How to skip the menu *once*

[thelastsecret]

How can I skip the main menu depending on whether a certain (persistent) variable is set?
(More precisely, I need to skip the main menu only the first time the player plays the game.)

I know about

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label main_menu:
    return

But this skips the game always and I don't see any way to put this into an IF construction...

A naive jump start from the splashscreen also doesn't quite work: for some mysterious reasons the quick menu is then not displayed (even if I open that screen by adding a show screen command), so it looks like there is some magic going on in the background at the start of the game that should not be entirely bypassed for best results.

Reason why I need this: At the beginning of my game when started the first time a short intro in how to play the game is provided. Now if the game is started the first time and the player ends up in the main menu, he might not start immediately (and get the intro). Instead, at least one test player started some extra first and then didn't know how to use it and got stuck. (You know, people can even be stuck in a VN when all they had to do would be to press space or mouse click to continue... ) If the first time they launched the game they would immediately end up starting the game (without menu first), that problem would be solved.

[m_from_space]

So the first time a player starts your game, you want him to go play a demo/tutorial, but after every other start the normal game menu should get shown?

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# this label is called after the game loads, but before the main menu shows
label splashscreen:
    if persistent.first_time is None:
        $ persistent.first_time = True
        # when the game tutorial returns, we end up here again
        call game_tutorial
    # returning from the splashscreen will call the main menu
    return

[thelastsecret]

Thank you, but unfortunately, it's not that easy: I want the game to start directly (the first time), not just have it call a tutorial there. (The tutorial is integrated into the game start, so I don't want to make it "stand alone".)

[Ocelot]

Ok, a little bit of using undocumented RenPy internals:

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label main_menu:
    if not persistent.tutorial_finished: # Do not forget to set it to True after finishing tutorial
        return # Or Start(something) or something else
    else:
        # That's the actual internal label responsible for showing main menu. 
        # Surprisingly, it does not start with underscore or present in reserved names section in documentation
        jump expression "main_menu_screen" 

[thelastsecret]

Wow! Thank you very much! That was some Voodoo-Ren'py-Magic, but it works like a charm.