Hi! Is your Mystic Messenger program engine available for anyone? Is it opensource? If so, where can i download it?
Hi Anon! Yes, Mysterious Messenger is open-source and readily available on GitHub here. It's licensed under the MIT License, which means you're free to use the code for personal, commercial, or other projects. Credit is certainly appreciated if you do, but not required.
You can also join the Mysterious Messenger Discord for program updates, bug reports, and access to extra files which aren't included in the GitHub. All this information and more is included in the pinned post on the program here.
We're up to v3.2.0 with additional improvements and features like a gui-based chatroom creator, expanded options for declaring your pronouns and gender separately, and several callbacks which can trigger on events like hanging up a phone call or missing a call. I maintain a complete changelog in the documentation here, and I continue to work on the program for a release of v3.3.0 hopefully sometime in the upcoming months.
Thanks for your interest, and I hope that answers your question!
After spending many months taking in the suggestions of my beta testers and improving the program, it is finally ready for version 2.0. Version 2.0 cleans up much of the original features and adds several new ones, such as accessibility features and a History screen.
If you’re interested in trying out the program, you can pick it up at https://github.com/shawna-p/mysterious-messenger/releases It does not come with the images and sound files -- if you would like to request those for personal use, you can join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server and request them from me.
Is this a mod for Mystic Messenger?
No. It is a standalone engine created from scratch in Ren’Py. It contains all of the features of Mystic Messenger, such as phone calls, emails, chatrooms, text messages, and routes that play out in real-time.
What can I do with this program?
You can use Mysterious Messenger to create mock chatrooms, calls, etc for fanfics, as presents to friends, or fan routes. It is not for commercial use and is intended primarily as a learning tool as the code is open-source and available for aspiring game developers to modify and learn from.
Your program is so cool! How can I support this?
If you like what I’m doing and want to support my work, consider donating a coffee through Ko-fi. I work on this in my spare time while at school, and your support helps me work on Mysterious Messenger as well as my own personal programming projects.
Some additional information on the program under the cut.
New features for Mysterious Messenger v2.0:
A wide array of accessibility features, including adjustable background opacity, audio captions, and animation toggles
A History screen which shows all seen chatrooms, endings, and phone calls (calls are in-line with the chatrooms they become available after; see screenshots above)
A guestbook to keep track of all guests the player has invited to the party
A unified way of writing VNs, phone calls, text messages, and chatrooms
Existing feature improvements:
Phone calls, text messages, and Story Mode VNs are now all written the same way as chatrooms
Real-time text messages can be mixed and matched with regular-style text messages (see gifs above for an example of real-time texting; they play out much like chatrooms but one-on-one)
VN sections can take advantage of image tagging to write in-line expression or outfit changes
Email guests now have additional fields that can be filled in for the guestbook and RFA comment sections after they have been invited to the party
Phone calls now show the profile picture and name of the person you’re in a call with
Tutorial chatrooms have been updated to ask players their preferences with regards to screen shake, hacking animations, banners, heart icons, and more
Album and Guest are now also viewable from the History screen
Much less overhead when setting up phone calls, VNs, text messages, etc
Album has NEW signs on each individual picture that is new. These can be dismissed by clicking on the picture in question or if the player sees the picture when swiping through album photos
Chatroom code cleaned up immensely
There were many, many improvements made over the last few months and I’m sure I’ve missed a few of them. Don’t hesitate to send me a message if you’d like to know more about the program or run into any errors. The Mysterious Messenger Discord is the best place to keep up with program updates and talk with me!
Random Mysterious Messenger question (so feel free to ignore this if you're busy!) but with the release of the Ray After Ending, do you foresee yourself adding some assets from it, like the "secure messenger", new Saeran emotes, etc? No pressure or anything, I was just curious - (the DLC was literally released recently so I'm sorry if this question isn't welcome ^^;;!!)
I may, depending on how easy it is to obtain and/or recreate those assets! The emotes in particular are very cute and I like the little animation for the secure messenger -- I would probably implement it much like how the hacked scrolling effect is currently shown. Programming them in would be very straightforward once I have the assets.
So, tl;dr, if you or anyone else has the assets, feel free to send them my way and I’d add it to my to-do list for program updates~
A new update to Mysterious Messenger has been released!
Features include:
Modified Profile screen to keep track of number of endings and routes viewed
Settings screen additions -- number of bubbles is adjustable; can now toggle an option to see which choices you've selected in previous playthroughs
Hub screen buttons refactored into Links button
Skip Intro button added to introductory chatrooms
Testing Mode now unlocks all chatrooms on a route and allows you to proceed through plot branches regardless of number of chatrooms viewed
Animated backgrounds -- a new toggle allows you to turn them on or off
In particular I'm quite pleased to show off animated backgrounds, a new option in Settings. A preview video is shown at about 15x normal speed (the animations typically play out over about 3-4 minutes and then loop). They are shown behind chatrooms.
You can check out the program at https://github.com/shawna-p/mysterious-messenger/releases It does not come with the images and sound files -- if you would like to request those for personal use, you can join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server and request them from me.
