Can I create "A wolf among us" style game with Ren'Py?

[serious_squirrel]

Hello guys (and girls). As you realized from the title in my topic, I am a totall newbie, noob, n00b with Ren'Py, and I need your help in order to understand if I will use Ren'Py or not for the purpose I want. I played some days ago the game "A wolf among us" from Telltale games and I really liked and I want to make something similar but WITHOUT the fighting mode and the clasic point'n'click advenutre mode (walking, using items bla bla bla). In other words, I want to create a game where all the action is based on videos played in a row and the player with a time limit has to choose an answer in order for the next video to be played. I hope you understand what I mean. Can this be done easily with Ren'Py? I want to mention here that I HATE coding and I do not intent to learn Python scripting language. Thanks a lot!!!!!!

[Tsapas]

It is possible to some extent. Ren'Py supports video playback and timed menus to choose an answer (the latter not out-of-the-box but not overly hard to achieve it either). That said, you'll probably have to do at least some coding in Ren'Py/Python to mimic Telltale's gameplay style.

[SundownKid]

You can indeed do something like that. I recently added an entry to the Cookbook about animated backgrounds here, there's also a recipe for timed menus. Theoretically, you could play a movie, play another movie, or just a image, in the background while you make your choice, and then play another movie depending on what you chose or didn't choose. It shouldn't require any additional python code beyond the default Ren'py code.

[serious_squirrel]

thank you both for your answers. A problem just realized and needs for an answer too: Can I make the dialogues in Ren'py proceed automatically. I mean, not to wait from the player to press enter or click the mouse buton. In other words, Ι want to have the control of the time the dialogue lines are shown on the screen and when they disappear.

[Tsapas]

I suppose you are referring to the {nw} text tag. This is a "no wait" tag that tells Ren'Py to advance onto the next text block without waiting for user input.

[SundownKid]

Or since the game is apparently in real time, an easier way might be to add subtitles to the movie itself if you wanted to add text.

You can use the wait tag in conjunction with {nw} to make lines wait and proceed. For example {w=1}{nw} makes it wait for a second and then continue automatically.

[serious_squirrel]

Okay, I have a video file called "room1.ogv".

I created a blank project and put the file in the project name/game directory and tried to play that movie as shown in the documentary
(actually I just copy-pasted the following lines

image movie = Movie(size=(1280, 720), xpos=0, ypos=0, xanchor=0, yanchor=0

and

label start:
scene black
with Pause(1)

play movie "movie_background.ogv" loop
show movie with dissolve

show person at center with dissolve

person "I'm in front of an animated background!"

hide movie with dissolve
stop movie

return) .

But.....video is not playing. What am I doing wrong?

[SundownKid]

You have to actually have a movie titled "movie_background.ogv", otherwise replace that with the title of your movie.

Also, you have to define the character "person", otherwise replace it with whatever character you're using.

[serious_squirrel]

Yes, okay, my mistake...I already changed the "movie_background.ogv" file name with the "room1.ogv" but let's say I don't want to use any character so far. My video include characters after all. I just want my video to be played. That's all. How to do it? Has something to do with the resolution?

[Tsapas]

Code: Select all

play movie "movie_background.ogv" loop
show movie with dissolve

I think these 2 should be the other way around. First show the movie displayable and then play the movie file of your choice.

Also, perhaps you may wanna check renpy.movie_cutscene. It could suit better the style you try to mimic.

[SundownKid]

You will have to show the movie object then play consecutive movies with pauses in between.

Code: Select all

label start:
    show movie
    play movie "movie1.ogv"
    $ renpy.pause(10.0, hard=True) # Length of the movie
    play movie "movie2.ogv" # This plays while I'm making my choice
    menu: # This should be a timed menu in yours.
         "To be":
              play movie "movie3.ogv"
              $ renpy.pause(5.0, hard=True)
         "Not to be":
              play movie "movie4.ogv"
              $ renpy.pause(5.0, hard=True)

Code: Select all

play movie "movie_background.ogv" loop
show movie with dissolve

I think these 2 should be the other way around. First show the movie displayable and then play the movie file of your choice.

Also, perhaps you may wanna check renpy.movie_cutscene. It could suit better the style you try to mimic.

The reason they are that way is because it makes the dissolve transition seamless when the movie starts playing before it fades in.

Movie_cutscene is pretty much the same thing, except it doesn't support having anything in front of it like a menu, and you can't force the movie to play without stopping if someone clicks.

[Tsapas]

Movie_cutscene is pretty much the same thing, except it doesn't support having anything in front of it like a menu, and you can't force the movie to play without stopping if someone clicks.

Ah, cool. Never used it myself, just stumbled upon it on the wiki and it seemed more straightforward.

[SundownKid]

Movie_cutscene is pretty much the same thing, except it doesn't support having anything in front of it like a menu, and you can't force the movie to play without stopping if someone clicks.

Ah, cool. Never used it myself, just stumbled upon it on the wiki and it seemed more straightforward.

Movie_cutscene is a movie command, while making the movie object shows it like it was an image. Not really much of a reason to use it over the movie object afaik, besides it being somewhat simpler (you don't have to calculate the length of the movie, if you are trying to show just the movie).