Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

renpy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#51

Post by borgerc »

tumsfestival wrote: post #37
optionalsquid wrote: post #7

As somebody who has read a large number of visual novels (VNs), I consider Ren'py one of the better engines as a consumer: - It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic features. - It is performant. You'd be…

>A number of localization companies have also ported (typically older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in the original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine licenses, and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines. Examples of companies having done this includes JAST USA, FAKKU, MangaGamer, and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpas…

[dead]

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#52

Post by LiquidSky »

optionalsquid wrote: post #7

As somebody who has read a large number of visual novels (VNs), I consider Ren'py one of the better engines as a consumer: - It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic features. - It is performant. You'd be…

Can you recommend some good VNs for a newbie?

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#53

Post by nurettin »

I've always wondered if LLMs will slowly seep into this backyard. They are perfectly capable of creating the story (will probably be mid, barely interesting), the art (albeit easily recognized as AI slop) and the code (after some iterations) and with some tooling, even sign and deploy to websites all fully automated.

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#54

Post by soraminazuki »

Frotag wrote: post #11

For context, visual novels are basically ~novella sized stories that come with visuals like static backgrounds + a few dozen renders per character. The character renders tend to be mostly the same, with small variations in facial expression, pose, maybe outfit. All that to say, you probably won't like VNs unless you like reading. Don't expect much gameplay / animation. That said, the more famous stories tend to have…

Baldr Sky is a perfect title for those who also want some action gaming in the mix. Also, like many great visual novels, the plot takes advantage of multiple endings very well.

Unfortunately, Japan stopped making visual novels somewhere around a decade ago. Creators presumably moved on to work on gacha games. Many visual novel companies are now either gone, inactive, or pivoted to gacha games. I wish I can see more games like Baldr Sky, Steins Gate, and Aiyoku no Eustia again.

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#55

Post by cwiz »

nurettin wrote: post #53

I've always wondered if LLMs will slowly seep into this backyard. They are perfectly capable of creating the story (will probably be mid, barely interesting), the art (albeit easily recognized as AI slop) and the code (after some iterations) and with some tooling, even sign and deploy to websites all fully automated.

They might take it with storm and we see influx or high quality stories that can't be distinguished from those written by nips.

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#56

Post by riffraff »

Frotag wrote: post #13
riffraff wrote: post #3

Curious, I discovered this today as I played a visual novel built with it: Doki Doki literature club (free on steam). Interesting read/play, but not for everyone.

Honestly I wouldn't recommend DDLC to someone new to VNs. It's hilarious but it parodies the dating sim genre by amping up the defining tropes to 11 before it then (minor spoiler, see footnote [2]). So you kind of need familiarity with the genre to understand some of the jokes. One of the more famous dating sims is probably Katawa Shoujo which is also free under a CC license. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kataw…

Ah Interesting, I have only played one or two dating sims many years ago, what are some tropes which are specific to dating sims rather than those also found in romance-based anime/manga?

I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up anything else.

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#57

Post by baobabKoodaa »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #27
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, Py is for Python and Ren is for Render

The “Ren” part is surely coincidence, it doesn't really make sense.

"Render your visual novel with Python"?

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#58

Post by RototRobot »

I've made two 'games' with ren'py in the past, and it's really fun engine to work in and quite an amazing engine as it can be used for the most basic straight forward game with little programming experience but also scales up to some pretty complex stuff if you have the means.

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#59

Post by woctordho »

jandrese wrote: post #12
optionalsquid wrote: post #7

As somebody who has read a large number of visual novels (VNs), I consider Ren'py one of the better engines as a consumer: - It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic features. - It is performant. You'd be…

One thing Ren'Py does well that many other engines do poorly is forward compatibility of saves. When VNs are released in pieces over time it is important to make sure the saves carry forward. Nothing kills momentum like "you will need to start over from scratch after every update". As far as competitors go, the list is not very long. Sugarcube/Twine works ok, but tends to bog down as the projects grow large because i…

Forward compatibility of saves is harder than people thought. VN scripts have choices and loops, so in general they are graphs, and upgrading the saves to another version requires matching two graphs. I'd be happy to know if there is a good diff algorithm for graphs

In practice graph matching can be helped by manually tagging the same nodes (labels in Ren'Py) in the two versions, but that cannot cover all the edge cases

I'm developing a VN framework for the own use of my indie VN dev group, and we mostly implemented the diff algorithm for the 'linear' part of the graphs. You can search my handle to know more

Re: The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

#60

Post by RobotToaster »

Blackthorn wrote: post #48
Frotag wrote: post #11

For context, visual novels are basically ~novella sized stories that come with visuals like static backgrounds + a few dozen renders per character. The character renders tend to be mostly the same, with small variations in facial expression, pose, maybe outfit. All that to say, you probably won't like VNs unless you like reading. Don't expect much gameplay / animation. That said, the more famous stories tend to have…

The most popular VN is a massive franchise: Phoenix Wright.

And danganronpa
Post reply on HN