A bunch of little questions.

[KatReverie 0]

Okay, as the title says, I have a few questions. I should give a little background first.

 

In my game I want to place an affection system, party changer, events based on who is the party leader, events based on affection and all sorts of fun little things including making my own songs for the game. I also have some questions that are less dependent on one another.

 

Oh, and, before I forget, I'm using RMXP.

 

I will start with the most simple of the questions.

 

 

1. When I'm working events (even using auto run) they will occasionally allow me to move the character around, when in all rights the character should be doing anything but moving (Example, a part where the 'hero' is passed out and some NPCs are crowding around her. It DID have some funny imagery though, being the 'down' sprite.) Now, I work around this by doing wait commands forcing the character to stay still, but I'm sure there has to be a more simple way to do this. How?

 

 

2. Is there a way to make it so that on a large map you meet different monsters in one area than the other? Example, I have a field, a small 'swamp', and a mountain-y maze thing. I used an event command (Marked's "Non-random enemy encounters" from the tutorials) and it got me to thinking about if there was a way to make... say, Mice appear in the fields, lizards appear in the mountain maze, and spirits appear in the swamp without having to make a new map or have them all bleed into one another?

 

 

3. Now for the one that has me pulling my hair out. Would it be more effective to use a script to handle affection Or to do it by variables and event? Seeing as how I plan to have about 24-36 characters which are modified by affection, and some overlap, that would be a LOT of variables. Some are NPCs, by the way.

 

 

4. I'd like to have a party changer, but, it would be useless to me if I can't get it to change how NPCs react to the party. Is it possible to make the game recognize what character is in the lead and then make it so that events can be triggered with certain characters?

 

What I have in mind is something like, say the party consists of Bob, Alice, Carl, and Eve. If Eve is your party leader then talking to her father will give dialogue that consists of something like "Be safe, alright?" but with any other character in the lead you'll get "Take care of my little girl." or in the case of Carl ". . . Don't you dare touch her."

 

And have where an event can be set off by having Alice in the lead, but won't trigger if anyone else is the leader.

 

And, working with affection, if you enter a certain place with Bob having... say 30 or more affection with Eve there will be a date scene or something.

 

Is it possible to do this? In the event that it varies from party changer to party changer, the one I'm looking at right now is this one.

 

 

5. Lastly, where could I find a vista compatible Midi composer that's freeware? I would love to give my characters theme songs and create my own town music, and cave music, Ect. I've done some research into it but am seriously confused by all the different programs.

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my questions. I hope I made sense!

[miguel1 17]

2- You can use a thing called terrain tag.

http://www.rmxpunlimited.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3677

I'm not sure if this is what you wanted

 

4- I think you can use a conditional branch there, like:

 

@» Conditional branch: [EVE] is in party

@» Good luck!

:Else

@» Take care of my daughter

[Kiriashi 117]

1. When I'm working events (even using auto run) they will occasionally allow me to move the character around, when in all rights the character should be doing anything but moving (Example, a part where the 'hero' is passed out and some NPCs are crowding around her. It DID have some funny imagery though, being the 'down' sprite.) Now, I work around this by doing wait commands forcing the character to stay still, but I'm sure there has to be a more simple way to do this. How?

 

Well this might not work, but try adding "Wait for Move's Completion" after "Set Move Route" commands. Post some pictures of your event so I can find the issue! ^_^

 

2. Is there a way to make it so that on a large map you meet different monsters in one area than the other? Example, I have a field, a small 'swamp', and a mountain-y maze thing. I used an event command (Marked's "Non-random enemy encounters" from the tutorials) and it got me to thinking about if there was a way to make... say, Mice appear in the fields, lizards appear in the mountain maze, and spirits appear in the swamp without having to make a new map or have them all bleed into one another?

 

Well I would suggest making more, smaller maps; however this can be done with everything mentioned in that tutorial. xD Don't use the random encounters thing in the map properties section, Just use conditional branches, variables, and terrain tags. If you can get it to work, I will make a tutorial for it.

