A few Programming questions...(Galleries & Image Maps?)

[~Julia~]

So I've begun major development on my visual novel but I had several questions to ask to see if all of my ideas are feasible and how possible my vision is, I apologize in advance if this topic is located in the wrong area or for asking anything that has been answered beforehand:

Q. Is it possible to have "information boxes" display while viewing CG in a gallery?
When people go to the game's Gallery I want there to be an option to toggle the display of a strip of information that tells you general things like who created the piece or where it was show in the plot or maybe even just a comment from the staff. This is similar to what was done in the Arc System Works fighting game, BlazBlue.

Q. Is it possible to display a randomized image?
In order to separate chapters and certain sequences I wanted to display a set of special illustrations (they aren't CG nor do they have any significance, just fun little images from guest artist) to mark the divide. But I'm wondering if it would be possible to have these images picked at random to be displayed?

Q. Is it possible to let the player freely select between scenarios?
My project has different routes but I was thinking of a different way of presenting multiple stories, having a "central hub" from which the player can see the progress and relation of the varying plot points. The character illustrations mark the start of a route (as well as the central characters involved). Each black dot is a scenario, selecting one will play out a select scene. The red lines show connected events and the blue line shows unrelated ones. I assume some sort of image map would be needed but based on what I read I want to make sure if all these things were possible; hovering over a dot and changing color to show it's selectable (an obvious but put here for the next query), changing the color of an idle dot to show the scene has been completed, placing restrictions to prevent the player from seeing some scenes before others, restricting the vision of the entire grid (but still allow for scrolling around).

My other idea aside from the large grid would be to separate each route on it's own page and having navigation buttons, but still largely with the same functions. My last inquiry is more of a curiosity as I may or may not implement it into my project:

Q. What's the formatting for blinking and lip movement?
I've read and looked at the code for the blinking and lip movement sequences but I was curious as to how you set that up exactly, I read that Ren'Py can't utilize animated .gif so I was wondering if you just had to have each individual still for the whole animation or if they could be packed together someway.


I'm sorry for all the questions but I've only barely managed to get the programming for the demo of my project running, haha, so unless I can find a programmer I want to understand these things and make sure they're possible, especially since I'm about to contact someone about designing a custom GUI and HUD. Thank you in advance, I appreciate any input.

[apricotorange]

In general, one topic per thread, please.

Q. Is it possible to have "information boxes" display while viewing CG in a gallery?
When people go to the game's Gallery I want there to be an option to toggle the display of a strip of information that tells you general things like who created the piece or where it was show in the plot or maybe even just a comment from the staff. This is similar to what was done in the Arc System Works fighting game, BlazBlue.

The built-in image gallery code doesn't make it particularly convenient to describe something like that, but it's possible: it takes arbitrary Displayables, so you can use, for example, http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/ref ... tions/Text . Alternatively, if you need more flexibility, and aren't afraid of a bit of programming, it isn't too hard to write an image gallery from scratch with screen language (http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens.html).

Q. Is it possible to display a randomized image?

Easy, and there are many ways to do it; for example, you can provide a list of images to renpy.random.choice (http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/ref ... dom.choice), and it'll randomly pick one for you.

hovering over a dot and changing color to show it's selectable (an obvious but put here for the next query), changing the color of an idle dot to show the scene has been completed, placing restrictions to prevent the player from seeing some scenes before others, restricting the vision of the entire grid (but still allow for scrolling around)

Changing color on hover is easy. Making a screen change state over time in the way you're describing (dot colors, which dots are active/visible) requires a bit more sophistication; you can't do it with just an imagemap. You can still stitch together a bunch of images with screen language, though. It's straightforward to describe a scrollable screen with screen language. Making buttons which jump between scenarios is easy; control flow in general is very flexible.

My other idea aside from the large grid would be to separate each route on it's own page and having navigation buttons, but still largely with the same functions.

This is basically the same thing.

Q. What's the formatting for blinking and lip movement?

Ren'Py is very flexible in terms of compositing images, animating them, etc; you can take a set of still images and describe how to put them together with ATL (http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/atl.html). See also http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/coo ... d_Lip_Flap .

if you just had to have each individual still for the whole animation or if they could be packed together someway.

There isn't really any reason to avoid many small images, but you can use cropping to take out pieces of images.

[~Julia~]

Sorry for the barrage of questions but thank you so much for your reply, this will prove invaluable!