Lemma Soft Forums

There's a thing I'd like to do in my game, but I'm new enough that I have no idea what it's called, so finding if it exists in the documentation has me flummoxed. If it doesn't already exist, it might be fun to add to the next version. There's probably a way to do it in Python, but I'm new to that as well... (Don't you hate it when we windbags won't get to the point...)

The Point:
To send a sprite OUTSIDE the game window area, as if it stood upon the desktop, like one of those enigmatic desktop companion things.
...heck, then Ren'py could be used specifically to make those desktop companion things if you wanted something to poke at while you code.

My idea (go ahead and steal it,) was to have a narrator, (or mascot, or whatever,) as a sprite outside the game window to throw out narration, or pointers, or to click on to ask for a hint if the player gets stuck... Yes, in fact, being able to click on the sprite, maybe different areas of the sprite, to do different things, (ask questions, initiate hints, etc) would be friggin rad.
Dragable and dropable would be a plus.
It'd even be awesome to have it behave differently to the local time, with a datetime function. I have an image of my narrator dozing off in the middle of my game, because I'm up in the middle of the night with it.

I came up with this because I wanted a narrator with an identity, but I dislike the idea of having said narrator pop up in the middle of the game window. I'm a big fan of the illusion of gaming and movie watching, so having things obscure the scenery ruins the illusion. It's like sitting in a movie, and the guy in the row in front of you turns on his massive friggin Galaxy S-infinity tablet-phone... annoying.

Disclaimer: I'm not asking anyone to program my entire game for me. I'd like to figure much of it out on my own, but I just need a little kick in the right direction.

The "easy" way to do this would be to have a smaller window that is basically just a painting that's always layered on top of backgrounds in the game window.
Maybe you could give the inner window a stage aesthetic and have the outside area as a place for a fictional audience, with free space for menus and similar things to the sides. Having a meta-narrator in that outer window would be doable. Still a ton of work for any longer game, especially if you want it to be interactive, but for a short comedy point and click adventure game it might be a cool gimmick.

PyGame can only render in windowed or fullscreen.
So, I think it's harder than you think.

Anyway, you can see tutorials even on youtube about "desktop mascot" in C++, Visual Basic... Search it on Google.
While at this point, Ren'py have no use for entirely XD.

I think people (such as myself) setting it to fullscreen might be missing it too easily or feeling obligated to do it windowed and thus having to read the smaller text size. Not sure if it would work, however I do agree that it would be a fun gimmick. I think I've seen it somewhere before (although it wasn't a Ren'py game) where the protagonist just walked out of the game at the end. Pretty neat.

Maybe I should make a companion iPhone app to play along side the game. Then you 'windowed only' whackadoos can have mascot narrators too.
I'll figure it out someday. Thanks gentlemen...
:p