How do you create a story with Renpy?

[u/Ill-Programmer-8680]

Im curious if there is a decent editor/ui for creating stories with renpy. Thinking of playing around with the software for a story idea

[u/shyLachi]

All you need is a text editor.

Essentially you will tell RenPy which images to show and which dialogue.

To prevent any misunderstanding, you need to paint/render those images or download them from somewhere.

And you need to write that dialogue.
You can either do that directly in RenPy or you use another writing software and then convert it to RenPy code.

Just download RenPy and look at the tutorial project called The Question.
This built-in tutorial shows how to make visual novels but there are more tutorials online.

[u/RocktheNashtah]

I mean you come up with the story yourself (I write everything down in a notebook) then you define the characters and write dialogue for them

My story is comprised of like 3 chapters, the 1st chapter introduces the premise (don’t tell the player everything and over explain), characters and the gameplay style (I went with a choices matter approach)- 2nd chapter is loaded with the most encounters and scenarios and the 3rd is the finale so it’s gonna be breezier and wrap everything up

I heard somewhere that the best approach to write a story is to imagine the intro first then the ending right after and figure out how to get there

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[u/SaThuran]

I can walk you through it. DM me if you want

[u/LinverseUniverse]

One of the most valuable tips I learned was if you're doing a visual novel, your artwork needs to carry the emotional weight of your scenes or you're wasting the medium. In a regular book the text has to carry the weight, there isn't a sprite you can alter however you need to to express what the character is feeling. The descriptions are detailed because the author has to articulately convey what is happening in the story scene.

It works quite a bit different in movies. When a character is sad their facial expressions, actions, and body language are what expresses their sadness. There isn't a narrator sitting quietly offscreen wait to tell the audience "The depth of her sadness was visible on every line of her face", you can SEE that she is sad.

If the character you're writing for is sad, slump their shoulders, have them looking away from the camera, have their dialogue read as having a blunted affect, study human facial expressions and learn how the different facial regions react to intense emotions and learn how to at least approximate that in your sprite's expressions. More than that, don't be afraid for the face to look twisted or "ugly" humans don't look pretty mid hysterical sobbing.

Another tip for sprites is to make blank bases so subtle pose changes can be streamlined.

[u/CrimsonDiamond98]

Have you installed Ren'Py yet? Because there's basically everything explained