Playing
Default controls
What each button does in a game, and how the bridge passes it to Ren'Py.
On this page
The buttons
| Button | Action | Button | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Confirm, advance the story | ZL | Auto-forward on/off |
| B | Back (rollback in the game; closes menus) | ZR (hold) | Skip, while held |
| X | Hide the text box | + | Game menu: save, load |
| Y | Dialogue history | − | Quick menu |
| L | Roll back | D-pad / left stick | Move between choices |
| R | Roll forward | Right stick | Mouse cursor |
| Left stick press | Loader overlay (not built yet) | Right stick press | Mouse click |
You can change any of these in Controller settings, for every game or for one.
note
The loader overlay is not built yet. Pressing the left stick in a game only shows a notice.
Choosing with the D-pad
When a new screen with buttons appears and nothing is selected, its first button is selected for you: New Game, the first choice, the first card. Only the content screen counts, never the quick menu, and dialogue and text fields are skipped. Then the D-pad and A pick buttons (run 18).
Some games have buttons taller than their spacing, so the boxes overlap. Ren’Py’s own D-pad movement skips those; the bridge also accepts an overlapping button whose centre is clearly further in that direction. In run 24, D-pad down from New Game in Forbidden Fantasy skipped Continue; with the fix it reached it (run 25).
The game menu (+) starts on its side menu. That part is tested on the desktop only.
How it reaches Ren’Py
| Action | Ren’Py input |
|---|---|
| confirm, back, hide UI, rollback, roll forward, game menu, directions | Ren’Py pad events (a, b, y, leftshoulder, rightshoulder, start, dpup/dpdown/dpleft/dpright). The game’s config.pad_bindings decide the effect, as with a real pad |
| skip (hold ZR) | Ren’Py’s skip event: press, then release |
| auto-forward (ZL) | Ren’Py’s toggle_afm event |
| history (Y), quick menu (−), overlay (left stick press) | rsl_* events, handled by a keymap in config.underlay |
| cursor (right stick), click (right stick press) | Mouse position and button events, with a software cursor |
Because games decide what pad events do, a game with its own config.pad_bindings may behave differently from this table.