Looking for Ren'Py "Tutor"

[Lishy]

Hey. I hope this isn't the wrong forum. As odd as it sounds, I am looking for a RenPy "Tutor" to help me learn the program. Granted, I'm still making an effort to go through the tutorials and learn on my own. It's just RenPy has me very "overwhelmed" so far.. It would just be nice if I just had some tutor or teacher of some sort to carry me through the lessons and kinda help organize me, as I keep procrastinating each time I try to learn it.
In other words, I need someone who could probably help keep me on track and make sure I learn what I need to know.

Sorry if this is a bit of an odd request, but I'm just having a hard time learning. I guess we call what I need is coaching?

I've successfully completed the quickstart and ingame tutorials, taking down notes, as you can review them here, but I don't know what to do if I wanted to, lets say, make a kinetic novel similar to When They Cry (For the sake of learning). What should I be learning next? I'm having trouble applying the things written in the documents on the main site.

Pm me or post here if you may be so kind enough so as to be interested

[Sakura02]

Honestly I think the best way to learn is to experiment for yourself ^_^; I mean the tutorials here and are kind of like tutors in of themselves. If you run into problems ask the community here, everyone here is really helpful. or Search for a forum topic which is related to what you're doing. .

Honestly if you don't have the patience to learn the program on your own, I don't think you are dedicated enough to make a VN. Programming is about trial and error and tearing your hair out trying to get things to work. If you can find someone to help you all the way through you'll be very lucky. But I just recommend you asking the community for help on specific issues.

[Sapphi]

I kinda agree with Sakura02 here... I'm sure a lot of people would like to have someone to walk them through Ren'Py when they are new, especially when they aren't familiar with the syntax and stuff, but the reality is, most people in this community are working on their own projects on top of a real life schedule. It isn't really feasible, which is why there is a wonderful demo included with Ren'Py and some lovely girls to walk you through it instead. :b

It seems a bit like you might feel overwhelmed just because you don't know where to start and are worrying about doing everything at once. In that case, all a visual novel really needs is text and pictures. If you can write a few lines of text, add a couple sprites, and a background picture, that's really all there is to it. Everything else builds upon that. Maybe once you have your sprites up you decide you want them to fade in instead of just appear, so you look through the docs to find out how to do that. Or perhaps after you've got your story down, you decide you might like to have a customized text box, so you go look for a code to achieve that. It's probably better to work on getting your story written than worrying about special effects and formatting for now, right?

And then, when you get to the point where you might have an error in your script that you can't figure out by the JEdit traceback and the search function on the forum, or perhaps you have a more specific question about a part of the documentation, people are usually more than willing to help you. You just have to do a little research on your part, too. ^_^

You can do it!

[Kuroneko]

I'm pretty new to Ren'py as well and it would be nice if there was a tutor, but as Sapphi said it would be lucky to find one because most people are really busy.

However, I think that if you want a friend to talk to about coding or to be able to look for an answer together with someone before actually asking the forum, (since there are a lot of answers in the forum, but a lot of questions as well so it's hard to find exactly what you're looking for even if it's been asked) I'd be really willing to do that. Doing everything on your own can be a hassle, and looking for answers together might lead to finding something else out that may become useful.

[IceD]

Well, it wouldn't hurt our community to create a kind of basic walkthrough together, that would show how to use some of the coding and create a kind of new, official 'tech' demo - what Ren'Py is capable of doing now - all the basic stuff and fireworks including ATL along with proper examples, so people could learn how to make it. By that I mean something similiar to Doomfest's Craddle Song tech demo - an engine sample with good graphics and a small documentation that would describe how everything works and how to put such thing together, along with some basic art/GUI interface tutorials and advice how to design them. I doesn't have to be that fancy and fully animated - it should just describe nicely and easily how to write such a working engine from scratch.

This could also benefit begginers, encouraging them to try to create high quality stuff straight from beggining, instead of leaving them with excuses to make crappy things because they don't know how or don't have the proper tutorials to learn from. Current documentation is great, but it might be something not fit for everyone, especially those who start because it's descriptions are a bit too 'academic' and it usually takes quite a lot of time to master everything.

I'm not a great programmer myself, but I'm good at graphics/UI design, and I could happily join on this effort and provide all the required assets for such a 'tech' demo along with designs and writing. I was thinking of somewhat that would be both helpful and entertaining for everyone. The documentation would describe everything from bottom to the top, while the demo itself could have working examples and explanations in form of a short story/segements described by cute characters It would be great, if someone that already mastered the ATL and advanced coding (by that, I don't mean Renpytom - he's busy enough with proper Re'npy itself) could offer help in creating such a thing - 2 or 3 people should be enough for coding and an artist or two for starters wouldn't hurt either. This could be also a fun and nice experience for us

I think it would be bad either to finally start reorganising forum and create a kind of general FAQ stickied thread, that would describe everything in a proper manner and point out to the most useful and popular examples of help, both on the forums and the net. We don't have to rush with everything, but it would be a nice moment to start.

