Any plans for a larger Ren'Py training VN?

[TrickWithAKnife]

Feel free to change the topic title, mods.

What I meant by the topic is, have there been any attempts to make a VN that teaches how to use Ren'Py? I know there is one that teaches the very basics on the main website, and I've seen a few that teach some functions, and I felt all of them were absolutely wonderful. But I'm surprised no-one has tried taking it a step further.

I wonder if we can expect some wonderful people to create a much larger VN that we can direct new people to, to help teach them how to make a quality VN.
Like the wiki, it could have sections too that the player (?) can choose from.

[apricotorange]

Ren'Py comes with a game called "The Ren'Py Tutorial Game", which covers a bunch of topics. Is that what you're looking for?

[Nuxill]

I think he means something that's a little more approachable than the current tutorial. Something that gives a play-by-play on what to do instead of just displaying all the different things you can do with the code. Besides, based on a lot of the topics in the Renpy help section, there's a good chunk of people who either don't take the time to look at the game or have trouble understanding it and the documentation.

It could potentially be a good forum project. At least it would probably be easier and less of a disaster in waiting for the forum to pull together to create it rather than something with an actual plot.

[apricotorange]

This discussion isn't going to go anywhere without more concrete examples. Where exactly do you think the gaps are in the existing documentation?

[Victoria Jennings]

This discussion isn't going to go anywhere without more concrete examples. Where exactly do you think the gaps are in the existing documentation?

I wouldn't say that there's gaps in the documentation, but that, at least in my case, it's pretty difficult to understand, mainly because a good portion of the time, there aren't any examples.

...So I guess more examples would be good?

[TrickWithAKnife]

The code can often be confusing to people who have no programming experience, or they can be difficult to visualise.
I think the ATL code would be a good example of something that would work much better explained and demonstrated in a VN, rather than just explained in text.

I'm aware of the tutorial VN that comes with Ren'Py.
I think it's fantastic, but there is so much potential there for something more indepth.

I like what Nuxill said. I noticed there is an extremely popular topic going at the moment where we are characters in a game that will probably never be made. Perhaps this could be something where we contribute our own Ren'Py lessons and examples on a particular topic? That way writing and art styles don't need to match.
We would just need 1 person to compile the resources and code into one VN. I wouldn't mind volunteering if the code submitted is correct. I have the internet connection to handle a lot of downloads and regular uploads.

[Donmai]

I think this is a great idea! And this VN should be multilingual too (I am a volunteer for the Portuguese translation). The Ren'Py documentation still lacks several examples. Currently we have to search the forums and, with some luck, we would eventually find vital information about less documented/tested features, like in this example:

Hi
I 'm trying to make a translation file with this way, but sadly I have no clue about the line 2;

Set the RENPY_UPDATE_TRANSLATIONS environment variable to a non-empty string.

What does it mean and how to do it? Thanks

Put the line:

RENPY_UPDATE_TRANSLATIONS="true"

into the environment.txt file in the same directory as renpy.exe.

This Training VN suggested by TrickWithAKnife looks like a very interesting project!

[TrickWithAKnife]

I like the example you gave. I spent a while on the exact same topic and links, and eventually gave up.

PyTom, if you see this topic, I'd love to get your view on this.

[SusanTheCat]

What about expanding the tutorial to include more generic "How to make a Visual Novel Start to Finish" with sections on planning your novel, writing, asset creation, etc

Susan

[OokamiKasumi]

This discussion isn't going to go anywhere without more concrete examples. Where exactly do you think the gaps are in the existing documentation?

The biggest gaps are in the Lack of examples.

Most of the documentation is a List of things that can be used with too few of examples of how things work and how things can be changed. Many times, you can't copy/paste the code directly. You have to add other chunks of code to make them work -- which aren't even mentioned.

Telling us "use this," doesn't tell us How to use it, or Where to put it, or what it Won't work with.

You're giving us Half the recipe, or rather, a list of ingredients, but no instructions on what goes together where, how it should be applied, what to include to change the recipe, or even the most common ways to change them.

For example,
-- According to the documentation, you can use im.FactorScale, or im.Scale on a composite or even LiveComposite image, but nowhere is there an example of HOW to combine the two, yet this combination would have common usage for side images made from composite images -- IF the recipe for this existed. It doesn't.

[nyaatrap]

The biggest gaps are in the Lack of examples.

This. People who can write codes directly is only ones who already understand them all. People who is under learning needs to copy examples and modify them.

[kkffoo]

Missing information. Take this for example.

How do I change the default font?

In the standard release of Ren'Py, there is already a line of code in the option.rpy file that changes the default font for the entire game.
style.default.font = "fontname.ttf"

To use it, you must first uncomment it by removing the "#" in front of it, and then replace your preferred font as the value.

It was only through searching in the forums that I discovered that you must also copy your font into the game file.

Another example from the help files;

style.say_thought (Text) — Dialogue spoken by the default narrator.

It was only through a lot of keyword jiggery pokery using search engines that I finally discovered that
style.say_thought.color = "#000000"
For example, makes this work (the above example should make the default font black)
That was three hours trying to work out how to change the default colour of font.
There is no intuitive connection between the word text in brackets, and 'dot colour'.
(thanks to Aurocyanide for putting examples up on the cyanide tea website, that's where I found this in the end!)

To be honest I'm not sure if making one Visual Novel for all this stuff is the way to go. None of the text within it will be accessible to search engines, and in order to find things you'd have to navigate through the whole novel.

Why not make 'mini novels' which just demonstrate one or two things?
(This would cut back on the eye clutter which is so tough to navigate for non programmers.)
Then have the scripts also available separately on a web page, with the example VN also embedded as a free download.?

eg Here's a VN which demonstrates the various ways to change the timing of your text.
or Here's a VN which demonstrates types of image transition.

You could get people to vote on which topic they would most like covered next..and smaller projects are more likely to get finished.

[Sharm]

I think SusanTheCat is right, what we need is something that shows how to make a simple VN from start to finish. It would be even better if it had a set of free to use sprites and backgrounds (maybe even sounds and music) so that a beginner had everything they needed to make their first VN to play with.

[PyTom]

I am certainly interested in having an improved tutorial game. It's one of those things that I've always wanted to spend time on, but other things have been taking higher priority (or have been simply more interesting to me).

So if people want to begin work on a replacement for it, I'd be very interested in merging that.

(At some point, I need to write a tutorial that explains how to use git and github to contribute to Ren'Py. That's one of my high-priority goals for the fall release.)

[mugenjohncel]

So if people want to begin work on a replacement for it, I'd be very interested in merging that.

Hmm....

And uh... can we have the TAB thingy back?... you know that TAB on the upper right of the screen where you press it then the editor pops up highlighting the part of the code currently being shown in the screen...

"POOF" (Goes to drawing board... to work alone... again ;_;)