Ren'Py 6.12.1 "Human Factor" is the first of a series of minor releases focusing on improving the experience of visual novel makers. This release features several improvements to the process of showing images:
- Image attributes make it no longer necessary to specify every part of a changed image.
- The say statement can change image attributes when a character speaks.
- Side images can be specified with the image statement, and can be used with NVL-mode dialogue.
- Sticky transforms allow a transform to continue through an image change.
As these new features can change the behavior of existing games, it may be convenient to disable them for in-development projects. Please see the list of incompatible changes for instructions on how to do this.
The other major improvement is in error handling. Where previous versions of Ren'Py would terminate on errors, 6.12.1 will display a screen that allows the maker to edit problematic files and reload the game, and the user to rollback or ignore the problem.
Ren'Py 6.12.1 also includes many other minor features and bug fixes, please see the full changelog for more details.
Downloads of 6.12.1 can be found at:
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http://www.renpy.org/release/6.12.1A full list of changes to Ren'Py can be found at:
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http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/changelog.htmlA list of changes that may require you to update your game can be found at:
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http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/incompatible.html1460:
This is the first release to use a new pre-release process, that I'm still experimenting with as a go along. I've posted up an early version of 6.12.1, so it can be out there for people to play with. There are a lot of changes to the way showing images work, and I think this will lead to changes in the way people program Ren'Py games. (I think that, combined, the changes will save people a lot of typing.)
If you're working on a new game, or one in the early stages of programming, I encourage you to try out the 6.12.1 pre-releases, and to use the new features, especially attribute-based images, as (based on suggestions from people) I think they will simplify game scripts. On the other hand, they can change the meaning of some code, so if you have an in-development game, you may want to set config.image_attributes to False to turn them off. In both cases, I'd like to find out about any problems you have.
There are still known reported bugs in 6.12.1, and I haven't touched the Android build in a while. Much documentation has yet to be written - many of then new features are only documented in the changelog. So this is by no means done. But my testing shows it to be reasonably stable, and hopefully worth trying out as I polish up 6.12.1.
Finally, there are a bunch of simple-yet-useful features, which I'll mention here to make them more prominent for people who don't read the changelog:
- Ren'Py remembers window size, and it's now possible to have preferences for specific window sizes.
- The new Tooltip class makes tooltips easier.
- config.debug_text_overflow will log text overflows to a file.
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Another Old-Fashioned Bishoujo Gamer
Supporting creators since 2004; Code > Drama
(When was the last time you backed up your game?)
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt