I finally found five minutes to take a look at it... and well, it was enough to know that I'll not need more.
If it's a relatively interesting book to learn about Visual Novel writing mechanism and history, it's a horror when it come to Ren'Py itself, that is supposed to be the main subject of the book.
The first code example appear only at page 115 and is this:
Python:
init:
$ mar = Character('Markus')
image home = Image( "home_of_markus.jpg" )
[...]
hide markus happy
show markus sad
[...]
What mean that the first code example already contain four errors that would have been avoided by the reading of the documentation...
"
You must be registered to see the links
".
It appear early in the "Quickstart" part of the documentation, something that anyone should have read at least once, in order to know how Ren'Py works.
"
You must be registered to see the links
"
Ok, this one is a bit difficult to understand for a novice, but you don't write a book about a subject if you're novice, right ?
Python:
# These two lines are equivalent.
image logo = "logo.png"
image logo = Image("logo.png")
[
You must be registered to see the links
]
Using
Image is only interesting when you need to change the additional arguments.
"
You must be registered to see the links
"
So, when you've
show markus happy, you just need
show markus sad to replace the image by another one.
Would the author, or at least the technical reviewer, have read the documentation, the init block would have been replaced by:
Code:
define mar = Character('Markus')
image hom = "home_of_markus.jpg"
And
hide statement wouldn't have been used, because useless.
Of course, the book is a bit old, since it date from 2019, but all this was already in the documentation at this date. And the rest of the example is globally following the same "I don't know what I'm doing, but well it works" logic.
It probably still worth to be read, at least for the three first chapters, but always keep in mind that the code you'll see is mostly wrong ; at least for Ren'Py, I don't know enough TyranoBuilder and Twine to judge. Because yes, a book named "game development with Ren'Py will teach you how to use TyranoBuilder and Twine :/
