Discuss how to use the Ren'Py engine to create visual novels and story-based games. New releases are announced in this section.
Forum rules
This is the right place for Ren'Py help. Please ask one question per thread, use a descriptive subject like 'NotFound error in option.rpy' , and include all the relevant information - especially any relevant code and traceback messages. Use the code tag to format scripts.
"After having spent almost an hour waiting in line to buy a ticket for the train, I am finally able to board it."
"Six hours later"
"So, the trip was boring, but now I've arrived at my destination, the Lakestar Ranch, where I'm to spend my next week working."
Now, my problem is that I want the game to make some kind of pause between the first and the second line, preferably a second or two. This is probably a really simple thing, but I figured I'd ask anyways. Thanks for any help I get.
Generally, if you're writing a normal visual novel (and so the user will be clicking between each of those three lines), that's all the pause you need.
"...is subjectively much 'slower' than text that's written like this."
"And text..."
"..."
"...like this..."
"..."
"...is even slower."
However. If you do still want to insert an actual pause, then there are two ways:
1) Within text, you can insert the {w} tag to wait for a user click, or {w=1.5} to wait for precisely 1.5 seconds.
2) Between lines of text/images/whatever, you can use the renpy.pause function: click that link for details.
I mean - I dislike the kind of script that passes time like:
"..."
"......"
"........."
"............"
but really... single ellipsis lines at a pause, when a character is speechless, or simply to denote the non-specific passing of a short period of time, I have no problem with whatsoever. I would even go so far as to encourage them; certainly I think it's a better method than using renpy.pause, for example.
I concur. A single ellipses to indicate a small pause is fine, provided there's only one of them. Any longer than a small pause and you should describe it in text, rather than making the user click multiple times. An actual time delay is right out.
Supporting creators since 2004 (When was the last time you backed up your game?)
Maybe you could do better than most games where time passes with these dots: You could change the BG along with the time (but I guess that means more work).
Ellipses are cheap ^^;... Why not use regular novel tricks or even *visual* clues for this? A fade to black, a pause, whatever...
I personally never thought ellipses meant passage of time. To me they mean something like a short pause or hesitation, which makes me thing of many protagonists as terribly undecisive *beep* ^^;... (ok ok, many of them are, too ~_~)
Actually I like ellipses for a moment of silence, because they are the traditional way to do it in a dialog-driven visual novel. But also I really don't like it, when lazy authors start to pile up ellipses pyramids.
A transition sounds weird. A fade to black. Did the protagonist just black out?
But a pause, especially a 3sec+, even sounds more weird, because I would wonder, if the game did crash.
Maybe a slow fade to the next scene then? I tend to use lots of these ^^;. I know we usually deal with a first person perspective, but does it mean we can't use movie conventions at times? ^^;...
I thought of waiting within a scene. Let's say a character leaves the room for a moment, just to come back a bit later. I guess in this case ellipses are fine. But for symbolising waiting time between to scenes. Well, there are a lot of possible ways to do that.
Even in movies there are different ways to do it:
- Just ignore it
- blanking out and fading in again
- A transition instead of a cut
- Onscreen text showing a time specification (two hours later, day 2, 3:02pm)
etc.
Going back to the initial post example, I'd say a short 1 or 2 seconds pause there is good. Although 6 hours is a long time, and a fade out, fade in would work nicely here too (but the text is needed in both cases).
For the case of someone leaving the room for a minute, a very short pause could work :
"Brian leaves the room in a storm..."
1 second pause
"... only to come back a minute later, a strange expression on his face."
OR, it could be a good place to add some flavor text :
"Brian leaves the room in a storm."
"He has always been impulsive like this (...)"
(insert here two or three other descriptive lines)
"As I finish remembering about this, Brian comes back, a strange expression on his face."
And there! You have actually made the player wait, except it was an interesting wait since you get to learn more about Brian.
Sure, you can do it that way. But whether you should do it or not may depends solely on the context of the story. Moments of silence can be a nice variety to narrative monologues.
For example, the protagonist in my project does a lot of narrative monologues anyways, so I let him just enjoy some downtime and a cigarette now and then.
so I let him just enjoy some downtime and a cigarette now and then.
... If the dialog box briefly vanished and we saw an animation of a guy taking a drag and blowing smoke, that would also be an appropriate way of doing "Time Passes" in a visual novel...
What about cutting the scene to an hourglass combined with creative use of Ren'Py's particle system for the "An eternity passes..." message? I suppose:
Too.
Many.
Pauses.
Might start making the script sound like James T. Kirk.
breaking
