Ren'Py or Adventure Game Studio for Point-and-Click/VN Hybrid?

[imagazzell]

Hello folks,

I'm an Adventure Game Studio user trying to determine whether AGS or Ren'Py would be the better choice for me to make a point-and-click/visual novel hybrid type game (akin to something like a Phoenix Wright in terms of mechanics, with VN-style dialogue views but P&C-style world interactions).

I know that Ren'Py has a leg up over AGS for a few of the aspects that I want (native HD resolution, the dialogue format, etc.), but there are a few elements perhaps more commonplace in AGS that I'm curious about how would be done in Ren'Py. So if you'd be so kind as to: A) tell me how difficult (or not) these things are to implement in Ren'Py, and B) direct me where to look or what terms to search for in the documentation to see how I'd go about doing so, I'd very much appreciate it!

Here's what I'm wondering about:

1. Branching dialogue trees, with the ability to remove options once read, return to previous topics, and have in-game variables dependent upon choices made.

2. Objects in the background/room that can be hidden or shown on command (e.g., character images which would transition to the dialogue view upon clicking).

3. Other points of interest in backgrounds that can be interacted with. In AGS, these are called "hotspots".

4. A P&C-style inventory system with items that can be picked up from the background, combined together, and used on other background elements or characters.

5. For those with knowledge on the topic, how good are companies like Ratalaika Games at porting Pen'Py games to console? They list porting of both Ren'Py and AGS games in their services, but I'm just wondering how cumbersome this is or isn't.


Thanks in advance for any input you can offer on these points (and any others worth considering).

[m_from_space]

Here's what I'm wondering about:

1. Branching dialogue trees, with the ability to remove options once read, return to previous topics, and have in-game variables dependent upon choices made.

2. Objects in the background/room that can be hidden or shown on command (e.g., character images which would transition to the dialogue view upon clicking).

3. Other points of interest in backgrounds that can be interacted with. In AGS, these are called "hotspots".

4. A P&C-style inventory system with items that can be picked up from the background, combined together, and used on other background elements or characters.

5. For those with knowledge on the topic, how good are companies like Ratalaika Games at porting Pen'Py games to console? They list porting of both Ren'Py and AGS games in their services, but I'm just wondering how cumbersome this is or isn't.

So that is of course just my opinion on the topic and I cannot compare anything to AGS, since I don't even know that.

1. Very easy to do, it's kind of a basic thing:
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/label.html
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/dialogue.html
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/menus.html

2. An easy task as well, since you can create "screens" in Renpy that contain elements like imagebuttons (even invisible ones), imagemaps etc. that players can interact with. Not sure what your example exactly means. In Renpy you can easily show characters and you can show dialogue. It's not common that you click characters on the other hand. You can create something like this for sure though.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens.html

3. Yes, hotspots are part of imagemaps as mentioned in point 2.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens. ... statements

4. Creating an inventory is easy. To make it possible to pick up things from the background is not hard as well using screens. Drag & Drop is possible in Renpy and you can therefore also combine stuff if you drop one thing on another thing. It's something you need to learn of course, not the easiest task, but well implemented.
https://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/drag_drop.html

5. I have no clue.

[philat]

1. Branching dialogue trees, with the ability to remove options once read, return to previous topics, and have in-game variables dependent upon choices made.

2. Objects in the background/room that can be hidden or shown on command (e.g., character images which would transition to the dialogue view upon clicking).

3. Other points of interest in backgrounds that can be interacted with. In AGS, these are called "hotspots".

Fundamental, fairly simple. Searching for point and click on these forums will turn up a fair number of examples on this, as it's a very common basic setting for ren'py games.

4. A P&C-style inventory system with items that can be picked up from the background, combined together, and used on other background elements or characters.

Intermediate, but not terribly difficult. It will (not necessarily, but very probably) involve creating a system in python from scratch (or finding a cookbook entry that has what you want) but it's fairly doable.

Can't speak on the other question.