Ren'Py QuickStart [Gallery, Codex, Scheduler, Tutorials etc]

[noeinan]

Ren'Py QuickStart and Coding Tutorials

I have now attached the current version of the All-In-One RenPy Framework-- renamed so that I can
fit more tags into the post title.

There are two versions: the tutorial, which is playable and teaches the player about coding in Ren'Py,
and the quick-start which includes the features but none of the tutorials (for those who just want to start
a game.) You can use these by starting a new game in RenPy and then using these files to replace your
'game' folder.

IMPORTANT:

On Dec. 8th, 2016 a very critical bug was reported. In the Feb. 2014 build of the quickstart, date based events did not trigger. This was an oversight on my part, as I tested date based events in an earlier build but failed to recognize this problem in recent iterations. I have now FIXED this bug, and there is a new build out. If you downloaded this quickstart PRIOR to Dec. 8th, 2016, you may need to repair your code. I have provided detailed instructions on how to do so here: viewtopic.php?f=51&t=22393&start=90#p436754

MAJOR FEATURES:

-Home Screen. A dashboard of sorts where you can choose to do a variety of things at the end of each month. Based on Princess Maker 2 base screen, includes viewing stats, inventory, saving the game, and the scheduler. Several buttons yet to be programmed including talking to your child, changing their diet, looking at their status, visiting town, or talking with people in the castle. Buttons can be replaced with whatever you want to include in your game.



-Inventory. Great inventory system created by leon. I adjusted the code to fit this screen. Allows you to purchase items, add or remove items, consume items like food, equip weapons, etc.



If you would only like to include an inventory, you can find the original thread here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=23071

-Monthly Scheduler. For each week, the player may pick a type of activity (eg., "School" or "Work")
and then the specific activity within that type (eg. studying art or working on a farm.) Once a specific activity is chosen for all
four weeks, the player sees a custom background for each activity as well as a small narration.





-Character Stats. Basic stat structure integrated with monthly schedule. Now each monthly activity may
increase or decrease stats, and narration changes depending on player's level of expertise.



-Calendar. When inside weekly activity, see every day of the week distinguished by a calendar overlay
showing the date and moon phase. Thanks to xela for this lovely code! All GUI was custom made by me.











If you would only like to include a calendar, you can find the original thread here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 98#p309061

-CG and BG Gallery. Created by leon with a CG by azureXtwilight and BGs by leon, mugenjohncel, and one
partly by myself. This is a very nice gallery! Multiple pages, CG/BG unlock automatically as the user sees them (meaning you don't have
to code it!), click on the smaller version to see the CG/BG in full screen. All BG show as black and white until unlocked, all CG simply
show as a locked space.





If you would only like to include a CG/BG Gallery, you can find the original thread here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=22465

-Codex/Character Info Page. Basic structure complete, currently making it fancier.




MINOR FEATURES:

-You do not need to declare background images, simply add a .jpg file with "bg " in the beginning
of the file name and you can use the rest of the name to show your bg-- no extra hassle!

-In Game Menu/Pause Menu. (Allows access to Codex.)

-Basic Splash Screen (Show your company logo or content warning before start of game.)

-Default resolution is 1280x720, 16:9. (Eventually planning on including multiple resolution release.)

-Default text speed is set to 20 characters per second. (Gives a nice "typing" effect.)


KNOWN BUGS:

-No known bugs, yay! Please report any bugs to this thread so that I can fix them.



TUTORIALS:

-Playable tutorial on how the scheduler works [outdated]

-Playable tutorial on removing scheduler from script

-Playable tutorial on changing text speed


PLANNED FEATURES:

-Custom Main Menus (A few basic setups that the user can choose between, planning on using imagemaps.)

-Elaborate Codex (Include better formatting for entries, include stats for characters, include images.)

-Elaborate In-Game Pause Menu (Pretty it up.)

-Grid Map Exploration (Instead of each direction sending you to one place, it will send you to a custom map.)

-Break the QuickStart into multiple "flavors" depending on what kind of game you want to make. (Dating sim, raising sim, etc.)

-Dating Sim version with daily schedule instead of weekly schedule. Instead of moon cycles, the calendar will display the time of day. (Morning, afternoon, night, etc.)

[Greeny]

I think it would be a great initiative! Even for more advanced users, it can get tedious to go digging into a previous project or the cookbook to copy paste that same old CG Gallery, because let's face it we're not going to code it from scratch every time...

Personally, things I would also include:
- Game menu screen
I personally love having a "pause menu" appear upon clicking esc, rather than immediately jumping to save/load. It's fairly easy to do, but because it's not there by default I don't know if many newer users even know it's an option.

- A custom menu screen
Aside from the CG gallery, the very idea of having your own menu screens beside the default ones seems a bit daunting.

