Ren'Py Gripes

[SinnyROM]

I would like to see this as well.

A gripe I have is the way to call a screen in a new context as an action. Currently this is the way to do it, or use a custom Python function:

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Function(renpy.call_in_new_context, "label", args)

Would it be possible to have an predefined action that does the same, say:

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Call("label", args)

I thought it would make sense since Ren'Py already has call label as a statement. There's jump label and its action equivalent Jump("label"), so would it be feasible to have the same with call? It's not completely necessary but it would make typing go a lot quicker.

[PyTom]

I need to think about this some. It's fundamentally a good idea, but at the same time, I need to figure out the right way to pass arguments to a game that may not be expecting them.

[xela]

I need to think about this some. It's fundamentally a good idea, but at the same time, I need to figure out the right way to pass arguments to a game that may not be expecting them.

Much appreciated, if possible without too much effort, it's a good feature to have. Everything is possible with menus as they are now, it just requires a workaround every time due to lack of flexibility.

===
On another screen topic, is there any chance that these:

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screen my_screen(arg1=1, arg2=2):
    $ pass

arg1 and arg2 to be counted same as:

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screen my_screen():
    default arg1 = 1
    default arg2 = 2

so they can be modified with SetScreenVariable() in the future?

Maybe more confusing:

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screen my_screen(arg1=1, arg2=2):
    default arg1 = arg1
    default arg2 = arg2

may be an option if there are namespace collisions? It's a bit tricky showing a screen with arguments and changing them without accessing screens _kwargs in a weird way at the moment and that seems like it should be a very popular feature, at least I am running into these issues and write weird looking code to make it work all the time...

Edit:
=======================
Another gripe:

Is there any chance to have the sound played immediately after the button is clicked? Right now, if there is a lot of logic (and therefor a small delay) behind a button, sound is being delayed as well until the said logic is resolved, it sounds a LOT weirder than if it just played on click and renpy calculated whatever is necessary to proceed.

[nyaatrap]

Is there any chance to have the sound played immediately after the button is clicked? Right now, if there is a lot of logic (and therefor a small delay) behind a button, sound is being delayed as well until the said logic is resolved, it sounds a LOT weirder than if it just played on click and renpy calculated whatever is necessary to proceed.

I second that. Also, can I play config.enter_sound, style.hover_sound and style.activated_sound in different channels to avoid collision?

[PyTom]

The answer is no to both thing, or at least not anytime soon - the sound system needs a rewrite to be a little less synchronous and dependent on channels, but that's unlikely to happen for a while. Right now, sounds begin playing at the start of an interaction, which works to synchonize them with ATL, but doesn't allow the responsiveness you want. It will take major chances to fix that.

[xela]

The answer is no to both thing, or at least not anytime soon - the sound system needs a rewrite to be a little less synchronous and dependent on channels, but that's unlikely to happen for a while. Right now, sounds begin playing at the start of an interaction, which works to synchonize them with ATL, but doesn't allow the responsiveness you want. It will take major chances to fix that.

Of well

There are always workarounds...

[Kinsman]

I was fiddling with the images directory, and I noticed a potential problem when it comes to defining images in subfolders.

Renpy's automatic use of the images folder assumes that every image you find is 'top-level'; in other words, if you have subfolders, the subfolder names will not become part of the name of the final image.

If you want to organize by subfolders, it makes sense to combine Renpy's use of the images folder, with config.automatic_images and config.automatic_images_strip.

For instance, if you have 'char', 'bg', and 'event' folders in your images folder, and then use this:

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    config.automatic_images = ['/',' ']
    config.automatic_images_strip = ['images','char']

Then you'll have a bunch of bg and event images that are named 'bg forest', 'bg school', 'event firstmeeting', and so on - while any character images will just have their single names, 'eileen' and so on.

However, this is a little inconvenient - I don't like that I have to remember to include 'images' in my prefix list for config.automatic_images_strip.

Also, there's a problem in that Renpy's automatic use of the images folder will also create a number of top-level images - so, you'll find that 'forest', 'school', and 'firstmeeting' are part of your image list. This can cause further problems if, say, you have "images/bg/eileen.png" and "images/char/eileen.png". Renpy will create a top-level 'eileen' from the bg folder, since 'bg' comes before 'char' alphabetically, and this will override the eileen character image you want to create.

Could you think of a way to harmonize the images directory, and config.automatic_images?

[jack_norton]

One thing that could be useful for Android/iOS is a progress bar showing the loading progress of the app in percentage. It's a minor thing of course but I thought could be nice to have

[PyTom]

That's actually really hard to do, since it's not predictable in advance how long it takes to load the game. (Also, we aren't able to draw on the screen until the app has loaded.)

[jack_norton]

Ah I see, np then!

[Donmai]

I'm on Windows 7, 64 bit. In all late versions of Ren'Py I'm having a trouble trying to use the 'Choose Theme' screen. The list of color schemes, when hovered, seems to always jump to the last selection, or to the middle of the list. This way, it's impossible to select my favourite color scheme (basic blue), as it is on the top of the list.

[nyaatrap]

I've been having the same issue, but I think theme is outdated and will be dumped in the future. So I don't bring this into github issue.
(Actually, I hope to be dumped those old compatibility)

[SinnyROM]

I noticed the documentation now has monospaced text for inline code. It looks great! Thanks PyTom, makes reading the documentation a lot easier.

Question: will Ren'Py one day be able to support GUI elements in screens similar to HTML? For example, a dropdown menu (select tag in HTML) can help save some room on the screen. I can think of a way to program this, but it would be nice to have this as a native element that can be styled in a similar way to a bar.

[trooper6]

So I've been pondering kia's coding challenge in his thead here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =8&t=33258

So, I came up with one answer to fix the problem:

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image book3 = Fixed(
    "bk1",
    "tx1",
    fit_first=True)

fit_first is the key to fixing the problem of the Fixed filling up all space. It is a great trick, it causes the Fixed to take on the shape of the first item in the fixed.
Checking up the original files, fit_first uses get_size() render function. Very practical. But there are things that could make this more useful.

Lets say, bk1 is tall and tx1 is wide. And you want the Fixed to fit to the max height/width of the two elements. So...the height of bk1, but the width of tx1. Would there be some way to implement this? Maybe two new styles? fit_largest? Where it conforms to the largest width and the largest height of all the elements in the fixed?

[Kia]

I've had this problem quite few times by now and I can't find a simple container for simple uses. thanks to trooper6 I learned something new and very useful but I always look for a more simple solution so I think having a container (lets say box) with xysize (0, 0) or (1, 1) that can have any number and any type of displayables as child can be extremely useful and save lot's of time styling different displayable to get the same simple result. if a displayable don't have any size it can be animated around it's center without worrying about its childs and their position

ani1.gif (36.37 KiB) Viewed 2046 times

and it can take the size of its childs with something like fit_child=2 ,fit_child=all
renpy has great animation potential but something simple is missing.