I've been spending the past year writing the script to my next visual novel that I hardly spent much time on the game development part of... game development. So this week I decided to do some tweaking in Ren'Py and work on the UI for my next title!
As Elle mentions above, this is still a work in progress and not representative of the final game. But compared to my last title Reconnected I have done a few changes including:
- Replacing the default Deja Vu sans font in Ren'py with Atkinson Hyperlegible and increasing the default text size.
Some visual novels I've played in recent years have had text that appears too tiny, worse... stylized fonts that can be hard (or impossible) to read. It's gotten bad that I've had to use Ren'Pys accessibility menu to force the default Deja Vu Sans font and increase the text size.
For a while I've been wanting to find a good font that can check all the boxes for style, ease of reading, and accessibility and I found this one to be the best choice. I'm hoping with the default values, a majority of users can easily read the game.
- Added an animated indicator at the end of text.
Simple, but goes a long way to let the player know when they can click to the next line/dialogue. I kept it minimal with it being an underscore that blinks from white to grey.
- Moved quick options to the right.
Doing this gives me more room for larger text and wider line spacing. Plus it looks nicer!
- Assigned colors for characters names.
I had this in my last title that I added last minute. I honestly always had a hard time following the names of characters in a majority of media, so being able to distinguish them with colors is a massive help to the reader!
(Original phone image and message system asset by Nadia Nova, with edits by Froey.)
- Textbox opacity is fully customizable with a changeable value and can be set solid for high contrast mode.
Simple option that goes a long way for any player. I always liked having a slightly transparent window and being able to adjust it to my liking is excellent!
- Last, the game will render natively in 1920x1080 and not 1600x900 like the last two titles.
This is a standard resolution for a majority of PC users, and I found Ren'py both downscales and upscales well to a majority of resolutions. Thanks to my simple art style, the visuals in this game upscale just fine to a 27" 1440p monitor!
This about sums up the work I've done this week and the changes/improvements I made since my last title. I hope to reveal the title of my project and share more about it this next year!
I also appreciate feedback from anyone, feel free to comment below. 