Ren'Py's Public Image

[Watercolorheart]

Would it be too early to say "I might like to write a scene or two?"

[PyTom]

Well, for the simple game, I'd expect there to only _be_ a scene or two.

For the tutorial/demo game, there will be a number of scenes, but they will be in the service of teaching people Ren'Py and/or demonstrating Ren'Py features.

That being said, all help is appreciated.

[Piroshiki]

I think the eyebrows are good... but would be it be possible for the mouth to curve a little more?

Is this alright? *points to the attached file* Though if I curve it more it ends up looking somewhat creepy... Also, is the metallic texture of the hairband the kind of effect you wanted?

Moving to the safari Eileen logo. Should she be normal, just the bust, SD-ified, or SD-ified bust?

(she's a bit more grown-up as well...)

Yeah, I noticed once I was done that her chest had inflated inexplicably while I was CGing... I don't think she was ever supposed to be that well endowed, actually...

Perhaps the artist can give a brief description of the technique? Is this acheived by making a solid block of color for the area that you're thinking of, and then going back and shading it, perhaps?

Just that, with blurring and smudging.

[PyTom]

Is this alright? *points to the attached file* Though if I curve it more it ends up looking somewhat creepy... Also, is the metallic texture of the hairband the kind of effect you wanted?

I like it, I think... but I wonder what it would look like with the full arc of the mouth, rather then just the corners. It might look silly,,, but if it isn't too hard, would you be willing to try it?

Moving to the safari Eileen logo. Should she be normal, just the bust, SD-ified, or SD-ified bust?

Well, she has to be carrying the pygame snake, who's a bit cartoony. But I like your realistic style... can they be made to work together? I think you'll have to use your judgement on this one.

I'm thinking waist up is the way to go for the logo, just to have some room for the snake.

Anyway, thanks for the pictures, and keep up the good work!

[Alessio]

The simple game is then an encounter between the POV character and Eileen in the hallway of the con, before her talk.

Very good idea. Simple enough and effective. (We just have to make sure to keep the simple game and the complex demo separated well enough, so that the user doesn't get confused which is which.)

A logo of Eileen, probably reasonably big and off to one side.

And we should use the same one for the in-game logo too IMHO.

BTW, a big shout out goes to Shaja, who's been working on adding the Refman to the new Ren'Py wiki.

Wow, big thumbs up! That looks really good. And navigation seems to be simple enough. Excellent!

[denzil]

BTW, a big shout out goes to Shaja, who's been working on adding the Refman to the new Ren'Py wiki.

So what will happen to Trac? (Read: Should be czech documentation I made moved to wiki?)

[PyTom]

At some point, the Trac will be decomissioned in favor of the wiki. Before that happens, I will migrate over the useful pages.

[PyTom]

I was fooling around last night, and came up with another potential look for the website. There are some (fixable) bugs with IE 5, the navigation is simply made up, and the logo image should be a little wider.

But I'm wondering what people think.

http://www.bishoujo.us/tmp/leftlogo/

[denzil]

But I'm wondering what people think.

http://www.bishoujo.us/tmp/leftlogo/

Looks quite good.
Idea: You are using verbs for separating most of menu section. Then it might be a good idea to replace "Documentation" with something like "Learn & Create"

[PyTom]

The menu there is to give people a feel for the look of the menu. I think a fairly major open area is what people think should be on that menu.

[Watercolorheart]

The menu there is to give people a feel for the look of the menu. I think a fairly major open area is what people think should be on that menu.

I like the new menu of the site, blue is my favorite color.

[Jake]

But I'm wondering what people think.

Depends, which bit are you asking for comments on?

In terms of the page content, I think that it still suffers from the 'too much information in one place' problem to be considered 'professional-looking'. I seem to recall some talk previously of presenting an example screenshot and an elevator statement, or something along those lines, on the front page - which would be a lot more appropriate, to my mind; most of the subheadings on the main page there should really be in their own pages, if you ask me.

In terms of the layout, the basic layout I like. A little logo in the corner makes a lot more sense to me than a banner across the top of the page, for something like this.

Whatever the case, though, it strikes me that it'd be worth going a little further on graphical prettiness; people are easily swayed by first impressions, and all, and flat colour and hard edges still feel a little... well, 'amateur' is a correct description anyway, but it's the best I can think of. I have no idea whether or not you were intending anything like this anyway, of course, but for example, for ~ten minutes' work:


Upsides: looks significantly more 'professional' for only a little extra work.
Downsides: Harder to make perfectly accessible - resizing text too much would make it look odd, for instance.

Looks quite good.
Idea: You are using verbs for separating most of menu section. Then it might be a good idea to replace "Documentation" with something like "Learn & Create"

Hmm... when I go to the website of a thing I can script, be it a web-scripting engine, game engine or whatever, 'documentation' is exactly the label I'm looking for when I want to look something up. Perhaps "Learn and Create" for the heading, then collapse "Reference Manual" and "Wiki" into a single "Documentation" link, since the RefMan seems to be moving towards the Wiki anyway?

