Hi, I'm struggling to find the right place to post this (was hoping to open a PR in git), but I was able to get this base template running in RenPy8 with minimal changes to the definitions.py file only. Tested by running the game; was able to use most of the features and saw the sprites, sfx, and music coming through as expected. Did not do a full end-to-end regression though.
Don't want to post the whole file here, but the summary of changes is:
1. import os
2. declare a definitions path with:
definitions_path = os.path.join(renpy.config.gamedir, 'definitions.rpy')
3. Replace both instances of renpy.loader.transfn('definitions.rpy') with definitions_path, so:
with open(definitions_path, 'rb') as f:
4. Write all comments with bytes instead of raw strings:
f.write(b'## Sprites:\r\n')
5. Encode all file paths with UTF-8, so:
f.write((' # ' + my_str + '\r\n').encode('utf-8'))
Please let me know if there is a place I can send the updated file or I'm happy to upload it privately to github and provide a link. If this is not the right place for this post please feel free to delete. Thanks!