Tell me, what do you think of those ideas, can we make it?

[PyTom]

I'd certainly be interested it working with people who want to improve the Ren'Py documentation. I think right now, the tutorial game is in terrible shape (and has been for a year), so anyone who wants to help out with that would be very welcome. The new manual could also use an editor - the downside is that it's harder to work on. Since the wiki didn't get much editing traffic, the new manual is maintained as part of the Ren'Py source code.

As for me, I'm devoting this week to the new manual, trying to make it better.

As I commented yesterday on #renpy, I'm in a weird position, as I never learned Ren'Py. That makes documenting it more problematic.

[jack_norton]

As I commented yesterday on #renpy, I'm in a weird position, as I never learned Ren'Py. That makes documenting it more problematic.

I think the basic tutorials are already quite good - I mean, to use Renpy you NEED to have some background programming, otherwise is better if you use another tool (maybe visual one).
What I would really appreciate is some tutorials (source code) of more advanced functions. I believe is enough to write several snippets showing the "most obscure" renpy function at work, with code comments explaining them.

[Robert Kirkland]

to use Renpy you NEED to have some background programming

I.. What. If by background programming you mean previous experience in programming, then I'd like to prove you wrong. Hard.

[MaiMai]

to use Renpy you NEED to have some background programming

I.. What. If by background programming you mean previous experience in programming, then I'd like to prove you wrong. Hard.

No need to sound offended at Jack-- I think what he says rings somewhat true even though Ren Py is made for non-programmers. The language is made so that even non-programmers such as myself can make simple games. What a lot of people I see on the forums here are going for though are trying to make more complex games, and having some background knowledge/experience would help a lot in understanding things like what putting in certain functions and numerals do. As far as I'm concerned, I've had Ren Py downloaded for ages, but hell if I understand how to mess around with some of the functions.

Or ignore my tl;dr and try to be more courteous with your disagreement.

[Robert Kirkland]

No need to sound offended at Jack-- I think what he says rings somewhat true even though Ren Py is made for non-programmers. The language is made so that even non-programmers such as myself can make simple games. What a lot of people I see on the forums here are going for though are trying to make more complex games, and having some background knowledge/experience would help a lot in understanding things like what putting in certain functions and numerals do. As far as I'm concerned, I've had Ren Py downloaded for ages, but hell if I understand how to mess around with some of the functions.

That's true, but he made it sound as if you NEEDED previous programming experience to use Ren'Py in the first place. Which is false. Previous experience would help though, especially in Python.

[jack_norton]

Sorry I meant to use Renpy to do more complex stuff. To do basic VNs previous programming is not needed, but if you start to customize stuff, then yes

[Samu-kun]

I think using ren'py for even basic things is pretty difficult... It has a lot of features from an overhead view (meaning looking at all the things it can do in theory), but it's all hard to use because the features are pretty much being implemented by Tom himself without a lot of user feedback. There are a lot of things that you obviously need when you're making a visual novel, but which is harder to program than what it should be. I think the majority of the problem lies in that Tom himself has never actually made a serious game with his own engine, so he has a bunch of functions that work perfectly in theory, but which are arranged in ways that are impractical when actually using it.

The biggest problem if that it is way too difficult to customize the UI. Virtually every single visual novel released has a custom UI. As it is now, it takes too much undocumented programming to even add buttons for "quick save," "quick load," "save," "load," "take a screenshot," "read log," "go to preferences screen," "toggle skip," "toggle auto-read" on the message box. Considering just how common they are now, it shouldn't be so hard to add them.

There are other things that a pretty much any visual novel will probably use at some but which are undocumented and difficult to implement without already knowing programming.

For example, let's say that you take a screenshot, and you want a message alert with the words "screen shot saved at [file location]" to appear on the screen that the player can then exit out of by pressing an "OK" button. Or putting in a new scrolling bar in the preference menu that sets the transparency level of the message box. Or putting "delete," "duplicate," or ,"rename" buttons beside every save file in the save menu. These things are pretty obvious things that you might want in a visual novel, but we don't really know how to get any of it done without the programming knowhow because it's just not documented. And the worst part is that I can't really help document it because I don't know how to do it either.

