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To start off my fresh account, I've compiled a few Ren'Py tips into a bite-sized format! I've been programming in Ren'Py since 2018 and spent a ton of time working with it for all sorts of projects. Here are some less-common bits of knowledge ✨ #vndev #visualnovel #gamedev #renpy

Starting with one I see confused all the time: the special variable `main_menu` is True when you are *not currently in a save file*. Once you've started a new game or loaded one, main_menu will be False. Until then, it's True.

It is NOT a variable checking "you are on the main menu screen specifically" - to do that, use `if renpy.get_screen("main_menu")`. In short: can you hit Return to return to gameplay? Then `main_menu` is False. Otherwise, it's True.

Another special variable is `_menu`. It's True if you're in the "menu context" - so, when you're on the preferences screen, save/load, main menu, etc. This is most useful if you have a screen accessed both in-game or manually through the menu screens, and you need to know which is which.

A feature that was added in v8.2 is the `position` type. It takes two arguments, an absolute and a relative value e.g. `position(1.0, -10)`. This can be used anywhere you'd normally use either a float or an integer, such as for `xpos` or `ysize`.

It adds the two together, so `xpos position(1.0, -10)` positions the item at 100% of the available space, -10 (e.g. if the available space was 1920, this would put the xpos at 1920-10 = 1910). Extremely useful for offsetting positions or sizes a bit from the edge or center without using `offset`.

Does it bother you that the Window button in the default preferences screen is never highlighted, even when the game is not fullscreen? This is a quirk of how that button action checks if it's selected - technically, it's only highlighted if the window is exactly the game dimensions (e.g. 1920x1080)

Most people want it highlighted any time the game is not in fullscreen, regardless of size. Fix it by putting `selected not preferences.fullscreen` on the Window button.

My favourite testing tip: there's a special config called config.auto_choice_delay. Originally made for demonstration booths, this can be set to a length of time to wait before the game automatically chooses an option from a choice menu.

You can use it for that, or you can do what I do, which is set it to a tiny number and skip through my entire game multiple times. Open up the console with shift+o and type in config.auto_choice_delay = 0.01, hit enter, and skip to your heart's content.

Extremely helpful if you have a lot of choices, so you can try to see as many paths as possible and ensure there aren't any crashes or obvious errors (like missing images).

Set `config.debug_text_overflow = True` to get a text_overflow.txt file which will report any text that's too large for its container. If you speed through your game using the previous tip, this logs where your dialogue is overflowing the textbox (useful if you support multiple fonts or text sizes)

The special config value `config.developer`, if left at its default value of "auto", will be truthy when you are testing your game and automatically False when you make a distribution build.

What this means is you can check for `if config.developer:` and be confident that whatever is in that block will not appear in the release build. I use it all the time for developer menus, to print optional information during the game while testing, to flag errors, and more.

Ren'Py Tom might come for my bones for telling you this, but if you ever need to replace or access something in the engine that isn't explicitly documented, you can access it via `renpy.FOLDER.FILENAME.thing`.

Disclaimer that if it's not in the public API it's subject to change, so you're in charge of updating your code if the engine is modified to move things around or change behaviours. Use at your own risk!

If you want a sound effect to play when the player advances dialogue (like in Ace Attorney), use `config.say_allow_dismiss`. For example:

Does Ren'Py's self-voicing feature mess up the pronunciation of your character's names? Use `config.tts_substitutions` to improve the pronunciation. It's a list of (word, phonetic pronunciation) pairs so you can get self-voicing as close to the intended pronunciation as possible.