- A higher default resolution
But that's just me.

- Default text speed not set to 0

That's all I can come up with for now.
I'd be glad to offer my help for this!

[noeinan]

[EDIT]

I want to clean up my first post and make it more of a "cover page," so I'm moving my OP here instead!

Hello,

I have been struggling to understand RenPy, and having a difficult time on my own mostly because I haven't had a lot of time to spend hours studying it. However, as luck would have it, I have recently landed myself with a lot of free time! So, I am going to take the time to learn how to code some of the more commonly used features in RenPy, such as an unlockable CG Gallery. I figure, with my level of knowledge, I have a pretty good perspective on what confuses a person who is new to RenPy code.

As I do this, I want to make a basic build with everything that someone might want to have in a visual novel (or at least some of the basic/common things) along with very detailed commentary explaining what variable is what, what parts you would change to get some basic differences, etc.

Right now there are a lot of good resources in the Cookbook that have been extremely helpful to me. But it does take some research to go back and forth between different pages and get different things up and running. So! What I would like to do is make a basic framework with as many commonly requested things as possible, clearly labeling what code is for what features etc. because I feel that it is easier to remove the features you don't want rather than add on the ones you do.

The idea is, people would be able to download the script/screen/etc. files and put them straight into their "game" folder, then open it up in RenPy and see clear sections labeled "This section does this. If you do not want this in your game, delete this entire section." And then more detail inside each section. I think this resource would make it a lot faster to get a lot of these features and teach some RenPy coding in the process. Perhaps I would also include notable Cookbook and forum entries that relate to a specific feature in case they have the time and want to learn more.

Perhaps this would also help people who, like me until recently, didn't have the time to look into more detailed code to get those features.

[tl;dr I want to make a basic RenPy framework that already has many commonly desired basic features, such as a CG gallery, so that people can simply download the script/screen files instead of looking around the Cookbook/forums for these things individually. The coding would have clearly labeled sections saying what code does what, and what to delete to get rid of something, exactly which parts to change for a desired effect.]

So my question is, do you think that something like this would be useful? If so, what basic features do you think should be included? (Things that would be useful even without large amounts of customization, including a CG Gallery or Character Info page.)

I think it would be a great initiative! Even for more advanced users, it can get tedious to go digging into a previous project or the cookbook to copy paste that same old CG Gallery, because let's face it we're not going to code it from scratch every time...

Personally, things I would also include:
- Game menu screen
I personally love having a "pause menu" appear upon clicking esc, rather than immediately jumping to save/load. It's fairly easy to do, but because it's not there by default I don't know if many newer users even know it's an option.

- A custom menu screen
Aside from the CG gallery, the very idea of having your own menu screens beside the default ones seems a bit daunting.

- A higher default resolution
But that's just me.

- Default text speed not set to 0

That's all I can come up with for now.
I'd be glad to offer my help for this!

I'm glad you think so, too! I was hoping it would provide a faster starting point, having all the basics already taken care of.

Also, I love all your suggestions. I am currently looking for threads explaining them!

I have definitely seen explanations of the custom menu screen, so perhaps I could comment out several different arrangements, eg., the menu selections all at the bottom, to either side, spread out, etc., with image mapping so that the user could easily swap out the images for their buttons and adjust the hotspot dimensions if necessary. The guide would have a description of what each looked like, and then the person could comment out/delete the default and then uncomment the one they like.

I haven't seen anything so far on the game menu screen/pause menu, screen resolution, or text speed in my wanderings-- though I did start a thread asking about supporting other screen resolutions a while back. These are great additions and I will keep looking for information about them. If you've come across any explanations of them then I would love it if you could post a link!

Thanks so much for your help!

[Greeny]

Don't know if there's any guide so I wrote up a quick 'n dirty tutorial on pause menu: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=22394

[noeinan]

Awesome, thanks!

I added a few other features, namely a splash screen and a scheduler since I think those are useful. I will continue the search for information on the other stuff. So far, I have a splash screen, very basic gallery, buttons for a scheduler, and I'm just now adding the pause menu from your instructions!

[noeinan]

For anyone who wants to see what I've got so far, here's the code. Still a lot to add and polish, but it's a start! Added the two files I've changed: screens.rpy and script.rpy and I included the mockup images I'm using. The commentary right now is very basic, but I will improve upon it. Basically just started on this yesterday, (exception is that I had the scheduler done a while back) so there is a lot more to come!

-Currently, the game has the scheduler in the script and is set to go three months before the end of the game.

-The main menu has a very basic gallery, and I would like to add multiple pages and probably unlockable images as well. Also, I want to make it so that clicking on an image will bring it up full screen.

