Industry Practice - Coding The Doctor, The Jester and Trigger Warning Screen (18/03/25)

Trigger Warning Screen

We haven't designed the final design for this screen but I wanted to get the code in ready to test if it worked. For this test, I created a placeholder trigger warning image to use. Here is the code I used to create the screen.

During this, I encountered many problems when it came to viewing the screen in game. The code above is designed to display the image using the dissolve transition. It will pause for 8 seconds before returning to the main menu screen. When the screen was displayed, it was a black screen and my placeholder wasn't there. This showed me that the code was working but there was an issue with the image. I recreated this and replaced it with a hound sprite and it worked with no issues. After a while of basic troubleshooting, I realised that it had an issue with the size of the image. I changed it to be the same size as the hound file and it worked.

The Doctor

Using the dialogue tree I made, I coded out the doctors story with some minor changes to help the dialogue flow a bit better. During this, I realised a lot of the options were quite similar and sometimes it was hard to tell which ones the best option. I plan to revisit my dialogue tree and make it a bit clearer and to add some more variety in the dialogue. Here is a snippet of the code.

When I was coding the hound's story, I realised that it was getting difficult to tell which questions stemmed from where. This led me to add comments on what routes they belonged to. I was testing this story to see if it worked, and realised that the ending variable wasn't functioning properly. It kept giving me the bad ending even when it shouldn't have. I realised that the previous code I used for the variable wasn't working and tried an alternative variation. I have tested it briefly and it seems to be working. I will continue to test it further once I've added more characters.

The Jester

Using the dialogue tree Jake provided in the discord, I coded in the Jester's story. I currently don't have access to Jake's sprites so I will come back and add them in when he's finished them. I plan to ask all my team members where abouts they would like their sprites to change and which sprites they want to change to. Here's a snippet of the Jester's story.

On Friday, I plan to ask my group meeting if we can complete the script fully. I don't have the script for the gaping and pattern's questions. I'm also not sure what the therapist should say at certain moments. I've included placeholder text in some places but the therapist definitely needs to speak more to make the stories flow better.

Reference List

Ren'py tutorials Playlist, 2017. [Youtube]. Elaine (EMP), August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJgbnTkC4bkCj2_8ZUg1o4CafLcRH0rAX [Accessed 31 January].

Tom Rothamel, n.d. Ren'py Visual Novel Engine Documentation [online]. Ren'py. Available at: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/credits.html [Accessed 31 January 2025].