Ren'Py What Ren'Py addons do people use?

[DesireForgerTeam]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask which addons people usually use with Ren’Py (UI tools, debugging helpers, custom systems, etc.).
For example:

• Controller support: “Controller Support Expansion for Ren'Py” by feniksdev
• Encyclopedia system: “Encyclopaedia Framework” by jsfehler
• Inventory system: “Lezinventory” by Lezalith
• Text effects: “FancyText / Kinetic Text Tags” by wattson
• Dialogue improvements: “Auto Highlight” (highlighting the speaking character) by wattson

I searched before but couldn’t find a thread about this. If there is already one, could you please link it to me? Otherwise, I’d be happy to start collecting suggestions here.


Thanks!

 

[osanaiko]

Speaking from what I've seen in the 2-dozen-or-so games where I've spent time looking at source code, using "addons" is not a very common practice for Renpy.

I'd say there's 2-3 games from that group which explicitly used externally sourced code rather than writing it themselves. One of those was a "cell phone" messaging component (vk something, seemed to be russian authored), and another was a glossary/backstory module.

I don't know why that's the case, as it is quite different from some other platforms (rpgm, unity) where external module use is common.

If I was to speculate, I'd say that the Renpy platform provides all the functionality you need for basic VN gameplay, and is not very suited to other game types, so complex subsystems (shops, skills/equipment/inventory) are less needed for most game implementations.

 

[DesireForgerTeam]

That’s a bit unfortunate. For me, the purpose of these addons isn’t just to plug them directly into a project, but also to see what other people can achieve with the engine and get ideas. Of course, you can also do this by studying other games, but addons are usually focused on solving one specific problem, which makes it easier to learn from them.

Thanks a lot for your reply!

 

[osanaiko]

I certainly believe that Renpy games on average have quite poor *internal* implementation.

This is probably due to the low barrier to entry leading to many beginner "developers" with no programming background getting themselves into deep water, well beyond their skill level. Then they thrash and hack code until it works, but rarely step back and rethink/refactor.

There are of course exceptions to this rule; for example: even before the endless "tech" rewrite, SummertimeSaga had excellent internal design, which is probably essential given the complexity of a full point-and-click / many parallel quests game design. It's clear that darkcookie got a professional developer to re-write the internal code once it got beyond the first 5~ releases.

Then again, as I said in my post above, there are many Renpy games which have extremely simply gameplay (choice A/B just shows different scenes, and has no further consequence) so the poor internal coding standard does not end up negatively impacting the game quality.

I think the approach of finding games with interesting gameplay systems and cracking them open to examine the internal design might be your best bet in discovering good examples to learn from.

 

[Himeros Studios]

Yeah from experience Ren'py has an extremely low bar to get started on a project, which is great if you are a beginner. Then you pour several days of work into something, only to then realise that there was a bunch of coding you really, really should have done at the beginning before anything else, and by that point you are pretty deep in and it is tempting to just plough on and try and make it work, which is where I think a lot of the games with really wild creaky code come from...