Ren'Py 7.4.0 Released

[PyTom]

I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 7.4.0, the product of over a year of development, and one of the biggest releases of Ren'Py to date. This release focuses on updating Ren'Py's internals so that Ren'Py is ready for its next 15 years.

Some of the bigger changes are:

• A new model-based renderer. While this is opt-in for the moment, it opens the way to features that creators have been requesting for a long time, such as being able to recolor displayables, blurring the screen, and using Live2D to animate sprites. The model-based renderer is extensible with shaders, allowing for custom effects.
• A new Python 3 compatibility mode has been added, to pave the way for Python 3 support in the next release. This mode changes the ways in which Ren'Py runs, to allow you to begin porting your game before full Python 3 comes out in Ren'Py 8.0.
• Ren'Py's build system has been modernized, and the libraries underlying it have been updated. This allows 64-bit Windows to be supported.
• The web platform has been updated, to allow for the incremental download of games.

This release also raises the minimum requirements to run a Ren'Py game. It is now required that a user's computer have OpenGL 2, DirectX 9, OpenGL ES 2, or WebGL to run Ren'Py. The model-based renderer requires OpenGL ES 3 or WebGL 2.

With these changes, there have been a few deprecations. Ren'Py no longer runs on Windows XP. The 32-bit armv7l platform has been removed on iOS, as this platform hasn't been supported by Apple for several years. The Editra text editor has been removed, as it hasn't been supported for quite some time, and wasn't compatible with the new build system.

It's my hope that this release will enable creators to take on projects they couldn't before, and will provide a solid basis for the next releases of Ren'Py.


Downloads of 7.4.0 can be found at:

https://www.renpy.org/release/7.4.0

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

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

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

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

Please also check out the credits and sponsor list.

[Reddy]

Thank you for 7.4.0, the features are amazing. But mac version crashes on start for me, nightlies do that as well. I'm on MacOS 10.11.6. Release 7.3.5 works fine. I'm getting this:

Code: Select all

Dyld Error Message:
Symbol not found: _getentropy
Referenced from: /Users/USER/Documents/*/renpy.app/Contents/MacOS/librenpython.dylib
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

[xavimat]

I'm trying to understand the incompatible change about side images.

Ren'Py will now only show side images if with at least one attribute in addition to the image tag.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/incompat ... atible-7-4

So I did a few tests.
First block of tests with a defined side image without attributes (IIUIC, that should be wrong). It usually wins

Code: Select all

define e = Character("Eileen", image="eileen")

image side eileen = Solid("#ff0", xysize=(100,100))  # yellow
image side eileen normal = Solid("#00f", xysize=(100,100))  # blue
image side eileen happy = Solid("#fcc", xysize=(100,100))  # pink

label start1:  # TEST 1
    e happy "yellow, it should be pink"
    e "yellow"
    return

label start2:  # TEST 2
    e "yellow"
    e happy "pink"
    return

label start3:  # TEST 3
    e normal "yellow, it should be blue"
    e "yellow"
    e happy "pink"
    return

label start4:  # TEST 4
    e happy "yellow, it should be pink"
    e normal "blue"
    return

Next, I don't define a side image without attributes. First line doesn't show any side image, even if it's expected.

Code: Select all

define e = Character("Eileen", image="eileen")

image side eileen normal = Solid("#00f", xysize=(100,100))  # blue
image side eileen happy = Solid("#fcc", xysize=(100,100))  # pink

label start5:  # TEST 5
    e happy "No side image, it should be pink"
    e "No side image"
    return

label start6:  # TEST 6
    e "No side image"
    e happy "pink"
    return

label start7:  # TEST 7
    e normal "No side image, it should be blue"
    e "No side image"
    e happy "pink"
    return

label start:  # TEST 8
    e happy "No side image, it should be pink"
    e normal "blue"
    return

Am I missing something?

[PyTom]

Thank you for 7.4.0, the features are amazing. But mac version crashes on start for me, nightlies do that as well. I'm on MacOS 10.11.6. Release 7.3.5 works fine. I'm getting this:

Code: Select all

Dyld Error Message:
Symbol not found: _getentropy
Referenced from: /Users/USER/Documents/*/renpy.app/Contents/MacOS/librenpython.dylib
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

This should be fixed in the next nightly, and 7.4.1.

[PyTom]

Just so people are aware, I'm working on getting Ren'Py 7.4.1 out sometime in the next few days.

Actually making the release revealed that there are a few issues here that affect some, but not all people, which are issues that are hard to test for. (For example, issues that manifest with specific combinations of hardware and game data, like a hard crash that occurred on a computer with SSE3 when playing a movie that wasn't a multiple of 8 pixels in width.) Now that I've been getting reports of these issues, I'm working to address their reports and make the first point release.

[felsenstern]

I noticed that 7.4.0 is growing all their window sizes after every restart when using the advanced scaling setting in Windows 10. In my case and I have a scaling setting of 150% on a 4k screen. RenPy's physical window size looked like to grow by these additional 50% after every restart until it filled the entire screen. These happened to both the game-window and the launcher window.

Also when I switched back to 7.3.5 all window sizes stayed the same even after deleting the RenPy prefs in appdata, so it would be nice to know where RenPy saves it's real prefs since apparently deleting the prefs in appdata changes nothing. In the end I was able to reset the launcher window size in 7.3.5 by disabling and re-enabling the Hardware rendering in the Launcher prefs.

Hope this helps to hunt down this bug. And again, it would also be nice to know where the launcher is saving it's prefs.

[solarProtag]

I'm a little confused how the python 2/3 compatibility mode works, how exactly do you set it up and what can be used with it?

[r3dhummingbird]

Hi there, I've run into a problem where pythonw crashes when I import a third-party Python 2 library. The import works fine for Ren'Py 7.3.5, so I suspect this is related to the Python 2/3 compatibility feature. A more detailed description of my issue is in this forum post: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61049. Any comment is appreciated!

[PyTom]

r3dhummingbird >>> Importing binary modules like that isn't something that's supported. I'm surprised it ever worked. What you probably want to do is to have Ren'Py use the subprocess module to talk to your other program.

Fundamentally, the problem is because Ren'Py 7.3.5's Python was compiled using MSVC, and 7.4.0's is cross-compiled using mingw64. This is important - it makes producing releases of Ren'Py something anyone can do, without a quartet of computers or virtual machines. but it does mean that binary modules would have to be compiled using mingw64.