VN I'm close to wrapping up development on a new VN engine prototype and I need some input.

[Deleted member 1071929]

Hey guys, my name is Rusty, I've been making a new VN engine and I'm a couple weeks away from it's initial release. It's based on Godot and my goal is to provide an even better default user experience than Ren'Py.

The reason I'm making a new engine is because as a user there are some things that I wish Ren'Py did better out of the box. As for game devs and VN authors, creating and implementing 2D (or 3D) minigames into your VNs is arguably significantly easier with Godot vs PyGame or Unity depending on what you're doing. I plan to release a short VN in my new engine showcasing everything it's capable of in about a week (no promises). I plan on creating a GUI based VN creation tool soon after the initial launch of the engine that will allow VN authors to create VNs with no learning or doc reading required.

I can't promise an exact 1 to 1 clone of Ren'Py with complete feature parity in every way, but all major Ren'Py features will be replicated and improved upon as well as plenty of new features added at launch and through future updates.

I ask you guys, what Ren'Py features do you wish were better? What kind of features would you like to see in this engine that Ren'Py doesn't already have?

I'm only a couple weeks away from finishing the initial release at the time of posting this and one of the last things left for me to do is the saving system. I attached a poll to this post with a few possible ways I can handle it. If the poll doesn't include the way you want the saving system to be, please reply to this post with any ideas you may have. Thank you.

 

[Veileos]

This actually sounds pretty amazing. I love renpy but know nothing about codes so its pretty slow making my own game. This sounds like a much better version of Tyrannobuilder my first VN maker experience. So I just want to wish you good luck and cant wait to see it.

 

[moskyx]

Ren'Py save system works fine enough. Adding the option to name your saves is the only real improvement I can think of in Ren'Py's default save/load module.

 

[SecretSal]

Wishlist time, here we go:

- Default option in settings to disable the textbox or adjust the opacity with the slider. Making the default textbox smaller to cover less of the screen.

- Subjective issue, but a more aesthetic default font. Open Sans is just too sterile.


- Functional phone system with calling and texting options:

• Can choose between text replies in the phone window itself.

• Can insert a thumbnail image with a separate hover image (for responsiveness), and clicking links to either displaying a larger resolution image as an overlay, or play a video (still figuring out how to do this in Renpy).

• Chat history is always visible right to the beginning of the conversation.


- Inbuilt gallery functionality. Both for bonus images and replaying scenes.

- Inbuilt walkthrough/hint system. Pretty popular request from players, so making it easier for devs to do it themselves would be helpful.

- Better system of managing save states, so saves don't get broken if a new variable or some other reference is added in the wrong place. This is probably more complex than I'm making it sound, though.


For the save system itself, I think a nice ambitious setup would be to provide options for a tabbed layout, each tab being its own screen where you can scroll down and up (like a Renpy viewport). Reason being a lot of games have exclusive paths, and players like to keep their saves on each path separate. Here, you could separate each path on its own tab, and scroll up and down to load/save the games on that particular path. Renaming tabs and saves would keep their playthrough organised.

Of course, several tabs might be intimidating for a fresh experience, so default should probably just have one autosave tab and one normal save tab. Have a + option on the side to add another tab if the player would like.

Just a rough mockup:



Probably would be a pain in the ass to implement this, but honestly the Renpy save system mostly works fine as is, so would have to be something pretty good to provide a significant improvement.

 

[Yngling]

What I like about Renpy most, and what I miss most in other engines:
- Skip text
- Rollback
- Save slots (unlimited)
When a game does not have this, these are more or less deal breakers for me.

If it were possible to program, an "automatic" gallery function would be great.

Technically speaking, Renpy sometimes does not respond correctly to the arrow keys. Sometimes this happens in the save menu (can't select the proper box by using only arrow keys). Being able to reliably use arrow keys to jump between hotspote (e.g. on a map) would be great as well.

 

[Deleted member 1071929]

Default option in settings to disable the textbox or adjust the opacity with the slider. Making the default textbox smaller to cover less of the screen.

Adding this to my plans, expect to see this on launch.

Subjective issue, but a more aesthetic default font. Open Sans is just too sterile.

I agree but I also think it's a very universal font. I'll take a look at some others but I can't guarantee the default wont be Open Sans. Of course VN authors will be able to adjust this to their liking.

Functional phone system with calling and texting options.