 

3. Now for the one that has me pulling my hair out. Would it be more effective to use a script to handle affection Or to do it by variables and event? Seeing as how I plan to have about 24-36 characters which are modified by affection, and some overlap, that would be a LOT of variables. Some are NPCs, by the way.

 

This wouldn't really be a lot of variables. :P There are 5000 freaking slots, you won't run out. :) Use variables. That way, you will be able to customize your event system however you want. Plus you'll feel accomplished. :B): I'll happily make a tutorial for you on this if you'd like.]

 

4. I'd like to have a party changer, but, it would be useless to me if I can't get it to change how NPCs react to the party. Is it possible to make the game recognize what character is in the lead and then make it so that events can be triggered with certain characters?

 

What I have in mind is something like, say the party consists of Bob, Alice, Carl, and Eve. If Eve is your party leader then talking to her father will give dialogue that consists of something like "Be safe, alright?" but with any other character in the lead you'll get "Take care of my little girl." or in the case of Carl ". . . Don't you dare touch her."

 

And have where an event can be set off by having Alice in the lead, but won't trigger if anyone else is the leader.

 

And, working with affection, if you enter a certain place with Bob having... say 30 or more affection with Eve there will be a date scene or something.

 

Is it possible to do this? In the event that it varies from party changer to party changer, the one I'm looking at right now is this one.

 

Well I don't really know how to go about doing this; and I've always wondered myself how to go about finding the answer to this.. You're going to have to ask Leon himself. If he get's on yahoo sometime I'll notify him of this topic. You could have the event happen regardless of who is the leader, and just have it happen if there is enough affection points.

 

5. Lastly, where could I find a vista compatible Midi composer that's freeware? I would love to give my characters theme songs and create my own town music, and cave music, Ect. I've done some research into it but am seriously confused by all the different programs.

 

Well this is where having a mac can come in handy.... *feels sorry for you* You've got some options though.

 

1. Continue your search for a midi-composer program. I found this one (NOT TESTED).

 

2. Get a friend to make them for you.

 

3. Pay me to do it for you.

 

4. Bring a thumbdrive to a store like Fry's or the apple store that has macs, open up a program called garageband, and play with it for 15 minutes and save the file you made as a midi. It's really easy to make good sounding stuff. You could even find one that has a keyboard connected.

 

5. Download a midi and edit it with whatever you found in part 1.

 

 

 

I hope that helped!.

[Tomo2000 60]

Well, a lot of these questions have easy answers.

 

1) This is quite usual, actually, and sometimes to prevent this you need to "crowd the event". This means that you have a lot in the event and doesn't give the player the space to move around. Using the "Wait" event can really make this work.

 

2) This is something that I like doing, actually. I'll post a system, too. It will be unencrypted so that you can see how it works and modify it to your liking.

Demo:

http://www.2shared.com/file/9263827/cc0c2728/Kats_Monster_System.html

^If you like this system can you please give me rep by pressing the "Rep+" button at the bottom of this post.

 

3) With the Affection event, use variables. Scripts, unless you get somebody amazing like Leon to make one, they can sometimes be a pain. Although there would be a lot of variables it would be easy to modify these variables. Instead of using 5 lines of script you can, instead, use a single event.

 

4) This can be achieved by using a conditional branch. Just go to the 2nd page and select "Actor", select the actor you want and then say "Is in Party". With the whole "Affection System", I'm not sure... Depends on the variables. You can set a conditional branch to check if a variable is a certain number or higher.

 

5) I don't have vista so I wouldn't be able to help... Sorry.

[Kiriashi 117]

You can choose specific actors in conditional branches? I thought it was only by numbers. o.O

 

I call next demo Tomo! xD I need something to event.

[Tomo2000 60]

Lol, Kiriashi. This demo, litterally, took me about 80 seconds to make. Uploading it was something else but the actual demo itself was easy. I LOVE EVENTING :D . Yours is coming very soon.

[KatReverie 0]

whoah, so many replies so quickly. Thank you all!

