Two VNs at once?

[Sidhe]

I was thinking about a game I was considering on making, and for one of the routes I want it to have two separate "screens" at one time, like two VNs being played at the same time. I don't mean in separate windows, I want it sort of like multiplayer games with people using multiple controllers-- the screen's split for each of the players (ex. Mario Kart). When advancing the story and clicking choices, each click would affect both "games" running, and the idea was that once you got to a choice, two people could be asking the same question in both screens but when you click a choice out of one menu it affects both "games". Er-- sorry if this is confusing lol But would this be feasible in any way? I'm not anywhere near Ren'Py savy enough to even think about where to begin with this...

[Guga Figueiredo]

This doesnt seem too complicated, if I understand correctly.
You wan't two - lets call it - archs of story being played through simultaniously and at the same point (some climaxing line in the story) the same question would be asked to the player at the same time.

I can see it happen, though I cannot say i know how to achieve this.
Displaying background images shouldnt be too hard.just get X,Y positionin right and you may achieve this.
I know it is possible to set the size of the game window, but I also have no idea how to do it.
To display the dialogues of both story archs at the same time you should be able to have a window displayable do that.
The question itself may be made as a single menu, no need to display 2 menus for the player if they both answer the same queston right? You may define some character with a mix of styles from both characters asking the question.

However.. I don't think doing this is the best idea, game-flow wise. It could be very confusing for the player to follow both dialogues at the same time and i dont think this will have the same feeling of 2 separate scenes escalating to that climax.
I would consider going back and forth from one arch to another, slow at first with dialogue lines getting shorter as it moves along each arch, making it seem that things are going faster and progressing towards a climax, and then posing the question to the player.
As you move along in the scene, I would even agree that the "split-screen" idea may be useful. But i believe this would give your scene a better flow than having both playing out simultaneously.
Just putting this out for consideration,

[Guga Figueiredo]

Oops.. sorry.. just re-read your post... I gues that for a full route, what i suggested wouldnt be ideal, so let me offer some different flow suggestions

Since we are talking about a whole route of the game, it may be needed to do as you had envisioned, but I would still suggest playing just some lines of the story in back and forth mode, specificaly those lines essential to the story, which require the players full attention. The rest you should be able to achieve with a window frame with text displayble in the right xpos/ypos X xanchor/yanchor (xalign/yalign), like so:

Code: Select all

screen test_frame(): # names the screen object
    frame: #sets a frame
        xpadding 10 # sets the left and right distance in pixels from the displayable to the border of the frame
        ypadding 10 # sets the top and bottom distance in pixels from the displayable to the border of the frame
        xalign 0.5 # sets the x axis (left-right) positioning of the frame (where 0.0 is the far left, and 1.0 is the far right)
        yalign 0.5 # sets the y axis (top-bottom) positioning of the frame (where 0.0 is the far top, and 1.0 is the far bottom)

        vbox: # creates a box tha can contain displayables
            text "Display" # sets a displayable to be shown in the box (in this case a text line)

And you can call this like so:

Code: Select all

label start:
    show screen test_frame
    pause
    hide screen test_frame
    return

The code above will display a single screen object in the middle of the game screen with the text "Display" on it, with the frame spaced 10 pixels from the any side of the text displayable. It will wait for the player to click and will hide the screen. But I am a low level Ren'Py user, so there may be a batter way to do this. You can find more about this here: http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens.html

[Donmai]

Something like this?
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=28776