AgentPaper

The Immortal King has ruled the lands for ten thousand years, bringing peace, stability, and joy to all of his subjects. ...and now, he is dead. Chaos and discord runs rampant through the lands, as leaders vie for power and fight to take the throne for themselves. However, an even greater enemy threatens to consume the world in flames, and the only thing that can stop it, is an unlikely band of heroes, drawn from all across the world. Now they must fight for their lives and the lives of those they love, in a desperate battle for the fate of the world! This is the opening for a new RPG I've begun working on, using RPG Maker, for the past few months. However, my time, talent, and resources are limited, so I need help! If you are skilled in mapping, scripting, writing, art, music, or anything else you think will help this game become a success, then I want you! Discord is an RPG that seeks to tie in the best of old-style RPGs with modern game design and thinking. The story uses the tried and true formula of the heroic journey of a young man who, after being thrown into unusual circumstances, steps up and proves his worth. However, it also throws in a few twists, with interesting, unique characters with their own individual stories of struggle and growth, and looks at themes such as pride before the fall, letting go of the past, overcoming your own weakness, and what truly makes you human. The world is expansive, with at least 10 distinct regions, and possibly more as the story demands. The combat will use an active-battle type system similar to the earlier Final Fantasy games, but with some additional twists to make it more interesting. There are 12 main characters, each with a unique, distinct personality and fighting style. Each of them has their own story that the player can choose to pursue, completing certain tasks that unlock special abilities and items unique to that character. Right now, the bulk of my work is in my notes, which detail each of the characters, their personal story, and of course the main story that drives the entire game. I've begun working on putting all of this into RPG Maker, but progress has been slow. I will be continuing to work on this as much as I have time for, but with a full-time job I can only spend do so much. If you want to help me with this project, then post here with contact information, as well as what skills you bring to the table and how much you think you'll be able to do. If you want more details, you can ask here, or send me an email. My contact info is: Email: Bushka2000@gmail.com Skype: Agent1Paper Finally, thanks for listening to me ramble on about my project! Whether you're willing to help or not, I hope you enjoy the game once it's done!

That does make more sense. I'd just forgotten what terrain tags were, since I've never had a reason to use them so far.

New version looks great, especially love the ladders. The explanation given in the demo on how they work didn't make much sense, but hopefully I can figure it out once I have a ladder I want to use.

A variable sounds good. I'll use that constant for now, I don't think there's anywhere I need it to be turned off quite yet, but I'm sure I'll run into something eventually, so a variable sounds great. #1: I was thinking more that it would only create the events if you don't already have one on the map. So, you could create a cat_actor[6] and cat_actor[8] event on a map if you need to control them in a cutscene, but then the script would create any other events that you don't specifically make. This way you don't need to make the events on every single map, but you can still control specific actors when you need to. If this is very hard to implement, don't worry too much about it, it's more a quality of life issue. #2: Ah, goodie. I don't have any specific need for it yet, but it's good to know that it's there. I'll ask more specific questions once I get to somewhere I need to use it.

Sure, why not. What exactly does it do, though?

How should I be handling changing party members? Specifically, removing party members from the group. It seems to just make the cat_actor stop moving, rather than disappearing. This seems like it would be nice in some cases, such as if I wanted the actor to keep doing stuff in a cinematic, but not so great when the player is switching party members around on the world map. Edit: Also, a tip for anyone that wants to use this: You need to make a cat_actor event for every single character you have, not just for each character in your party. For example, I have 12 characters in my game, so I need to have 12 cat_actor events in every single one of my maps, even though only 4 people are in the party at any given point in time. To make things easier, I have a "template" map with the 12 cat_actor events already in it, as well as a generic setup event I use to reset variables and such. Whenever I need to make a new map, I just copy this one and start working. Speaking of which, I'd like to request a few things. First, would it be possible to have the script automatically create the events if they don't already exist? And second, it'd be great to be able to have a way to refer to cat_actors by their position in the caterpillar, instead of by actor number. This would be useful, for example, if you wanted to have the cat_actors moving around in a cutscene but don't know what party members will currently be in the party at that point. Ideally this would include a way to find out which actor is in that slot, so you can have specific speech events based on who is in your party. I think there could be a way to make this work using conditionals to check who is in the party, or by using variables, but it seems like a clunky, awkward solution that has a lot of possibility for bugs.

