Quickstart - Ren'Py Documentation

8/14/22, 2:33 PM Quickstart — Ren'Py Documentation
Quickstart
Welcome to the Ren'Py quickstart manual. The purpose of this manual is
to demonstrate how you can make a
Ren'Py game from scratch in a few
easy steps. We'll do this by showing how to make a simple game,
The
Question.
The Ren'Py Launcher

Before you begin making a game, you should first take some time to
learn how the Ren'Py launcher works. The
launcher lets you create,
manage, edit, and run Ren'Py projects.
Getting Started. To get started you'll want to

download Ren'Py (https://www.renpy.org/latest.html).
Once you've downloaded Ren'Py, you'll want to extract and run it.
On Windows, double click on the executable file you download. It will

extract Ren'Py into a folder named
renpy-<version> . You can change
into that folder and run renpy.exe . (The renpy.exe file may be
presented
as renpy if extensions are hidden.)
On Mac OS X, double-click on the downloaded drive image to mount it as a
drive. When the drive opens,
copy the folder named renpy-<version>
somewhere else. (Where does not matter, but it has to be moved
out of
the read-only drive image. Do not move the renpy app out of the folder it's in
– it won't work
elsewhere.) Then change into it, and run the renpy
application.
On Linux, unpack the tarball, change into the renpy-<version>
directory, and then run renpy.sh .
After running this, the Ren'Py launcher should run.
The Ren'Py launcher has been translated to multiple languages. To

change the language, choose "preferences" at
the bottom right, and then
select the language.
Choosing and Launching a Project. You should first see what the
completed The Question game looks like. To
do this, start the Ren'Py
launcher, and choose "The Question" from the first screen. Choose
"Launch Project" to
start The Question.
You can get back to the Ren'Py demo by doing the same thing, but
choosing "Tutorial" instead of "The Question".
Creating a new Project.

Create a new project by choosing "Create New Project" from the
launcher.
If this is your first time creating a project, Ren'Py may ask you to
select the projects directory. This is a directory
(also called a folder)
where new projects are created, and is scanned for existing projects. The
directory chooser
might pop up below Ren'Py, so be sure to look for it
there.
The launcher will then ask you for a project name. Since
"The Question" is already taken, you should enter
something different,
like "My Question", and type enter.
After that, the launcher will ask you to select the project resolution.
1280x720 is a good compromise between
game size and image quality.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will select 1280x720 to match
"The Question"
game art, then click "Continue".
The launcher will then ask you to choose a color scheme – an accent and
background color for the new GUI. It
doesn't matter what you pick at
this point, so just pick something you find appealing, and then click
"Continue".
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/quickstart.html 1/14
At this point, Ren'Py will process for a bit, and

spit out a simple game
template. The template
used placeholder art and text, but is runnable,
and
supports expected features like rollback,
loading, and saving. Choose
"Launch Project"
to run it.
(_images/launcher.png)
The main screen of the Ren'Py launcher.
(_images/project_name.png)
Naming a new project.
(_images/resolution.png)
Selecting the project resolution.
(_images/color.png)
Selecting the accent and background colors for the default
theme.
A Simple Game
label start:
"Sylvie" "Hi there! How was class?"
"Me" "Good..."
"I can't bring myself to admit that it all went in one ear and out the other."
"Me" "Are you going home now? Wanna walk back with me?"
"Sylvie" "Sure!"
This is a very simple Ren'Py game. It doesn't include any pictures or

music, but it does show a conversation
between two characters, and a
line of narration.
To try this out, from the top screen of the launcher select "My Question"
project, and then choose "script.rpy" from
under Edit File. If this is
your first time, Ren'Py will ask you to select an editor (we recommend
Editra for first time
creators), and will download the editor you choose.
Then it will open the script file in the editor.
Once the editor opens, erase everything in script.rpy. We're starting

from scratch, so you don't need what's there.
Copy the example above into
script.rpy, and save it.
You're now ready to run this example. Go back to the launcher, and
choose "Launch Project". Ren'Py will start up.
Notice how, without any
extra work, Ren'Py has given you menus that let you load and save the
game, and
change various preferences. When ready, click "Launch Project",
and play through this example game.
This example shows some of the commonly-used Ren'Py statements.
The first line is a label statement (label.html#label-statement). The label

