Getting Started

[Me_Me_Friggin_Me]

What is a good easy program I could use to get the gist of making a game? I have some backgrounds and such, and I just want to try to master the learning curb of making a Ren Ai game. What program should I use?

[Sai]

Try RenPy
http://www.lemmasoft.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=105

My friend did a quick little pice with RenPy the other day that including a background, character image and some dialogue with 1 option point (yes or no question). He did it in under 5 minutes using RenPy apparently and that included thinking up the dialogue (random test dialogue) and getting the image sizes right....
So should be a good place to start although I haven't tried it myself

[PyTom]

I'm thinking of cutting a new release of Ren'Py in a day or two. It'll be reasonably complete insofar as gameplay is concerned, but won't support loading or saving. (At least, not with a user interface.) So you may want to wait for that.

In the meantime, everyone may want to check out the draft of the Ren'Py tutorial, at:

http://www.bishoujo.us/renpy/tutorial.html

I'd appreciate comments on the tutorial, good or bad. Either post it here, or email it to tom at bishoujo.us

[Alessio]

Hi Tom,

Absolutely brilliant IMHO, thanks for taking the time to write that one. With that set of instructions, it should be a breeze to get started. I'm impressed about the things you thought of, since I'd been thinking those same issues over and over (menus with conditions; handling of returns from a subroutine when a game is saved).

Only remaining question: How to handle user input (e.g. player's name)? :-)

Cheers!
Alessio

[Guest]

(PyTom here... not logged in because I'm on a different computer.)

Right now, there's no way to handle user input in the new version. While it's on my list of things to support, it probably won't make it into the preview release that will come out in a few days.

For now, I recommend simply setting a placeholder variable for the user's name, using code like:

Code: Select all

$ name = 'Joe User'

Eventually, you'll be able to replace this with something like:

Code: Select all

$ name = renpy.prompt('What is your name?', 'Joe User')

But that probably won't work until the release after the next one. It's not totally clear to me that prompting the user for their name is a good idea, but that's a whole other issue, and something that should be left up to the game author rather than the engine programmer.

[Alessio]

Hi Tom,

I agree, it's of course a matter of taste (and of the author) whether or not user input is needed. In any case, it's the least urgent thing, so don't worry - I'm not trying to push you here. Just curious! :)

Cheers,
Alessio