discussion What is the deal with Ren'Py?

[Johnsnow421]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

 

[JethroHatfield]

I would like to offer a single moment of criticism with your opening post. The points that you have raised as grievances, are due to whatever method of Art production used, and not that of Ren'Py itself. Most AVN's in todays market utilize either HoneySelect 2 (from Illusion) or Daz3D with a few Koikatsu, AI Girl, or HoneySelect 1 (All three of which are also Illusion products). Ren'Py itself is just the framework and coding software of the production as an entirety.

Now if you would like to discuss the issues and limitations of Illusion or Daz3D we can certainly do that, but please be aware that RenPy has NO impact on whatever art medium a developer chooses to utilize.

 

[Johnsnow421]

I would like to offer a single moment of criticism with your opening post. The points that you have raised as grievances, are due to whatever method of Art production used, and not that of Ren'Py itself. Most AVN's in todays market utilize either HoneySelect 2 (from Illusion) or Daz3D with a few Koikatsu, AI Girl, or HoneySelect 1 (All three of which are also Illusion products). Ren'Py itself is just the framework and coding software of the production as an entirety.

Now if you would like to discuss the issues and limitations of Illusion or Daz3D we can certainly do that, but please be aware that RenPy has NO impact on whatever art medium a developer chooses to utilize.

Yes, I know but they use frames or images from these games to create visual novels with Ren'Py. My criticism isn’t directed at Ren'Py alone, but at all the tools used in the process, as well as the final product.

I just want to know what catches people's attention in these games.

 

[JethroHatfield]

Again, that is a choice made be the developer when creating the artwork. There are devs out there (Jestur's Ripples is one for sure) that does include animations in more of a minor sense than just the lewd scenes. And to more directly answer your question, RenPy is chosen more primarily on the basis that it is very beginner friendly to learn and fairly easy to work with. Which is why most of the Menus follow the same general format. Advanced users and Python coders can make more immersive, unique menus and such. Another reason for devs to choose static images rather than full animations 100% of the time is the amount of space each animated scene would take up. You're talking about taking an approximately 400mb "Prologue/ V0.1" instead inflate to sizes in excess of 4GB for a 0.1. And when that trend continues Chapter/ Release after Chapter/Release, your project can easily scale so far out of feasible download size that many players would rather move on to other potentials than risk wasting precious bandwidth on a potential let down.

I've seen it myself first hand with my own project "Valkyrion Rising." Where I stayed with static images, however I instead shot a different image for every single line of dialogue with the intent to make the characters feel more alive, and for only the Prologue its size is still excessive.

 

[AlBetGam]

Yes, I know but they use frames or images from these games to create visual novels with Ren'Py. My criticism isn’t directed at Ren'Py alone, but at all the tools used in the process, as well as the final product.

I just want to know what catches people's attention in these games.

The issues you're listing exist just the same in games made with any engine- RPGM, Unity, HTML, etc.

People prefer Renpy because, independent of the render quality or visual arrangement skill or art design, Renpy makes for a very consistent and user-friendly player experience. Almost anything you want to do in a VN (at least as a player) is just simpler in Renpy than in competing engines.

 

[HuiEtyud]

Ren'py is literally a visual-novel engine. If your goal is to make visual novels, you wouldn't go to Unreal, for example, though there are quite a few in Unity. Ren'py looks like it's fairly easy for beginner coders to grasp, so it's something of a Baby's First Game Engine. You can keep the UI simple, or you can go crazy custom with it, if you know how to code it.

The render quality, scene animation, etc are all separate issues. They have nothing to do with Ren'py itself. That's either a stylistic choice or just a developer's lack of creativity when it comes to model design or animation prowess.

 

[Uthuriel]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

Nice shitpost dude... :kek:

 

[exerp]

For game developers Renpy is ..

• open source and free
• very easy to work with compared to other game development systems
• widely supported in the community
• crossplatform so game developers can easily ship to most platforms
• very customizable if they want to put in the time and effort

For players ..

• familiar and consistent across most games .. so we do not have to learn a whole new interface each time
• easy to hack for modding
• playable on most platforms

 

[femboyreptile]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

it's just the easiest to work with, maybe right after Twine. and yeah absolutely, it does lead to a whole lot of pretty low quality games. anyone could put their fantasy into reality with public 3d models, Blender and Renpy. which is pretty cool, but you also get a lot of super mainstream stuff, drowning out all of the actually cool kinky games with the effort of hand-drawn art or at least good modeling

 

[fwjv]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

I'm not all that big a fan of Ren'py, but like everyone said, its just an engine. Like any engine, Ren'py, RPGM, Unity, Unreal, or anything that has a relatively simple early learning curve there will be slop. There are plenty of valid criticisms of ren'py, just like there are of any engine, but to judge the engine based on the slop isn't one of them.

 

[Johnsnow421]

I'm not all that big a fan of Ren'py, but like everyone said, its just an engine. Like any engine, Ren'py, RPGM, Unity, Unreal, or anything that has a relatively simple early learning curve there will be slop. There are plenty of valid criticisms of ren'py, just like there are of any engine, but to judge the engine based on the slop isn't one of them.

Can you recommend a "non-slop" game made with Ren'Py? Most of the ones I've played so far have felt low-effort.

 

[User_111574]

Speaking of poor graphics, it all depends on the talent of the developer and/or graphic designer. RenPy as an engine has nothing to do with it. For example, I simply cannot stand Japanese graphics on an organic level, but it never occurs to me to associate this with one game engine or another. But when it comes to problems specifically related to the engine, the first example that comes to mind is Unreal Engine. As a rule, games created on this engine by amateur developers are extremely poorly optimized, and as a result, some amateur project consumes more resources than a AAA game created by professionals.

 

[fwjv]

Can you recommend a "non-slop" game made with Ren'Py? Most of the ones I've played so far have felt low-effort.

Mist (personal fav), Knightly Passions, What a Legend, and Inquisitor Trainer (its a bit wonky, but since its WH40k and pretty funny I give it leeway)
I'm sure there's others. I can't remember if Aurelia is/was a Ren'py game. (they changed engines at one point)
I'm not really a big VN fan, but those ones all got my attention.

 

[[丂ㄖ尺卂]]

Can you recommend a "non-slop" game made with Ren'Py? Most of the ones I've played so far have felt low-effort.

most visual novels made by cherry kiss/ noel

 

[USER_6969]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

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[User_88762]

Why do so many people like Ren'Py? Every game I’ve seen made with it looks terrible, static images of poorly drawn characters that look like stiff Barbie dolls. Their facial expressions barely change, and the sex scenes are often worse with awkward camera angles, characters floating in space, no depth, no emotion. It all feels lifeless and cheap.

Now that I’ve said what I think, I want to hear your opinion on Ren'Py and why people like it so much!

RenPy doesn't have anything to do with how art is made for the game. RenPy just makes making VNs very easy so it allows for a lot of low effort VNs to be made. There a lot of good RenPy VNs with good graphics, but there are way way more shitty ones.

 

[Boberson1234]

Its best when combined with other elements that are not just static images

 

[rgd]

Well, I liked the games I played in Ren'py.

 

[LewdyPie]

The quality is up to the developer, as others said. I enjoy it because it easily runs in Linux.

 

[EEacidEE]

I'm not a dev myself but i'm 100% its just easy to build a game on renpy