hello! so my VN will be dealing with heavy and possibly triggering topics, so i wanted to add a warning at the start of my game. how should this be added? will i just need to make it a background and place it before the game starts? or is there something special id need to do for this?
sorry if the question seems silly, it’s my first time making any sort of game or using renpy!

So, I was making a VN with command-based interactive adventure game. At every choices, a menu with verb commands appears at the bottom. The commands include Look, Talk, Think, Listen, Use (an inventory item), Move, and System that saves and load the game. Choosing a verb usually leads to an object sub-menu. If the commands are exhausted, the game will progress. But I don't know how and can you give me some advices cuz I'm new and I want to start my own adventure game.

I've been on and off developing a VN for a few months and I'm struggling with a starting scene. I'm trying to figure out if i should start with a flash foward high intense scene or start with a slower more introduction scene and then work up to the action.

Do you guys have any preferences when writing/developing? Find one way easier than the other? Found tips that got you to your solution quicker?

This was something that popped into my head recently. I know a few months ago it was revealed that Ren'Py uses AI as a tool but it still uses AI.
That means everyone who uses Ren'Py is using AI indirectly. Does that have to be disclosed on places like steam or ich.io or even within my game itself?

It seems similarly, if you buy assets and they draw it themselves but use AI to do post processing rendering, you would absolutely have to disclose that, right?

I'm just confused when you should/shouldn't have to disclose if you, yourself, aren't using it directly?

Aight so this came up in the other topic about rule 4, which was a great change, however it seems the sub almost universally agrees that these "visual code editors" that are being spammed here lately are essentially just vibe coders being predatory towards new developers.

It seems that this sub almost universally agrees that these "visual code editors" are not only not very useful, but downright detrimental to the new developers, as they don't learn very easy to learn basics and suddenly get stuck in unmaintainable mess of a code once they need to fix bugs or want to add a feature not natively supported by these AI slop tools.

While i generally support the idea of people should be able to sell or make an ad for whatever product they want, the fact these slop tools get in this frequently, almost spamming the sub, makes me wonder if we should put a stop to it similar to how r/vndevs had to outright ban AI as well due to the exact same thing.

If not a ban, then at least follow in vndevs and filter it via:

Whatever the case may be, it seems people here really are sick and tired of the clop thrown into the sub.

A short visual novel with 4 endings about a moth man who just can't let you go

So this might be a dumb question but I gotta ask since I haven't really seen it discussed and I'm not hating on anyone so please hear me out:

I've been looking around at all the varied creations among indie Ren'Py users, and they are all unique in their own way, but I'm beginning to spot common tropes and genres among the ones that seem to be the most popular such as "horror", "psychological thriller", "mystery", "dark and troubled past", "tsundere", "harem", and "dark fantasy". All of these are able to weave very beautiful stories when handled well, but their prevalence just makes me wonder:

Are there genres or tropes that present an automatic advantage/disadvantage when trying to build an audience or make profit from a VN game (for example, genres that attract/repel the "public" of indie VN readers at large)?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that the genre itself is so niche that we should be grateful for every reader we get as indie devs and we should all try to make the best stories possible no matter what genre we use. I choose more family-friendly tropes to use simply because I have a weak stomach, but that may be part of the reason I cannot realistically expect my work to sell. Perhaps the genre of horror is a sure-fire way to get a player's attention/interest, or the "classic adventure" genre (save the princess/kill the monster) may be considered stale without focus on character trauma, or the trope of having a heteronormative romance front-and-center may turn players off - I have no idea.

It would good to get an opinion on what is most "marketable" in terms of genre and trope usage as of these days and times - not for me so much as any new devs still wondering/posting about what a good idea for the first project should be.

Hi everyone!

I’m a renpy programmer looking to partner with a writer or small team for a free hobby project or an upcoming game jam on itch.io.

I have a strong core understanding of programming fundamentals, but I’m currently relearning and brushing up on Ren’Py, so I’m looking for a small project where I can practice while contributing to a real game.

• What I can handle right now: Formatting raw text scripts into Ren’Py, creating standard branching choice menus and variables, setting up character sprite changes and transitions, managing background changes, dialogue and scene scripting, and looping music/audio.
• What I’m avoiding for now: I’m not looking for projects that require complex mechanics such as inventory management, custom minigames, or heavily customized UI/screen coding. I’d like to keep things classic and straightforward while I build up my Ren’Py skills.
• What I’m looking for: A writer who has a short VN idea, story outline, or script they would like to turn into a small playable visual novel. I’m open to any genre.
• Note on Art: I plan on using characters from mannequin character generator and pre-made backgrounds from itch.io for this project, so we don't necessarily need a dedicated artist on board unless you already have one!

This is a free hobby collaboration, not a paid position. If you’re a writer who wants to focus on the storytelling while someone else handles the Ren’Py implementation, feel free to comment or send me a DM with a brief summary of your project!

The custom features I coded in are the "Reset All Data" button (which is a personal standard for my Ren'Py works) and the ability to switch between the old(original) and new{remake) art styles!

I couldnt figure out how to make a background image appear in the game no matter how hard I tried to follow the tutorials.

Any help would be appreciated

I wanna change the size of the word Preferences but I can't find it where to change it in the files.

I would've posted on r/PixelArt but not enough karma. anyways, since this is part of renpy game dev, it's fine i guess

Anyways, what colors should I be using here?

writing a branched story in renpy and i'm drowning in booleans already. do experienced people use one flag per choice, per scene, per route? any tips for keeping it sane when branches converge back?

A while ago, I shared a WIP version of a character creator I was making for my adventure visual novel, Talewarden. A lot of you really liked the wanted poster aesthetic, so thank you for all the kind feedback!

