Ren'Py Description Menus (Beginner Friendly!)

First you want to make a variable for whether you met the character. You would add code like this in the area where the variables are defined:

You should always leave a character set to true so the menu isn't empty! This will determine whether a character shows up in the menu, so when you're writing the script you can add the line  $ metcharacter2 = True to make them show up! Alternatively you can make it False to hide the character again.

Then you need to set up the list inside of each menu. Just slap them into some if statements!

The list is different for each screen, so ensure you make this change on each screen so everything is consistent.  This should be ready and working after that!

But remember there's always the option to just make the menu appear later on in the game after people are established too. You don't have to add the line "show screen onscreenmenubutton" at the very start of the script! I've always liked the idea of setting the name as "?" until you meet the character too! If something is unclear please follow up, good luck!

Yes yes the column part is a very simple change, the way I have it is that the portrait and the description are within an hbox, which displays them next to each other, you just delete the hbox and the portrait line of code to remove the icon, and you also need to delete the line that constrains the xsize of the description so it will naturally fill the box! The overflow scrolling is something I haven't done much before, but basically you just add the text inside of a frame and add the properties draggable and scrollwheel!

In example, each character profile has a line that says #layout starts and #layout ends, between these you can paste this code:

 vbox:

                    spacing 10

                    frame:

                        background gui.selected_color

                        padding (10, 10)

                        label "{color=#000}{size=50}[character1]{/size}"

                    label "{color=[gui.accent_color]}{size=25}[character1title]{/color}"

                    frame:

                        ysize scrollframeheight

                        has viewport:

                            draggable True
                            mousewheel True

                        label "{color=#fff}[character1description]"

                vbox:

                    frame:

                        background gui.selected_color
                        padding (10, 10)

                        textbutton "Return" action Return() xalign 0.5 #You can uncenter the return button by removing "xalign 0.5"

                    xalign 0.5

And that should get you where you're trying to go! I made a new layout code and posted it on the download page for you if you want to pop that in and give it a try, it'll save you the effort of renaming all the stuff and whatnot!

Let me know if you come across any errors or if something doesn't make enough sense, good luck!