Visual novel and Point'n'click adventure? How?

[VNQuality]

Is there a way to combine, using RenPy, visual novel and Point'n'click adventure? I liked the trilogy "Deponia", its visual part. The only problem is that I don't understand how to tie one to another.

[Alex]

Here it is an example of such a game http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=20541

[noeinan]

I believe you can do point and click, where you can interact with items in the background, using image maps. I'm not an image map expert myself, but you should be able to find more info on the forums.

[SundownKid]

It is definitely possible, using screens and imagebuttons, or alternatively imagemaps. Making it a person there instead of just a hidden object game would be a bit harder though but still feasible. I'm not sure how to get the person to walk to where you clicked but there could be a way.

[KimiYoriBaka]

the easiest ways to go about using renpy for a point and click adventure would be either to avoid showing the main character (as with games such as myst) or to have the character only move when the player clicks on something (as with games like gabrial knight: the beast within). for the former, you can use either imagemaps (not recommended), imagebuttons or drags to allow the player to click on objects in the screen. for the latter, you can still use the same method, but with a movie or simple animation playing whenever the player attempts to have the main character do something.

it is certainly possible to have a moving character that goes where you click, but it would be excruciating to do without either pygame or user-defined displayables. I'm not exactly sure how much would be different between the two due to my own limited knowledge of programming and renpy's inner workings, but as far as I know, pygame would be more efficient because of not having unnecessary bits attached to each image, while UDD's would make it easier to save, load, play music, and present the visual novel style dialogue.

if you really do want to have a moving on-screen player character, it may be worth looking at adventure game studio instead. just be warned, though, that it only works on windows and it even requires extra files be add to work on 64-bit windows. if you do choose to use renpy for this, you'll need to look up a good pathing algorithm.

[Asceai]

I second the suggestion to make a Myst-like game where you don't see the protagonist and simply interact with stuff on the screen. This style of adventure also has precedence in the VN space with titles like YU-NO following this model, so there's a wealth of examples to follow for how you might want to combine the point and click adventuring with the VN aspects.

[PyTom]

I'll note that while it might be possible to make a point-and-click adventure game with Ren'Py, it isn't going to be Ren'Py's strong suit. Once you get past the myst-like game, you'll start fighting against the assumptions Ren'Py makes. At some point, you'll be better off using an engine dedicated to p-and-c adventures. (IIRC, people have started making original games with SCUMMVM.)

The big benefit of Ren'Py is that, by making assumptions about the sort of game you'll make, it makes creating games easier. When you violate those assumptions too much, you lose those advantages.