Renpytom
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Ren'Py 6.99.13 Released & Thank You
🕑 Added 2017-10-29 17:56:51 +0000 UTC I'm happy to announce Ren'Py 6.99.13, the last in a series of releases that will culminate in Ren'Py 7. This release improves Ren'Py for creators of all experience levels. Some of the highlights of this release are:- The two games that are bundled with Ren'Py have both been remade. Both are now in the 16:9 aspect ratio and use modern Ren'Py programming techniques. The Tutorial has been rethought, and is now structured to be a basic and in-depth class in Ren'Py, with hundreds of new examples. (The old tutorial may still be used when a translation exists for a language.)
- Ren'Py now ships with the Interactive Director, which can be accessed by pressing 'D'. The Director allows one to edit scripts from inside Ren'Py, adding and modifying the scene, show, hide, with, play, queue, stop and voice statements.
- Ren'Py now runs on the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi files can be downloaded and added to a Ren'Py release, though it's the creator's responsibility to ensure that their project runs in the limited memory available on that platform.
- Ren'Py now takes advantage of Non-Power of Two (NPOT) textures to reduce memory usage when supported on a platform. Memory usage can be reduced further by setting config.cache_surfaces to False.
- The functionality of the {a} text tag, which introduces a hyperlink, has been improved. It's now possible to use a hyperlink to jump to a label, call a label, or show a screen.
- The say statement has been extended to take arguments. This new syntax can be used by advanced creators to provide additional information to a say statement.
- Ren'Py now loads files in a second thread, preventing sound playback and looping from causing drops in the framerate.
- Translations of the launcher to French and Brazilian Portuguese have been added, while the new tutorial is also available in Russian.
In addition to these, dozens of minor improvements are mentioned in the changelog.
To my Patreon sponsors, I'd like to say a big thank you. Your participation in this release helped me to replace the computer I use to build the macOS and iOS releases of Ren'Py, after the old one died from a bad motherboard. The new computer, Mary (named after the heroine of Moonlight Walks) is a brand-new Mac Mini, the 2.6 GHz version with the SSD. It proved critical to finishing this release, so thanks again.
If you're one of the sponsors that chose to have your name listed, you can find it in the documentation and from a link in the launcher. For creators who find the link intrusive, don't worry - it's easy to turn it off. Just go to preferences and uncheck 'Sponsor message'.
And as always, to everyone who uses Ren'Py, thank you. Your support means a lot when going through the process of a release.
Comments
Kokoro Hane
That's a reasonable answer, thank you! I am highly considering importing my current project into here, because I love the new hyperlink features. I am also guessing this still has the Legacy Theme too?
Cult of Ape
I just signed up as patron, not much money, but I hope it helps. Nice to see that this engine is actively developed. I haven´´´t done anything with it yet, but from games I´ve played who use it, it seems very capable, and I´m actively considering it for my next game. Keep up the good job! :D
Renpytom
Unfortunately, large Android games are a bit hard, due to the way Google has structured their play store. The new GUI is a bit more Android friendly, though - at least, that was one of the goals.
jonnymelabo
I´m glad to see how Renpy is working on... I just doing an Android version wouldn´t be such complicated... For someone not used to programming is really a mess...^^ Great work so far! ;)
Renpytom
Generally, the way Ren'Py tends to evolve is that the old features keep working, but there are new and better features that are added on top of them. One example of this is the new GUI. The old GUI keeps working, and you can still customize the GUI through replacement, which is what you had to do with older games. But the new GUI allows for simpler means of customization without having to replace the whole thing. The Interactive Director is a similar feature. It provides a new way of editing your game's script. But it doesn't replace opening it in a text editor, nor should it. Hope that's a reasonable answer - your old knowledge should still be applicable, but if you learn the new stuff, you can benefit from it.
Kokoro Hane
I'll have to give this new release a shot! I'll probably still work in 6.99.11 for awhile (my favourite release so far), since I'm still learning a lot of its new features and this new release seems to add a lot of new things so I dunno if this will add more learning curve, or is it simply an addition of new features and everything else works the same? I admit to being slow to getting up to date, lol. (All versions I've used; 6.12.2, 6.15, 6.18, then 6.99.11).
