Been often wondering this... VN = Visual Novel, yes? So... a Ren'Py game is pretty much a novel/big load of text where you just just read and click/choose between random selection of choices to progress in the story and occasionally you get to view a pic or video? No walking around etc., right? Just wondering since I am still uncertain of it despite googling etc.
- Apr 30, 2017
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It's an engine made for Visual Novels, so yes it's basically just text and pictures in most common uses, but it's not limited to that. One can add items, inventory, management, map movement, branching choices, etc if they so desire and by no means the only way to do it.
The best comparison is what Word is for texts, it's not he only way to write texts, and it can do tables, drawings, and other stuff, it's just that its main use is making text documents.
The best comparison is what Word is for texts, it's not he only way to write texts, and it can do tables, drawings, and other stuff, it's just that its main use is making text documents.
- Jun 10, 2017
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Other's have answered what Ren'py is, but there's also what Ren'py mean :
It's short for ren'ai (Japanese for "romantic love"), for the initially intended content of the game, and Python, for the language used to create the engine.
It's short for ren'ai (Japanese for "romantic love"), for the initially intended content of the game, and Python, for the language used to create the engine.
Yes, okay, so the games we find on f95zone are pretty much "loads of text (story), click-choices and more text (story)", right?
- Jun 14, 2018
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RenPy as a game engine is pretty flexible. Yes, it's primary aim is to create visual novels or at least visual novel like games.
But I've seen (and played) minigames within RenPy games that include things like picking locks, playing Pong (tennis), sliding number puzzles and some others I can't remember.
But the vast majority of RenPy authors probably picked the engine because players are familiar with it and it's easy to create a basic story with. Beyond that, it's really about the author's imagination and experience.
At the very basic level... that's a story told like a storyboard with subtitles. With each character speaking their dialogue and that appearing at the bottom of the screen.
A more experienced author might add in alternate stories based on character stats or choices the player makes.
An even more experienced author might have a very complex story, with a rich user interface, some sort of stats system, maybe some sort of combat mechanics, minigames or anything else the author can imagine.
The associated pictures can be anything from really bad images created in MSPaint, hand drawn cartoon like 2D pictures, 3D rendered life-like models, 3D created pose-able models (I'm thinking Hunny Select), even pixel art I guess. Up to and including some very complex animations. Again, limited only by the author's skill.
As far as it being "just text". I can't say it feels like that when you're playing. My "just text" comparison would be most of the bad HTML games... where there's lots of reading and very little visually going on. RenPy games tend to be mostly still images with some text explaining what's going on, who's saying what or who's thinking what. Again, some (but not most) are a lot more complex than that. I suppose if you're comparison would be more mainstream games like Warcraft, Warframe, CoD, Diablo, Fortnight, Red Dead Redemption or even Tetris... then yeah, there's more text to read.
My advice if you're wondering is just to just download a couple of games from the
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. Sort the list by Likes and grab 2 or 3 games that catch your eye on the first page that are flagged as RenPy (Maybe avoid Summertime Saga as a first try). Play 10-15 minutes of each. Anything you see as similar between your random choices of games is what makes it "a RenPy game", the differences will all be about the author's imagination.Thanks for the replies. I guess I got the needed answers. Ren'Py's not for me, but I certainly understand why so many like it, though, absolutely. Thread can be locked if needed.