Gestures (Detailed analysis)

[Andredron]

If you've ever tried to build a gesture system into a game and looked online for information about it, you realize how terrible its documentation is

https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/gesture.html

It gives very little information and unlike other pages in the documentation - there is no example of use, just obscure theory.


PyTom responded to a user's question about it by saying that gestures are simply matched with keystrokes, and he considers this system a mistake and is not going to improve it in the future. But for us it's not a big deal - the main thing is that it works.

viewtopic.php?p=482127#p482127

Now I'll tell you how I figured it out, did it, customized it and what bugs the presence of gestures causes and how to fix them.

Initialization - let's write one of them in options.rpy:

Code: Select all

define config.variants = ["phone", "tablet", "touch", "ios", None]

define config.gestures = { "n" : "game_menu",
                           "w" : "help",
                           "e" : "toggle_skip",
                           "s" : "hide_windows"}
                           
init -1700 python:
    _game_menu_screen = "save"

We create gestures by indicating direction using the sides of the world:

North - North, South - South, West - West, East - East. They can be combined via underscores, for example: "n_w".

Well, since the gesture system is just matched with keystrokes, and a keystroke doesn't do what you want - nothing will work, so we have only 4 actions - i.e. we can say 4 screens. I'll tell you what to do about it now, but the gesture system already works after you put in the code and there are already 2 bugs.

Let's say that by swiping down["s"] we want to hide the interface - all is well. Swipe right["e"] to enable skipping - all good. But by swiping up["n"] we want to open not the settings or save menu, but for example - "about the game". Yes, that's how we wanted, but we can only action - game_menu.

The solution - simply in script.rpy or optinons.rpy we write

Code: Select all

init -1700 python:
    _game_menu_screen = "about"

We go further and want to swipe left["w"] to open the dialog history screen. But we won't be able to simply replace the variable. But we don't need to - let's do what real programmers do! We won't do anything and just change the name of the history screen to "help" and everything will work.

Now let's deal with another error - the history screen is called in the main menu. We write about this code and check, and then set the value of the variable "scr_show" at the beginning of the label "start" with the value "True":

screen.rpy

Code: Select all

screen help() :###screen history
    tag menu
    if scr_show:
        #screen history code
    else:
        $ renpy_quit() 

script.rpy

Code: Select all

label start:
    $ scr_show = True
    ############
    jump prolog

Well, there is only one bug left, which is not necessary to fix for those who have 2 different builds - for smartphones and for PC or those who make the game only for one platform. For after we initialized the gesture system - the checkout broke:

if renpy.variant("") — "pc" , "small", "touch" .

And you can fix it by simply replacing this check with a regular variable check.

I leave a link to a project we are experimenting with for the second time and now it has a gesture system built in in addition to the gallery

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/CUJyqjmaczuSkA

Author - https://vk.com/@miosion_pub-sistema-zhestov-v-renpy




viewtopic.php?p=548711- Hide the interface with an upward gesture

viewtopic.php?p=330957 - Crutch number 1

viewtopic.php?p=554242 - Crutch number 2