New Features Update --- 2004-08-29

[PyTom]

Two new features to report, one easy and one hard.

The easy feature is the ability to change the title of the window that the game runs in, when it's not running in fullscreen mode. One can write code like:

Code: Select all

init:
    $ config.window_title = 'Homestay'

And it will change the window title.

The second feature is more complicated. It's a style system that lets you change the look of all text, windows, and buttons that are displayed by the program. (Within reason.)
For example, one can change the background color of all the say windows displaying a particular character's dialogue.

The style system is fairly complicated by quite powerful. It can also be ignored by people who like the default look of the games.

I'm now using a different default font for the games. I'm using Vera Sans because FreeSans had some serious problems on Windows. Unfortunately, Vera only supports Latin-1, while Ren'Py supports unicode. If anyone knows where to get a good-looking font that supports unicode, let me know. I have a demo in which characters speak English, Japanese, and Russian (with the appropriate characters), but it doesn't work with the new font.

Anyway, more after I get back to New York.

[Tyler]

Keep up the good work! Ren'py is the best ren'ai engine ever.

[rioka]

Whoo, good going PyTom. That style system will definitely come in handy. Anyways, I have a feature request. How about just showing scenes without the text boxes? You know, for nice cinema-like credits? =)

[PyTom]

As in, showing a scene and then waiting for the user to click to get to the next thing?

Clickity... Clickity... Testity... Done!

I decided that since this is a fairly specialized feature, it's best to expose it as a python function rather than an Ren'Py statement. So one can now write:

Code: Select all

$ renpy.pause()

And it will pause until the user clicks the left mouse, or hits the enter or space keys. You can use this in conjunction with the show and scene statements to handle displays.

I'll probably add an optional timeout to pause at sometime in the future.

In other news, I now have a working load/save interface, which supports multiple save slots, and even a thumbnail associated with each slot. I'll probably get predictive loading and animations up and running, and then I'll cut a new release.

[rioka]

Clickity... Clickity... Testity... Done!

rofl - The game maker's fairy godfather to the rescue! lol XD
Thanks for adding it. I can't wait to try out the new improved version.