In case you were wondering what’s been going on, I’ve been working on my Ren’Py game(s). The first one is called Aeridale, which is the story of an orphaned girl that grows up to find adventure, romance, and possibly aliens. It all depends on the choices you make while playing.
^ Above is a screencap of the script.rpy file. The “[mc]s” will show as Aeridale’s name when the game is played. Because the name is left unspecified, this will allow the possibility of giving the player the ability to input their own name if I add that option. (I’m still thinking about it.)
When the player gets to the startingchoices option, they can choose Action/Adventure, Romance, Horror, or Science Fiction storylines. There are trophies to be gathered and bonus content that can be unlocked.
Depending on the storyline chosen, there’s the possibility of a love-interest, friendship, or just Aeridale learning to kick ass and take names. She starts as a lonely girl desperate to survive and becomes a woman that refuses to lay down and die.
Right now I’m finishing up the script and drawing/painting/stealing artwork to be used as backgrounds, objects, and sprites. Though at the moment I’m actually thinking that I won’t use an Aeridale sprite at all, leaving her appearance up to the mind of the player? Because honestly, how often do you see yourself when you’re talking? Like almost never, right? So maybe instead of a sprite I will represent her with an image denoting the romance choice, or the action choice, or whatever. I’m still working on that, and it’s not really pressing as it doesn’t affect the script much — it’s just the addition of a few lines of code here and there (“show Aeridale happy at left” will display the image defined as “Aeridale happy” standing to the left side. Simply enough, I add the image definition in the pregame code, then I can use those images anywhere I want.).
Aeridale will be about 4+ hours of gameplay to run through all the opened options, plus however long to go through the bonus material. It seems like a lot of work to put the game together — and it is, hours and hours — but it’s basically a lot of me thinking “Aeridale does this and then she does this because of that, which leads to this and that, the end”. Everything logically follows itself, though I did manage to write a loop which kept going back to the same menu screen over and over again before I figured out where I’d messed up. I’m learning a lot as I’m doing.
Other games I’m scripting: “Harper Kingsley’s Heroes & Villains”, “Kimichee 001”, and “Romantica.”
I’m hoping to release my first free game by early next month. I’ve already got an itch.io page and I’ll be sending out download keys to my Patreon subscribers.