 

@miguel

 

4- That's not quite what I mean. I want to base it on who is in the lead. Example

 

(Party order)

 

Eve

Bob

Alice

Carl

 

would get the "Be safe alright?"

 

But,

 

Bob

alice

Eve

Carl

 

Would get "Take care of my daughter"

 

 

As for 2, I think someone else got what I was meaning. I need to check the Demo to find out.

 

Thank you!

 

 

 

-

 

@Kiriashi

 

1- When I do that sometimes things just freeze completely. I was able to get it to work for one, but not the other, and when I took out wait on the one that didn't work it messed up the one that did.

Should I post images of the event pages or the map or the play testing..? Or all three?

 

 

2- I think Tomo2000 may have the way to get the idea to work. I have to try the demo real fast.

 

 

3- 5000? Oh, that puts me at ease! I thought there was a max of 999 variables and I'm getting very fond of them and will probably eat through several hundred rather easily. Since the limit is 5000 I should be fine relying on Variables for it. Thank you!

 

 

4- Yeah, that's my backup plan. I won't be able to do EVERYTHING I wanted if I can't get a leader based deal going on but I can still do the most important parts.

 

 

5- I'll try the program listed. I had a program similar to that on my Windows 95 and used to use it all the time. I really want to make the music myself since I have several tunes in mind.

 

 

 

 

-

 

@ Tomo2000

 

1- I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by crowd the event. Could you perhaps give me an example?

 

 

2- I'll start messing with it as soon as I have the file downloaded ( my connection is having fun being a turd for the moment, haha.) I'm +Repping you anyway for taking the time to help, I REALLY appriciate it.

 

 

3- Many thanks. Now that I've been told the variable limit is much higher than I thought I'll not be at all hesitant to use a lot of variables. That and it's probably easier than finding a script that does what I intend or learning the scripting language to make my own.

 

 

4- You can make it so the event will recognize who is in the leader position that way? Whenever I use that it doesn't matter what position the party member is in, the reply is always the same.

 

 

5- You lucky soul, haha. A lot of XP programs work on Vista, but not always without ripping your hair out and shouting choice words at the computer first.

 

 

 

 

Thank you all so very much. I've been worried about cutting out whole chunks from my game due to no way to manage them. At this point, only leader based events seems to have taken a downfall, and I may be able to make SOME of the events happen.

 

Thank you again~

[Kiriashi 117]

Even if you do run out of variables, you can just split your game into different parts! This will also eliminate the other limits. :) Furthermore, players will be itching for more when they are left at a cliff hanger!

 

*downloads Tomo's demo. :P*

 

 

Post all three images please!

 

 

EDIT: THANKS TO WHOEVER GAME ME AN INTERNET!! :)

[Tomo2000 60]

A cliff-hangar, you say? You should see the one I have at the end of Hope Afloat. Damn that is gonna make people send me death threats to hurry up with the next one :D .

[KatReverie 0]

Whew! Sorry it took so long! I am multi-tasking and a really slow typist to boot.

 

Okay, here's the test play screenies-

 

The main character (Arian) has just come in from a scene outside. Her entering the door sets off "Arian inside" which starts the event pictured in the first two screenies. Until I put "Set move route: Player: Wait" and the ammount of frames until the end of this scene, the player could move around while the 3 NPCs come near her, and then while one of them runs off towards the stairs.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/Testplay1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/Testplay2.jpg

 

 

After that, the character wakes up in a bed upstairs. When the player moves to leave the bed it starts a scene where the player moves to kick the boy who's asleep. Using the "Wait for move's completion" option will freeze her in front of the boy. and not play the dialogue or the jumping. Then, when the boy is running away, it'll stop him at the door and freeze the player in place if I use that command instead of "Wait" and won't let the NPC disappear.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/Testplay3.jpg

 

 

The first cutscene

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev14a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev14b-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev14c.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev14d.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev14e.jpg

 

 

The Upstairs room the player wakes up in

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev25a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev25b.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ev25c.jpg

 

 

The first floor

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ineditormap1.jpg

 

The upstairs room the player wakes up in

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/KatRev/ineditormap2.jpg

 

 

A quick credit:

Arian is my friend Raichana's character, she's allowing me to use her in the game.