Ok, something hopefully much less stupid this time: Unfortunately, the non-SDK version of MMW still has some issues, however it seems that they are resolveable. I haven't fixed things perfectly, but I've gotten a good start: In CTB by Charlie - Scene_Battle: Replace line 150 with: @message_window = [] @message_window[0] = Window_Message.new(0) Replace line 219 with: @message_window.each {|mw| mw.dispose} Replace line 362 with: if @message_window.each {|mw| mw.visible} Replace line 387 with: if @help_window.visible or @message_window.each {|mw| mw.visible} Replace line 394 with: @message_window.each {|mw| mw.update} This keeps the game from crashing as soon as you start battle. It alls seems to work just fine, the only issue I've run into so far (and it's a big one) is that you can't move up and down on the main menu. You can press left and right to switch between the main and guard menu, but you can't move down to choose Item, Skills, Switch, Items, etc. Any idea how I might fix this bug? I don't necessarily need a specific fix, but just a pointer to what line(s) in what script(s) I need to be looking at would be a lot of help.

Starting a game with a blank starting party also seems to cause errors, specifically a NoMethodError on line 985. Strangely, though, it doesn't seem to always be the case. For example, my game starts with a blank party, and then an event blacks the screen, adds the main character to the party, turns on Caterpillar, then moves the player to the first map. If I put any kind of wait in there, though, it causes the error My best guess is that the error is avoided by changing maps immediately after starting the game.

Odd. I was able to save and load saved games without any issues. The only hiccup is that the caterpillar would automatically stack onto the player, which isn't a big deal.

I'm testing it in a special test zone I made for tweaking new events, like save zones and such. I made an event that does nothing but turn $walk_off_map to be true and then false, when the player uses the action button on it. No player or event is ever off of the map before during or after the event. I'll test out what you're talking about. I'm actually a fairly proficient coder, I just don't know ruby, so most of that I already knew about, but thanks anyways. I think I will need to learn ruby sometime soon, though, so I can tweak this an other scripts to work how I need.

Heh, it's not THAT complex. Just tried setting $walk_off_map = true right before setting it false, and it still causes the issue. If I get rid of the line that sets it to false, it runs just fine, but of course then the player is able to walk off of the map, which isn't exactly ideal. I should note that I'm using JUST the caterpillar script at the moment. I had to get rid of SDK to let my combat system work, which meant I had to get rid of MMW and pathfind and such as well. Would that cause any problems? Edit: To make it even more clear, I made an event that does nothing but turn $walk_off_map to be true, then false. It causes the same error, so it's definitely a specific bug with $walk_off_map, and not any complex situation from all the eventing.

Don't worry too much about it, it's fairly minor and the workaround is something I end up doing most of the time anyways. One thing, how difficult would it be do make a version of the Multiple Message Windows that doesn't need SDK? That would help me out a lot, because currently I'm stuck deciding between using MMW, and the CTB battle system, which is a tough choice to make. On the one hand, the battle system is a huge improvment, and while MMW doesn't add quite as much to the game, all my my cutscenes have been built with it in mind, and it would be a ton of work to re-do them all without it. Edit: Just pinned down a very strange bug. I'm using a slightly modified version of the map transfer events used in your demo map (why re-invent the wheel?), and it was working just fine before, but now I'm getting a bug where after the caterpillar moves out, the game hangs similar to an infinite loop, like an autorun event that doesn't terminate. I assumed that the problem was with the loop near the end of the script, but after testing I've actually determined that it's the "script: $walk_off_map = false" line that's causing the problem. Any idea what could be causing this?

