Help Screen

[PyTom]

Lemma points out to me privately that a good idea for Ren'Py would be to have an in-game help screen. Right now, there's no really good way for a new player to learn about some of the features of Ren'Py games. And I think that's right... how would people know that tab toggles skipping, for example, or s takes a screenshot?

What I'm thinking of is adding a new Help option to the main and game menus. When clicked, it will bring up a frame with help information. It can also be invoked by hitting f1... and whatever the standard help binding for the mac is. (Command-? ?)

The help option would look for help.txt in the game directory, and display that to the user in a big frame. (Actually, there should be a config variable that sets the help file, so it's easy to localize.)

One question is where the Help option should be placed on the various menus. Right now, I'm thinking:

Start Game
Continue Game
Preferences
Help
Quit

and

Return
Preferences
Save Game
Load Game
Main Menu
Help
Quit

but I can think of other placements... putting Help before main menu seems appealing. Any thoughts?

(Also, I'm considering changing "Continue Game" on the main menu to "Load Game", to match the game menu. It's weird to have two names for the same thing.)

[Aenakume]

... how would people know that ... s takes a screenshot?

Well, shit, i coulda used that info before now! ^_^;

One question is where the Help option should be placed on the various menus.

Where you have it - right above "Quit" - is perfect i think. It's not somethin you're gonna be using often, so keeping it out of the way, stuffed down at the bottom of the list, is perfect. Burying it in the middle of menus (like putting it before "Main Menu") also makes it harder to spot - and as a help button it should be easy to spot. The last thing on the list (except for quit) is hard to miss.

The help option would look for help.txt in the game directory, and display that to the user in a big frame. (Actually, there should be a config variable that sets the help file, so it's easy to localize.)

Could you make it possible to either load a text file or call a custom label? Or, possibly, load some kind of marked up text? Some help info might be better suited to having images, or pages/tabs, and it would be nice to be able to load that if you want to.

(Also, I'm considering changing "Continue Game" on the main menu to "Load Game", to match the game menu. It's weird to have two names for the same thing.)

(And more work for translating.)

[Adorya]

Easiest and fastest way would be to put a help button that open the ren'py's readme/documentation file

The problem I can see with mouse hover help windows "?" like is that it's a huge task to point to every feature/function, and after people would have tasted it in the main default screen they would try/want to do that for the demo and even for every games.

[Formedras]

Easiest and fastest way would be to put a help button that open the ren'py's readme/documentation file

If I remember correctly, 6.7.1 already introduced a "Documentation" button that is supposed to open up the built-in offline docs. (I say "if I remember" because I still use 6.7.0 in order to keep using SciTE.)

[PyTom]

I'm kinda liking the idea of html-based help, rather than trying to render it all in Ren'Py.

Right now, Ren'Py doesn't really support large amounts of text in the game or main menus. There aren't styles for it, and the colors chosen by the theme don't really lend themselves to huge amounts of text. By launching a web browser, we get around this nicely. It also lets the user keep the help open while they're in the game, which could be a plus.

[Aenakume]

I'm kinda liking the idea of html-based help, rather than trying to render it all in Ren'Py.

Right now, Ren'Py doesn't really support large amounts of text in the game or main menus. There aren't styles for it, and the colors chosen by the theme don't really lend themselves to huge amounts of text. By launching a web browser, we get around this nicely. It also lets the user keep the help open while they're in the game, which could be a plus.

Yes, even better.

You could make the standard compile distribution include a default help.html which gets opened unless the developer has overriden this some way (to provide an alternate html help file, or something within the game itself if they want to put the time and effort into that).

[papillon]

By launching a web browser, we get around this nicely. It also lets the user keep the help open while they're in the game, which could be a plus.

But what about when people are playing in full-screen?

(As I recall, for Summer Session we wrote up a super-quick set of instructions and popped them when the player started the game for the first time. Although I didn't know about the s-for-screenshot either, we obviously left quite a lot out...)

[PyTom]

You could make the standard compile distribution include a default help.html which gets opened unless the developer has overriden this some way (to provide an alternate html help file, or something within the game itself if they want to put the time and effort into that).

I was thinking I'd include a default html file with the template game. It would be copied into new projects by default.

But what about when people are playing in full-screen?

I could make Ren'Py pop them out of fullscreen when they click help. The help would explain how to go back to fullscreen mode.

[jack_norton]

But what about when people are playing in full-screen?

I could make Ren'Py pop them out of fullscreen when they click help. The help would explain how to go back to fullscreen mode.

In Heileen I use openURL to open buy page when user click on the button, and if is fullscreen the browser window become the active one, so I think is already the default behaviour.

[PyTom]

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Help

has some draft help. Anyone want to have a go at editing it into something more usable by unskilled users?

[N0UGHTS]

I've changed things a bit. Hopefully it's more "layman-friendly" now.

[Jake]

I went through and changed the tense of some of the explanations so they were all consistent (e.g. "Advances through..." instead of "Advance through...") and some minor grammar changes...


One other thing - while there are some arguments that the word 'gameplay' shouldn't be used at all, even if one accepts it (and it seems sensible to, given widespread usage) it's generally used to refer to mechanics rather than the act of playing the game itself, which is why I changed "Return to gameplay" back to "Return to game".

[Adorya]

Main Menu
Returns to the main menu, ending the current game.

Is it ok to not add the fact that game will not be saved on main menu return or is it redundant with its own confirmation warning box?

[monele]

Can there be a small "keyboard shortcuts" popup in-game and then a link to external documentation? I don't really like games that pop me out of fullscreen when I just want to remember what's the key for this or that ^^; (and I usually don't like any program opening a browser for some readme or help but I see how convenient it can be here so I can live with that ^^)

[papillon]

Can there be a small "keyboard shortcuts" popup in-game and then a link to external documentation? I don't really like games that pop me out of fullscreen when I just want to remember what's the key for this or that ^^; (and I usually don't like any program opening a browser for some readme or help but I see how convenient it can be here so I can live with that ^^)

This.

I'd rather not break people out of game if I can help it. A very small in-game help with options for a 'Manual' which is much more detailed would be my preference.