Luna Moon

my shitty elbow is flaring up rn because of the cold/some personal mistakes, and i can only do one handed tasks, so here's another list of resources. for a while now i've wanted to have something to send to people i drag into the ren'py pit with me, so here is my curated list. the selling point here is that i am an empty headed ADHD disaster who is not very good at coding and i personally have successfully used all of these. i'll probs update this list in the future.

comments are open (even to people without a dreamwidth account) if you wanna suggest stuff but im keeping the post itself to stuff i have personally used. ;D

🎺 = Trumpet of MOST FERVENT EVANGELISM
💰 = costs a lil money (worth it)

VSCODE EXTENSIONS
Official Ren'py Language Extension 🎺 - highlights your code to make it way, WAY easier to read and edit.
Ren'py Launch and Sync 🎺 - launch Ren'py straight to the line you're looking at in the code!! no more fast forward or typing in labels. (Kayin showed me this one and i screamed)
Ren'py Text Analyzer - tells you all sorts of interesting info/stats about your game

HANDY UTILITIES
Ren'Edit - makes beta testing, proofreading, note-taking and corrections much easier.
Ren'py Action Editor - helps a lot with image positioning and ATL by providing a gui you can mess around in + code output to clipboard
Layered Image Visualizer 🎺💰 - INVALUABLE if you are using layeredimages as sprites.
Intro To Positioning In Ren'py - shows you how image positioning works via interactive tutorial.
Ren'py Hotspot Tool - make imagemap hotspots easy. it has a thread on the Lemmasoft forums.
Ren'py Visual Novel Viewer - if you're a "learn by picking apart someone else's code" kinda person this will help. please do not look at my code from my games though because it's bad DONTLOOKATME... OTL

FEATURE EXPANSIONS
Easy Ren'py Gallery 🎺 - unlock images as the game progresses. very clear and easy to set up w/demo game
Controller Support Expansion 🎺 - rocks ass. works right outta the box

VISUAL EFFECTS
Ren'py Auto Highlight - highlights and focuses sprite of talking character
Frost Breath & Snow - works great out of the box, dead simple to use and modify for other purposes
MVN Action Effects 💰 - some really neat vfx!!
Point Emitter - rocks ass. i used this for some of the fireworks in Potion Stand Story. good instructions.
Transitions & Dissolves - biiiiiig pack. also good for looking at and learning to make your own.
MVN Ren'py Shader Pack - lots of fun shaders to play with
Wave Shader - very flexible tool for wiggling stuff. wiggle your game. WIGGLE IT

TEXT EFFECTS
Kinetic Text Tags 🎺 - i use this extensively for the shaky text (great for drama OR comedy, tbh)
MVN Text Effects & Shader Pack - LOTS of fun text effects like pulsing gradients and glowing letters

TUTORIALS ETC.
Screen Language For Dummies - 🎺 unfinished atm but already so much good info for newbies. read it!! REEEEAD ITTTT
LayeredImage Tutorial - 🎺 learn how to set up layered sprites. real nice tutorial, easy to follow
NomNomNami's tips - 🎺 a LOT of "things i wish i knew earlier" content here
VNDev Wiki - exactly what it says on the tin
Zeil Learnings - some great video tutorials with downloadables so you can play along
Visual Novel Design 🎺 - really great ren'py videos. i'm honestly so mad that video tutorials are good sometimes
FeniksDev's site 🎺 - LOTS of good ren'py info for devs of all skill levels

🎺🎺🎺 MORE GREAT STUFF (TOOT TOOT) 🎺🎺🎺
FeniksDev on itch - so many more tools i haven't even gotten around to testing yet (some free, some is 💰)
Make Visual Novels on itch - Stella is a genius, just go browse (some free, some is 💰)
official Ren'py discord - i know we're tired of joining discords but it is useful for real
r/Ren'py - a real good subreddit, i've learned a lot just searching here