I think pretty much that all the features ren'py has right now are shiny and pretty awesome compared to what we had in the past. Now the real work isn't in giving new fancy tricks that only the most programming skilled of the users can implement, but just letting the regular user use functions to just change basic things that you need in a visual novel...

[Aleema]

I wonder if there can be an engine that can be hardcore and "even-babies-can-do-it." The ATL and screen language were made to make things easier, but I can't help but feel it's been dumbed down. Though I can't find proof for that. Making things more accessible should be a good thing, but I do take some pleasure in knowing how to do something not easily done. If you want to make something good, then work hard, you know? If everyone can be Picasso's then no one's a Picasso (lol wut). But I also like playing good games. So I'm more conflicted than I should be. You know, morally.

Right now, Ren'Py isn't a template maker Ren'Ai generator. It's a toolbox, a lovely parent that teaches us everything it knows and then watches us fly away from the nest, and other obscure imagery. It's making Python, a programming language, that tool. If this doesn't float your boat, then maybe some other engine can. But if we dumb Ren'Py down to RPGMaker or some Japanese date sim makers where a GUI interface is required to walk around your project ... you aren't really in complete control of it. I love how in control of everything I am with Ren'Py as opposed to other engines that require you project to be a facet to their program. You have to create the scene node and then the emotion icon and then circle through your uploaded poses and then select "Text" and then blahblahblah. That's much easier to learn and to execute, but in the end you can only ever do what the software will let you do, and soon you'll outgrow it and wish you could "trick" the software into doing exactly what you wanted. In the same amount of time, you could have learned a language that let's you do whatever you freakin' want.

Basically my feelings are this ... I'm writing the scripts, it's coming from me, the game maker. I'd rather be the game maker than some software I installed, you know? Is this approach more prone to errors? Yes! But it's also more prone to creativity and, I daresay, quality. I hope Ren'Py never sees a day where it doesn't just process scripts you've written and you can hit a button called "magically instant good VN" and all your fixin's appear. We'd suddenly have a bunch of VNs that look alike with the same format and functionality. I DO think that better documentation on how to manipulate Ren'Py would be useful. Like, how I could add a "delete save" button myself by learning what process would do that (not necessarily a cookbook code), if possible.

In response to an FAQ thread, someone would have to maintain that, or else have it open to everyone to maintain, which is just like a wiki. ^^; Though PyTom is obviously trying to separate this forum from Ren'Py, posting tons of Lemmasoft links in his documentation might be frowned upon?

Random gushing: It's true on-screen buttons are prevalent in Japanese VNs, but rollback is also usually a "log" that is way less functional than what Ren'Py has. And after playing a lot of different VNs, I can't say how much I've come to appreciate rollback. It's really ahead of its time from what I can tell. xD

[LVUER]

I'm somewhat agree with Aleema. The reason why I stop using RPG Maker is because it's too restricting me and too limited (consequences of being too easy to use). And then I switch to Game Maker. But then again, RPG Maker could be as versatile as you want it to be, provided you have necessary programming knowledge (Ruby).

My point is that, perhaps RenPy could have "basic" mode and "expert" mode kinda like that Game Maker and RPG Maker have (RPG Maker doesn't have these modes, but the only place you could mess with the lines programming is in "script").

Though considering that RenPy is almost one-man job from PyTom, and it's FREE... we can't really ask too much, after all, beggars can't be chooser (it's free and you could make commercial game with it, what else do you want?).

[jack_norton]

Basically my feelings are this ... I'm writing the scripts, it's coming from me, the game maker. I'd rather be the game maker than some software I installed, you know? Is this approach more prone to errors? Yes! But it's also more prone to creativity and, I daresay, quality. I hope Ren'Py never sees a day where it doesn't just process scripts you've written and you can hit a button called "magically instant good VN" and all your fixin's appear. We'd suddenly have a bunch of VNs that look alike with the same format and functionality. I DO think that better documentation on how to manipulate Ren'Py would be useful. Like, how I could add a "delete save" button myself by learning what process would do that (not necessarily a cookbook code), if possible.

Yep, exactly. I am making a sort of RPG framework with it, Jake is making a sort of wargame/strategy one, and so on. Renpy possibilities are endless and once I started to learn to use it seriously, I never labeled it as "only a VN maker tool". Because it isn't. And it shouldn't, really. Over my 7 years of indie (and I also worked for another 10 years in games before in a company) I've never seen such a powerful tool for 2d games, and I plan to keep using it for long time (maybe when the new blitzmax 2 comes out might do some games with it because of the insane range of supported platforms).