Text Box Alternative/Preventing renpy from moving forward

[Avo]

I'm in the middle of writing an rpg combat system for my game, but have hit a bit of a bump in the road.

I need a way to display the normal sort of text you would see in an rpg (with optional buttons for attacking/etc) but am torn in what direction I should go.

Like this:


As it stands currently, this is what I have.

https://streamable.com/cae3l

My issue with my current system is that I'm using a normal screen and am passing dialogue to it via an arg.
I'm having a hard time with this because the label I jump to displays all this information (3 screens, the monster portraits) but will not stay in place due to me not having a dialogue box or menu up on the screen. I'm having to resort to a pause to prevent the game from immediately skipping the label.

If anyone has any sort of idea I would be open to hearing it.

Thanks!

[Avo]

I realize that a majority of what my script is doing is contained within a label.
I'm thinking that if I instead control the combat from within a python environment rather than a label, I can probably keep it from auto-forwarding. This may be more difficult, it may not be.

I've also looked into maybe using pygame but from what I've seen, renpy+pygame isn't a worthwhile adventure. I'll continue to search the lemmasoft forums for how other people have implemented minigames and try to glean some sort of information from there.

Edit:

So I attempted to rewrite the scene with Python. It seems like I'm in the same pickle though.

Code: Select all

label jankyass:
    python:
        renpy.scene()
        battleBG = "images/battle_"+CombatEnvironment+".png"
        renpy.show(battleBG)
        fighting = True
        if fighting:
            renpy.show_screen("MobStatBoxes", Enemy.combatants)
            renpy.show_screen("PartyStatBoxes")
            renpy.show_screen("battleBox", "Status Message")
            if len(Enemy.combatants) == 1:
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[0].portrait, at_list=[centerMob])
            if len(Enemy.combatants) == 2:
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[0].portrait, at_list=[leftMobDouble])
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[1].portrait, at_list=[rightMobDouble])
            if len(Enemy.combatants) == 3:
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[0].portrait, at_list=[leftMob])
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[1].portrait, at_list=[centerMob])
                renpy.show(Enemy.combatants[2].portrait, at_list=[rightMob])
            renpy.pause(delay=10)

If I don't include a pause, the scene goes away. I also have this blank text box and I'm not sure what is calling it.

https://streamable.com/hof7r

I'm wanting to let the user control the game flow from their actions with textbuttons within the battleBox, but I can't do that if the game doesn't stay still.

[kivik]

You should be able to achieve this by calling your screen that receives input instead of showing it. When you call a screen it waits for an interaction automatically based on the input received on the screen > so you can put it in a loop, call the screen, process the _return value to decide what to do (calling a different screen for example when player chooses attack, to show the targets).

Here's the documentation for it: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens.html#call-screen

I have to head off to work now so can't post sample code, but hopefully you can figure something out meanwhile.

[Avo]

Hey, thanks kivik! I'm sure I haven't solved all the problems that I'm going to have with this, but calling the screen worked and I can control flow with textbuttons now!

Thanks so much! I can't wait to get home to work on this some more!

https://i.imgur.com/AYNRjpE.png