How can I make animated GUI for my Ren'py game?

[Vialixia]

Hey everyone!

So I have a question, it's quite a big one so please bear with me. Basically, there is me (ala fairly good knowledge of Ren'py, basic knowledge of Python) and I have a GUI artist on board. Normally, a GUI artist would create a Flash file, add the animations into that file, and UI Programmer would then take that, add the functionality and put it in game. This way is good, because it means that artist can tweak the animation/art without any knowledge of the code.

So, is there a way to replicate this process in Ren'py? So far I've been doing the GUI on my own and I've been using the ATL language for some basic animation.

What would be cool is if we can somehow use a video between screens to create a really nice animation, or an animated video file for the GUI. I know Ren'py can't directly take a Flash file.

Does anyone know if anything like that is possible? May be a silly question, so sorry if it is.

Basically just want to know alternatives to creating some fancy animated GUI stuff

Thanks!

[SundownKid]

Unfortunately, in Ren'py that is limited to adding transforms to still images. It's the same process as giving a transform to a typical image, but you have to give it to a button.

[Vialixia]

I see, so the only way to do it is via the ATL language/transforms and there is no way around it?

Thank you~

[Vialixia]

I had an idea.

Would it be possible to create an frame by frame animation (like the example of rain falling in ATL) and apply a transform to a still image, in the screen script, before the screen appears? All the animation thereafter would have to be done with ATL code, but that shouldn't be a problem as we only want to do simple things anyway. We just want fancy transitions between two screens.

The only downside to this would that you would have to have a series of high resolution images in the game folder which would bump up the size of the game significantly, but for a few seconds of neat transitions I think it won't be too bad. That way, the artist can just create the animation, I can split it into a reasonable amount of frames, and put it in the game while moving from one screen to another.

What do you think?

[nyaatrap]

You can use filmstrip images when showing menus (You can't when hiding BTW. There's no way you can add any animations other than simple transitions when hiding most of ren'py's in game menus).
Downside is you need to use renpy.cache_pin for animated GUIs, and it consumes several hundreds MB of RAM. Watch RAM usage when you use animations.
Though unless it's too fancy, most of reasonable GUI animations can be done with transforms, without consuming huge amount of memory. You can even apply transforms on filmstrip images (That I'm using on battle effect on my game)

[Vialixia]

Okay, thanks. I'll give it a shot and see how it runs.