 

 

 

 

Also, Tomo2000, that works wonderfully. I'll probably still have mice show up in the swamp and the mountain maze, but this will let me add the other monsters in, too. Does it work if you place the events with space between them?

[ChaosDesigned 0]

I also have the same problem with the wait commands.

[Kiriashi 117]

Alright, since I am more of a visual person, you might need to send me your game. PM IT! Don't post it here.

 

 

I think that the problem might be:

 

One of you characters is supposed to move somewhere they are not supposed to.

A Set move route command is assigned to someone you don't want it to be (happens a lot).

You don't have the ignore if can't complete checkbox checked.

Or, you are using the wrong event commands.

 

 

This might work though: In all of the set move route commands, use a "Turn on through". and then after the cut scene, turn it off.

[Zeriab 9]

1:

Wait for Move's Completion is an event command you have to be very careful when using.

It waits for all Set Move Routes to end. If you have a Set Move Route on repeat or an event gets stuck so it never finishes, then you will wait forever. If player is frozen while you wait the game is practically stuck.

Wait for Move's Completion can lead to errors which can be very hard to debug. It is much safer to wait for a specific amount of frames, but there are situations where using it is much more practical. Just be very careful when using it. It is a typical cutscene design problem.

All event triggers except Parallel Process causes the player to freeze until the event has finished executing.

 

You can make the player unable to move around by having a parallel process which sets the move route of the player to wait a frame or two. Note that you would still be able to call the menu screen.

 

4:

Put this in a script call:

var_id = 10
if $game_party.actors.empty?
 $game_variables[var_id] = -1
else
 actor = $game_party.actors[0].id 
 $game_variables[var_id] = actor
end

 

You can change var_id to whatever variable you want to store which actor is leading. (No leading zeros, i.e. var_id = 09 bad, var_id = 9 good)

You can then use a conditional branch to check which id the leading actor have. If party is empty then the variable is set to -1.

 

*hugs*

- Zeriab

[KatReverie 0]

Ah! Sorry I've not posted in this in a long, long time. I've been either sick, busy, or having computer problems (or a combo of all three... ha ha) since about thanksgiving. I finally have time to ask a few questions and reply to answers.

 

I think I found out what I did wrong on 1., I wasn't able to recreate it but looking at things I more or less froze things WITH the wait till completion and the fact I forgot to make an event through on the second one.

 

@Zeriab: Thank you so, so, SO much. I'm not sure HOW to use it properly just yet (getting the hang of scripts and all), but I'll experiment with it so I can get the hang of it. The information on how wait for move's completion has helped me confirm what I did wrong and will help me stop from making the same mistake again~

 

-

A little update on a few things, the event based monster finding system has done really good in testing so far~ It'll also allow me to add in some rare monsters, once I've finally gotten them made.

 

While the midi composer linked to wasn't quite what I was looking for (it's an auto composer) I was able to use the link to find the Piano roll composer, which is working wonderfully. After hearing a lot of classical music in media as of late I got the obvious idea to make midi compositions of classical and ballet music. I don't like using pre-made midis, so the program will be really helpful.

 

-

 

A couple new questions:

 

1B. Alright, a scenario. Someone is running the game a second time, only this time they decide to level grind or do optional quests, or gain some early optional team members. The first time they got to the first dungeon at... level six, had three team members, and also had only basic shop weapons, the monsters were hard, but by level ten they could mop the floor with the most common spawn. However, the second time they grind/do quests and end up level 25 when they get there, have a fourth party member and have been given MUCH better equipment from quests. They expect the path to be easy as heck, but, their being OVER leveled makes the monsters harder to beat (as if the monsters leveled up in this extra play time) but not as bad as if they'd come in at level 6.

 

Is it possible to do this without duplicating maps and troops to be a 'higher level' version?

