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A guide is available in the README.html file for DDLC and video guide made by Querxes available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eH5Q4Xdlg6Y
You will need a copy of Doki Doki Literature Club, which can be downloaded for free either on Steam or at http://ddlc.moe, and the zip file containing the mod files for Monika After Story, which can be found on the release page.
You do not need to download the source code from either the release page or from the repository. Those files are for development purposes only and may behave in unexpected ways if placed in your DDLC folder.
Use a fresh copy / unaltered version of DDLC. If you've had a different mod installed prior to this one, you will probably encounter issues. (This only applies to the DDLC game, and not the persistent files.)
The files for Monika After Story must be placed directly in the game folder of Doki Doki Literature Club in order for the game to find and properly load them. To find the folder containing DDLC, do one of the following:
If the game was installed using Steam, right click on Doki Doki Literature Club and click on Properties. In the window that pops up navigate to the Local Files tab and click the button for Browse local files....
If the game was installed from http://ddlc.moe or itch.io, the installation location was chosen at setup, but is likely under Program Files on a Windows computer.
If the game was installed on mac, but not through the Steam client, Doki Doki Literature Club can be found as a packaged app in you Applications folder. Right click on the package and select "Show Package Contents" once inside the folder, navigate to Contents/Resources/autorun/. This folder is the base directory for DDLC.
Once inside the base directory, place the contents of the zip archive into the /game directory. Ensure that the files are not in a subfolder in the game directory, since DDLC will not be able to locate the files that way.
For some reason Doki Doki Literature Club is not loading the mod files. Check that the files are not inside a subfolder inside your game directory.
If the game crashes and returns a gray screen, that means that a major error has occurred and the game had to quit. The text shown is called a "Traceback" and will hopefully include an error message that will help diagnose the problem. This traceback file can also be seen by viewing traceback.txt in your game's DDLC base directory.
While some crashes may indicate a bug in the game, a few may indicate a problem with installation.
If the traceback includes:
Exception: DDLC archive files not found in /game folder. Check installation and try again.
Ensure that the original archive files for DDLC are still in the game folder. This will include images.rpa, scripts.rpa,audio.rpa and fonts.rpa. If these files are missing, then they will need to be replaced using a fresh installation of DDLC, downloaded from http://ddlc.moe
If the traceback includes a line like the following:
The label chara_monika_scare is defined twice, at
Then it is likely that developer files have been installed, instead of the release distribution. Ensure that the game files downloaded were from the latest release, found on our Release Page.
Games are unlocked after spending time with Monika, whether that be viewing new topics with her or keeping her running in the background.
MAS keeps telling me that there's an update, but when I click Update Now, it says MAS is up to date.
This usually means that you have downloaded and installed a dev version (aka the source code) instead of a release zip. Release zips are found on our Release Page.
To resolve this:
- Delete the
rpyfiles in yourgame/directory. - Do either of the following:
- Replace the contents of your
update/folder with the contents of theupdate/folder in the release zip. -
OR Delete your
update/folder and copy over all the files from the release zip intogame/, overwriting existing files.
- Replace the contents of your
- Launch game. If you decided to replace contents of
update/, then you will need to click Update Now to get the latest version.
I run unstable MAS from a steam install of DDLC and got a traceback about writelog missing after updating.
Steam's folders are often write-protected, and may interfere with RenPy's built in updater. This results in incomplete installs even though it'll appear that it was successful. If you want to participate in unstable updates, its best to use a version of DDLC not from steam. We recommend using the Doki Doki Mod Manager for easy management of DDLC installs with mods.
Your computer may not have the graphical power/drivers to run DirectX or OpenGL. Try updating your graphics drivers. If the problem persists, then:
- Add a text file called
environment.txtin yourddlc/directory. - Write
RENPY_RENDERER="angle"into that text file. - Launch game.
If the issue still persists:
- replace
anglewithgland try again. -
OR replace
anglewithswand try again.swuses software rendering and will look terrible and run terribly.
If the issue still persists, then your computer cannot run RenPy.
Okay, let's verify a few things:
- Did you download and install MAS using the Mod zip?
- YES: Good, continue to step 2.
- NO: Download and install MAS using the Mod zip. DO NOT USE THE SOURCE ZIP.
- Do you have a folder similar to
Monika After Storyin yourgame/folder?- YES: You extracted/copied the files into a folder in
game/instead of directly intogame/. Take everything out of theMonika After Storyfolder and move them togame/. - NO: Good, continue to step 3.
- YES: You extracted/copied the files into a folder in
- Are you updating from an older version of MAS?
- YES: Did you overwrite all the files when you copied them into the
game/folder?- YES: Good, continue to step 4.
- NO: OVERWRITE THE FILES when you copy them into the
game/folder. Then continue to step 4. - It didn't ask to overwrite anything: You downloaded and installed a source zip. Delete the
rpyfiles and return to step 1.
- NO: Continue to step 4.
- YES: Did you overwrite all the files when you copied them into the
- Do you have
rpyfiles in yourgame/folder?- YES: You downloaded and installed a source zip at one point in time. Delete the
rpyfiles and return to step 1. - NO: Good, continue to step 5.
