what platform do you play renpy games on?

[trusk rock]

Hey guys. I'm a new developer here. I would like to know what platform do you guys use to play renpy games/ novels. If you have multiple then please choose the preferred one

 

[freedom.call]

Windows.

 

[Fliptoynk]

ARM linux

oh just compile your games on linux, mac, and windows. the kick-ass android porters and compressors will take care of the rest.

 

[JuiceShooters]

This is interesting. The votes here are mostly desktop players, but what I've seen in the analytics of our game, most players on Itch.io play their games on mobile (Like 2/3 of the total downloads). Renpy also has an option to compile your games in android, so you can just do that to make sure you're supporting (almost) all platforms.

Oh like Fliptoynk said, if you don't want to do it yourself and your game gains enough traction, they will do it for you haha but just make sure the game also runs and plays fine on mobile.

 

[anne O'nymous]

This is interesting. The votes here are mostly desktop players, but what I've seen in the analytics of our game, most players on Itch.io play their games on mobile (Like 2/3 of the total downloads).

Isn't it a question of community ?
We are on a forum, a place not really designed to be used from a mobile device. So, most people here own a desktop or laptop, and are more likely to play the game directly on it.
At the opposite, itch.io is more adapted to mobile devices, and even have a dedicated app. So, it's the place where people who search for mobile device adult games goes.

 

[khumak]

On a related note, I'm kind of curious whether there's much testing needed on each separate platform or whether you can just develop and bugfix on 1 and then cross your fingers and release your builds for the other platforms without testing? In my case I have a windows box but no mac, no iphone, and the only android phone I have is a work phone so I can't be putting porn on it... Will I need to actually go buy a cheap mac/android phone/iphone just to test on or is that unnecessary? Presumably the actual code is identical for all of them, you just have a different executable and in the case of phones probably a smaller screen/different aspect ratio?

 

[rayminator]

This is interesting. The votes here are mostly desktop players, but what I've seen in the analytics of our game, most players on Itch.io play their games on mobile (Like 2/3 of the total downloads). Renpy also has an option to compile your games in android, so you can just do that to make sure you're supporting (almost) all platforms.

Oh like Fliptoynk said, if you don't want to do it yourself and your game gains enough traction, they will do it for you haha but just make sure the game also runs and plays fine on mobile.

compiling renpy games for android is not that simple

the hardest thing is to setup java for it for me

 

[anne O'nymous]

On a related note, I'm kind of curious whether there's much testing needed on each separate platform or whether you can just develop and bugfix on 1 and then cross your fingers and release your builds for the other platforms without testing?

For Windows and Linux, Ren'py is known to be stable, what will works on one will also works on the second.
MacOS is more of a bitch, and many devs complain about some bugs that happen only on the MacOS version. But globally if you don't go to wild, it should works without problem.

But Android is something radically different, mostly because Ren'py is ported on Android. Contrarily to what happen for the desktop/laptop version, where the interpreter (Python) stay the same, just in a version compiled for the OS, here the interpreter change. This imply some subtle changes that can possibly lead to big consequences.
It's not one of the problem, but a good way to explain it : Imagine that you're working with a language that always round the division of two integers to the lower number, not caring about the rest ; therefore, 3/2 will be 1. Then you port your code to a language where the division is rounded to the upper number if the rest is .5 or more, and to the lower one if the rest is .49...9 or below ; suddenly 3/2 become 2.
It will works most of the time, but with some differences. If, by example, you use this division to compute the size of a button, it will be bigger with the second language than with the first one. And sometimes those differences will just break everything because 1 is obviously not the same thing than 2.
And, of course, there's the problem due to the size of the screen (you can have to reworks the User Interface) and the lack of keyboard.
Unlike for the desktop/laptop version, you can't just cross your fingers with the Android port, you have to test it first, and potentially include "if it's a mobile version do that instead of this" parts in your code.

Will I need to actually go buy a cheap mac/android phone/iphone just to test on or is that unnecessary?

You don't really need it.
It's not really legal, but if you search well, you can surely found everything you need to run a MacOs into a VirtualBox or another virtualization software. But even this isn't really necessary unless you encounter a bug on MacOS that you really don't achieve to understand and solve without effectively playing under MacOS.
You can do the same virtualization thing with Android, but it will not be exactly the same than playing on an actual mobile device ; the virtualization will not magically change your screen into a touchscreen, and even if the window fit the size of a mobile screen, the feeling isn't the same. This said, the easiest solution is probably to let one of the Android port maker do his magic.