HTML Ren'Py twine/sugarcube vs renpy

[Untolddead]

I've been messing with both. I like that twine is easy to run online but renpy seems to look more professional (as it doesn't need to open in a browser). Do you guys have a preferred engine? Why?


Thanks.

As for the game I'm planning on making. It's a business simulator where you play as an armor seller. One day you get jealous of the lingerie store across the street and it's great margins. You then start your mission to corrupt the world of fashion and adventuring so you can sell skimpy bikini armor instead of bulky plate armor.

 

[Domiek]

I'm not familiar with twine so take this with a grain of salt.

Ren'py is written with Python and you can still write python code within your game. This means you have the flexibility to implement even more complex code than just what ren'py provides out the gate. However this means a steeper learning path.

If Twine is able to let you accomplish whatever it is that you want to do without too much problem then it may be worth considering.

 

[NandabaCanti]

Twine can use coding as well, Javascript in this case. I personally hate Js, so that is a mark against Twine in my book, but others seem to like it for whatever reason.

Twine is my favorite tool for brainstorming and rough drafting branching narratives. It is just so easy to use and I love having a visual overview of a story's paths with that node editor it uses. But I don't particularly care for it when it comes to making games to publish, unless maybe I found myself taking part in some kind of interactive fiction game jam and just wanted to focus on quickly producing a story I could toss on the web as my submission. Not even sure if there are any such game jams, but it there are, it would be an ideal tool for the job, heh.

Ren'Py is old and battle tested, it is pretty well optimized and will run on just about any system with one of it's supported OS targets, even crappy old beaters like my system which has yet to have any issues with any Ren'Py games I've thrown at it, something that can't be said for the likes of Unity, TyranoBuilder, and several other alternatives out there. Ren'Py also has the previously mentioned benefit of offering no fuss standalone builds for desktop and Android that don't require you to run the game in a browser, which is a huge plus over Twine specifically to me.

Personally though, as someone with a fair bit of programming experience and who's spent a lot of time testing out a lot of different engines over the past few years - I've found myself settling on Godot as my engine of choice. It isn't without it's faults, but the benefits far outweigh any issues I've run into with it so far. It is a free open-source general purpose game engine that can fairly easily be adapted to make any sort of game you can imagine. It has dedicated support for both true 2D and 3D rendering and processing. Unlike things like Unity which has traditionally sort of had half-assed 2D support done entirely in 3D as an afterthought they tacked on embarrassingly late in their release history. I think things may have improved more recently, but with all of Unity's performance issues I've run into with games made with it, I have no interest in wasting any time on keeping up on it anymore, especially now that I've gotten into Godot.

But if all you want to make are fairly straight forward VNs, then Ren'Py is a solid choice. It is pretty easy to get familiar with the syntax it uses for formatting your game scripts and it comes with just about everything you'll need for your game built in (basic save systems, I/O, transitions, basic animation support, audio, etc). It also has a pretty good community around it; the primary dev is pretty active in their Discord channel as well. I've gotten answers to a lot of my concerns when I was learning the basics of that engine straight from him on there earlier this year.

 

[HiEv]

I've been messing with both. I like that twine is easy to run online but renpy seems to look more professional (as it doesn't need to open in a browser). Do you guys have a preferred engine? Why?

I'm a big Twine fan. Now, you can make Twine look professional, the problem is that it takes a bit more work and Twine makes it really easy to not do that work. The first thing you can do is use fullscreen mode to hide the browser's interface (if you're interested,

You must be registered to see the links

). The second thing to do is get away from the generic Twine interface, and to build an interface which is designed for your game.

The fact is, you could make a Twine game which looks and works exactly like Ren'py if you wanted to (but with the added benefit of having one version that works anywhere that has a modern browser), but like I said, it's easy to avoid doing that in Twine.

As for the game I'm planning on making. It's a business simulator where you play as an armor seller. One day you get jealous of the lingerie store across the street and it's great margins. You then start your mission to corrupt the world of fashion and adventuring so you can sell skimpy bikini armor instead of bulky plate armor.

Well, if it would help, I'm working on an inventory system "plugin" for Twine/SugarCube which is meant to make working with inventories much easier. It's called the

You must be registered to see the links

(UInv), and it's in a working pre-release state at this point if you want to try it out. You can take a look at some

You must be registered to see the links

and an early version of

You must be registered to see the links

if you want to get an idea of what it can do.

Whatever you choose, good luck with your game!

 

[Untolddead]

Ren'py is written with Python and you can still write python code within your game.

Yeah, I took a class in python many years ago in college. It's a lot like C so in that way it's better for me to program in then twine.

Twine is my favorite tool for brainstorming and rough drafting branching narratives.

Yeah I've even used it for a story I'm writing to keep track of the characters relationships and locations. With how simple it is to make the connections quickly.

I personally hate Js

Honestly me too. I come from a c background so Js always feels a bit off.

I've found myself settling on Godot as my engine of choice.

Interesting I've never heard of it before. I'll check it out.

if you're interested,

You must be registered to see the links

Thanks this definitely looks useful.

I thought I'd get more people saying what they prefer to play in rather then critiques for development. Still thanks for the info. It gives me something to think about.

 

[Domiek]

Yeah, I took a class in python many years ago in college. It's a lot like C so in that way it's better for me to program in then twine.

Yeah I've even used it for a story I'm writing to keep track of the characters relationships and locations. With how simple it is to make the connections quickly.

Honestly me too. I come from a c background so Js always feels a bit off.

Interesting I've never heard of it before. I'll check it out.

Thanks this definitely looks useful.

I thought I'd get more people saying what they prefer to play in rather then critiques for development. Still thanks for the info. It gives me something to think about.

For a VN, the general consensus is that people prefer to play in Ren'py. Usually because of familiarity and least amount of issues. There's not much optimization required on the dev end to make it a smooth experience.

The main question comes to whether or not Ren'py can handle the mechanics of your game.