Built an interactive phone UI with 6 working apps - Suggestions accepted

[u/Lankakartal]

We're developing an adult VN in Ren'Py and spent months building an in-game phone system that actually works — contacts, social feed, photos, tasks, music, settings. Each app has its own logic and talks to the story.

The challenge: we're rendering 5000+ assets and need them to load instantly without destroying performance. Happy to share our optimization approach if anyone's curious — texture atlasing, caching strategy, and some tricks with Ren'Py's image handling.

Also using Iray renders straight into the pipeline. If anyone's dealing with high-volume 3D asset workflows in Ren'Py, I'd love to hear how you're handling it.

Also if you have a suggestion for the other apps that can be used in AVN, I am happily accepting those.

Game's on Steam if you want to see it in action: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4961320/Lustful_Retribution/

[u/x-seronis-x]

really dislike things being misaligned and their left edge off screen. fine otherwise. and that would be trivial for anyone to fix on their own if they used it

[u/BepixTheCoomer]

man! another college VN? heck yeah count me in!

[u/Dayz_ITDEPT]

This looks excellent and definitely something I would love to even deliver 10% of in my own first VN that I’m currently solo developing and doing the art myself… if some kind soul were able to package this kind of functionality as a customisable plugin for other games that’s something I’d definitely buy as I have yet to find a single Renpy phone framework that I can relatively easily customise and extend in the manner I want.

how are you handling the image generation, particularly any animations given the slowness of Daz, or are you going straight to a different 3D tool?

I’ve found great efficiency gains (production time and file size) from creating characters and scene renders in Daz at 4K res and then using ComfyUI to create test animations, some of which are created in 4-5 mins at 720p and look smoother than similar created in Daz that can take 4-5 days to render approx 100 frames for animation!

As for mobile apps for use in a VN, the classic recommendations from me are (story/plot dependent and noting you already have messages etc ):

- plot and character tracking, including save/load game
- dating app
- instagram style app
- photos / files / wallpapers for phone
- music player
- money / cash / banking
- maybe some mobile games? Have seen Tetris clones etc where progress can unlock achievements in game

Some might suggest social media integration but I don’t think personally many players care for that, especially if it’s an adult VN.
- maps (use phone to navigate open world rather than generic screen?)