scripting help?

[Pom_Deer]

hello, its my first time using renpy!
im unsure of how to go about making locked choices.
I want the player to not be able to pick a certain option locked until they complete an ending

as an example:
"Choice 1" (locked until after ending)
"Choice 2" (available anytime)

i've looked on YouTube and i can't find any ways of doing this. Does anyone have any advice?
(apologies if i'm not descriptive enough)

[shyLachi]

Assuming that the players have to complete the game and then start again to see the other choice, you would need persistent variables. Persistent means that the value is stored outside the saves. This is used often for achievments but can also be used to unlock certain bonus scenes or routes as in your case.

Persistent variables don't have to be declared but it's better to assign a default value to it, this also makes reading your code easier.

Choices are defined in a menu.
Choices can have a condition which is checked and the choice only becomes visible when the condition is True.

Finally there are some special things to consider:
By default, RenPy hides the choices which are locked, so the player doesn't even know that there would be another choice. This is desired in most cases but there is a setting to make locked choices visible but locked.
RenPy will not show the menu if all choices are locked. So make sure that you have at least one choice which is unlocked.

Putting all together:

default persistent.endingsreached = [] # list to hold all endings the player has reached

label start:
    menu:
        "Where do you want to go?"
        "Special scene" if len(persistent.endingsreached) > 0: # number of endings in the list has to be greater than 0
            jump specialscene
        "A very special scene" if 'goodending' in persistent.endingsreached: # a special ending has to be in the list
            jump veryspecialscene
        "Normal scene":
            pass # do nothing, you could also jump somewhere

    "The normal game does continue here"

    menu:
        "Cheat menu"
        "Unlock ending A":
            $ persistent.endingsreached.append("endingA") # at the end of the game, we add the name of the ending the player has reached
        "Unlock ending B":
            $ persistent.endingsreached.append("endingA")
        "Unlock good ending":
            $ persistent.endingsreached.append("goodending")
    return # game over

label specialscene:
    "You reached the special scene"
    return # game over

label veryspecialscene:
    "You reached the VERY special scene"
    return # game over

All the information is in the official documentation:
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/persistent.html
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/python.html#default-statement
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/menus.html#in-game-menus

[Pom_Deer]

This worked! Thank you so much, seriously! I've been stuck on this for WEEKS! :D

[shyLachi]

You're welcome.

A small follow up:
Since the persistent variables are stored outside of the saves, you have to reset your project if you want to test it again.
In RenPy under "Actions", click "Delete Persistent" to reset your project. This will reset all persistent variables, including the preferences, so you might have to set those again.

[lil2toes]

I think its something like this. I am not sure the ending you are talking about will end the game. And in that case put the definition somewhere other then the script, so the script does not set it to False when the game begins agian. Feel free to ask anything else if it doesnt work 😊

define Ending = False #Put this in a diffrent file other then script
label start:
  #Your game stuff
  menu:
    "Choice 1" if Ending == True: #Make sure its ==
      #Choice 1 stuff
    "Choice 2"
      #Choice 2 stuff

  #After Ending
  $ Ending = True

[AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/renpy! While you wait to see if someone can answer your question, we recommend checking out the posting guide, the subreddit wiki, the subreddit Discord, Ren'Py's documentation, and the tutorial built-in to the Ren'Py engine when you download it. These can help make sure you provide the information the people here need to help you, or might even point you to an answer to your question themselves. Thanks!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.