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A beginner’s guide to Ren’PyToolbox
and a colour scheme. 5en’3y will then build your
proMect, and you’re almost ready to get started.
2nce your proMect has been created, go over
to script.rpy and pick a text editor to install
see Figure 1). )or this tutorial, I’m using Atom,
and 5en’3y recommends you do too. All you
need to do is click on the name and 5en’3y will
take care of downloading and updating it. 2nce
you have your text editor installed, you should
see something along the lines of Figure 2.We’ll delete most of this in a second, but
it’s useful to see how 5en’3y sets itself out. If you
want to see this script in action, go back
to the 5en’3y launcher and launch your proMect.
In the meantime, let’s break down what the
commands in the script mean Hashtags: These are Atom’s way of putting in
comments. These lines will not appear in the
game and are skipped during compiling.Define: A way of storing a character or obMect
into an easily called variable. If you’re going to
be typing your character’s name a lot, then you
might want to Must use their initial as you can
see in the green text. <ou can also use thedefine function to determine the colour, si]ing,
font, and style of a character’s name, saving you
from setting it every time.Label start: This tells the game where to start,
and with the use of the jump command, you can
use labels to Mump to different sections of your
game. )or example, you could use labels as a
way to allow the player to navigate a world map,
Mumping to the appropriate location on a click.Scene: &lears the screen and sets a new
background image. <ou’ll likely use this if you’re
changing location or ending a chapter. ȆBg’ is
Must shorthand for Ȇbackground’, and Ȇroom’
is the name of the image the default game
uses. )or your own game, I recommend using
something more memorable, as Ȇroom’ can
Tuickly become ambiguous as your game grows.Show: /astly, show is the function for displaying
characters on the screen. (ileen is the character
and +appy is the specific emotion to call.
The best format for saving your characters is
‘character emotion.jpg’ so 5en’3y can read
it correctly.6o, the first step for us is to define our own
characters. I’ve decided to go ahead and use
two free-to-use character images – a rather
charming fox and hamster duo – that I’ve
downloaded from itch.io. Figure 3: ťou cƃn ǁefine the chƃrƃcters useǁ in ʰour gƃmeӗ ƃnǁ set
their positions on the screenӗ ʥith Țust ƃ coupȢe oǹ Ȣines oǹ coǁeӝ Figure 2: sƃmpȢe oǹ the commƃnǁs ʰouԇȢȢ commonȢʰ use in RenԇPʰӝ
tԇs ʥorth ȟeeping ƃ note oǹ these to hƃnǁ ƃs ʰouԇre getting stƃrteǁӝVISUAL NOVEL
DATABASE
Like IndieDB for indie games
and for interacti{e fiction,
visual novels have their own
database that lists basically
every visual novel ever made.
With over 25,000 listed on
vndb.org at the time of writing,
you can be sure you’re not
going to run out of games to
play any time soon.
“With just these simple
functions, you can make
a visual novel in Ren’Py”