Ren'Py 5.6.3 Released

[PyTom]

I'm pleased to announce the release of Ren'Py 5.6.3 "Demo Party". This release includes a new demo-game, intended to be somewhat more educational then the old one. It also includes new features, experience improvements, and bug fixes.

Downloads and a full release announcement can be found at:

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/releases/5.6.3

[mikey]

Works fine with me, although I haven't tested all options exhaustively

I have to say this is exactly how I think the demo game should be. Simple, effective and clean - easily expandable etc. Sure, there's no underlaying story, but that doesn't matter, as it's a demonstration of features.

What it would need (for the 6-series anyway) are some new backgrounds, so it really looks fresh.

In addition to that, I would strongly consider some pre-defined color themes for the demo game that you could perhaps switch between in the options menu (blue-default, red, green, yellow, dark etc.). Developers could assign a default theme for their game and disable others. This would help a lot, IMO, especially for low-budget productions or people who don't want to mess around with menu customization and their game doesn't go well with the blue theme.

So backgrounds and color schemes are my visual suggestions for the future.

[PyTom]

What it would need (for the 6-series anyway) are some new backgrounds, so it really looks fresh.

Yes, I'm hoping to get some backgrounds, some better theme music, etc... This mostly depends on people contributing it to me.

In addition to that, I would strongly consider some pre-defined color themes for the demo game that you could perhaps switch between in the options menu (blue-default, red, green, yellow, dark etc.). Developers could assign a default theme for their game and disable others. This would help a lot, IMO, especially for low-budget productions or people who don't want to mess around with menu customization and their game doesn't go well with the blue theme.

Again, this is an area where I have high hopes for user contributions. Coming up with a color scheme should be fairly easy, for someone (not me) with even a modicum of design sense.

Another eventual goal, before 6.0, is to put together a simple game, and then to have a tutorial that teaches people how to make that simple game from scratch. But we'll also need new art for that.

My own plans for the next release are more code-oriented... better music playback support, and maybe (just maybe) something involving non-rectangular buttons, among other ideas.

[DaFool]

Finally, NVL mode and O3-style subtitles demonstrated!

The separated scripts and line-by-line reference are a nice touch and really eases the learning curve.

One thing though, most NVL modes have a gap around the text box, and the textbox usually has a simple border besides being just a plain rectangle. See screenshots of FSN posted somewhere in this forum. But that's just a cosmetic thing.

I agree about different color and button themes. So far we just have blue roundrect and plain black and gray text, did I miss anything else?

The more themes, the better. Although for my purposes, black white and gray suffices. I honestly don't know how other color schemes would match, since it depends on the overall design of the game (backgrounds + character art). Black, and to a lesser extent blue, tend to match well no matter the style. But maybe having a green, red and yellow roundrect theme adds just a little bit more of variety?

Don't worry about the new backgrounds, I'm working on it and will be done by the end of the year. I estimate around 6 new pieces set in autumn.

Just wondering about the new demo music, is the music generator you used good for only classical (harpsichord) themes, or is it more powerful?

Thanks.

[PyTom]

IIRC, right now we have the default blue roundrect, and we also have a roundrect_red. Recoloration of the roundrect theme is fairly easy, but I think it would also be nice to have some non-roundrect themes, as people think them up.

NVL-mode supports borders and spacing fairly easily, even if the demo doesn't use that support.

The music was created by going to:

http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/

randomly generating a piece, and then using timidity to turn it from midi into ogg format. I regard the mozart piece as basically temporary until an original composition shows up... but it's reasonable, and if I get to annoyed with it, I can always generate a new one and replace it.

[mikey]

I've gone through it and it's magnificent, cleanest demo ever, well sorted and probaby easy to update/add new features to (never underestimate that). I wouldn't really know under which category to look for some of the effects, whether they are transitions or animations, but I don't mind for now, it may get a bit more complicated in the future - the main distinction would probably be either by the effect they cause (director's side) or by the function (programmer's side) they use.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've gone through the Ren'Py demo and I haven't been following all of the threads too closely, so now I just went from feature to feature like a little boy, pressing all the buttons - I was really inspired - wanted to try this and that, there are really so many options, your imagination runs wild.

Great job. There's more though - I think this explanatory style is just perfect and doesn't force a personality onto Eileen, so she's great as ever. No need for thought-out settings or anything. A set of nice BGs and you're there. And... the dev shortcut to the Scite editor is completely ingenious. Maybe it was in the previous versions, haven't noticed it, but really, it's excellent.