statement is used to give a name to a
place in the program. In this case,
we create a label named start . The start label is special, as it's
where Ren'Py
scripts begin running when the user clicks "Start Game" on
the main menu.
The other lines are say statements (dialogue.html#say-statement). There are two
forms of the say statement. The
first is a string (beginning with a double-quote,
containing characters, and ending with a double-quote) on a line by
itself, which is used for narration, and the thoughts of the main
character. The second form consists of two strings.
It's used for
dialogue, with the first string being a character name and the second
being what that character is
saying.
Note that all the say statements are indented by four spaces. This is
because they are a block underneath the
label statement. In Ren'Py,
blocks must be indented relative to the prior statement, and all of
the statements in a
block must be indented by the same amount.
When strings contain double-quote characters, those characters need to

be preceded by a backslash. For
example
"Sylvie" "Did you ever hear Lincon's famous saying, \"The problem with Internet quotat
While this simple game isn't much to look at, it's an example of how
easy it is to get something working in Ren'Py.
We'll add the pictures
in a little bit, but first, let's see how to define characters.
Characters
Main article: Defining Character Objects (dialogue.html#defining-character-objects)
One problem with the first example is that it requires you to

repeatedly type the name of a character each time
they speak. In a
dialogue-heavy game, this might be a lot of typing. Also, both
character names are displayed in
the same way, in the accent color
selected when starting the game. To fix this, Ren'Py lets you define
characters in
advance. This lets you associate a short name with a
character, and to change the color of the character's name.
define s = Character('Sylvie', color="#c8ffc8")
define m = Character('Me', color="#c8c8ff")
label start:
s "Hi there! How was class?"
m "Good..."
"I can't bring myself to admit that it all went in one ear and out the other."
s "Are you going home now? Wanna walk back with me?"
m "Sure!"
The first and and second lines define characters. The first line
defines a character with the short name of "s", the
long name
"Sylvie", with a name that is shown in a greenish color. (The colors
are red-green-blue hex triples, as
used in web pages.)
The second line creates a character with a short name "m", a long name
"Me", with the name shown in a reddish
color. Other characters can be
defined by copying one of the character lines, and changing the short
name, long
name, and color.
We've also changed the say statements to use character objects instead
of a character name string. This tells
Ren'Py to use the characters
we defined.
Images
Main article: Displaying Images (displaying_images.html)
A visual novel isn't much of a visual novel without pictures. Here's another
scene from "The Question". This also
includes statements that show images
to the player. This can fully replace the previous section of script, if
you
want to try it out.
define s = Character('Sylvie', color="#c8ffc8")
define m = Character('Me', color="#c8c8ff")
label start:
scene bg meadow
"After a short while, we reach the meadows just outside the neighborhood where we both

"It's a scenic view I've grown used to. Autumn is especially beautiful here."
"When we were children, we played in these meadows a lot, so they're full of memories.

m "Hey... Umm..."
show sylvie green smile
"She turns to me and smiles. She looks so welcoming that I feel my nervousness melt aw

"I'll ask her...!"
m "Ummm... Will you..."
m "Will you be my artist for a visual novel?"
show sylvie green surprised
"Silence."
This segment of script introduces two new statements. The scene statement on
line 6 clears all images and
displays a background image. The show statements
on lines 16 and 26 display a sprite on top of the background,
and change the
displaying sprite, respectively.
In Ren'Py, each image has a name. The name consists of a tag, and optionally
one or more attributes. Both the
tag and attributes should begin with a
letter, and contain letters, numbers, and underscores. For example:
In the scene statement on line 6, the tag is "bg", and the attribute is
"meadow." By convention, background
images should use the tag bg.
In the first show statement on line 16, the tag is "sylvie", and the
attributes are "green" and "smile".
In the second show statement on line 26, the tag is "sylvie", and the
attributes are "green" and "surprised".
Only one image with a given tag can be shown at the same time. When a
second image with the same tag is
show, it replaces the first image, as
happens on line 26.
Ren'Py searches for image files in the images directory, which can be
found by selecting "images" in the "Open
Directory" section of the
launcher. Ren'Py expects character art to be an PNG or WEBP file,
while background art
should be a JPG, JPEG, PNG, or WEBP file.
The name of a file is very important – the extension is removed, the
file
name is forced to lowercase, and that's used as the image name.
For example, the following files, placed in the images directory, define the
following images.
"bg meadow.jpg" -> bg meadow

"sylvie green smile.png" -> sylvie green smile
"sylvie green surprised.png" -> sylvie green surprised
Since the filenames are lowercase, the following also holds.
"Sylvie Green Surprised.png" -> sylvie green surprised
Images can be placed in subdirectories (subfolders) under the images directory.

