Ren'Py Need help with bootstrap errors and Renpy directories

[inigoshakir]

Hi, I'm wondering if someone can help me understand what I'm doing wrong.

I'm building my own game using the Ren'py 7.4.10 sdk.

The path I have everything saved on my external HDD is
G:\Renpy Dev\

Inside that path I have:

G:\Renpy Dev\[Dev] Game 1
G:\Renpy Dev\[Dev] Game 2
G:\Renpy Dev\[Dev] Game 3
G:\Renpy Dev\my_game
G:\Renpy Dev\renpy-7.4.10-sdk

The [Dev] games are ones that I particularly liked and that seemed to use interesting mechanics that were relatively bug-free. So I use those as references for code examples. Not copying the code but more so that I can peek under the hood and see the logic behind what they are doing. (Yes, I'm still a newb.) I copied those to the Renpy Dev folder, then used rpaExtract and un.rpyc so I could get to the scripts. So far so good. I'm able to play the game on one screen and follow along with the script on another screen, taking notes as I go.

But I'm having trouble with two things.

First, every now and then (maybe every few weeks) when launching either one of their games or mine, the system will throw a bootstrap error. I've found that if I delete \renpy-7.4.10-sdk and reinstall from my previous downloaded copy of the sdk I can continue as before. A few weeks later it'll do it again. As far as I'm aware I haven't saved any changes in the example games so I'm not sure why bootstrap would be suddenly missing from those.

What are best practices to prevent throwing the bootstrap error?



Second issue, I decided that I wanted to go forward developing with Ren'py 8.0.3 to save myself any headaches down the road. I downloaded 8.0.3 and extracted to:

C:\Users\g***\Desktop\Dev_Build

I fired up the launcher from that location. It shows the current version but everything from G:\Renpy Dev\ is still listed there. Tried refresh but it's still there. I'm nervous to continue as I don't want to screw anything up in my test environment on G or build environment on C.

Is there a way to isolate those environments so I don't break anything? Is there a way to create a new working directory and choose which one I want to work in at a given time? Or does it even matter as long as I use the 8.0.3 launcher while working on my game going forward?

 

[anne O'nymous]

First, every now and then (maybe every few weeks) when launching either one of their games or mine, the system will throw a bootstrap error. I've found that if I delete \renpy-7.4.10-sdk and reinstall from my previous downloaded copy of the sdk I can continue as before. A few weeks later it'll do it again.

Hmm, I don't see why it would be an issue, but just to be sure, in the SDK, click on "preferences" (bottom right of the screen), then "options", and uncheck "Daily check for update".

What are best practices to prevent throwing the bootstrap error?

There isn't, because there's no reason for them to appear. And it's not because of Ren'Py being on an external drive, it's the same for me.

It shows the current version but everything from G:\Renpy Dev\ is still listed there.

What is normal and not really avoidable. The SDK is designed to survive its own update, and since it's directly made in Ren'Py, it rely on Ren'Py mechanism to ensure that the information will be shared from a version to another. What also mean that having a second SDK environment would change nothing, the project directory would stay the same for both.
But it don't really matters as long as you use the 7.x to only try games made for it, and the 8.x to only try games made for it.