The whole game in 1 script.rpy?

[Suro]

Hello there!

I recently came across Ren'Py, after successfully finishing NaNoWriMo and I want to get to know it better in this year.

While digging around in the tutorials and on youtube, I always only managed to see small test-projects being shown, with mostly 2 characters going back and forth. When realizing this, I started to wonder how one would tackle a Vn with multiple characters, a couple of dozen scenes and round about 50k words.

In unity I am somewhat used to the idea of having to split the game (including cutscenes, logic and models) into several scenes. Is this something I should/can do in Ren'Py as well, or do I write the whole game, from the first sentence till the "The End" into this single script.py?

I already tried to find the answer for this, but as with every new program, I didn't really know what I was supposed to search for.
Hopefully you can help me with that!

Cheers!

[vollschauer]

The short answer would be yes, you can put your whole story into the "script.py" BUT you can also have multiple files. So it's totally up to you....

[Suro]

The short answer would be yes, you can put your whole story into the "script.py" BUT you can also have multiple files. So it's totally up to you....

Sounds good!
I'll just assume that I can rename script.rpy into anything I need (day01.rpy, day02.rpy, etc), as long as I keep that in mind when jumping around from 1 script to another?

[trooper6]

Script must keep the name script. All you new files can have new names, day01.rpy for example. Also, keep the start label in the script.rpy file.

And just so you know how it works, Ren'py treats all rpy files as one big file...so make as many as you like.

[Imperf3kt]

I have a couple of projects going (some abandoned)
Since I don't use the start label, I usually start like this in script.rpy

Code: Select all

# Game Start ## Not used

label start:
return

I define where to start from, from within the main menu.
You still need the start label, but thats all you need. It doesn't need to contain anything. you can make as many files as you want, as stated by others.

[PyTom]

I don't think you need the start label for anything. If Ren'Py is calling it for some reason, it means some code is running in the main menu context and then returning, which is probably the sign of worse problems happening.