The directory name is ignored and
only the filename is used to define the
image name.
Hide Statement.
Ren'Py also supports a hide statement, which hides the given image.
label leaving:
s "I'll get right on it!"
hide sylvie
"..."
m "That wasn't what I meant!"
It's actually pretty rare that you'll need to use hide. Show can be
used when a character is changing emotions,
while scene is used when
everyone leaves. You only need to use hide when a character leaves and
the scene
stays the same.
Image Statement.
Sometimes, a creator might not want to let Ren'Py define images
automatically. This is what
the image statement is for. It should
be at the top level of the file (unindented, and before label start),
and can be
used to map an image name to an image file. For example:
image logo = "renpy logo.png"
image eileen happy = "eileen_happy_blue_dress.png"
The image statement is run at init time, before label start and the rest
of the game script that interacts with the
player.
The image statement can also be used for more complex tasks, but that's
discussed elsewhere
(displaying_images.html).
Transitions
Main article: Transitions (transitions.html)
In the script above, pictures pop in and out instantaneously. Since

changing location or having a character enter or
leave a scene is
important, Ren'Py supports transitions that allow effects to be
applied when what is being shown
changes.
Transitions change what is displayed from what it was at the end of

the last interaction (dialogue, menu, or
transition – among other
statements) to what it looks like after scene, show, and hide statements
have run.
label start:
scene bg meadow
with fade
"After a short while, we reach the meadows just outside the neighborhood where we both

"It's a scenic view I've grown used to. Autumn is especially beautiful here."
"When we were children, we played in these meadows a lot, so they're full of memories.

m "Hey... Umm..."
with dissolve
"She turns to me and smiles. She looks so welcoming that I feel my nervousness melt aw

"I'll ask her...!"
m "Ummm... Will you..."
m "Will you be my artist for a visual novel?"
The with statement takes the name of a transition to use. The most
common one is dissolve which dissolves
from one screen to the
next. Another useful transition is fade which fades the
screen to black, and then fades in
the new screen.
When a transition is placed after multiple scene, show, or hide

statements, it applies to them all at once. If you
were to write:
scene bg meadow
with dissolve
Both the "bg meadow" and "sylvie green smile" images would be dissolved in
at the same time. To dissolve them
in one at a time, you need to write two
with statements:
scene bg meadow
with dissolve
with dissolve
This first dissolves in the meadow, and then dissolves in sylvie. If

you wanted to instantly show the meadow, and
then show sylvie, you
could write:
scene bg meadow
with None
show sylvie smile
with dissolve
Here, None is used to indicate a special transition that updates

Ren'Py's idea of what the prior screen was, without
actually showing
anything to the player.
Positions
Main article: Transforms (transforms.html)
By default, images are shown centered horizontally, and with their

bottom edge touching the bottom of the screen.
This is usually okay
for backgrounds and single characters, but when showing more than one
character on the
screen it probably makes sense to do it at another
position. It also might make sense to reposition a character for
story
purposes.
show sylvie green smile at right
To do this repositioning, add an at clause to a show statement. The at

clause takes a position, and shows the
image at that position. Ren'Py
includes several predefined positions: left for the left side of
the screen, right
for the right side, center for centered
horizontally (the default), and truecenter for centered
horizontally and
vertically.
Creators can define their own positions, and event complicated moves,
but that's outside of the scope of this
quickstart.
Music and Sound

Main article: Audio (audio.html)
Most Ren'Py games play music in the background. Music is played with the
play music statement. The play
music statement takes a filename that
is interpreted as an audio file to play. Audio filenames are interpreted
relative to the game directory. Audio files should be in opus, ogg vorbis,
or mp3 format.
For example:
play music "audio/illurock.ogg"
When changing music, one can supply a fadeout and a fadein clause, which
are used to fade out the old
music and fade in the new music.
play music "audio/illurock.ogg" fadeout 1.0 fadein 1.0
The queue music statement plays an audio file after the current file
finishes playing.
queue music "audio/next_track.opus"
Music can be stopped with the stop music statement, which can also
optionally take a fadeout clause.
stop music
Sound effects can be played with the play sound statement. Unlike music, sound
effects do not loop.
play sound "audio/effect.ogg"
When a filename is in the "game/audio" directory, and the name without the
file extension can be used as a Python
variable (that is, it begins with
a letter, and contains only letters, numbers, and underscores), it is possible
to play
that file without using quotes.
For example, if "game/audio/illurock.ogg" exists, we can write:
play music illurock
See the audio namespace (audio.html#audio-namespace) for more details.
Pause Statement
The pause statement causes Ren'Py to pause until the mouse is clicked.
pause
If a number is given, the pause will end when that number of seconds
have elapsed.
pause 3.0
Ending the Game

