I'm pleased to announce the release of Ren'Py 8.5, a major release of Ren'Py. Major releases include new features, major improvements, and fixes. Some of the major changes in Ren'Py 8.5 are: * Live2D models are now supported on the Web platform. 1/5

Just bumped the Ren'Py 8.5 prerelase up to 8.5.0.25110906, with several more fixes in it.

I've posted the first prerelease of Ren'Py 8.5.0. If you'd like to help test the next version of Ren'Py, check it out at: www.renpy.org/releas...

I haven't verified it myself, but it looks like there is a report of malware being distributed inside pirated versions of games made using Ren'Py. All downloadable games are only secure if you trust the creators and the sites you get them from. 1/3

Just posted the new article to the Ren'Py Patreon, talking what's coming in Ren'Py 8.5. www.patreon.com/post...

Visited a nearby federal courthouse to see a museum there, and had the lovely experience of helping a family of new Americans take a group photo together. (Public pic zoomed in to protect their privacy.)

My project for the last week has been integrating Live2D Cubism SDK for Web with Ren'Py's web platform support. I've had some success, you can see the first working version at: share.renpy.org/l2dw... 1/2

A quick question - is anyone playing Ren'Py games on a gsync-enabled monitor? If so, are you having any problems?

The name visual novel is a clue that literary and artistic merit is an aspiration of the medium. It's pretty rare to get both in one package - part of what drew me to VNs in the first place.

First new feature of Ren'Py 8.5 is config.image_directories, which lets you have multiple image directories. For example: define config.image_directories = [ "dlcimages", "images" ] would let you have dlc images that have priority over non-dlc images. 1/2

The new Patreon article is up. It goes over July's work - including the two big releases. It also has a new displayable that lets you display taps on the screen. www.patreon.com/post...

Had a great conversation with the University of Dayton Game Dev club, about Ren'Py and balancing life with engine development. I appreciate them having me.

I'm happy to announce the release of Ren'Py 8.4.1. This release addresses multiple issues, including a problem that prevented creators on Windows from creating new games in non-English languages. Downloads of Ren'Py 8.4.1 can be found at: www.renpy.org/releas...

I will say - thinking about this after a night's sleep - that I don't think the steam/itch teams had much of a choice in how they acted. It was losing some games, or lose every game. So please, be kind to them when expressing your frustration.

Steam and Itch taking down games they host is a problem for game preservation - and of course, I'm not a fan of people trying to censor what creators can express. This is one of the many reasons Ren'Py is free, and why its license means I can't censor what is made with it. 1/2

I've made the first prerelease of the Ren'Py 8.4.1. You can find it at: www.renpy.org/releas... with the list of changes at: www.renpy.org/dev-do... You can update using the update button in the launcher.

I'm looking at making a prerelease of Ren'Py 8.4.1 later today. Should have some important fixes, especially one for an issue that's been preventing the creation of new non-English-language projects.

I've just released Ren'Py 8.4, a feature release that includes many new features, improvements, and fixes. www.renpy.org/latest.html

Just put up the new Patreon article, talking about the ongoing Ren'Py 8.4 release campaign. You can find it at: www.patreon.com/posts/renpy-...

It's a touch grass day today - or perhaps a touch the ionisphere today. I'll be working ARRL Field Day at the 2pm-2pm Dix Hills Fire Department, here on Long Island. We have a get-on-the air station for anyone who wants to try it out. www.larkfield.org 73, and catch you later.

The 8.4 prerelease marks the beginning of the end of Ren'Py's warring states period.

I've made the first prerelease of Ren'Py 8.4. Ren'Py 8.4 brings Python 3.12, improved performance, better shaders, GLTF models, and more. Downloads can be found at: www.renpy.org/release/8.4.0

Ren'Py's new in-place Matrix transpose operation was so good, it would transpose the matrix twice in a row. (Fixed that one.)

I'll just make a screenshot for the release. I say. It'll be easy, I say. Three fixed bugs later...

Back down to one issue open, and as I work on it, I'm working on some of the things I do before a Ren'Py prerelease, like writing the changelog. I think a lot of developers, especially of larger games, are going to be happy with this one - Ren'Py 8.4 should make developing faster.

After a bug that took 3 days to solve, I managed to drop the list of issues blocking the Ren'Py 8.4 prerelease down to zero yesterday - for a few minutes. Then someone posted a new one I'd really like to solve. (Should be much faster.)

The new Ren'Py developer update is out on Patreon, covering new features, like Traceback Saves. www.patreon.com/posts/130302...

Added the same automatic oversampling feature to movies, so playing "test.webm" will look for "[email protected]", and play that if the game is scaled up. (Both will play at the same relative width, but [email protected] will have more data, letting it be shown sharper.)

Added a new feature to Ren'Py last night. Ren'Py will now automatically load oversampled images. If "doc.png" exists, and the window is scaled up, Ren'Py will see if [email protected]" exists and load that to get higher resolution data.

I'm hoping the new pope is bold enough to pick the name Sixtus VI.

Fixed an issue today that was caused by 8.4's startup speed being improved to the point where the launcher can start it twice in one second.

Patreon day, talking about the work on 8.4. Both the work I did, and some features I spent the last week or so merging in. www.patreon.com/posts/renpy-...

Today's Ren'Py change - allowing CTC to be positioned as part of the speech bubble screen.

Today's first batch of Ren'Py dev has been a bit more accessibility work. An accessibility menu redesign to show dialogue underneath, and font kerning adjustment support.

Potentially could update the colors for the upcoming release, with bigger redesigns for the fall.

I wonder if any designers want to make themselves hated by suggesting a redesign for Ren'Py's error and utility screens.

There are some things in Ren'Py 8.4 that are immediately visual, but there is a ton of stuff that will probably percolate to community provided effects.

Added support for texture uniforms to Ren'Py 8.4 today. You'll now be able to do: transform effect: shader "myeffect" u_effect_texture "effect.png"

Someone asked about Ren'Py processing people's personal data.

Some of the domains I run (under renai.us) are down at the moment. Bots (probably AI training bots) were eating the site, I'm setting up Cloudflare to block them.

Patreon Day. This one takes us under the hood of Ren'Py's rendering system, which I've been speeding up. www.patreon.com/posts/125553...

The vscode extension probably gives an idea of the number of Ren'Py developers out there - 130k downloads in the past year, figure maybe 2-3 installs per user, and we get 40k or so people who try Ren'Py. That loosely tracks with the number of downloads from the website.

I've pushed a prerelease update to the Ren'Py Language (8.3+) extension for Visual Studio Code. If you'd like to test it, opt-in with: ctrl+P ext install renpy.language-renpy<enter> Right click on the gear. Switch to Pre-Release version.

I'm happy to announce the release of Ren'Py 8.3.7 and Ren'Py 7.8.7, fix releases that improves earlier versions of Ren'Py 8.3 and 7.8. These releases fix multiple reported issues, with a focus on Live2D and Arabic text shaping.

Updated the Ren'Py 8.3.7 prerelease to fix a small regression, and to update the licenses for Ren'Py's dependencies.

I'm happy to announce the prerelease of Ren'Py 8.3.7 and Ren'Py 7.8.7, fix releases that improves earlier versions of Ren'Py 8.3 and 7.8. These prereleases fix multiple reported issues, with a focus on Live2D and Arabic text shaping.

After pretty much a full day working on it, solved the Live2D clipping issue. (Which had to do with the size of the mask texture.)

One day, the Ren'Py 7/8 dual releases will be remembered like the warring states period is today.

With the release out of the way, here's this month's Patreon article. patreon.com/posts/123350...