Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

Discuss how to use the Ren'Py engine to create visual novels and story-based games. New releases are announced in this section.
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PyTom
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Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#1 Post by PyTom »

So, remember how 6.99.13 was supposed to be the last release before Ren'Py 7? Well, a funny thing happened - after a very productive month or two, we have Ren'Py 6.99.14 with many improvements.

As an important note, the first time you open a game in 6.99.14, it will open much slower as Ren'Py compiles all the Python expressions it encounters. The game will open faster the second and later times it is run, and will run faster once it is open.

Some of the improvements are:
  • The performance of Ren'Py has been improved in multiple ways, and the apparent responsiveness has been improved even more.
  • A new multiple character dialogue system makes it possible for multiple characters to display dialogue on the screen at once.
  • A new GUI preference system works with the new GUI to make it easier to create preferences that customize the look of the Ren'Py GUI.
  • A new tooltip system makes it easier to write tooltips.
  • Ren'Py now supports TLS on multiple platforms, making it possible to use HTTPS to connect to servers to transfer game data.
This release also fixes issues with movie playback and android apps displaying a black screen, along with other improvements mentioned in the changelog.

Downloads of 6.99.14 can be found at:

https://www.renpy.org/release/6.99.14

A full list of changes to Ren'Py can be found at:

https://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/changelog.html

A list of changes that may require you to update your game can be found at:

https://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/incompatible.html

Please also check out the credits and sponsor list.
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#2 Post by jack_norton »

Just curious, did you do any benchmarks (assuming it's possible) about the speed improvements over the old version?
That's the thing I am more interested into (especially on mobile) :)
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#3 Post by ComputerArt.Club »

Thanks again for all your hard work Pytom! Thanks for fixing the issue with Android, it really improved the experience with my games. My elementary school Computer Art Club students are nearly finished their Renpy game too!

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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#4 Post by PyTom »

jack_norton wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 4:34 am Just curious, did you do any benchmarks (assuming it's possible) about the speed improvements over the old version?
That's the thing I am more interested into (especially on mobile) :)
The answer is yes, of course. There's a new profiling framework I added for my own use that guided much of my work. It's hard to to give precise numbers, but my guess is that this version might be about 30% faster for the full click cycle - from when you click, to when the next frame is displayed. It'll vary quite a bit from game to game, and as I work towards Ren'Py 4k (my 2018 focus, once 7 is out), it'll get faster still.

There's still alot of work to be done, of course, so it'll vary from game to game. Do you use ConditionSwitch alot? There's going to be a big speedup. Do you fill the screen with text? It'll be faster, than before, but not as much.

I've actually focused more on apparent speed (minimizing frame skips), compared to actual speed. And while there's been a lot of work to improve actual performance, which is always a win, this means things like delaying event processing until a frame has been drawn, to maximize the time Ren'Py has to respond without a skip. And in the case where Ren'Py is forced to skip (like an unpredicted image load), we even do that better. Previously, we would do.

(draw) (skip) (skip) (skip) (draw) (draw) (draw) (draw)

That is, we'd skip frames in the middle of, say, a dissolve, if we got behind. Now, we move those skips to before the first frame is drawn, so we're likely to skip drawing a static screen:

(skip) (skip) (skip) (draw) (draw) (draw) (draw) (draw)

This means we'll draw all the frames of the dissolve, which looks much nicer.

Lastly, you can lock a game to 30fps, which doubles the time per frame. (Or even make this a preference the player can set, which will probably keep you off the s-itlist on Steam.)

Hopefully, people can try this and give me some feedback, but I think it should be much better, and I've identified a number of ways I want to improve Ren'Py in future releases.
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#5 Post by jack_norton »

Cool thanks for the explanation! As soon as my main connection works again I'll try it (now it's impossible for me to download it lol).
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#6 Post by Geckos »

Heyas!
New stuff sounds great. I tried poking around various places to try to get my hands on "A new multiple character dialogue system makes it possible for multiple characters to display dialogue on the screen at once." some of that but so far no luck. Is there any sort of documentation/a thread about it? I'm dying to play with multiple speech bubbles :D
Hope you're having a great weekend, and thanks so much for Ren'Py! It's really a fabulous engine.
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#7 Post by AXYPB »

Version 6.99.14.3081 seems to have altered the behavior of the quick menu in regard to priority and the window show and window hide statements. I use a custom quick menu with an imagemap, and in the previous version, when the text window is shown or hidden, the quick menu inherits the show and hide transitions. However, in the current prerelease, the quick menu is now shown under the say screen, and the on show and on hide statements in the code for the say screen does not take effect, which allows the quick menu to display when the say screen has been hidden.
Say screen and quick menu in version 6.99.13.
Say screen and quick menu in version 6.99.13.
Version 6.99.14.3081 changes the order in which these screens are placed.
Version 6.99.14.3081 changes the order in which these screens are placed.
The quick menu remains on screen after the text window is hidden.
The quick menu remains on screen after the text window is hidden.

