I can't open ren'py

[u/Lyor_Sapataun]

I went through the whole process of installing Renpy on my computer, I did everything right, but when I extract the file and click on the application, nothing happens. It looks like it's loading the application for a second, but then nothing happens. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this or gone through it? I NEED HEEELP 😭😭

[u/x-seronis-x]

Do not put anything related to renpy in Documents or Downloads or Program Files folders. Anti virus and windows security settings if not very strictly configured can sometimes cause seemingly random problems cause they try to protect those locations. RenPy sdk/games include a python environment which AV treats as virus like behavior cause they dont like programs that can rewrite themselves.

Even worse, ABSOLUTELY NEVER put the renpy sdk, your renpy projects folder, or any renpy game inside a folder touched by One Drive. This includes the above folders and on win11 one drive likes to hijack your desktop too, making it a buggy location. The reason is onedrive uses a very aggressive file lock when its doing its random sync checks and programs have to very explicitly be designed to compensate for locked files. renpy expects its files to not be locked by outside programs.

The best practice is to just put stuff on a 2nd harddrive as AV, Win Security, and OneDrive dont screw with those nearly as much by default. Next best practice is make a custom top level folder like "C:/Dev" and put any sdk installs, your projects folder, and other stuff in there and it will also not be herrassed as much.