Loading new images from disk while game is running

[Nephthys]

In brief, is there any workaround that would allow me to load a new image via Python after init?

I am downloading new image files while the game is running, and would like to display them as background/character images. However, I cannot run renpy.image outside of init. I've tried using a DynamicImage, but even then it doesn't seem like it will load any image file that did not exist when the game started? Any new images files that I try to load with the DynamicImage wildcard come back as 'could not find image'.

The only thing that has kind of worked is to have a template image created, declare that image in the init and then overwrite it during gameplay. The file only seems to load once show is called, and then it loads the newly downloaded image. However this only works once, as the image after that seems to reside in memory and does not get reloaded even if the file on disk is replaced again and show called afterwards.

Is there anything I can do to find and display new images after the game has started?

[Imperf3kt]

I haven't yet worked out how to use the images / text on any screen other than news() yet, but there's viewtopic.php?f=8&t=65185&p=554749&hilit=News#p554749
And alternatively viewtopic.php?f=51&t=65233&p=554917&hilit=News#p554915

[Andredron]

I haven't yet worked out how to use the images / text on any screen other than news() yet, but there's viewtopic.php?f=8&t=65185&p=554749&hilit=News#p554749
And alternatively viewtopic.php?f=51&t=65233&p=554917&hilit=News#p554915

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=58678

As an option, make such a gallery of screenshots ...

But your version is more advanced

[enaielei]

How about saving/downloading the image file in the config.savedir or %appdata% path, then load it as a path file?

Code: Select all

init python:
  APPDATA = config.savedir.replace("\\", "/")

screen test():
  add "{}/test.png".format(APPDATA)

[Nephthys]

Thank you! The news module in particular is a great example - im.Data() is a function I hadn't seen before, and that makes some of what I'm doing a lot easier.

I'm starting to understand the different ways in which images are handled better. So I guess the main issue I'm having now is - I can make a displayable using im.Data(), but I still don't see how I can show that displayable in the way that I want.

renpy.show() needs an image string, which I can only get via renpy.image, which takes a displayable as an input, but renpy.image can only be run on init.

Is there any easy way to show a displayable without calling renpy.image? I have a displayable, I want to display it as the background image, but I don't understand what the easiest way to show a new background would be without having to do renpy.image. The news example uses a screen, but I don't understand how that bypasses the neeed for renpy.show/renpy.image?

[Nephthys]

Oh I think I finally got it!

Took a while of digging through documentation, but I've finally realised that renpy.show() doesn't just have to use the name of an image registered by renpy.image(). If you use the optional 'what' argument you can pass a displayable directly to renpy.show() and bypass the need for renpy.image(). So confusing