I feel like it'd be easier for a dev to make their own phone system rather than use something built-in. I don't think I could feasibly implement something that's not only easily customizable but also suits every devs individual needs. So I wont be adding this to my plans but if this feature ends up being heavily requested I could fairly easily add this sometime after launch.

Inbuilt gallery functionality. Both for bonus images and replaying scenes.

Added to plans, expect to see this on launch.

Inbuilt walkthrough/hint system. Pretty popular request from players, so making it easier for devs to do it themselves would be helpful.

I love this idea and have thought about adding this but it'll be something that I'll do sometime after launch.

Better system of managing save states, so saves don't get broken if a new variable or some other reference is added in the wrong place. This is probably more complex than I'm making it sound, though.

If I understand correctly this is something that I've been keeping in mind and I will make sure that saves are as bug free as possible. So don't worry

... Renaming tabs and saves ...

The save system is currently planned to be exactly as you described.

 

[Deleted member 1071929]

- Skip text
- Rollback
- Save slots (unlimited)

I don't know what rollback means , but as long as by "unlimited" you mean hundreds of slots the rest of those features will definitely be implemented.

If it were possible to program, an "automatic" gallery function would be great.

I'm still debating on whether or not it makes sense to treat scenes differently from normal dialogue sequences. If I end up making scenes their own unique thing in the code I could easily implement this, otherwise it'd be basically impossible. Either way there will be a built in gallery and it'll be pretty easy for VN authors to manually add scenes to it.

Technically speaking, Renpy sometimes does not respond correctly to the arrow keys. Sometimes this happens in the save menu (can't select the proper box by using only arrow keys). Being able to reliably use arrow keys to jump between hotspote (e.g. on a map) would be great as well.

I'm not entirely sure how hard this would be to implement, but this and controller support will likely come after launch. However, using arrow keys to go backwards and forwards in dialogue is something that will be there on launch.

 

[woody554]

what are you planning animation-wise? or is all animation done in godot?

the thing I hate the most about renpy is how you can't chain animations while guaranteeing completed loops, and how you can't change any useful variables from inside animation loops.

I don't have strong opinions about saves. I kinda feel a lot of VNs make their choices pointless with save scumming and rollbacks anyway. but I guess for an engine more might be better.

 

[Meaning Less]

the thing I hate the most about renpy is how you can't chain animations while guaranteeing completed loops, and how you can't change any useful variables from inside animation loops.

You mean video animation? if so you can, this game does that.

Most devs just don't give this much attention to their animations probably.

 

[SecretSal]

The save system is currently planned to be exactly as you described.

Nice, looks like you've got your ducks in a row. Oh, one more thing: ability to delete saves from the save/load menu. In Renpy, sometimes I misclick and end up saving a game in a slot far away from the others. Then I have to hunt down the save folder, take note of which page and slot it's on, and delete it from there. Making that hassle-free would be a plus.

I don't know what rollback means...

Scrolling up on your mouse (or some other input) will rewind backwards through the conversation and also undo any variable changes that were made along the way, and after that, scrolling down will go forwards through the conversation, only stopping if you interact with a choice menu, if I remember right. Basically, it's a way to rewind through the conversation and resume at an earlier point without messing up the variables. Renpy has a pretty generous limit how far it will scroll back, but it's still limited. Not sure if the user can change the limit, haven't tried myself.

 

[Ambir]

Hey guys, my name is Rusty, I've been making a new VN engine and I'm a couple weeks away from it's initial release. It's based on Godot and my goal is to provide an even better default user experience than Ren'Py.

The reason I'm making a new engine is because as a user there are some things that I wish Ren'Py did better out of the box. As for game devs and VN authors, creating and implementing 2D (or 3D) minigames into your VNs is arguably significantly easier with Godot vs PyGame or Unity depending on what you're doing. I plan to release a short VN in my new engine showcasing everything it's capable of in about a week (no promises). I plan on creating a GUI based VN creation tool soon after the initial launch of the engine that will allow VN authors to create VNs with no learning or doc reading required.

I can't promise an exact 1 to 1 clone of Ren'Py with complete feature parity in every way, but all major Ren'Py features will be replicated and improved upon as well as plenty of new features added at launch and through future updates.

I ask you guys, what Ren'Py features do you wish were better? What kind of features would you like to see in this engine that Ren'Py doesn't already have?