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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#8 Post by CalixtheGreat »

Just want to ask if I update my Ren'Py. Do I also need to download again a new SDK?

Sorry if it's a dumb question haha
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#9 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

Thanks, PyTom, this is awesome. Thanks for listening to my moaning about response times! The AC power check is an ingenious solution.

Can't wait to really dig into this release. At this point I think you've solved every quibble I've had about the engine. You're the best - thanks for all the hard work. :D

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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#10 Post by PyTom »

LateWhiteRabbit wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:48 am Thanks, PyTom, this is awesome. Thanks for listening to my moaning about response times! The AC power check is an ingenious solution.
When you got me, you got me. And you actually got me out of a bit of a funk. With 6.99.13, I was having trouble thinking of where Ren'Py should go after 7.0 - and after looking into performance issues, the road map to Ren'Py 4k (more of a branding name than an actual version) is clear.

Anyway, just posted another prerelease. Here's the changes.

6.99.14.3105)

Ren'Py once again runs on older versions of macOS that don't have the getentropy function.

The garbage collector is now given a chance to run once per interaction, and has a chance to collect all generations when it runs. This should prevent Ren'Py from leaking memory and crashing if, for example, the player is skipping through a game. I haven't seen any GC pauses, but if you see them, please consider setting config.manage_gc to False and determining if the situation if the game performs better or worse.

Variable munging now works inside string interpolations. (When a variable has a name that begins with __, like __foo, it is given a new file-specific name everywhere it's used. This now works with string interpolations.)

Ren'Py now detects if a displayable handles the hide event, and only processes it if it does. This replaces config.zap_transients from the prior prerelease. Basically, compared to 6.99.13 we now do a lot less work if a screen or transform doesn't handle the "hide" event, and compared to the previous prerelease we should get things correct if it does.

Loading a game no longer changes the value of the _return variable.

The image location picker now supports webps, and lets you type to filter the images being shown.

Various type errors caused by text inside a viewport have been fixed.

Various problems with the interactive director have been fixed.
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#11 Post by vollschauer »

I have now some wired error messages (not happen with 6.99.13). See latest comment here:
https://github.com/renpy/renpy/commit/a ... 0ba356f5a0
Last edited by vollschauer on Sat Jan 06, 2018 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#12 Post by PyTom »

Just landed a fix.
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#13 Post by vollschauer »

I can't confirm that 6.99.14 is running very nice in general for me, I experience a lot of transition stuttering when switching menus, also sound (button hover_sound/selected_hover_sound) stuttering. And something is really buggy with showing the correct bg when switching between screens. Kinda similar what
AXYPB has reported.

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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#14 Post by PyTom »

I'll need some examples of stuttering, with specific instructions on how to reproduce it, in the new prerelease. Speaking of which...

6.99.14.3113)

There's a fairly major change here, which is that the image cache now is pruned at least once per interaction. In previous prereleases, skipping and other things that advance quickly through the game could prevent the cache from being pruned, leading to unbounded growth.

There's also an extension to munging, where it now works in strings. (Munging is a feature where names beginning with __ get a file-specific prefix automatically prepended, based on the script file it's in. So __foo will be replace with something like __m1_a_foo in a.rpy and __m1_b_foo in b.rpy. This now works in strings as well as Ren'Py/Python script.)
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Re: Ren'Py 6.99.14 Prereleased

#15 Post by ComputerArt.Club »

Geckos wrote: Sun Dec 24, 2017 5:49 am Heyas!
Is there any sort of documentation/a thread about it? I'm dying to play with multiple speech bubbles :D
If you are a supporter of PyTom on patreon there is some documentation there. :)
Otherwise I think it will be public in just less than three months.
Not sure if there is more info elsewhere

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