============================== The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

https://www.renpy.org

Branches

The following branches are the most interesting.

fix The fix branch is used for fixes to the current version of Ren'Py that do not require dangerous changes. The fix branch is also the source of the documentation on https://www.renpy.org/. This branch is automatically merged into master on a regular basis.

Pull requests that contain fixes or documentation improvements should be
made to the fix branch. When a release is made, the master branch is
copied to the fix branch.

master The master branch is where the main focus of development is. This branch will eventually become the next release of Ren'Py.

Pull requests that contain new features, that require incompatible changes,
or major changes to Ren'Py's internals should be targeted at the master
branch.

Getting Started

Ren'Py depends on a number of Python modules written in Cython and C. For changes to Ren'Py that only involve Python modules, you can use the modules found in the latest nightly build. Otherwise, you'll have to compile the modules yourself.

The development scripts assume a POSIX-like platform. The scripts should run on Linux or macOS, and can be made to run on Windows using an environment like MSYS.

Nightly Build

Nightly builds can be downloaded from:

https://nightly.renpy.org

Note that the latest nightly build is at the bottom of the list. Once you've unpacked the nightly, change into this repository, and run::

./after_checkout.sh <path-to-nightly>

Once this script completes, you should be able to run Ren'Py using renpy.sh, renpy.app, or renpy.exe, as appropriate for your platform.

If the current nightly build doesn't work, please wait 24 hours for a new build to occur. If that build still doesn't work, contact Tom (pytom at bishoujo.us, or @renpytom on Twitter/X) to find out what's wrong.

The doc symlink will dangle until documentation is built, as described below.

Compiling the Modules

Building the modules requires you have the many dependencies installed on your system. On Ubuntu and Debian, these dependencies can be installed with the command::

sudo apt install python3-dev libassimp-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev \
    libswresample-dev libswscale-dev libharfbuzz-dev libfreetype6-dev libfribidi-dev libsdl2-dev \
    libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-gfx-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libjpeg-dev pkg-config

Ren'Py requires SDL_image 2.6 or greater. If your distribution doesn't include that version, you'll need to download it from:

https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_image/tree/SDL2

We strongly suggest using a package manager to create virtual environment and manage dependencies. We have tested with uv <https://docs.astral.sh/uv/>_ but other package managers should work as well. To create a virtual environment and install dependencies, open a new terminal and run::

uv sync

After that, compile extension modules and run Ren'Py using the command::

./run.sh

Other Platforms

Where supported, Ren'Py will attempt to find include directories and library paths using pkg-config. If pkg-config is not present, include and library paths can be specified using CFLAGS and LDFLAGS.

If RENPY_CFLAGS is present in the environment and CFLAGS is not, setup.py will set CFLAGS to RENPY_CFLAGS. The same is true for RENPY_LDFLAGS, RENPY_CC, RENPY_CXX, and RENPY_LD.

Setup.py does not support cross-compiling. See https://github.com/renpy/renpy-build for software that cross-compiles Ren'Py for many platforms. The renpy-build system also include some runtime components for Android, iOS, and web.

Documentation

Building

Building the documentation requires Ren'Py to work. You'll either need to link in a nightly build, or compile the modules as described above. You'll also need the Sphinx <https://www.sphinx-doc.org>_ documentation generator. If you have pip working, install Sphinx using::

pip install -U sphinx sphinx_rtd_theme sphinx_rtd_dark_mode

Once Sphinx is installed, change into the sphinx directory inside the Ren'Py checkout and run::

./build.sh

Format

Ren'Py's documentation consists of reStructuredText files found in sphinx/source, and generated documentation found in function docstrings scattered throughout the code. Do not edit the files in sphinx/source/inc directly, as they will be overwritten.

Docstrings may include tags on the first few lines:

:doc: section kind Indicates that this function should be documented. section gives the name of the include file the function will be documented in, while kind indicates the kind of object to be documented (one of function, method or class. If omitted, kind will be auto-detected. :name: name The name of the function to be documented. Function names are usually detected, so this is only necessary when a function has multiple aliases. :args: args This overrides the detected argument list. It can be used if some arguments to the function are deprecated.

For example::

def warp_speed(factor, transwarp=False):
    """
    :doc: warp
    :name: renpy.warp_speed
    :args: (factor)

    Exceeds the speed of light.

    `factor`
        The warp factor. See Sternbach (1991) for details.

    `transwarp`
        If True, use transwarp. This does not work on all platforms.
    """

    renpy.engine.warp_drive.engage(factor)

Translating

For best practices when it comes to translating the launcher and template game, please read:

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?p=321603#p321603

Contributing

For bug fixes, documentation improvements, and simple changes, just make a pull request. For more complex changes, it might make sense to file an issue first so we can discuss the design.

License

For the complete licensing terms, please read:

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