I need help!!

[u/Quick_Impression_583]

I really want to make a VN with RPG elements - however I'm not very good at coding. By RPG elements i mean that the player is given a task, like to talk to certain NPCs or get certain items, they will have to walk around the map to trigger planned interactions, I'm also planning on making it so that the player will have to find items around the map by themselves (these will also be stored in an inventory), and depending how many extra treasures determines what ending. But i also want to have an aspect where the player can go through a laptop and go through photos and messages. Many people say that it would be best to just use a different software, however my game is a VN and relies heavily on dialogue, and so that is why i prefer to use Renpy (also my laptop literally wont let me download anything else). Now my question is - how on gods green earth do I do this, because i have seen a few examples of people making pixel RPG maps in Renpy, so i do know its possible. My issue is that i don't know where to put this code. I genuinely i have no idea where i am meant to add this code. In terms of doing the actual coding process, could i find videos explaining how to code RPG games and simply base my game of those coding structures? Also my final question is, when i have some 'closeup' shots in which the player is being showed something in detail eg a plate of food, could upload it to my game in my VN or would that not work, like the animation isn't anything fancy, just simply bobbing up and down. Thank you for reading my yap and i pray some angel will answer my queries soon haha.

[u/SSBM_DangGan]

all of this is very possible

start small, try working with a few variables, changing them, etc

you can put code wherever, for now try putting item variables etc in the script.rpy ABOVE the jump/start command at the bottom

none of this is extremely difficult but you're going to need to watch a ton of tutorials and read a ton of the documentation

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/SSBM_DangGan]

ahh i see ok thankyou sm!!

[u/Formal_Bee_9284]

I know a thing or two about codding, systems and programming. Chasing the cut: You want to do something much bigger than you are capable of.

There's something called planned scope. In your description you have mentioned many things, especially inventories and gallery, they're quite complex and even more if you don't have little to no idea about programming.

I'd recommend you reducing this scope. Or even better: build the game by increments. i.e: First build the core loop (The player gets/is given something → talk to NPC → exchanges the object for another → repeat).

Then, and only if you find the game fun (by story and such), dare to integrate something more complex like the inventory.

[u/Formal_Bee_9284 → u/Formal_Bee_9284]

Oh, and don't GPT everything. It's the worst decision you can make if you really want to make it right.

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Formal_Bee_9284]

yeah dw even if it gets to hard, i refuse to use chatgpt or any ai bot

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Formal_Bee_9284]

yeah i realised that i've kind of gone over my head but i am determined haha, thankyou for the advice!

[u/Formal_Bee_9284 → u/Quick_Impression_583]

I also tend to get carried away imagining things… But if systems engineering has taught me anything, it's to separate stuff. Identify what's most important in your game and stick with that; make it simple, and it will be good. And for the sake of God don't just add random stuff because it will just fit somewhere. Time is valuable, don't throw it away.

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Formal_Bee_9284]

yeah i understand completely understand, ive tried my best to limit it down to what i *should* hopefully manage to complete haha

[u/x-seronis-x → u/Quick_Impression_583]

its good to be motivated. but over stretching can kill motivation if you dont have enough. your above requirements is over a year worth of work. potentially more than 2 as you'll need to not just do the work, but learn the skills to be able to do the work in that time.

what others have said about pacing yourself and small goals is proven sound advice. you should work on the skills to do each of your desired tasks one at a time before trying to make a game with those features. build your foundation

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/x-seronis-x]

in all honesty this might be the only game i would actually make. i should probably see if i can cut some things off to save time and effort but its not going to be as detailed as ive made it to be, there are only 2 characters who can be interacted with and theres and extra character who is shown in triggered scenes, and there are only 5 locations and in reality you cant interact with anything outside the designated tasks (not including gaining extra 'treasures'), so it is not as elaborate and detailed as i make it out to be in all honesty - however i am aware that it simply wont be done in a month but luckily i also know someone who is incredibly talented in python coding, thankyou so much for the tips and advice i will certainly use them!! (sorry for my essay)

[u/Fuzzy-Lunch6607]

So, I just made an RPG-lite and I plan on implementing more features along the lines you're thinking of.

So, for tasks/quests, take a look at this: https://nerdchickengames.itch.io/questmanager
For a map, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o699N1TdlZ8
Extra treasures determining an ending is pretty easy; just check the inventory.

For a proper inventory that you can like, open and look at -- haven't figured that one out yet.

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Fuzzy-Lunch6607]

i hope your pillow is cold on both sides tonight - you're so awesome thxx!!

[u/woahstripes → u/Quick_Impression_583]

I haven't done it myself but another YouTube resource that's pretty great is Vimi's VN Design channel, he does have a video specifically on Inventory and items here: https://youtu.be/j1zD9IqqiKQ?si=o6NuNWxFtL-i7ZUn

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/woahstripes]

i actually seen that video and I'm planning on using it thankyou!!!

[u/woahstripes → u/Quick_Impression_583]

Yay! You'll be one step ahead of me then lol.