If you’d like to support my work on this project, consider donating a coffee through Ko-fi!
heyyyy so i've been following ur mysme program tag for a while now and just wanted to lyk that you're doing a great job! i really admire how you're able to do all of this despite being so young! also, i read about how python wasn't initially ur go-to language, so i was kinda curious about how you transitioned from ur preferred language to python and also learnt how to use renpy in such a short while. did you take any short online courses on python as such or just figure out stuff while coding?
Aw, thank you so much! It's been a lot of work but I'mreally proud of how the program has turned out <3
As for my experience with Python – I'd actually nevertouched it prior to coding in Ren'Py, so there was a bit of a learning curve tofiguring it out, for sure! Luckily both Python and the language I was mostfamiliar with prior to learning Python are something called "object-oriented languages",which in the simplest terms just means that you often program using objectscreated from classes. That means it was easier to learn for me than if I'd beencoming from, say, a "functional" language like Scheme. If you don'tknow anything about programming languages, you can think of programmingparadigms (e.g. object oriented vs functional) kind of like you'd think ofreal-world languages.
For example, if you speak fluent Spanish, you'll likely findit a lot easier to learn Italian than someone whose first language is Korean.But someone who speaks Korean will have a much easier time learning Japanesethan someone whose first language is Spanish. That's because Spanish andItalian are much more similar than Spanish and Japanese, both grammatically andthrough vocabulary and the sounds present in the language. So in this analogy, Ispeak pretty good Spanish (aka C++) and therefore it was much quicker for me tolearn Italian (Python) than if I didn't speak any Spanish at all.
In particular, I had a great time learning Python becauseit's actually much simpler than C++ in several ways – "for each X in Y"and lists in particular are two features I honestly adore that aren't presentin C++. Knowing C++ beforehand meant that I had a starting point for looking upthings I was sure Python could do but didn't know the syntax for – quick Googlesearches like "get last item of a list in Python" are pretty quickshortcuts to the answers you need.
So that explains my starting point – as for how I learnedRen'Py in particular, it was honestly a lot of trial and error! I didn't takeany Python courses or anything, though I'm sure that they would be helpful,particularly if you're just starting out with coding. I learned C++ through myuniversity courses, though there are many resources out there to help you learnC++ as well. I actually started out reprogramming a short Ace Attorney-stylemurder mystery that I'd originally written in Visual Basic back in high school,but because VB is definitely not made to create those kinds of programs it wasdifficult to show off to my friends, so I decided to remake it last year andlanded on Ren'Py as a solid VN engine to use for the remake.
Remaking MysMe was definitely not on my to-do list, though Idid want to try making a messenger-style game and learn more about how screensworked in Ren'Py. Everything after that was something of a snowball effect as Irealized recreating all the features I wanted might be within the realm of possibility.I think it's important to note that I definitely built from the ground up – thisprogram didn't just magically fit together, and I went back and redid how Iprogrammed several earlier features because I had learned more about Python andRen'Py and realized that the way I initially programmed features wouldn't scalewell and/or that I could make it more efficient now that I was more familiarwith the engine.
So I guess if I were to give advice on how to get startedwith your own game or programming project, it's to just give it a shot! Itwon't be perfect and you'll make mistakes along the way, but you'll learn a lotwhile you're doing it so you can make it even better in the future. Good luck!:)
If you’ve been following me for the past few months, you’ll have noticed I’m working on an engine that lets you create a custom Mystic Messenger route -- you can generate chatrooms, text messages, phone calls, VN mode sections, emails, and more. You can find out more about it here.
I’m looking for a few people who are willing to test out the program and help me work on usability and design, and to help me discover as many bugs as possible to solve before I fully release the program. If you’re interested in beta testing or want to be in the loop for program updates, join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server! A few more details will be listed under the cut about beta testing. If you’ve already sent me a message about beta testing and I replied to it, I’ll be in touch soon ^^
Do I need to know how to code?
No, though if you’ve done some coding (especially if you’ve done coding in Ren’Py (the engine I’m using) or even Python) you’ll probably have a better idea of how the program works. I’m looking to make this as accessible as possible, so non-programmer perspectives are more than welcome so I can understand how to make the program more intuitive to use.
Is this a game?
No. It’s an engine that allows you to write dialogue + a bit of code and will take care of the animations/menu screens/timing/etc to output things like chatrooms and phone calls that make up a route. I talk a bit more about what the program does here and here.
Do I need anything to be a beta tester?
Just a computer! Any operating system that runs Ren’Py is great. So, Windows, OSX, and Linux are all OK! I also recommend NotePad++ for a text editor -- it’s free and easy to use, though anything that lets you edit a text file is good.
What do I do as a beta tester?
First, you’ll be sent the beta program and files. You’ll also need to download Ren’Py. I’ll send you a “to-do list” with things like “trigger a text message after a chatroom”, “invite a guest to the party during a chatroom or VN, and have them email you”, or “change Yoosung’s voicemail message”. These are all things that are possible to create using the program, and I’m looking for feedback on any difficulties or bugs you run into while trying to complete the tasks, where you get stuck, that sort of thing. The list will be short, but if you’re willing to help me more I will send you additional tasks to test.
Sign me up!
Great! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server and mention you’d like to be a beta tester so I can give you the beta tester role. The role will give you access to the files you need, as well as additional channels for bug reporting, discussion, and more.
I’m excited to finally be able to share this project with you!