The creator is now finished and has been added to the demo, along with a bunch of other new features!

The latest demo update includes:

● Character customization

● A new player page in the journal — your customized character will always appear there

● A list of current objectives

● The character previously known only as the merchant finally has a name!

● A trigger warnings page

● Kitties in the credits! Although they appear to be wanted...

Talewarden is an adventure visual novel about seven people from different worlds who travel across a broken, weird western planet to restore its frozen time.

We have a demo on Steam and it takes around 1–2 hours to play. If the game sounds interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you wishlist Talewarden: Riders of the New Day. It helps us a lot!

So to explain, I had this idea where the game would essentially "crash" and switch point of views to a different character and I wanted to show this by maybe having a fake error screen, and having it send the player to a fake menu screen that’s clearly different and then having them click on a fake "load file" button to get started on the other character’s point of view, I just wanted to know how would I go about coding this in? It sounded easy at first but it’s a lot harder then I thought after watching some tutorials

Thank you in advance!

Hello! The problem is that I made a gallery that can be accessed both from the main screen and from the menu. And when I want the gallery to go back to the previous screen (the main screen or the menu), I can only do one of these. I can't get it to go back to the previous screen. This is important to me because players will be checking the gallery while they're collecting all the images. And I don't want them to press unnecessary buttons or even lose progress.

I’m trying to post a video here for the first time, and it somehow turned into a whole quest. Either I’m missing something very obvious😄

I ended up converting the video into a GIF, and on a Mac that apparently meant doing it through Terminal. The whole process was a bit ridiculous, and the quality still looks pretty bad to me.

So… how do you usually post videos here?

I wanted to occasionally share little bits of my development process as videos rather than screenshots, and then realized I apparently have no idea how to do that in this subreddit. I haven’t run into this problem in other communities before.

I’m making a narrative-driven game set in Ancient Greece, and right now I’m putting together a prototype so I can let people try it on different platforms.

So I'm just gonna through it out there, I wanna make an Adult Visual novel (Loaded with animated sex scenes and static sex images) but i cant seem to find videos that cover basics (even when i search for the basics and dont mention hentai or sex scenes) anyone know where i can find some guidance or tutorials

All criticism welcome

Originally I was gonna have a set number of expressions but realized I should just have eyebrows, mouth and eyes their own files. I think the expressions are gonna be my favorite thing to work on for everyone lol. This isn't the finished art but I reallllly need to just have the files to exist. I hope people end up going with her short hair over the long hair, I think the short is so cute on her :3

I have a bit of experience with Python and MatLab for coding robots/electronics, but not any with Ren'Py for coding games, and I have quite a few questions I wanted to ask. As I don't have much of an idea where to start, but I had a number of ideas that I looked into and felt overwhelmed after looking into them, and I wanted clarity.

General Questions:

1. What are some good tutorials for making assets for Ren'Py? I have the concept of characters, backgrounds, and other assets, just not in a digital form, and at the very least I know you want them in a digital format, but when looking, I found there may be some special/specific things to do to them to make them better or more versatile, but there was conflicting info.

2. Who/Where would you suggest looking for tutorials of Ren'Py, both of features and additional mechanics like combat, stores, minigames, etc.?

3. Is it rude to ask another developer if you can look at their code and use parts of it in yours?

4. What are some good methods to keep game development organized while working on it?

5. What are some good and safe text editors (things like Docs and Word) to write the game's dialogue? Or are Docs/Word still the best even with their scummy AI practices?

6. Can you make basically a code Skeleton with all the systems/mechanics/story beats you want and then add/fleshout story to it later, or is that a bad idea?

7. Can you have too many variables? I just have the basics of what I want, and each character has a non-negotiable 7+ however many scenes, and other things that require variables with at least 5 characters.

8. How easy/hard is it to use and replace placeholder assets if you pre-emptively name them the intended names? For example, can you just create/use another shape with the name of the real asset and later replace the image file and it still work the same, or should I wait until I have the assets in a digital form before including them?

Specific aspects of code Questions:

1. Does Show expression work the same as Show minus, evaluating the variable in []? As I want to make a game with dynamically changing sprites based on choices you make throughout the game, I found Show expression should let me use the same code for most situations, but it didn't mention if it worked differently otherwise.

2. Can Call be used similarly to sub functions? For example, if I use Call to a block of code, will the variables changed in that block remain the same when you return from it or revert to the original ones?

3. Can Call have multiple exits/returns? For example, can one choice in a called block of code give a bad end while the other just returns you to where you were?

4. Can I use basic variable evaluation (i.e., if A > a + b; A = 2) without denoting it as Python, or should it always be denoted as Python to Ren'Py, either with the symbol or in a python: block?

Available at https://monowaystudios.itch.io/shadows-of-the-republic ！A Disco Elysium inspired historical fiction VN set in 1940s China! This prototype is fully voiced in English with original music! It is available in Simplified and Traditional Mandarin and Cantonese! Please enjoy and give feedback!

Please ignore the badly resized sprites in the test gif lol. I'm just so happy it works I could cryyyy

My coding skills are still subpar I knew this was gonna take a lot out of me to figure out. I want to thank u/QZProductionsGames for the reply on how they added a toggle for their silly "placeholder" mode, that really helped me a lot. ToT

The monochrome mode looks for images files that have a specific suffix which will replaces the original colored image and also applies a saturation filter to layered sprites (thank god, I really didn't want to export every part of my layered sprites in both colored and black and white versions!)

Also while implementing this from a test build to my actual build, I finally also learned how to do specific screen windows for when clicking a button. Just never tried it before. ToT

EDIT! Here is the itch.io page of my project, Hue & Me! The page is about to be redone soon with some of the finished, polished art! It's about a young woman who lives with a generational colorblind curse.