renpy-capture

Every line of a Ren'Py game, in its scene, in every branch — without playing it.

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_{One moment of The Question, the sample game that ships with Ren'Py, in English and in the Russian translation that comes with it: two frames drawn by the game's own engine. The artwork is released under the MIT license.}

See the live example →

renpy-capture runs a Ren'Py game in its own engine on a hidden screen, answers every menu every way, and keeps the picture the player sees at every line. What comes out is a small website: read it in a browser, search it, send it to anyone.

What you get

• The book of the game. Every line beside the picture the player sees, with the speaker and the line of the script. Search it; link to any line.
• The tree of choices. Every menu and every option, down to how each path ends; each option opens its moment in the book.
• The translation beside the original. For a game that already has a translation (game/tl/<language>): every translated line as the game itself draws it, in its own dialogue window, beside the original. Does the text fit, does the font have the letters. renpy-capture shows translations; it does not make them.
• Proof that nothing was missed. After the capture the game's scripts are read, and every scene no path reached is named, with its label, file and line.

Who it's for

Try it

No terminal? Use the window on Windows: a zip, nothing to install.

pipx install renpy-capture
renpy-capture capture ~/Games/SomeGame work/
xdg-open work/export/index.html

One command does the whole job: it fetches the official Ren'Py SDK of the game's version, plays every branch on a hidden screen, looks for scenes no branch reached, and writes the pages. Run it again to go on after an interruption. The Question takes six seconds; a large commercial game of 22,000 lines, about eight minutes.

A translation the game already has in game/tl/russian: capture the original and the translation, both with the game's dialogue window, and open the translation's book, where the original stands beside every line.

renpy-capture capture ~/Games/SomeGame work/ --text
renpy-capture capture ~/Games/SomeGame work/ --text --language russian
xdg-open work/export-text-russian/index.html

No terminal? Use the window (Windows)

Most translators never open a terminal, and they do not have to: renpy-capture has a window, and on Windows it comes as a zip that needs nothing installed (no Python, no pipx).

1. Open the latest release and download the file called renpy-capture-…-windows-x64.zip under Assets (not Source code).
2. Right-click the zip, Extract All, open the folder renpy-capture and double-click renpy-capture-gui.exe.
3. Choose the folder of the game, and press Capture.

The window tells in plain words what it is doing (the first time it downloads the engine of the game's version: 150 to 165 MB, once), has a Cancel button that stops everything, and ends with what was captured and two buttons: Open the page (the book of the game, in your browser) and Open the folder. Capture the same game into the same work folder again and it goes on where it stopped. A game with a translation in game/tl offers it in a list, and Show the text box keeps the game's dialogue window in the pictures, to check how the translation fits.

With Python, renpy-capture gui opens the same window on Linux and Windows (Tk is needed: sudo apt install python3-tk on Debian and Ubuntu), and pip install renpy-capture puts a launcher on Windows that opens no console. How the window works, and how the zip is made, are in the guide.

Why you can trust the pictures

• The game's own engine draws them. The official Ren'Py SDK of the game's version runs the game: its fonts, transitions, layered images, animations and screens. Nothing is rebuilt from the script.
• Every branch, then a check. Every menu is answered every way; then the scripts are read, and any scene no path reached is named.
• The same picture, every time. Game time follows frames, not the clock; randomness is seeded; a scene is kept once it has settled. Run it twice and the files are identical, so a difference between two captures is a real one.
• Your copy stays untouched. The game runs from a separate folder that only links to it; the SDK comes from renpy.org and is checked against its official checksum.

Tested on a large commercial game: 44 branches and 21,945 lines in about eight minutes on four engines, every picture identical, byte for byte, to the run before.

Compared with what you do now

renpy-capture does not replace your translation tools: it shows what they produce, in the game.

Good to know

• It answers menus; it does not play mini-games. A map, a quiz or a timed challenge can be guided by the game's config, see the guide.
• The official SDK has to run the game: a game shipped with a modified engine may not start.

flowchart LR
    G["Your copy of the game"] --> L["Launch folder<br/>links to the game + capture.rpy"]
    S["Official Ren'Py SDK<br/>from renpy.org, sha256 checked"] --> L
    L -->|every menu, every option| O["Every picture<br/>and a log of every line"]
    O --> E["The book, the tree of choices,<br/>a table of every line"]
    O --> X["Scenes no path reached"]

More

• The guide: installing, the hidden screen, translations, every command, what each file holds, games that need help, when something is off.
• The config and the output, field by field · Changelog

Be kind to the authors

Capture games you own. The pictures and the words are their authors' work: do not publish them without permission.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Made by Aiken and Claude.