Tool Renpy reader for iOS Spark visual novel reader, any experience?

[mrbigchungus]

Hey there, I haven't tried it myself since it's a commercial tool, but I'm wondering how it functions (if at all) for Renpy visual novels on iOS. The utility is called Renpy Spark, it's not affiliated with the official project, but now I'm curious. Other than playing a renpy web version of a game, could this utility enable my games to play on an iPhone?

Super curious to hear the community's experience if any. Thanks.

 

[FratBoy2019]

TLDR: I use it religiously at this point, even upgraded iPads because I find tablet to be a lot more enjoyable for RenPy than on desktop. I've used newer titles like Cosy Cafe, older titles like Harem Hotel, and larger titles like Being a DIK. The first few releases were rough, with some scaling issues, issues with keyboard popups etc, but the dev has done numerous quality of life updates. Sometimes I'll just wake up and there's a new feature I was thinking about and its magically there after an overnight update.

Initial Impression:

• I could load up games on my iPhone 15 and an older iPad Pro.
• Some weird scaling. Like Being a DIK would only show 4 save slots but images were displaying properly. Mainly UI issues.
• Keyboard popup sometimes broke games. Like you couldn't get it to go down.
• Some games wouldn't launch, or the Dev would have to investigate specific game issues and give feedback to the community.
• Only supported Zip or APK files, so RAR files had to be decompressed and recompressed.

Current State:

• Full save management, and save export if you wanted to move between devices.
• Install supports a much wider range of archives including RAR and 7zip. Pretty good with nested folders too since some games nest a parent folder around the game.
• Almost every game I try works out of the box, but some still crash. 99% of these get fixed by adjusting the RenPy version. Its literally a dropdown right next to the game, and it tries its best to pick the best version. If that doesn't work, moving it to the latest RenPy almost always works. Another .9% are fixed by using the APK version if necessary, probably because of a weird popup or something. Witch Hunter is a good example of that one. It has a different startup animation on desktop vs mobile and that breaks the desktop version on Spark but not the mobile one.
• There are control buttons you can customize so you can pick how to trigger things, force a right click for the menu, force a scroll back. Basically any little issue, it has a button that will fix that and you can put them anywhere on screen so it isn't intrusive to the experience.
• When using a bluetooth case like a logitech one for ipad that has keyboard/trackpad, typing works. Two finger click works natively. Keyboard works. Mouse works. Its basically like using RenPy on a mac.
• Saves backup automatically on a schedule and you can manually trigger full save backups as well. That way if you uninstall a game for storage, you don't lose that data.
• Overall, I upgraded from a 128GB iPad Pro to a 1TB M1 iPad Pro purely for this app and moved all my RenPy off my laptop and desktop onto here.

Wishful Thinking:

1. Updating is a little painful on games. Dropping in a new archive creates a separate install of the game. You can copy the files or just delete the old version and import the old saves. Wish it had an 'update from zip' option to just merge the games.
2. Some kind of hover mode. Sandbox games on touch screen is rough. You have to already know where to click since there's no translation between dragging a finger vs dragging a mouse.
3. A way to tag or organize your game library - right now its basically an alphabetical list with a search. But if you could group games by tag or folder, that would be really cool. I know some people might prefer to organize by genre, model type like DAZ vs HS, or even a way to group finished games, unplayed games, and in progress games.
4. SUPER WISHFUL THINKING: Cloud Sync via iCloud. If I had shared saves between iPhone/iPad or iPad and MacBook that would be the best RenPy experience I could picture.

 

[mrbigchungus]

Sold, I think I'll try this out for my iphone at some point then and see if my games will work. I know there isn't a snowballs chance in hell of actual iOS enabled adult games so this seems like the best we'll get.

Much appreciate the reply dude, thank you.

 

[poodles]

Just installed it and seems to work. Is there an easy way to add mods to the files though? And this is a bit off topic, but do you know a way to play RPGM on iOS?

 

[FratBoy2019]

Just installed it and seems to work. Is there an easy way to add mods to the files though? And this is a bit off topic, but do you know a way to play RPGM on iOS?

No clue on RPGM, but that would be awesome to play Treasure of Nadia on mobile.

As for mods, there's two ways I go about it if you're loading a zip/rar but not an APK. Not sure about modding APK files. These steps assume you already downloaded the game, the mod, but haven't unzipped anything yet. It also assumes the mod file is supposed to go into the "game" folder that every RenPy game usually has. If it needs to go in another location within the game folder, you can do that as well. Once its on the device, the folder structure is identical to being on the desktop.

Installing Mod from Computer:

1. Unzip the game into a folder.
2. Navigate to the /game folder within the zip (assuming that's where the mod should go)
3. Drop the mod in there
4. Rezip the game into an archive
5. Copy to phone or tablet
6. Install like normal with Spark, it'll copy the contents including the mod during the install

Installing Mod from Phone/Tablet:

1. Install the game using the import like normal for Spark
2. Close the spark app in the background. Not sure if that matters but I do it to be safe.
3. Go into the Files app on your iPhone or iPad
4. Locate the mod file, and select "move" from the menu
5. If it brings up a section other than "Browse", like iCloud for example, hit the back arrow in the upper left until you're in the main Browse section of files.
6. Select "On my iPhone/iPad"
7. Select "Spark" which should be a folder midway down with the Spark logo on the folder icon
8. Select "Games"
9. Select the folder that matches the name of the game you installed
10. Select the "game" folder
11. Select "Move" in the upper right corner.
12. Do a test launch of the game in Spark. It should be installed now.

 

[poodles]

No clue on RPGM, but that would be awesome to play Treasure of Nadia on mobile.

As for mods, there's two ways I go about it if you're loading a zip/rar but not an APK. Not sure about modding APK files. These steps assume you already downloaded the game, the mod, but haven't unzipped anything yet. It also assumes the mod file is supposed to go into the "game" folder that every RenPy game usually has. If it needs to go in another location within the game folder, you can do that as well. Once its on the device, the folder structure is identical to being on the desktop.

Installing Mod from Computer:

1. Unzip the game into a folder.
2. Navigate to the /game folder within the zip (assuming that's where the mod should go)
3. Drop the mod in there
4. Rezip the game into an archive
5. Copy to phone or tablet
6. Install like normal with Spark, it'll copy the contents including the mod during the install

Installing Mod from Phone/Tablet:

1. Install the game using the import like normal for Spark
2. Close the spark app in the background. Not sure if that matters but I do it to be safe.
3. Go into the Files app on your iPhone or iPad
4. Locate the mod file, and select "move" from the menu
5. If it brings up a section other than "Browse", like iCloud for example, hit the back arrow in the upper left until you're in the main Browse section of files.
6. Select "On my iPhone/iPad"
7. Select "Spark" which should be a folder midway down with the Spark logo on the folder icon
8. Select "Games"
9. Select the folder that matches the name of the game you installed
10. Select the "game" folder
11. Select "Move" in the upper right corner.
12. Do a test launch of the game in Spark. It should be installed now.

Thank you! I’ll give that a shot.

Hoping there’s an RPGM solution in the future, but pretty cool that renpy is workable on iOS.

 

[FratBoy2019]

Thank you! I’ll give that a shot.

Hoping there’s an RPGM solution in the future, but pretty cool that renpy is workable on iOS.

No problem! If you have any issues, let me know and I can try to help. And yeah, I hope so too for RPGM. Since the EU forced Apple to allow some forms of emulation like Delta, its only a matter of time before it pops up. Pretty sure that EU regulation is how Spark got approved despite their older stance on running scripted content.