that if developer mode and autoreload are enabled, a thin border is drawn around each hotspot shown in that map, allowing me to simply adjust the values in the edtor and save, letting the game redraw the coordinates accordingly.

I said all that to say, I imagine a stock developer option that did something similar with Shift+I style inspection would be appreciated by plenty.

Have you tried the developer tool for determining hotspots that is included with Ren'Py already?
When you are in the game, hit Shift-D, then press the "Image Location Picker" button. That lets you draw a rectangle where you want on one of your images and it gives you the co-ordinates of the rectangle you drew.

[Kia]

one of the things that I always have trouble with is Alphamask. I always wished for it becomes a part of the screen language and we could use it like:

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screen maskedmenu:
    alphamask:
        mask "mask.png"
        xalign .5
        yalign .5
        hbox:
            imagebutton:
                idle Frame("ui/mm/1.png", 15, 15)
                hover Frame("ui/mm/1.png", 15, 15)
                focus_mask True
                action Start()
                at jam

or a property of displayables

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screen masked:
    frame:
        xalign .5
        yalign .5
        alpha_mask "mask.png"
        hbox:
            imagebutton:
                idle Frame("ui/mm/1.png", 15, 15)
                hover Frame("ui/mm/1.png", 15, 15)
                focus_mask True
                action Start()
                at jam

should I spend few birthdays wished on it or it's easy to do? ^_^

[nyaatrap]

I was trying to implement bounce and elastic interpolations by http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/atl.html#warpers
Bounce is no problem, because t' is always within 0.0 ~ 1.0. The problem is elastic, because t' can't exceed 0.0~1.0. Could it possible to make elastic interpolation somehow?