Edit: Ok, now I feel like a...well let's not get into that. Anyways, ignore basically everything I said, I wasn't aware that the SDK is basically not used by anything and causes more problems than it solves. I found a non-SDK version of MMW easily once I actually thought to look, and everything is happiness and diabetes now for me and my project. One minor feature request: You have a "multi-hit" system, that basically makes the skill be used multiple times. However, the system literally just has you use the skill twice or more in a row. Would it be possible to have a system where you can tell the game to add an additional strike at a specific point in the attack? My thought is that it would work like this: SKILL_HIT_TIMING = {5 => 7, 6 => 5, 6 => 9) # Set skills to deal damage at specific frames into their animations. Overrides the default timing. This would set skill 5 to have it's hit occur at frame 7, instead of when the hit normally takes place. Skill 6 would be set to have two hits, one at 5 and one at 9. This would allow you to easily have your attack deal it's damage at specific times, as well as having it deal damage multiple times.

I think I just found a bug: In one of my cutscenes, I have the player move to a point, at which point cat_pause is turned on, and cat_actors 1 and 2 move to a different location. Later in the scene, another event moves over that same position, and gets blocked, as if cat_actor 2 was still where she was before cat_pause was turned on. There's only two people in the party at this point in the game, so perhaps it's cat_actor 3/4 that are mucking things up? Anyways, I'm working around it now by having the events turn Through ON in their move route, but I figured you may want to know.

Edit: I am a doodoo head, nothing to see here, move along.

Excellent. You may want to include links to the message system and pathfind system threads, since you've got those included in your demo.

And thanks again for all the help. The game is coming along nicely, I'll make sure to credit you and send you a copy of the beta once it's actually something worth sending!

Perfect. Thanks again. One last question, not actually related to Caterpillar, but Multiple Message Windows. It says in the script that it can do default messages (ie: not chat bubbles but just a box on the bottom of the screen), but it doesn't seem to list how you actually do that. Just having no \ commands makes the text show up over the event by default.

What's the best way to reset a caterpillar after moving the player and cat actors independently with cat_pause on? I have it set up so that they end up in caterpillar formation at the end of the cinema, but when I move, cat actor 2 moves back to where the player was before the cutscene started, then moves back to following me. delete_last_move doesn't seem to work in this case.

Darn. Was hoping for a slightly more elegant solution, but that should work fine.

Another question. I want to have the screen pan independently of the player's movement for a cinematic. It seems that the way to do this is to use an event to represent the player for the duration of the cinema, and turn the player invisible so he can move wherever you need the camera to be. Since there's a Cat_Actor[1], it seems like it should be easy to do this in the Caterpillar system. So my question is, how do I use the Cat_Actor[1]? It doesn't seem to show any graphic or do anything.

I'd definitely suggest putting in a "installation instructions" bit in your script that tells people how to use it. Even to get it as far as I had before running into the issue, I had to spend a lot of time reading through the whole thing and wandering around the demo trying to figure out how to make things work.

Heh, I was having a bit of trouble with that before (hence the Through On bit), but that's not what's causing the issue now. The actor is definitely finishing it's move route, and not being blocked. I actually kind of like using Wait instead of Wait for Move's Completion in most cases, since it lets me have the character start talking before they finish moving, which feels more natural, so it's a bit of a mixed blessing. I'm sure I'll come across a situation eventually where I want to use Wait for Move's Completion, though. I'll try setting that exclude option on any actors that might be moving in the future.

It freezes up, though the application itself doesn't freeze or crash or anything. It simply waits forever without doing anything. (edit: to be clear, no I can't move the player) I do have one event that has a move route set to turn about randomly, that's the only other event that is actively moving. (edit: tried disabling that one event, didn't change anything.) Edit: Just tried replacing all the Wait for Move's Completion lines with Wait 10 frames, and now it's working fine, so I can confirm that the issue is with Wait for Move's Completion. I'll use this workaround for now, but a fix for that would be helpful later on, with more complicated cut scenes.

Yes. I have a second cinematic that runs a bit later, which moves the player once with cat_pause off (to ensure a straight line), then turns cat_pause on and has each party member start a different move route. In that one, the event also runs the first move route, then hangs up and never gets to starting the other move routes.