You can end the game by running the return statement, without having
called anything. Before doing this, it's
best to put something in the
game that indicates that the game is ending, and perhaps giving the
user an ending
number or ending name.
".:. Good Ending."
return
That's all you need to make a kinetic novel, a game without any
choices in it. Now, we'll look at what it takes to
make a game that
presents menus to the user.
Menus, Labels, and Jumps

Main articles: In-Game Menus (menus.html) and Labels & Control Flow (label.html)
The menu statement lets presents a choice to the player:
s "Sure, but what's a \"visual novel?\""
menu:
"It's a videogame.":
jump game
"It's an interactive book.":
jump book
label game:
m "It's a kind of videogame you can play on your computer or a console."
jump marry
label book:
m "It's like an interactive book that you can read on a computer or a console."
jump marry
label marry:
"And so, we become a visual novel creating duo."
This example shows how a menu can be used with Ren'Py. The menu statement
introduces an in-game choice. It
takes an indented block of lines, each
consisting of a string followed by a colon. These are the menu choices that
are
presented to the player. Each menu choice takes its own indented block of lines,
which is run when that menu
choices is chosen.
In this example, each of the two menu choices runs a single jump statement.
The jump statement transfers
control to the a label defined using the label
statement. After a jump, script statements following the label are run.
In the example above, after Sylvie asks her question, the player is presented
with a menu containing two choices.
If the player picked "It's a videogame.",
the first jump statement is run, and Ren'Py will jump to the game label.
This will cause the POV character to say "It's a story with pictures and music.",
after which Ren'Py will jump to the
marry label.
If there is no jump statement at the end of the block associated with the label,
Ren'Py will continue on to the next
statement. The last jump statement here is
technically unnecessary, but is included since it makes the flow of the
game
clearer.
Labels may be defined in any file that is in the game directory, and ends with
.rpy. The filename doesn't matter to
Ren'Py, only the labels contained inside
it. You can think of all the .rpy files as being equivalent to a single big
.rpy
file, with jumps used to transfer control. This gives you flexibility
in how you organize the script of a larger game.
Supporting Flags using the Default, Python and If

Statements
Main articles: Python Statements (python.html) and Conditional Statements (conditional.html)
While some games can be made by only using the statements given above,
other games require data to be stored
and recalled later. For example,
it might make sense for a game to remember a choice a player has made,
return
to a common section of the script, and act on the choice later. This
is one of the reasons why Ren'Py has
embedded Python support.
Here, we'll show how to store a flag containing information about a choice
the player has made. To initialize the
flag, use the default statement, before
label start.
# True if the player has decided to compare a VN to a book.
default book = False
label start:
s "Hi there! How was class?"
The book flag starts off initialized to the special value False
(as with the rest of Ren'Py, capitalization matters),
meaning that
it is not set. If the book path is chosen, we can set it to True
using a Python assignment statement.
label book:
$ book = True
m "It's like an interactive book that you can read on a computer or a console."
jump marry
Lines beginning with a dollar-sign are interpreted as Python statements. The

assignment statement here assigns a
value to a variable. Ren'Py has support
for other ways of including Python, such as a multi-line Python statement,
that are discussed in other sections of this manual. Ren'Py supports Python 2.7,
though we strongly recommend
you write Python that runs in Python 2 and Python 3.
To check the flag, use the if statement:
if book:
"Our first game is based on one of Sylvie's ideas, but afterwards I get to come up wit
If the condition is true, the block of script is run. If not, it is skipped.

The if statement can also take an else
clause, that introduced a block of
script that is run if the condition is false.
if book:
"Our first game is based on one of Sylvie's ideas, but afterwards I get to come up wit

else:
"Sylvie helped with the script on our first video game."
Python variables need not be simple True/False values. Variables can be

used to store the player's name, a points
score, or for any other
purpose. Since Ren'Py includes the ability to use the full Python
programming language,
many things are possible.
Releasing Your Game

Once you've made a game, there are a number of things you should do
before releasing it:
Check for a new version of Ren'Py.

New versions of Ren'Py are released on a regular basis to fix bugs
and add new features. Before releasing,
you'll want to click update
in the launcher to update Ren'Py to the latest version. You can also download new
versions and view a list of changes at https://www.renpy.org/latest.html (https://www.renpy.org/latest.html).
Rarely, changes to Ren'Py will require you to make a change to your game's
script.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/incompatible.html (https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/incompatible.html) has
a list of
these changes.
Check the Script.

