Visual Novels should have sound. Even if your budget is low that doesn't mean you can't include free resources, just credit any artist used.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Sele/family_tree_f
Add a custom font so the Title Screen catches the eye as a generic project will look generic.
https://www.fontspace.com/turds-font-f23569
Include a link to your Itch.io page as easy advertising. Filling in the About info is a good idea too.
Nameable Protagonist since it's not hard so why not.
While too early for this tip take a look at how galleries work as it could help you later.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/rooms.html#replay
Example: Replay("Ll", scope={"player_name": persistent.player_name or "Jacob"})
This will replay label LI and set the variable player_name to either what's saved in persistent or "Jacob", whichever has content.
Somewhere in the label LI a line "$ renpy.end_replay()" needs to be added to tell Ren'Py when the h-scene ends.

You can review the changes I made with https://winmerge.org

Edit: Noticed you didn't save the choice selection. Used "true_story" in this example. Learn how variables and conditional statements work or the redundancy will start to pile up quickly.

https://mega.nz/file/vW43RQ5K#zba30re883VCB3sSxV5ARakrduVNJIQYVVErqwxaiLo

TOILET2 years ago(+1)

Thank you for the much needed input, This is the first game I have made on my own and not for school. I am very inexperienced in the developing of these games but I am a very avid consumer so I understand what makes these games popular, but This intro was just meant to catch the eye of people who will hopefully stick with this project. I do plan to implement some sound, namable protagonist, custom font, and a gallery in the next update. Can I use that updated script you made? I am using the basic knowledge I have of python and the ren'py engine so this simple solution helps me tremendously to clean up the mess my code was.

Thank you,

TOILETdev

jadih962072 years ago (1 edit)

That's what it's there for so go ahead and use it.

Good luck with your game!

Gallery shouldn't be too hard if you make a simple one with imagebuttons and the example mentioned above.

https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/style_properties.html

idle - the image for when an item appears on screen but isn't hovered or clicked.

hover - when the image is hovered over with the mouse and clicked.

insensitive - it's disabled for whatever reason.

imagebutton auto "gui/gallery/h-scene01_%s.png" action Replay("Ll", scope={"player_name": persistent.player_name or "Jacob"})

the "auto" part fills in the "%s" with one of those states so have images called:

h-scene01_idle.png

h-scene01_hover.png

h-scene01_insensitive.png

Having three helps the player know they can interact with it yet you can get around with only idle and hover if you make a generic locked image though you might want to do that without using auto. Replay by default will report if the scene can be replayed if the player has seen the label but if they haven't it switches to insensitive. Insensitive can be used to give hints about the scene.

For a bit more finesse you could even include tooltips

https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screen_actions.html#tooltips
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens.html?highlight=grid#grid