 

What I want to do (using the example above) is have where a dungeon meant for characters level 6-13 will have an enemy upgrade if the player reaches 25 before ENTERING ( meaning if they grind to 25 in the dungeon they'll not get the monster upgrade until leaving the dungeon and coming back)and will raise the difficulty to be at least a little challenging.

 

The reason for this is that the plans for my game involve a few branching storylines, a LOT of quests (300+ planned. How many will be implemented would depend totally on if I can keep them all varied. I'd rather not have 60 fetch quests that consist of getting... I dunno, 20 bear asses that randomly drop or something like that. ;3 ) and a number of optional dungeons which would mean if someone did ALL of the things available to them at any play through could end them up being extremely over leveled for the actual plot if I'm not absurdly careful.

 

I also want to have where secrets can be discovered by going back to early areas, such as optional bosses, loot that a certain character wouldn't have been strong enough to detect earlier, or just the natural environment changing based on level as well as plot.

 

Things I'd want to happen with monster upgrades:

1. Obviously, some would get stronger defense, and attack.

2. Some would gain new spells and skills.

3. Better loot would drop. (Using bats as an example, the lv, 6-13 version would drop Fangs and the 25+ version would provide Great Fangs.)

4. Some monsters would be more likely to attempt escape.

5. Some monsters would become more 'agressive'. (Example: Fairies would heal themselves and cast minor wind on a low level, but would be more likely to use stronger spells on a high level party)

6. The characters would have a higher chance of 'saying' something before kicking the monster's rear.

 

I've played around with it a LITTLE to no effect because I can't figure out how to make it do it once the lowest level character is over a given level, let alone figure out how to make it teach the monsters skills.

 

I don't mind making duplicate monster/troop entries with the higher level versions if I have to (I THINK I can simply make it so that if a character is over a certain level it'll 'transform' into the higher level version if a character is over a certain level, so I may not have to duplicate troops. I'm currently testing this on a test 'game'.) but I'd really, REALLY not like having to duplicate plot important maps unless I had no other way.

 

 

 

2B. I want to make it so you get an item 100% of the time from a monster, but, not the SAME item. Example: A bat drops the following loot ( % of finding so said item listed in brackets)- Fang (50%), great fang(10%), chipped fang(5%), Bat Wing(5%), Damaged Bat wing(27%), and Bat eyes(3%). Your party beets 5 bats and gets a MINIMUM of one item from each bat every time, but the item(s) they get may change each time. As I understand it, this could be messed with using variables, but I'm not sure HOW.

 

 

 

3B. This time it's simple advice. I'm wanting to use 'Name plates' for all npc's (varying from "Alice" to "Citizen", since there's no reason your character should know the name of someone they've not been introduced to.) but I really don't want to draw face graphics for all of them.

 

Here is a screenshot of my current layout: http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/6939/examplelalala.jpg (I still have tweaking to do, as I've just recently implemented Ccoa's UMS and haven't played with it all that much since I've been pursuing a few ideas I had, I've even got most of the dialogue that I had pre script... )

 

I'm thinking about making the default text middle aligned for ALL conversations. Would it look better to have no face graphic whatsoever for NPCs, or to have a frame with a question mark, a "No image" sort of message, or just a blank frame for them?

 

 

4B. I'm looking to place some sort of ending video where the credits will roll and you'll see illustrations and 'screenshots' of events that happened during the specific branch you followed. Would it be more effective to use some sort of video program to make so said video (I'm already weeping at the potential file size in such an event, as I have 4-5 endings in mind) or is there a way to make images and words scroll across the page? I mean, worse comes to worst and I'll simply make each screen and instead of scrolling it'll use "Show image" on a timer or whatever that command was.

 

 

5B. And lastly, what are those things that record the names of monsters you find in battle called? I want to search for a script for them, but I can't remember the name of them to save my life! I know they exist as I've seen them, but my vocabulary has decided it's not going to live to its potential at the moment...

 

 

Thank you for your time once again~!

 

Edit: Solved 5B, bestiary.