I'm only a couple weeks away from finishing the initial release at the time of posting this and one of the last things left for me to do is the saving system. I attached a poll to this post with a few possible ways I can handle it. If the poll doesn't include the way you want the saving system to be, please reply to this post with any ideas you may have. Thank you.

Say, what scripting language is this going to use? Same as godot?

 

[baloneysammich]

ability to delete saves from the save/load menu.

In Renpy, press Delete when the cursor is over the save you want to delete.

 

[Deleted member 1071929]

what are you planning animation-wise? or is all animation done in godot?

This is what'll be available on launch. They can be applied to both characters and backgrounds:

Slide in from the left/right.
Flip horizontal/vertical.
Fade in/out.
Punch up/down/left/right.
Shake.

As you know, Ren'Py has a crazy amount of options for this and my engine isn't going to be 1 to 1 on launch. The plan is to eventually add most of what Ren'Py offers but it would take months to launch with complete feature parity. However, I do plan to allow you to either play animations in a specific order or at the same time with no issues. Programming your own animations will also be pretty easy to do for anyone who knows a little coding. I might even make a couple tutorials for this after launch if needed.

 

[fyl3toys]

- Inbuilt walkthrough/hint system. Pretty popular request from players, so making it easier for devs to do it themselves would be helpful.

I 2nd this. This would be most welcome.

 

[Deleted member 1071929]

Say, what scripting language is this going to use? Same as godot?

The codebase is on GDScript, which is very similar to Lua and Python. VNs are currently being created through a JSON file. It may be a risky design choice that people might not like but I feel that it's a pretty intuitive system that helps with organization, has better rollback support, and is easier to learn. Worst case scenario I can take a couple weeks after launch to switch over to using scripts just like Ren'Py. If this happens scripts will also be in GDScript. There will be a VN creation tool eventually to help out VN authors who don't want to deal with JSON or scripts.

At the end of the day I'm making this for the community so if there's a large dislike for any feature or feature implementation, it will change .

 

[SecretSal]

In Renpy, press Delete when the cursor is over the save you want to delete.

Thanks, now I feel like an idiot.

 

[Yngling]

I don't know what rollback means

Using page up to scroll back through previous conversations.
In case you scroll back beyond variables though, it sometimes leads to problems in Renpy.

, but as long as by "unlimited" you mean hundreds of slots the rest of those features will definitely be implemented.

In a fairly long completed game, I may have almost 1000 saves...
I like Renpy's gallery function so you are able to quickly go through the save files identifying the one that I want.

Some Renpy games have an automatic save name function, naming saves by their episode number automatically.

What I really, really dislike about Renpy is that it saves in two locations, namely the game dir but also the user dir. This makes it harder to clean up.

 

[Bev_]

What I like about Renpy most, and what I miss most in other engines:
- Skip text
- Rollback
- Save slots (unlimited)
When a game does not have this, these are more or less deal breakers for me.

This.

+Being able to decide whether you want to skip through unseen text or not
+Easily accessible saving (Quicksaves and normal saves being only one click away)

 

[MLocke]

First, props to you for trying to do this. Look into replicating or extending something like godot-ink. A data serialization format like JSON (that is barely human readable on top of other things) can't be at the core of a Ren'py engine replacement. A visual novel engine that abstracts everything rather than just letting the devs work directly in the GoDot engine (with some modules) needs a scripting language that supports all the functionality you offer while being simpler than writing, let's say, Python or R. Your internal representation for game state and any data serialization can be whatever you want, so I don't see how it's relevant that JSON supposedly supports some kind of straightforward rollback. I hope this makes sense and was the input you were looking for.

EDIT: I would also add that ink only supports annotation so that the game engine knows to display an image. That would be fine to start, but eventually people will expect more from a full-fledged visual novel engine including UI scripting for overlays, minigames, and much more. Here's a relevant discussion I guess:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[MrSilverLust]

Hey guys, my name is Rusty, I've been making a new VN engine and I'm a couple weeks away from it's initial release. It's based on Godot and my goal is to provide an even better default user experience than Ren'Py.

May I ask what happened to this project and if it’s still going?

Although I think it’ll be hard to have the same great functionality and ease of use as renpy (it has been in development for many many years), it’d be quite interesting to have something at least close enough where we could also use the rest of the godot engine on top.

I was curious to try it out.