Adventure for Ren'Py

Deciding on a Toolbar Layout The purpose of the Toolbar is to help the player clearly express their intended command to the game, and to avoid unintentional actions, or time-wasting annoyances. The first consideration to make is whether your game needs a Toolbar at all.  If you are planning to show all available options on the screen with Verb Icons, and your game doesn’t require an "Examine" tool, you might seriously consider the following: adventure.toolbar_position = "none" How Many Toolbar Icons? If your game requires more interaction options, a simple combination of ["auto", "ex"] will probably handle most needs. adventure.toolbar_icons = ["auto", "ex"] This communicates to the player that the arrow is used to actually DO things and the magnifying glass is used to LOOK at things (or otherwise receive explanations about them.)  This has the added benefit of making the icons disappear when choosing the "ex...

Icons, Polygons, and Tools: Your Contract with the Player Adventure for Ren'Py gives you the tools you need to make any genre of Point-and-Click Game.  From a Film Noir-style Hard-Boiled Detective like Déjà Vu with a three-act plot, to a Turn-Based Dating Simulator. We have therefore given you enough tools to potentially create a mess.  This article, part of our How-To Guide series, is here to help you sort that mess out. Understanding Your Genre In a Detective Game, which is a literary form of puzzle, and was the earliest successful form of Visual Novel, players are going to be expecting to use their brains.  This leads to certain principles: Don’t solve puzzles for the player that the player should solve on their own. The thrill of playing a mystery or detective game is the chance to solve the mystery intellectually before the game reveals the solution. Guide the character along the route to finding clues.   If your world is too open and doesn’t provide enough dir...

How Commands are Matched Welome to the second entry in our “How To” guide about Adventure for Ren'Py.  Today we will explore essential information for the game designer to understand about the command matching system. Command Sentences At its heart, Adventure for Ren'Py thinks of commands in much the same way as a classic Text Adventure game.  It is primarily interested in finding a VERB and a NOUN .  Although, there are cases where one or the other is implied. Gathering Possible Sentences for a Click When a player has a tool selected and clicks on an interactable  Verb Icon or  Polygon , Adventure gathers a list of all possible verbs and all possible nouns matching the current mouse position (or touch event position) and the chosen tool. Verb Icons The case of Verb Icons is simplest, so lets discuss it first.  Only visible icons are taken under consideration, and each Tool only shows icons belonging to a specific set of layers. Advanced Tip:  ...

Creating your first Adventure for Ren'Py Project Welcome to the first in our series of How-To Guides.  This one will show you the step-by-step process to create a new empty Adventure for Ren'Py Project, which you can then use as a starting point to begin building your game. Step 1 - Install & Open the Latest Stable Ren'Py SDK First, download and install the latest version of the Ren'Py SDK from  https://www.renpy.org/latest.html Once installed, open it using its Application icon. Step 2 - Choose “Create New Project” This option is in the bottom left area of the Ren'Py launcher window. Step 3 - Continue past the Information Screen If the language shown is correct, just click Continue. Step 4 - Choose a Project Name Type your project name, then click Continue.  For this example, I'm using “My Project” Step 5 - Screen Resolution Select the Screen Resolution for your project, then press Continue. Step 6 - Color Theme Select the Color Theme for your project, then...

Evolution of the Genre The First Adventure Game "Colossal Cave Adventure" (also known as "Adventure" or ADVENT), created by William Crowther in 1976 and expanded by Don Woods in 1977 is almost indisputably recognized as the first entry in the Adventure Game genre. It was an interactive story where the player would key-in commands in a reduced set of English verbs and nouns such as "GO EAST", "LOOK",  or "DRINK POTION." The First Visual Novels When it became feasible to add graphics to these games, the genre split into two:  "Text Adventures," and "Visual Novels." The first Visual Novel, the Portopia Serial Murder Case, in 1983, was released on the PC-88 in Japan.  This still included typed commands (this time, in Japanese.) This first Visual Novel included other unique features such as a "Magnifying Glass" which the player could point to an object in the scene to attempt to investigate it, and a "Telep...