Need some assistance.

[Vamides]

Hello there, I'm Vamides, 18 years old. Some years ago I wrote a small novel and recently decided turning it into a Visual Novel. I have a basic understanding of Ren'Py 6.6.3, it works pretty well and is highly customizable.

But, I have some questions.

1. I want some slow image transitions (I hope you understand what I mean) in the intro of my game, but "with fade" change backgrounds too quickly... and that doesn't help me.

2. There is a way of pausing what is going on? For example, show a background... wait three seconds... and change the background to another one? I've tried "with pause(3.0)" like someone mentioned around here... but crashes my game and decided to remove it.

Any help is appreciated.

[Mikan]

You can define your own slower dissolve this way:

Code: Select all

    $ slowDissolve = Dissolve(3.00) 

(this is for a 3 second transition)

with pause is with a capital P

Code: Select all

 show imagename with Pause(1)

(pauses for a second)

[Showsni]

If you want a longer fade or dissolve, just try defining them with longer times - so

Code: Select all

init:
    $ fade2 = Fade(1.5, 0, 1.5) # Fade to black and back.

scene bg washington with fade2

Code: Select all

init:
    $ dissolve2 = Dissolve(5)

scene bg whitehouse
show eileen happy
with dissolve2

or whatever. (I think that should work).

Pause shouldn't crash your game... Did you capitalise it?

Code: Select all

show bg cathedral
with dissolve
with Pause(2)

[Vamides]

That fixes it, thank you very much.

Seems like even capitals make the difference.

[N0UGHTS]

Writing in Python is like writing an essay where you have to abide by specific "grammar" rules (whitespace, capitals, blocks are comparable to paragraphs focusing on a specific subject, etc.). In Ren'Py, it's more like writing a screenplay, though.

By the way, welcome to the community.

[Jake]

Writing in Python is like writing an essay where you have to abide by specific "grammar" rules (whitespace, capitals, blocks are comparable to paragraphs focusing on a specific subject, etc.).

It's more like writing English for a foreigner who only has a phrasebook to make sense of what you're saying.

With an essay, the person marking your essay can still make sense of it even if you don't have capitals in the right place or use totally correct grammar, because they're an intelligent system capable of making reasonable guesses as to what you mean; you'll get marked down for getting it wrong, but if you make a really good point in a sentence without a capital leading letter, you'll still get the marks for that sentence, even if the grammar isn't perfect.

The compiler doesn't understand the words you use at all, it's just looking for specific words it recognises; it happens that it recognises 'True' but not 'true', for example. If our foreigner is from a country with a different character set (Russia, Greece, any Arabic-speaking country, Israel, etc.) then he won't know that 't' is the same letter as 'T', he can't say that those two words are necessarily the same. He can only flick through his phrasebook to try and find out what you mean, and his phrasebook only lists "True". Consider the vast difference between the different conjugations of 'to be' - there's no way someone could make an educated guess that "is", "are", "be" and "was" were all forms of the same verb if all they had to go on was a phrasebook that had "I am hungry" in it, and that's how the compiler sees your code.

[delta]

Or more to the point, Ren'Py is not a natural language, it is a programming language that somewhat poses as a natural language. This is something I personally dislike about it. Not scaring newbies with obfuscated Perl is all fine and dandy, but in the end of the day Ren'Py's syntax is just as strict as that, and you have to learn and use it 100% correctly just like any other programming language - and the "natural" look isn't helping anymore after ten minutes of reading that you have to do anyway. Making it look like it's as easy as just telling the interpreter what you want and it does the rest is highly misleading (enjoy your four AND EXACTLY FOUR spaces at the beginning of each line).

Yes, I understand that that applies to Python as well to some degree, but still...

P.S. Somewhat topical anecdote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_pr ... g_language

[Vamides]

I have a music issue right now... it sounds really, freaking, ugly.

I decided to use a pretty cute background music in the main menu of my novel but seems like I must use an OGG with a frequency of 44100.

I used Audacity to modify the MP3, changing its frequency and saving it as a OGG sound file... but with no luck, it sounds very ugly when I run the game.

Any advice? What I'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[EvilDragon]

You MUST use 16-bit, stereo, 44100 Hz audio files with Ren'py.

[denzil]

I'm pretty sure that it is either the resampling or low bitrate of the OGG why it sounds bad.
But Ren'Py can play MP3 music too, so you don't have to convert it. So just use the MP3 instead.

You MUST use 16-bit, stereo, 44100 Hz audio files with Ren'py.

No you don't have to. It doesn't have to be any of those. It doesn't have to be 16 bit, or stereo or 44100 Hz.

[PyTom]

Hm... IIRC, it does require that format, unless you adjust the config variable that controls this. It may also automatically convert 22050 to 44100 as necessary, by doubling each sample.

[denzil]

Hm... IIRC, it does require that format, unless you adjust the config variable that controls this. It may also automatically convert 22050 to 44100 as necessary, by doubling each sample.

Okay I did some testing (Ren'Py 6.6.0, no config changes in case something changed in the new version).

Ren'Py plays 8 or 16 bit audio files.
Ren'Py plays stereo as well as mono audio files.
Ren'Py plays anything that has lower or equal frequency than 44100 Hz.

Ren'Py doesn't play 24 or 32 bit audio.
Ren'Py doesn't play or doesn't play well audio with frequency > 44100 Hz. (48000 Hz file played, but sounded bad)

[Guest]

To add to that (this may have changed since it's been a long time):

Ren'Py especially does not like to play sound files with different properties (especially sample rate) at the same time. So even if a particular file works on its own, you may still run into problems later. Might as well just stick to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, Stereo (it's not bad).

[Vamides]

Hmm, then maybe is the Audacity that doesn't do what I want. I tried to open the modified OGG with the program again, and it does have its default frequency and stuff.

If you can, name other good program to do that kind of stuff. One which allows me to save music files in MP3 or OGG format.

Thank you very much.

[AlphaProspector]

Hmm, then maybe is the Audacity that doesn't do what I want. I tried to open the modified OGG with the program again, and it does have its default frequency and stuff.

If you can, name other good program to do that kind of stuff. One which allows me to save music files in MP3 or OGG format.

Thank you very much.

FOOBAR 2000. In capitals. This program is small, supports plug ins and, overall, is a nice awesome tool for file conversions. It'll let you convert mp3 to ogg at the exact rate Ren'Py likes. It's the program I've been using to convert my sound and music files to ogg.

http://www.foobar2000.org/

edit: Oh, you will need the Ogg component and Mp3 one in order to do the conversions. As they are exe files and people are too paraonid (well, I AM too paranoid) I'll direct you to the developer's links so you can retrieve 'em.

LAME (for mp3, pick the 3.98): http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php

OggEnc (pick the one according to your CPU or the generic): http://www.rarewares.org/ogg-oggenc.php

Hope this helps. It might not look flashy and hi-tech but Foobar compensates it with its speed and converting capabilities.