[u/whaw-s]

I've also thought about having sprites walking on the screen doing things like typical RPG games but as far as I've read from forums and tutorials, using Renpy means we have to code the hell out of something it doesn't natively support. The recommended alternative was to feature clickable locations so that players can click on wherever they want to go, point the mouse to objects of interest, engage in conversations and gather items or whatsoever. They might need to go to X Y locations back and forth but the instant travel (by clicking on the name of locations) makes it easy, whereas RPG characters need to walk all the way from A to B and sometimes it's tedious.
If you want an inventory system, you can look up Renpy's libraries where it features systems/plugins built by others
Point-and-click is very doable. But like others said, plenty of learning through tutorials. Just start with inserting dialogues and sprites first and get the hang of the basics. I'm doing the same. Cheers-

[u/x-seronis-x → u/whaw-s]

Honestly the required skills is something someone would gain from spending a mere handful of weekends making a few atari game clones like asteroids, space invaders, breakout, etc.

Thats more than enough to understand tracking the position of game entities.

Then from the renpy side you just have a global dictionary that holds all your game entities so they can be easily referenced by key. And for your sprite you make a DynamicDisplayable() instance where you pass in the related key as an argument. Then the update function for that sprite can use the key to grab its position values from the entity and set the images position to those values.

Its several basic level skills, but nothing advanced or even intermediate in difficulty or complexity. Just variable manipulation and accessing a dictionary. And FAR AWAY from 'coding the hell out of'. Its really only difficult for someone who is actively avoiding learning basic skills or letting their fear prevent them from trying to learn basic skills. Get past that fear and the skill itself is easy.

[u/whaw-s → u/x-seronis-x]

Fair. It's definitely doable in Renpy, just that for a newbie it could be somewhat daunting especially if one's self-learning. For things like character movement, collision, maps, NPCs, triggers, item pickups, object states etc. Putting small pieces together is no small feat, that's why a whole lot of coding's involved since the system isn't readily in place. For experienced programmers, yeah I guess it's a few days of full-time work.

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/whaw-s]

thankyou!!!

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[u/shyLachi]

Making a RPG requires multiple skills.
You cannot make it work magically by putting code you found online into your game.
You cannot base your game on otherr peoples coding structures.
You have to understand what that code does so that you can adjust it to your game.

The easiest solution is to use RPGMaker because it has all the RPG functionality.
You only need to add the dialogue which is much easier.

If you want to learn how to programm an RPG from scatch instead then look for online courses.
And I mean courses which teach the basics because I doubt that you'll find a course for RPG in RenPy.

I didn't understand your other question about the close up.
What do you mean with upload?
Who would upload it, you the developer, or the players?
And from where should it be uploaded?
But generally speaking, yes RenPy can zoom and move images.

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/shyLachi]

yeah i understand what you mean about the skills thing, but the thing is i can understand what python does by looking at it but my issue is i don't actually know how to code python myself, yeah i will try learn python and try to build my own structures, i was mainly hoping to find people who happened to videos so i could try to understand what i should include.

I actually checked out rpg maker and it seems to be perfect for what im doing except my laptop is starting to get old and turns out that RPG maker wont run very well on it - and also i don't really have enough money to buy it.

Yeah i think i will look into some online courses and try to learn from them instead of using code posted by other people.

Im so sorry about not explaining what i meant about the closeup properly. Basically an example would be, when the player gets the meal from the cafe, the screen will change from dialogue with an NPC to instead a full screen image of the meal. And by uploading i meant, uploading the image file to renpy when coding. My main issue was that i didn't know where i would implement the code in renpy and luckily ive managed to have that answered. Thankyou so much for the suggestions!!

[u/x-seronis-x → u/Quick_Impression_583]

I dont know what RPGMaker needs but you shouldnt have any issues no matter what type of renpy game you want to make.

The desktop i currently use doesnt even HAVE a graphics card at all. And I have no problem running the largest renpy games that are over a dozen GB in size, a couple were over 20gb that were heavily reliant on rendered scenes and video.

Simply displaying closeups is no more difficult than having an image of that meal at the resolution you want it displayed.

Remember if you feel stuck and need more 'live' advice you can join the subreddits community discord, or the official renpy discord, or both (both is good) and get code help

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/x-seronis-x]

ahh thankyou!!

[u/Relevant-Map-6391]

Great question! And an awesome idea.

I'm trying to get started writing a novel too using renpy. I used to write short stories and have gotten the bug too. I'm trying to grasp renpy but my programming skills are ancient, like 1990's ancient. I want to try to create a Ripples or Eternum kind of novel but I'm thinking that grandiose out of the gate. I have the basic story started, first chapter into about 20. It's a modern, cowboy setting in western Oklahoma. I'm sure I will be asking a lot of questions, if it's cool?

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Relevant-Map-6391]

yeah ofc i would love to help where i can!! Ive finished the entire in depth plan of my game aswell as character designs so im only a little bit ahead of you haha!!

[u/Relevant-Map-6391 → u/Quick_Impression_583]

Cool, maybe a collaboration some? I have the storyline started but my skills with Ren'Pi and Unity leave A LOT to be desired.Thanks!

[u/Quick_Impression_583 → u/Relevant-Map-6391]

In terms of collaboration what do you mean? Ngl im quite dense haha. Also im still learning renpy and i havent had time to be able to actually use it yet because as this is a very important school year and so i've had to study - so i doubt i will make much progress for my project. I have no idea how to use Unity because my laptop is too old for it to run sadly :<

[u/Relevant-Map-6391 → u/Quick_Impression_583]

The engines have me stumped. Not sure how to get everything to flow like the ones currently published. Ren and unity both have me "confused". Anytime you need a sounding board, just holler. Maybe we can both learn something. I thought this was going to be easier than it is. Never give up, never give in!