Silkline

$2.50. One file. Place in any and every unpacked Ren'Py game on Windows 11.

Ren'Py’s V key is a screen reader. It uses the old monotone male Windows voice and reads every button, menu, and label on the screen. That is useful if you need a screen reader. It is not useful if you just want to hear the dialogue.

Silkline reads only the textbox. Menus stay quiet. Default is a woman’s voice. You can split Player / everyone else, guess gender from names, and assign voices per character.

What you get

• silkline.rpy — drop it in the game’s game\ folder
• This Readme (install, Edge TTS, Piper, troubleshooting)
• Cast mixer on F8 during play (not in the game’s own menu — that is expected)

What it does

Silkline is a cast mixer, not a single Windows voice.

It reads only the textbox (menus stay quiet). Then you pick who sounds like whom, and which engine speaks.

Engines (F8, top row — toggle any time):

Engine	What you hear	Needs
Auto	Piper if you installed it, else Edge, else SAPI	nothing extra
Piper	Local neural, offline. Defaults: Lessac (narrator), Ryan (Player), LibriTTS (other women), Norman (other men)	piper.exe + .onnx in game\silkline\
Edge	Microsoft neural (Aria, Jenny, Guy, Andrew, …)	edge-tts pip + internet the first time
SAPI	Windows Zira / David	already on the PC

Cast (same F8 panel):

• Player / MC — one voice (Ryan / Guy by default)
• Everyone else — another (LibriTTS / Aria)
• Other men — when Guess gender is on (Norman / Andrew)
• Narrator — no nameplate (Lessac / Jenny)
• Per name — names appear as they speak; cycle a voice or mark one as Player

So a line from you, a line from her, and a narration line can be three different voices. F8 is in-game only (not the game’s own Preferences menu). V turns Silkline on/off.

If a line already has a real voice clip, Silkline stays quiet.

Voices (you choose)

1. Works immediately — Windows SAPI. Zira for women, David only for the male slot. No download.
2. Online neural — edge-tts (Aria, Jenny, Guy…). Needs Python and internet the first time a line is spoken. Personal use; Microsoft’s commercial path is Azure.
3. Local / offline — Piper. Unzip piper.exe plus .onnx voices into game\silkline\. Defaults: Lessac high (narrator), Ryan high (MC), LibriTTS high (other women), Norman medium (other men). CPU, no GPU.

Silkline does not talk over a line that already has a real voice clip.

Cast mixer (F8)

• Player / MC vs everyone else vs narrator
• Guess gender from the name
• Names appear as they speak — cycle a voice or mark one as Player
• Reads common MC variables (player_name, mc_name)

There is no Preferences item in the game’s main menu. Open F8 while a textbox is on screen.

Install (2 minutes)

1. Steam / itch / your SDK: open the folder that contains the .exe → game\
2. Put silkline.rpy next to script.rpy / the .rpa files. Not in renpy\
3. Filename must be exactly silkline.rpy (lowercase)
4. Launch → play until a textbox → V and F8

Full pip command, Piper links, and silkline-local.json are in the Readme inside the zip.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• An unpacked Ren'Py PC game you can write files into (your project, a Steam desktop VN, an itch build)
• Not Android, iOS, or web

What this is not

• Not official Ren'Py, Microsoft, or Piper
• Not a screen reader
• Not a patch that rewrites someone else’s game for you — you copy one file
• Not a license to redistribute other games’ art or voices

You are paying for the addon and the instructions. Windows voices are already on your PC. Neural / Piper models are optional downloads you do yourself.

AI Generated / AI Assisted

Cover art, banner, and icon were generated with an image model and cropped for itch (630×500). The addon (silkline.rpy) and the Readme were drafted with an LLM and then hand-edited for Ren'Py 8 / Windows 11. Silkline itself is a voicer: it reads the in-game textbox using Windows SAPI, optional edge-tts, or optional local Piper. Those engines are not bundled as generated audio. No third-party game art is included.

SILKLINE LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2026 Lance Mason. All rights reserved.

Silkline (including silkline.rpy, the Readme, and accompanying

docs) is NOT open source, NOT public domain, and NOT MIT.

The author owns the copyright. Buying or downloading it does not

transfer ownership of the file.