Ren'py Test

I have to give a lot of credit to GenericUser from the TIGForums for his (or her?) tutorial "Creating A Visual Novel With Ren'Py" made a few years ago. Helpped me realize how easy making a ren'py game was. The character sprite "girl" was taken from www.the-other.endoftheinternet.org/alicedotnet/ . The class room and lunch room backgrounds were found through Google.

Of course I will draw and color my own character artwork and background artwork. Sorry I forgot to add music. 

Anyways...prepare for a long paragraph of coding.  Feel free to compare the original coding ( the tutorial ) with the changes I made and added.

init:
    $ me = Character("Me", color="#CC0066")
    $ girl = Character("Girl", color="#aaffaa")
  
    image bg street = "street.jpg"
    image bg busstop = "busstop.jpg"
    image bg lunchroom = "lunchroom.jpg"
    image bg classroom = "classroom.jpg"
    image girl sorry = "girl_sorry.png"
    image girl happy = "girl_happy.png"

label start:

    scene bg street
    me "I wish I had just one more quarter..."
    me "I’d rather take the bus instead of walking there."
    "Today was professional dress day at my university.  My shoes were already killing me."
    me "What’s that?"
    "I saw something shiny on the street."
    "I picked it up while patting down the back of my dress.  I can't wait for this day to pass already."
    "It was a quarter!"
    "That cheered me up... "
    "I smiled. Of course being the poor college student I was, finding a qaurter would make me smile.  I can stop walking in these damn shoes for a few minutes."
    show girl sorry
    girl "Excuse me, but have you seen any coins around here?"
    girl "*sigh* I can’t find that one quarter..."
    "My smile disapeared."
    me "No I haven't.  I hope you find it"
    "I walked passed her, letting my smile come back once I was sure she could no longer see my face."
    girl "*sighs*"
    "Sucks to be her.  Now if only I can catch the bus in time."
    "I was about to take another step when something hit me.  It was my consious."
   
    menu:
      "Be honest and give the quarter to her":
            jump honest

      "Finders keepers, losers weapers.":
             jump lie
       
label honest:
     "I should probably be.... a little honest."
     me "Yes, I have an extra qaurter..."
     show girl happy
     "Aww...look at her.  So unaware of the truth."
     girl "Thank you!"
     girl "Now I can take the bus instead of walking there..."
     me "I was going to take the bus too..."
     girl "Then why don't we walk to the bus stop together?"
     "To be honest, I didn't expect that..."
     me "O-OK."
     "So we walked.  She hummed walking in her high heels while I managed to keep my balance in mine."
     "I listened to her humming as we walked.  My ipod was in my book bag since most dresses do not have pockets."
     "The humming had a strange effect on me.  I almost forgot my feet was hurting by the time we reached the buss stop."
     scene bg busstop
     "Just as we came to the bus stop, the bus drove right past us."
     me "What?!?  Come back you ass hole!"
     "I quickly reached for my dress and patted down the rising fabric before it went past my thighs.  A few of the old men at the buss stop looked diappointed but I ignored them."
     girl "Didn't he notice us?"
     me "What do you th...I'll check out when the next bus will arrive."
     "I looked at the timetable."
     "Damn..."
     me "It looks like the next one isn't going to come before 10 am..."
     me "...and the clock is 8 am right now."
     girl "*sigh* I hate walking all the way to Light University..."
     me "Really?  You go there too?"
     "I was shocked.  The more I look at her, the more I realize I've seen her a few times."
     girl "Yes..."
     show girl happy
     girl "Hey, maybe we could walk there together?"
     "Sigh..."
     "I look at her happy expression.  My anger was melting away."
     me "I guess"
     "I shrugged my shulders and began walking. I smiled upon hearing the sound of her humming again."
     scene bg classroom
     "I was late and missed the suprise test at the beginning of class.  Those tests should be illegal."
     "My GPA is down the gutter now."
     "Thank God the old fart had a soft spot for cute girls in dresses.  Through a lot of convining tears and pleas, the teacher gave me some extra credit work to do after class."
     "I did the work putting in more effort than I was used to in class. I paused every now and then before writing a few words.   Something kept bothering me.  For the life of me, I can not remember where I met that girl."
     scene black
     "I smiled, having completed the work, I slammed the work on the teacher's desk and walked away.  The teacher will check the work in the morning."
     "My stomach was growling."
     scene bg lunchroom
     #Add lunchroom scene where mc meets girl again
     "Upon looking for an empty table to sit alone at and eat, I bumped into someone."
     "I was preparing to say something witty but the sight of the dress made me shallow my words."
     show girl happy
     girl "Hi!"
     me "H-Hi..."
     girl "Want to eat with me?"
     me "S-sure"
     "I didn't know it then, but this would be the beginning of a long friendship..."
     "--Friendship Ending--"
     return
   

label lie:
    "Meh, what she doesn't know can't hurt her."
    me "I'm sorry, but I haven't seen anything."
    girl "Are you sure?"
    "What's with this girl?  I nearly roll my eyes."
    menu:
        "I'm still ignoring my consious":
            jump again
           
