Lemma Soft Forums

Hi all, newbie here, was hoping if someone could explain how we can build DLCs or extendable stories into our existing Visual Novel. For example, you want to make your game episodic, how do we update the existing game with episode 2..3.. and so on and so forth?

If you want to make an episodic game you'll need to look into using Persistent Data (or more precisely, Multi-Game Persistence): https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/persiste ... ersistence

Also check the built in Web Updater Framework

Note that there are two different approaches:

1.- Multi-Persistent, linked by Amie, shares data between different games, does not update the same game.

2.- In the Web Updater Framework, linked by Remix, you can check the references to DLC, so you can add different parts to the same game (so, no need to use Multi-Persistent). I'd suggest this method, because former savegames will work (but you need to be careful with new variables to avoid errors). This way, you can add different expansions to the game, and the player can download only some of them. (look also the build section, search for dlc: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/build.html )

Thanks for the tips guys, Gonna look into both Multi Persistence and Web Updater.

You can make separate game archives that can be dragged and dropped (or in the case of Steam, downloaded) into the game folder. You just have to separate the game into folders by episode, in subfolders of the game folder. You can then make the game check to see if a particular file from those archives is present in order to "unlock" the DLC within the base game.