Ren'Py games on websites or even as a Facebook App?

[Der Tor]

A while back there was a thread about having Ren'Py games run in websites.. i can't find the thread anymore but as far as the bottom line goes i seem to remember that it IS possible.
So i thought if you can have a Ren'Py game run on a website, then (in theory) you should even be able to make a Facebook App out of it.
I know it's probably not a good idea and there will be a lot of issues, problems and limitations even if it works.
But i would really like to give it a try as the story i am working on would really benefit from that. As i want it to simulate a Facebook Chat or at least a chatroom anyway... kinda similar to the "Digital" Visual Novel a while back. And so if on top of that i could make it run as a Facebook app it would enhance the atmosphere for my story tremendously and make it soooo much more realistic.

As far as i understand it, it should be possible as i would just have to make it run on my website and then use I-frame to make it run as a Facebook app, right?

Has anybody tried this before?
Of course there will be tons of problems - the most obvious one being that the game would propably take too long to load. Even a RenPy game with nothing in it is about 5 MB big just in itself. But maybe i could reduce the file size somehow or use an older version of Ren'Py to make it smaller?

[leon]

Ren'Py games can be run in websites? I'd like to see this thread too. If anyone can point me (us) to it...

My 2 cents on Facebook apps: It should be possible, but as you said it yourself - "issues, problems and limitations". Facebook may look nice on the front, but if you are a developer, get ready for some huge issues. Facebook API has a lot of bugs, some of them are critical and have existed for years, yet Facebook won't address (or even acknowledge) these issues. Sorry for being so negative, but I really hate FB...

What functionality from Facebook would you need? Does it need to be ran from inside FB or do you just want to connect to players FB account, to access their data and gain permissions to post on their wall, etc.? The latter would be much simpler...

I'm not so sure, if the filesize would be an issue here... If Ren'Py games can be ran in websites in a true server-client fashion, this should not be an issue at all, as the major part of the game would ran on the server and only small parts (currently displayed web page) would get transferred to the user.

If anyone can point me to that thread, discussing running Ren'Py in a website, I would really appreciate it.

[jack_norton]

No they cannot - pytom hacked something in his own server so that there was a python app running, and the browser was simply displaying the OUTPUT. But was super slow, and I think impossible to expand on large scale (would consume lots of bandwidth/server resources). In particular as FB app, with just 100-200 concurrent users the server would probably collapse

[leon]

@jack_norton: Thanks for the explanation. I kind of expected something like that...

Still, this could work in theory, so I'm staying optimistic. I'm sure it will be implemented in time. Any animations and effects would be an issue with the bandwidth, but a simple VN or a sim, limited to simple images and text should be fairly lightweight on the bandwidth.

I can imagine, a lot of concurrent users being a problem, both with bandwidth as well as processing power, but you could just limit the max number of concurrent users and send everyone else to the page with a download for the desktop version.

@Der Tor: I checked your project and demo game. It look very interesting. I'm not sure how complex do you intend your project to be, but maybe a conversion of the renpy version to a web-app could be an option?

[Gear]

It sucks if it can't really happen, but after reading the OP, I realized what a cool idea it would be. Some people don't like downloading games, so if they could play them through FB, that would not only give more people a chance to play, but with wall postings and whatnot, it would be word-of-mouth advertising from FBer to FBer. I can certainly see the appeal of the concept, and I hope it becomes possible at some point.

[Soraminako]

Yeah, that's why I originally made flash games instead of using a game engine. Most people likely to randomly drop by your site don't feel like downloading something and having it in their PC. :-S
However, flash is a pain to get anything done with (at least for me), and Ren'py is so full of wonderful possibilities to develop stuff fast and more easily than with flash, so it's lovely.

Both worlds have their pros and their cons I guess.

If it ever becomes possible to have Ren'py games playable on websites I'll be so happy to use that too.

[Der Tor]

Yes, i guess i will have to just redo my game in flash. Or is there anything besides flash that could easily be used to make Visual Novels and can run on a website?
A while back there was a Visual Novel engine called Sylph that apparently was capable of running inside a browser. But it seems to be down. Anyone still have a copy of it?

[DragoonHP]

You can use HTML5 with CSS and js... it ought to work...

[animedaisuki]

I definitely saw visual novels on Facebook. What game engine allows you to do that? Or do people code from scratch?

[fullmontis]

I definitely saw visual novels on Facebook. What game engine allows you to do that? Or do people code from scratch?

There are a few HTML5 engines, like Construct 2, which are developed for games in general but can easily be adapted to create visual novels.
It's also possible to code from scratch, HTML5-CSS-JS is easy to work with and VNs aren't complex to implement.

[qirien]

I know that you can play Night at the Hospital online, but I'm not sure how they did it - maybe you could ask them?

[leon]

Night at the Hospital is using WebStory Engine.

[C7N]

_lb_ currently works on a Ren'Py to WebStory Engine converter. Not sure where to get the latest version, but you can read more about it here (and maybe ask where to get it): https://iiyo.org/f/discussion/52/renpy- ... -converter

[LVUER]

Game Maker now also have the HMTL5 version, though I don't know how much amount of resources it uses.

[i1abnrk]

Google has official support for python through their app hosting cloud. That gives me a hunch that G+ would be easier. I've looked into fb and I think you'd be needing to write a pretty nifty http servlet that includes the fb code base in the javascript output. Then you just need a server to run it on. You don't need to put your game on facebook to get a ton of functions to post stuff with. You have to write servlets that negotiate user permissions like 'post on my behalf', etc. Just some impressions, I'm not an expert at all.