        "Be honest":
            jump honest
       
label again:  
     me "Nope.  I haven't seen a dime."  
     girl "Oh, OK..."
     "I slowly walked away, smiling the momment I was sure she could not see my face."
     "And then I hurried to the bus stop."
     scene bg busstop
     "I swung my bookbag in between the closing door of the bus."
     me "CUTE GIRL COMING THROUGH!"
     "The bus driver muttered something under his breathe before opening the doors fully. I smiled at him, paid my fee and moved to empty seat."
     "I stared out the window, wondering about that girl who was just now reaching the bustop.  She stopped to look at the bus sadly and then kept walking."
     "I could do something crazy and tell the bus driver to stop so I can trade places with this girl.  Of course this wasn't the movies and I really want to get to class so I can sit down some more."
     "The buss took off.  The girl became smaller and smaller before she finally disappeared along with my guilt."
     scene bg classroom
     "I pushed the door aside and walked to my seat.  The clock said 9:00 a.m..  I would have been late if I took that long walk over here."
     "I sighed heavily at how good my feet felt.  I hope that girl didn't have class today.  She would be late at the speed she was going."
     "The teacher stopped talking and placed his hands on a pile of papers on his desk.  He smiled."
     "I nearly banged my head on the desk.  There was one thing I hated more than wearing a dress.  It was tests."
     scene black
     "I completed the work, walked over to the teacher's desk and slammed the work right in front of him and walked away.  The teacher looked suprised.  The other students took their eyes from their papers to stare.  If words were said, I did not care."
     "My stomach was growling and I was sure I passed the test.  That score will take my GPA out of the gutter."
     scene bg lunchroom
     "I managed to find an empty table to eat at.  Aside from this morning the whole day played out the same as usual.  I ate lunch, go to my next class, and go home.  The END."
     "-- Loner's Ending --"
     return
       

 

Finding Motivation

 I have the characters' personalities, a general idea of how the story is going to go, and the final designs of the characters.  This week I am finally diving into digital coloring on the computer.  Thanks to my seasonal job ending earlier than expected I have enough free time to push myself forward and finish my first Ren'py game.  Unfortunately having a steady schedule at a job was a major motivation for me.

During breaks, at my seasonal job, I would write my story or character bios, read Imagine FX magazines, or listen to indie game development podcasts.  Despite the distractions of hearing random people enter the break room, I was fine studying away as I have a hard time doing these activities at home.  Random people at work sounded like background music while family members and telephone calls was another story.  There is also a sense of laziness and a need for sleep when I am in my room all day.

This week I am breaking the habit of getting busy with indie game development when I do not have a steady paying job.  As soon as I wake up, I get down to the activities that I enjoyed so much during breaks at my last job.  There is no sense of time or a need to rush myself through my writing or drawings with in thirty minutes. I make my own stopping point when the sun goes down. 

Of course job searching will occur during my free time and maybe I will get a new job in a few weeks.  Hopefully I will keep this practice even after getting another steady job.

Homosexuality in my VISUAL NOVELS?

As the days go by I am getting closer and closer to finishing my first Ren'py game.  The game is a dating sim of sorts (main character going for one of the males).  Of course I'm already thinking ahead to the second possible Ren'py game and only a very few have a main character going for someone of the opposite gender.  That's right...I can not get males dating other males or females dating other females out of head for my next game.  It does not help that there are so few boy love and girl love dating sims in the Ren'py game list (Look ).  I just want to add more to the boy pursue boy and girl pursue girl section!

 Of course I know that not everyone is into boy's love and girl's love.  So when I start making my second game, I will also be working on another game (Unity3D or Flash) in order to have something else that future readers can also look at here.  I used to write a lot of same sexed romance fan fiction and the range of flames I got (solely based on the fact that the main pairing was gay) bored me after a while.  I would skim over those flames and then give my full attention to the next review.

Still I am putting a lot of thought into my next visual novel game since visual novels require a lot more work than fan fiction.  Writing, drawing, coloring, and programming a story for several weeks or months only to have someone hate my visual novel solely based on the fact that my main character is pursuing members of the same sex irks me.  What about the story, personality of the characters, artwork, etc?  Of course I will get used to this kind of treatment the same way I did in my fan fiction days long ago.

Lurking the Lemma Soft Forums, I'm finding that there are a lot of people looking for these types of games.  So I do know that there are some people that would play second game whenever it comes out.  Thinking about this issue has made me think about how I am going to advertise my same sexed dating sim games in the future.  Also what kind of characters I will make for these games as there are a lot of fans for boy love and girl love with a variety of tastes.  This will be an interesting adventure.