Japanese Style Adventure Menu for RenPy

This module adds a menu based interaction system to RenPy, like it was popularized by "The Portopia Serial Murder Case" and was used by many japanese adventure games in the 80's and 90's.

Simply copy the two files module_adv.rpy and module_adv_config.rpy somewhere into your project directory.

You can easily customize the styling with module_adv_config.rpy to your liking. The basic structure of this configuration file is similar to the options.rpy or gui.rpy files within RenPy.

To initialize the module simply call the label init_module_adv_verbs. This will register all verbs your game should use.

To add or modify verbs you have to modify the label init_module_adv_verbs in the file module_adv_config.rpy. Adding a new verb can be done with the adv_mode.register_verb() function that takes three parameters:

• The first parameter defines the verbs internal name you will use when registering actions.
• The second parameter defines the icon of the verb. You can either add images as a text tag or use a special font icon. I would suggest the use of a special font for more styling options.
• The third parameter is the displayed name of the verb in the game itself.

The Adventure Menu at its core is a screen that, based on the players choice, will jump to different labels that then describe the logic of the specific interaction. To better explain this, let us look at a simple example:

$ adv_mode.clear_actions()
$ adv_mode.register_action("look", "Room", "look_room_label")
$ adv_mode.register_action("look", "Chair", "look_chair_label")
$ adv_mode.register_action("use", "Chair", "use_chair_label")
$ adv_mode.register_action("move", "Other Room", "move_other_room_label")
call screen adv_menu
$ increase_choice_repeat(_return)
jump expression _return

• First you want to clear all previously registered actions with adv_mode.clear_actions() function.
• Then you need to register your different actions the player should interact with. To register an action you simply call the adv_mode.register_action() function with three parameters:
  • The first parameter is the verbs internal name you want to use for this action, like "use" or "look".
  • The second parameter is the text of the action that is displayed to the player, something like "Room" or "Chair".
  • The third parameter is simply the name of the label the action will jump to when selected by the player.
• After this, call the screen adv_menu to display the menu
• At last you have to add the two lines $ increase_choice_repeat(_return) and jump expression _return that execute and jump to the label, based on the return value by the called screen.