I would also host the Utsukushii Effects demo on the Ren'Py page - maybe we could have something like a "downloadables/add-ons" section or something, much like Blade has with their minigames. Also, maybe it would be nice to mark the released games which are "open", unobfuscated, so people can learn from them (MW, CD and LS?). Or at lest have links to them on that page.

Overall, I've spent an hour at work playing this new version, it's so clean, so fast, so polished, just great. Also, it's great to see that the games and projects which have been going on contributed to the engine in such a way. Add to that the potential of fan contribution to the Cookbook or similar, and the sky is the limit. There's probably not enough user content just now, but I think it should be promoted as good as it can, because it's the projects that fuel the engine... (^_^ that came out of nowhere, the metaphore).

Congratulations on this release.

[DaFool]

Wait, is there something I'm missing... where's Utsukushii Effects? I thought at first it was U-Planet, but it isn't, isn't it?

EDIT: Found it using search. It's a demonstration program using U-P's materials, so while I have seen the effects before, this explains it.

Also, besides custom themes, we could use more default fonts, especially less blocky and more script-like fonts. Maybe there's more to it that's required in order to redistribute it in an engine, but I barely have experience searching for fonts (as compared to just trying them out).

Another thing, is there already a shaky camera effect? You know, the feeling you get while watching an amateur film? It isn't a transition like v-punch or h-punch, but something that must persist for the duration of a scene. It doesn't have to affect the text nor textbox, just a background and/or sprite.

[monele]

U-Effects kinda disappeared in the thread list XD... Here it is :

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 3898#13898

I'm flattered it's mentioned in the demo ^.^.
I tried the new version but couldn't see everything. It look very neat overall though... very pro . The script+line info in the corner is a great thing o_O

[DaFool]

Well, yeah, I bet a significant portion of "user contribution" to new Ren'Py features is inspired by monele's projects!

Hmmm, about the new simple game, we can aim for a 2nd Anniversary release of Moonlight Walks (1.25.2007) which is essentially the 2nd anniversary of Ren'Py (considering no Ren'Py games were made prior to MW). We can make it coincide with the christening of Ren'Py 6.0.0.

Name for simple game? Autumn Walks (lol) (although it'll be winter by then)

[PyTom]

Well, yeah, I bet a significant portion of "user contribution" to new Ren'Py features is inspired by monele's projects!

Monele does tend to inspire quite a few new features. For example, all of the RLE functionality can trace its inspiration back to the UP demo.

Moonlight walks is way too long to be the simple game I want to ship with the demo. I'm thinking two or three dozen screens, at most.

(I'll probably wind up doing an update to MW around the second anniversary, but that's unrelated.)

[PyTom]

I would think they're still somewhat sensitive about Blade on wikipedia. IIRC, at one point they had to block a user named "Curiousfactory" for spamming links to Blade to several articles.

(Again IIRC, Haeleth and Shii were both involved in cleaning that up.)

[Matt_D]

tutorial is very cool been picking up handy things like show expressions and the new novel mode setup is dandy.

Minor gripe though
first is a standardization
dissolve
Pause
they're both manipulators for images but one starts with a lower case character and the other with an uppercase.

And a quick note in the nvl_mode.rpy it says to use
# $ narrator = NVLCharacter(None)
but that don't seem to work
$ narrator = NVLCharacter(" ", who_suffix="")
does.

Other then that I'm a happy bunny (and even with that I'm a happy bunny)

[DaFool]

Moonlight walks is way too long to be the simple game I want to ship with the demo. I'm thinking two or three dozen screens, at most.

(I'll probably wind up doing an update to MW around the second anniversary, but that's unrelated.)

What sort of update to MW?

I didn't mean to say that the simple game had to be on par (in terms of gameplay or length) with MW, just that it would give a nod to MW while standing on its own.

Because as far as a simple game goes, both Lakeside Sunset and Colorless Day already demonstrate things well.

Maybe it's a simple conventional ren'ai game? If you have a solid idea already about its overall structure, then we can better envision the particular scenes (and hence, BGs).

Minor gripe though
first is a standardization
dissolve
Pause
they're both manipulators for images but one starts with a lower case character and the other with an uppercase.

dissolve = Dissolve(#) where # is I think default 1 sec? It's just that using the lowercase became all too common.

EDIT:

Code: Select all

init:
    $ dissolve = Dissolve(0.5)

[PyTom]

And, I've just made it offical. Ren'Py 5.6.3 is out.

[PyTom]

Okay, I've noticed some problems with 5.6.3 running on Linux. So I ask people hold of releases with it until I fix those problems... I'll try to do so on Wednesday.

Edit: Never mind. The problem is with my system, not with Ren'Py.