If anyone is curious as to my thoughts, feel free to check
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Ok, well, you apparently need to have more experience before going further:
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Imagine being told to read and comprehend a page of narrative, but you can only read it via a mask the obscures all but one line of text. When you are ready, you slide the mask down to expose the next line, with the line you just read disappearing as the mask slides.
You don't have to imagine. Every Ren'Py game is like that.
I have to admit that for me, this is frustrating. Humans don't read like a fax scanner, top to bottom, left to right, consuming one character at a time. [...]
How few Ren'Py games have you played, and have you never been curious and opened their option/configuration page ?
Yes, there's a trend in Ren'Py authors to put one sentence by dialog line, but they are a minority ; a really annoying minority, but nothing more than a minority. And obviously, they would do exactly the same if they were using another game engine. It's not due to the engine, but to the author. And obviously, this don't take in count the few games using Ren'Py in NVL mode ; like
interns of ecstacy island by example.
As for the "one character at the time" part, yes by default Ren'Py is configured that way, and yes (too many) authors don't care to change that. But it need one click, to open the option/configuration page, and moving a slider, to change that into a faster text display, or even an instant text display.
Not knowing all the specificities of a game engine never prevented someone to talk about a global problem. But here you based all your talk and argumentation on your total lack of knowledge of two basic and mandatory features. Not understanding that one is purely due to the author, and, worse, not acknowledging that the second is purely due to your own decision as player.
Plus, you totally missed the important problem posed by the "one sentence by dialog line" approach, that is the dialog dynamics.
Ren'Py ADV mode limit the size of the paragraphs, but you can still fit 5 physicals lines in its default text box, what is enough for most dialogs. The splitting will then give its pace to discussion. Something like:
- You know...
- You really messed up this time !
carry more intensity than the same displayed in a single go. The suspension points are already here to mark a pause, but the splitting intensify it ; the character really gave to its interlocutor the time to reflect on what happened.
And the same apply for the difference between:
- You really messed up this time !
- But well, it didn't have consequences.
that put the attention in the fact that the character messed up. This opposed at the same displayed in one go, that would then put the attention in the fact that there where no consequences.
Both carry a different meaning, that would be expressed by the tone if we would ear the dialog, and have to be expressed through the splitting since we can only read it.
You don't say stupid things, but you clearly lack of perspective, and there's also not enough depth in the analyze ; you stay too much on the surface of the problem.