- YES: You downloaded and installed a source zip at one point in time. Delete the
- Do you still have an issue running the game?
- YES: Go to the issues tab and make an issue. If you got a traceback error, upload the
traceback.txtor a screenshot of the traceback error or paste the traceback error into the issue. - NO: Good. Have fun with Monika!
- YES: Go to the issues tab and make an issue. If you got a traceback error, upload the
Almost 100% of the time it's because you have reached the daily limit. The limit is low, so reaching the higher levels of affection requires daily Monika visits.
If you really think it's a bug, make a new issue and upload your aff_log.txt. It's located in your log/ folder in the DDLC base directory.
Various issues may arise where you need to restore an older save of MAS. The save file for MAS is the persistent file, and is located at:
For Windows users: goto either %APPDATA%\RenPy\Monika After Story or %APPDATA%\Roaming\RenPy\Monika After Story depending on your system.
For Mac users:
- Open
Finder - Click
Goat the top of your screen and hold alt/option to makeLibraryappear and click it - Follow
Library > RenPy > Monika After Story
(It is recommended to create backups of this folder often in case there are future problems with your MAS progress.)
You should see a file named persistent as well as 5 files named persistent##.bak To restore to an older save, simply delete the file named persistent and rename the most current persistent##.bak file that was created before the problem you are currently experiencing to persistent. This should take you back to your progress before whatever problem you are having.
We're always happy to hear new ideas! Suggestions can be made on our issues page. Please preface all suggestions with [Suggestion], or follow this link which will automatically populate your suggestion with the appropriate tags.
We are always looking for new dialogue and art. Please see our Contributing Guide for information on how to submit new dialogue and art to Monika After Story. In this guide you will find tips on writing good dialogue in Monika's style, and learn how to open a "Pull Request" which will allow you to submit new topics for review and inclusion in the game.
Our issues page will show a list of technical issues, new features, and requests that are available. Anything with the Help Wanted tag is a good place to start if you would like to help add something to the game!
The easiest way to contact our dev team is through our Discord channel.
Yes! DDLC has a vibrant modding community, thanks in part to Team Salvato's very clear IP Guidelines. To get started building your own mod, you can download the DDLC Mod Template and join in the community on reddit.
In general, we are very open to assets and code from Monika After Story being used in other projects. However, we do hope that anyone who wishes to do so respect these requests:
Please follow Team Salvato's IP Guidelines for any project which includes our work.
Please consider contacting our development team to ask permission before using our work.
Please give credit to Monika After Story for the work that you use and link back to our project at http://www.monikaafterstory.com/. Do not claim ownership of the work others have done. Where applicable, please give individual credit for things like art assets used.
Do not make a mod or fork intended as a replacement for Monika After Story. If you would like to add new features or content to the game, please make those contributions to the original project. We are very open to suggestions and contributions, and odds are that anything added would be welcomed. If, for some reason, your new features conflict with the direction for Monika After Story consider developing your changes in the form of a "submod" which can be added to Monika After Story.
While we are very open to new suggestions, there are a few common suggestions that come up often. These suggestions have all been made previously and will either be implemented in a future release or have been rejected for some reason:
Yes, check this guide
While we may come back to the concept in the future, the fact is that we weren't happy with the interactivity with the keyword system. While, on the surface, the open text box offered a lot of freedom to the player for talking with Monika, there were too many common entries that would simply dead end. The result was that Monika felt less real, and more like a crappy chatbot. We decided that a system that didn't dead end would be better, even if it didn't have the same surface level impression of agency.
While we might come back to the idea in the future, for the moment it doesn't seem feasible to make an AI that can give the sort of detailed philosophical responses that Monika should give. A large part of this is technical limitations in the engine for connecting to outside resources and importing custom libraries.
There are currently no plans to add voice acting to Monika After Story, for a few reasons. Some of these reasons include the large number of lines to be voiced, the time this would add to including new content, and the large increase in file size for the download.
That said, we will likely add support for third-party voice packs when full submod functionality is added in a later release.
We would very much like to add translations to Monika After Story in the future. For the moment, we are waiting for the addition of language support in an upcoming Doki Doki Literature Club update, which is what we will use for our translations.
We do not currently plan to include animations in Monika After Story. The game engine does not have very good support for animated sprites, and it also does not have licensing for the most popular 2D animation engine: Live 2D.
Because of the large increase in Monika expressions after the 0.8.0 update, a special tool was developed to help contributors preview expressions. This is known as the Sprite Previewer.
If the Sprite Code is in red, then the sprite isn't defined yet despite us having the assets to make it. You can still use this sprite in topics, but your pull request will fail travis checks. This is understandable and a dev will add the sprite code to your pull request in this case.
To add the Sprite Previewer to your MAS, copy this file to your game/ directory.
NOTE: This dev file routinely receives updates when we add new sprites. If Monika disappears on a certain sprite code, then you are missing the art for that sprite code. New sprites usually appear in unstable releases first, so try running the Sprite Previewer in an unstable install.
Don't see the answer that you're looking for here? Please create an issue to ask a tech-support question or file a bug report. You can also get help from members of our community on the tech-support channel on discord.