Ren’Py supports playing music and sound effects in the background, using the following audio file formats
Ren’Py supports an arbitrary number of audio channels. There are three normal channels defined by default:
music
- A channel for music playback.sound
- A channel for sound effects.voice
- A channel for voice.Normal channels support playing and queueing audio, but only play back
one audio file at a time. New normal channels can be registered with
renpy.music.register_channel()
.
The Music Volume, Sound Volume, and Voice Volume settings of the in-game preferences menu are used to set individual volumes for these channels.
In addition to the normal channel, there is one special channel, audio
.
The audio channel supports playing back multiple audio files at one time,
but does not support queueing sound or stopping playback.
Sounds can also be set to play when buttons, menu choices, or
imagemaps enter their hovered or activated states. See
Button Style Properties. Two configuration
variables, config.main_menu_music
and config.game_menu_music
allow
for the given music files to be played as the main and game menu music,
respectively.
In-game, the usual way to play music and sound in Ren’Py is using the three music/sound statements.
The play
statement is used to play sound and music. If a file is
currently playing on a normal channel, it is interrupted and replaced with
the new file.
The name of a channel is expected following the keyword play
.
(Usually, this is either “sound”, “music”, “voice”, or “audio”). This is
followed by audiofile(s), where audiofile(s) can be one file or list of files.
When the list is given, the item of it is played in order.
The fadein
and fadeout
clauses are optional. Fadeout gives the fadeout
time for currently playing music, in seconds, while fadein gives the time
it takes to fade in the new music. If fadeout is not given, config.fade_music
is used.
The loop
and noloop
clauses are also optional. The loop clause causes
the music to loop, while noloop causes it to play only once. If neither of them are
given, the default of the channel is used.
play music "mozart.ogg"
play sound "woof.mp3"
play myChannel "punch.wav" # 'myChannel' needs to be defined with renpy.music.register_channel().
"We can also play a list of sounds, or music."
play music [ "a.ogg", "b.ogg" ] fadeout 1.0 fadein 1.0
On the audio channel, multiple play statements play multiple sounds at the same time:
play audio "sfx1.opus"
play audio "sfx2.opus"
The stop
statement begins with the keyword stop
, followed by the the name of a
channel to stop sound on. It may optionally have a fadeout
clause.
stop sound
stop music fadeout 1.0
The queue
statement is used to queue up audio files. They will be played when
the channel finishes playing the currently playing file.
The queue statement begins with keyword queue
, followed by the the name of a
channel to play sound on. It optionally takes the loop
and noloop
clauses.
queue sound "woof.ogg"
queue music [ "a.ogg", "b.ogg" ]
The advantage of using these statements is that your program will be checked for missing sound and music files when lint is run. The functions below exist to allow access to allow music and sound to be controlled from Python, and to expose advanced (rarely used) features.
Ren’Py supports partial of audio files. This is done by putting a playback specification, enclosed in angle brackets, at the start of the file. The partial playback specification should consist of alternating property name and value pairs, with every thing separated by spaces.
The values are always interpreted as seconds from the start of the file. The three properties are:
from
to
loop
from
if specified, or to the start of the file.)For example:
play music "<from 5 to 15.5>waves.opus"
will play 10.5 seconds of waves.opus, starting at the 5 second mark. The statement:
play music "<loop 6.333>song.opus"
will play song.opus all the way through once, then loop back to the 6.333 second mark before playing it again all the way through to the end.
A specified duration of silence can played using a filename like “<silence 3.0>”, where 3.0 is the number of seconds of silence that is desired. This can be used to delay the start of a sound file. For example:
play audio [ "<silence .5>", "boom.opus" ]
Will play silence for half a second, and then an explosion sound.
The play
and queue
statements evaluate their arguments in the
audio namespace. This means it is possible to use the define statement
to provide an alias for an audio file.
For example, one can write:
define audio.sunflower = "music/sun-flower-slow-jam.ogg"
and then use:
play music sunflower
Ren’Py will also automatically place sound files in the audio name face,
if found in the game/audio
directory. Files in this directory with a
supported extension (currently, .wav, .mp2, .mp3, .ogg, and .opus) have the
extension stripped, the rest of the filename forced to lower case, and are
placed into the audio namespace.
Note that just because a file is placed into the audio namespace, that doesn’t mean it can be used. So while you could play a file named “opening_song.ogg” by writing:
play music opening_song
Some filenames can’t be accessed this way, as their names are not expressable as Python variables. For example, “my song.mp3”, “8track.opus”, and “this-is-a-song.ogg” won’t work.
Most renpy.music
functions have aliases in renpy.sound
. These functions are similar,
except they default to the sound channel rather than the music channel, and default
to not looping.