-Basic logo splash screen and a "pause screen."

-I added a Character Info option to the Pause Screen/In Game Menu but I have not built it yet.

Oh, and also I've been using stuff from the cookbook and basic guides, all of which are for commercial and non-commercial use. I would like this framework to be available to everyone for free, no matter the type of project they're making.

[EDIT] Shortened this into a .zip file so it takes up less space.

[noeinan]

Aaand some basic screenshots that I'm taking to track my progress. Everything is very basic for now because I'm just getting it functional, but I do plan to eventually pretty it up. Perhaps something like Uncle Mugen's Imagemap GUI Sample?

Current schedule is based off of Princess Maker 2-- I'd like to eventually make it so that if you click "Work" you get a list of different jobs, and same for the other options. I think this framework could include more than one scheduler just in case? We'll see!

[noeinan]

Okay, I have made some changes to the framework. Here are the improvements so far, I have included some screenshots as well as the new script, screen, and options files. (If you are downloading for the first time, you will need all the image files posted above as well.)

-Changed the default text speed to 20 characters per second.

-Included an in depth explanation on changing text speed.

-Added the second step to the scheduler. Now, instead of just choosing between school/work/travel/rest, when you pick any of these you go to a new menu asking what class you want to take, job you want to work etc. I would also like to add a small picture on the right which changes depending on what you have selected, but I am still working on it.

That's all for now, but I will continue to improve! Please let me know if there are any other common features that need to be included, or if you have any advice on coding the things I am attempting to code!

[noeinan]

Now with a multi-page gallery! Changed the names of the CG files and added letters to the CGs so that people who are colorblind will have an easier time distinguishing them-- so here are all the files you would currently need to run it. I put them in a .zip folder this time to make it easier.

[noeinan]

Okay, new version is up! I really liked leon's Instant CG and BG Gallery (http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=22465) so I asked if I could include it and got permission! It is much better than the one I made and has a lot of the features I was going to improve. Because leon's Gallery script was in 1280x720 I decided to do that as well! Higher screen resolution was on my checklist already, and so I will put out this version which is a 16:9 as well as the default 4:3.

Thank you to azureXtwilight for the beautiful CG, and also thanks to leon and mugenjohncel for the free backgrounds! All the backgrounds were made by them with the exception of the farm bg which I made, though still using the endless green field from Uncle Mugen's free backgrounds. :3

New features are as follows!

-Much improved Gallery-- now both CG and BG. The pictures are unlockable, automatically unlocking once the user has seen them. When you click on unlocked cg/bg it will come up full screen! Also, you can add new background images simply by adding a .jpg file starting with "bg " to your game folder. (Though it will not show up in your gallery automatically-- adding it is simple, though, and I will explain that when I go through and add more commentary.)

-As part of the above, the GUI is improved. Much more polished look overall.

-Screen resolution is now 1280x720, or 16:9. I will release a 4:3 version soon.

-Schedule now has events! When you select an activity, that activity will have its own background and short narration.

-Changed color of text explaining the activity each week. This still doesn't look good on all backgrounds, so I will probably replace this with an image later.

-When you select a specific activity, the color of the text on the button selected changes. Before you couldn't tell what was selected and it was pretty frustrating! I actually didn't change this myself-- I ended up pasting my code into the game folder provided by leon because simply adding the code to my existing framework was not working. This is a style setting in the options.rpy and it's definitely nice to have.

-Changed all image files to lower quality .jpegs to help reduce file size.

[noeinan]

So, my original idea was to have different features in the same script, but the ability to comment out sections that you don't want. However, I think it would actually be much easier to have all the code you need in one file, so you can just delete that file instead of having to search for it.

This might get a little tricky with features like the CG Gallery, which require a change in the Main Menu, for example, but perhaps there would be instructions at the top of each code saying "If you don't want this feature, do X and then delete this file." I will play around with it and see what I can come up with!

[pineapplepocky]

holy shamolies! thank you so much!
Despite all sorts of tutorials on how to make a gallery, I've never figured it out. You are my savior T_T

[noeinan]

I'm glad it helped you out! The person who created the gallery was actually leon, but they let me use it in my all in one framework.

It's been a while since I've been able to work on this framework, but I'll try to add more to it at some point.

[Rosstin2]

Tagged b/c this sounds useful.

[Dragonstar89]

I'm trying to add an additional "trophies" or "achievements" section into my game by using the gallery code but with some changes. I've already managed to rename everything so that it can work without messing with the actual CG Gallery. My problem is the thumbnails for the trophies are fullsize (because they're small images), so I don't want the option to have them clicked and viewed as an image.

Would anyone know what part of the gallery code would be needed so that the locked and unlocked images show but they can't be clicked no matter what?