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Creating a Chatroom

Example files to look at: tutorial_5_coffee.rpy, tutorial_6_meeting.rpy

A brief overview of the steps required (more detail below):

1. Create a new .rpy file (Optional, but recommended)
2. Create a label for the chatroom
   1. You may also want to fill this in to the Script Generator.xlsx spreadsheet so you can set up your route later (see Setting up Sequential Chatrooms)
3. After the label, write call chat_begin('noon') where 'noon' is replaced by whatever time of day/background you want to use
4. Add a play music yourmusic where yourmusic is replaced by the desired music variable
5. Write the chatroom (you may want to use Script Generator.xlsx)
6. End the chatroom with jump chat_end

The first thing you should do when creating a chatroom is create a new .rpy file and name it something descriptive so you'll know where to find that chatroom. If you're planning on making a lot of chatrooms (say, for a route), you should come up with a consistent naming scheme such as day_1_chatroom_3.rpy or chatroom_1_3.rpyso it's easier to find the correct files later on.

In your newly created .rpy file, start off by making a label:

label day1_1:

Don't forget the colon after the label name. Your label name also can't have any spaces in it, nor can it begin with a number.

Next, it's time to begin the chatroom. Note that everything under the label must be indented at least one level to the right. Look at the example files mentioned above if you're not sure what this means. To begin the chat, use the call:

call chat_begin("earlyMorn")

chat_begin
background, clearchat=True, resetHP=True

The text in quotes tells the program what background to use. Your options are:

• morning
• noon
• evening
• night
• earlyMorn
• hack
• redhack
• redcrack

Note that it is case-sensitive, so you need to get the capitals right. The chat_begin function will also clear the chat log (aka your message history, so when you begin a new chatroom there are no messages on the screen at the beginning), but you can pass it a second argument so that it doesn't clear the chat log. That looks like this:

call chat_begin("hack", clearchat=False)

The other thing the chat_begin call does is set the heart points the player has collected in this chatroom to zero. In general, this makes sure that if the player collected 15 heart points in the last chatroom, they start again at zero for this chatroom. Unless you are changing the chatroom background in the middle of a chatroom, you can usually leave this as True. If you don't want to set the chatroom heart points to zero, you need to tell it the resetHP argument is False:

call chat_begin("hack", resetHP=False)

Besides preventing the program from resetting heart points, if resetHP = False the program will also assume you're calling chat_begin in the middle of a chatroom and thus don't want the participants reset. Otherwise, the list of participants shown at the top of the screen during a chatroom will also display people who have entered and then exited the chatroom. If you're not calling chat_begin in the middle of a chatroom, you usually want resetHP to be True.

So now that the chat is set up, you probably want to play some music. Music is played like so:

play music mystic_chat

where mystic_chat can be replaced by the name of whatever music you want. There are several files already pre-defined in variables_music_sound.rpy under the heading BACKGROUND MUSIC DEFINITIONS. If you want to define your own music files, be sure to add them to the music_dictionary so they are compatible with audio captions. See Adding new Audio for more information.

Finally, to end your chatroom, you need to write

jump chat_end

To learn more about how to write dialogue for your chatroom, check out Using the Chatroom Spreadsheet.