From the front page of the launcher, choose "Check Script
(Lint)". This will check your games for potential
errors. Since some of
these errors will only affect users on other platforms, it's important
to understand and
usually fix all errors, even if you don't see the problem
on your computer.
Build Distributions.
From the front page of the launcher, choose "Build Distributions". Based
on the information contained in
options.rpy, the launcher will build one
or more archive files containing your game.
Test.
Lint is not a substitute for thorough testing. It's your
responsibility to check your game before it is released.
Consider asking
friends to help beta-test your game, as often a tester can find problems
you can't.
Release.
Once the game has been finished and tested, you should post the generated
archive files on the web
somewhere people can see them. (If you don't
have your own website, https://itch.io (https://itch.io) hosts a lot
of
visual novels.) Congratulations, you've released your first visual novel!
There are a few places where a game can be announced:
The Ren'Py Games List (https://games.renpy.org) helps us keep track of

Ren'Py games being made.
The Completed Games section of the Lemma Soft Forums
(https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewforum.php?f=11) is a
good place to tell fellow creators about your
game.
More advanced vays of customizing the building of the distribution of your game
can be found in the Building
Distributions (build.html) section.
Script of The Question

You can view the full script of ''The Question'' here (thequestion.html#thequestion).
Where do we go from here?

This Quickstart barely scratches the surface of what Ren'Py is capable of.
For brevity's sake, we've omitted many
features Ren'Py supports and
simplified others – focusing on the minimum set of features used to make a
visual
novel.
To get a feel for what Ren'Py is capable of, please play through the Tutorial,
and perhaps some of the games
featured on the Ren'Py website (https://www.renpy.org).
You may also want to read the rest of this manual, starting
with the GUI Customization
Guide (gui.html#gui).
Beyond that, we recommend checking out the Ren'Py section of the Lemma Soft Forums
(https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums), which
has a section for asking questions, and a cookbook section with
libraries and examples meant for reuse. The Lemma Soft Forums are the
central hub of the Ren'Py community,
where we welcome new creators and the questions they bring.
Thank you for choosing the Ren'Py visual novel engine. We look forward to seeing
what you create with it!
© Copyright 2012-2022, Tom Rothamel.

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8/14/22, 2:33 PM Quickstart — Ren'Py Documentation

The Ren'Py Launcher

Getting Started. To get started you'll want to

On Windows, double click on the executable file you download. It will

After running this, the Ren'Py launcher should run.

The Ren'Py launcher has been translated to multiple languages. To

Creating a new Project.

At this point, Ren'Py will process for a bit, and

"Sylvie" "Hi there! How was class?"

This is a very simple Ren'Py game. It doesn't include any pictures or

Once the editor opens, erase everything in script.rpy. We're starting

This example shows some of the commonly-used Ren'Py statements.

The first line is a label statement (label.html#label-statement). The label

When strings contain double-quote characters, those characters need to

Main article: Defining Character Objects (dialogue.html#defining-character-objects)

One problem with the first example is that it requires you to

define s = Character('Sylvie', color="#c8ffc8")

define m = Character('Me', color="#c8c8ff")

s "Hi there! How was class?"

define s = Character('Sylvie', color="#c8ffc8")

define m = Character('Me', color="#c8c8ff")

show sylvie green smile

"I'll ask her...!"

m "Ummm... Will you..."

m "Will you be my artist for a visual novel?"

show sylvie green surprised

"bg meadow.jpg" -> bg meadow

"sylvie green surprised.png" -> sylvie green surprised

Since the filenames are lowercase, the following also holds.

"Sylvie Green Surprised.png" -> sylvie green surprised

Images can be placed in subdirectories (subfolders) under the images directory.

s "I'll get right on it!"

m "That wasn't what I meant!"

image logo = "renpy logo.png"

image eileen happy = "eileen_happy_blue_dress.png"

In the script above, pictures pop in and out instantaneously. Since

Transitions change what is displayed from what it was at the end of

show sylvie green smile

"I'll ask her...!"

m "Ummm... Will you..."

m "Will you be my artist for a visual novel?"

When a transition is placed after multiple scene, show, or hide

show sylvie green smile

show sylvie green smile

This first dissolves in the meadow, and then dissolves in sylvie. If

show sylvie smile

Here, None is used to indicate a special transition that updates

By default, images are shown centered horizontally, and with their

show sylvie green smile at right

To do this repositioning, add an at clause to a show statement. The at

Music and Sound

play music "audio/illurock.ogg"

play music "audio/illurock.ogg" fadeout 1.0 fadein 1.0

queue music "audio/next_track.opus"

play sound "audio/effect.ogg"

For example, if "game/audio/illurock.ogg" exists, we can write:

play music illurock

See the audio namespace (audio.html#audio-namespace) for more details.

Ending the Game

".:. Good Ending."

Menus, Labels, and Jumps

The menu statement lets presents a choice to the player:

s "Sure, but what's a \"visual novel?\""