I understand how it can be useful for patches, and so why you mentioned it, but I fail to understand why PyTom added it. There's already a virtual flag for this,
config.developer. If it's value is
False, Ren'py will not complain about duplicated labels and probably use the last one loaded ; therefore, it will do what I suppose being the meaning of this new configuration variable.
This while the
config.label_overrides offer a more precise control since the label used can be changed at any time during the game.
It can also do more than just patch. I don't think that it's used in one of the game available here, but you can have something like :
Python:
label start:
[...]
menu:
"Easy game":
$ config.label_overrides["dayUpdate"] = "easyDayUpdate"
"Regular game":
$ config.label_overrides["dayUpdate"] = "regularDayUpdate"
"Hard game":
pass
[...]
"Time to sleep."
call dayUpdate
[...]
which is easier than something like :
Python:
label start:
[...]
menu:
"Easy game":
$ gameLevel = 0
"Regular game":
$ gameLevel = 1
"Hard game":
$ gameLevel = 2
[...]
"Time to sleep."
if gameLevel == 0:
call easyDayUpdate
elif gameLevel == 1:
call regularDayUpdate
else:
call dayUpdate
[...]
especially if
dayUpdate is called from more than one place.
It can also works for the games with some scenes that change according to previous decision. Just redirect the label(s) when the decision is made, and you don't have to care about the decision when the time will come.
It's probably a good way to prevent the usual errors, like inverting the meaning of
True and
False because the decision was made few update ago and you don't remember correctly.
Same for games allowing to define the sex of the MC. Especially for a game like
@Nottravis one. There's a female version planed, but for the future, so it can be easier to overrides the labels that imply many changes depending of MC's gender, than adding manual redirection each time that the game will jump/call the said scenes. All is done in a single place (where the player choice the gender) which mean less risk to forget something and more simplicity if a label is misnamed.
But I'm out of the subject I presume.