[PyTom]

In terms of the page content, I think that it still suffers from the 'too much information in one place' problem to be considered 'professional-looking'. I seem to recall some talk previously of presenting an example screenshot and an elevator statement, or something along those lines, on the front page - which would be a lot more appropriate, to my mind; most of the subheadings on the main page there should really be in their own pages, if you ask me.

I probably should have been more clear (which would have involved actually saying it),,, I just copied in the content from the current main page so that we'd have something to show people. The content needs revision... I'm hoping people here will step up and do much of that revision, since I'm way too close to the system to do it properly.

(For example, I consider one of Ren'Py's big features to be predictive image loading... something most other people couldn't care less about.)

-----

For the screenshot, I have an idea for what I think it might look like... I think we want a campaign of the sort:

"Ren'Py lets you write this:"

Shows a shot of clear, syntax-highlighted code from the middle of a (released) game.

"and make this:"

Shows a nice looking screenshot of said game.

-----

I would like people here, especially game-makers, to hash out the elevator statement, as again, I don't know what attracted you to Ren'Py.

In terms of the layout, the basic layout I like. A little logo in the corner makes a lot more sense to me than a banner across the top of the page, for something like this.

Whatever the case, though, it strikes me that it'd be worth going a little further on graphical prettiness; people are easily swayed by first impressions, and all, and flat colour and hard edges still feel a little... well, 'amateur' is a correct description anyway, but it's the best I can think of. I have no idea whether or not you were intending anything like this anyway, of course, but for example, for ~ten minutes' work:


Upsides: looks significantly more 'professional' for only a little extra work.
Downsides: Harder to make perfectly accessible - resizing text too much would make it look odd, for instance.

Could you turn this into a working page? I'd like to see it in action. I am a little worried about accessibility. It may make sense to leave the buttons as square, and then fix the background to the lower-right corner, and have an image that's bigger then we see. That way, we get your nice look, and also the ability to scale the buttons somewhat to match the user's font size.

I realized from seeing your screenshot that the font tracks the user's serif/sans-serif preference. I personally think sans looks nicer for screen text... but is my preference worth overriding the users?

Hmm... when I go to the website of a thing I can script, be it a web-scripting engine, game engine or whatever, 'documentation' is exactly the label I'm looking for when I want to look something up. Perhaps "Learn and Create" for the heading, then collapse "Reference Manual" and "Wiki" into a single "Documentation" link, since the RefMan seems to be moving towards the Wiki anyway?

That's an idea...

[Alessio]

Very neat, I like the layout. Simple is beautiful. :) Seems to offer a better overview since the menu buttons use less space (and/or capture less attention) compared to the previous version.

For the screenshot, I have an idea for what I think it might look like...

Very good approach, maybe using just three lines of code (scene + show + text) which strikes me as the most obvious choice.

I would like people here, especially game-makers, to hash out the elevator statement, as again, I don't know what attracted you to Ren'Py.

mikey's quote is a a good example. Let's come up with more, they can then be rotated on the web site's front page. My line is: "Writing a story in Ren'Py is not harder than writing a screenplay, with the advantage of being able to see the results immediately."

[Jake]

Could you turn this into a working page? I'd like to see it in action.

Here y'go.

I had to add an extra div around each button to get them rescalable, but other than that I left the markup the same as your original. The buttons look OK until after the text has already strayed out of the nav bar when it's resized, and just making the graphics taller would increase their scalability, of course. The ...top images don't need to be more than 2px tall, actually, I just got carried away.

(I'm not sure I like the jumping around of the buttons too much, myself; I modified the original behaviour a little just to try and make it more pleasing to the eye, but I still don't like it, if it were up to me I'd leave them the same size and position and just graphically highlight them... all the same, it's fiddlable easily enough.)

[EDIT: Now we just need a kind of Frame that tiles, instead of stretching, the inner section of the frame and I can do a theme that looks the same... ]

I am a little worried about accessibility. It may make sense to leave the buttons as square, and then fix the background to the lower-right corner, and have an image that's bigger then we see. That way, we get your nice look, and also the ability to scale the buttons somewhat to match the user's font size.

Mmm. Personally, I've kind of veered away from making such efforts, just on the grounds that every single user I've ever met who cares about accessibility uses Opera anyway, and Opera's zoom scales graphics as well as text... but hey, it's good to play on the safe side, I guess. If nothing else, making such assumptions would only strengthen the apparent feeling that users with poor eyesight have to use Opera and don't get a choice of other browsers, which isn't a good thing as much as I personally like Opera.

On similar grounds, though, it would also be worth converting all graphics with an implicit background colour (which in this case is all of them) into GIFs, since IE is terrible at PNG palettes.

I realized from seeing your screenshot that the font tracks the user's serif/sans-serif preference. I personally think sans looks nicer for screen text... but is my preference worth overriding the users?

Hmm... Myself, I've never bothered changing my font settings on the grounds that I prefer to use whatever settings the page designer intended, and page designers these days nearly always set a specific font, or at least choose serif/sans, these days.

I'd say override it - most browsers these days give the user the option to override the specified fonts themselves if they want to anyway (IE is the main exception I know of) - some on a page-by-page basis, even - so anyone who really really likes Times can probably go back to it if they want.