Advice/Tutorials on creating an CMS in RM2K3?

[Parallax Panda]

I’ve made CMS systems in other engines before, but never in RM2K3. It does seem like the perfect engine to do it in though, with it seemingly more flexible eventing system and increesed variable/picture cap (compared to later makers).
The only thing that I think is really missing is a ”Draw text as picture” command, but it is still possible (but more of a pain) without it.

That being said, I’m not very familiar with RM2K3 itself so I’m sure there are some best practices?

Like for example, how you in MV can accidentally reach the stack overflow if you don’t properly use the “Exit Event Process” command and so on. I would like to hear from people with deep knowledge of how RM2K3’s eventing works in regards to how to best construct a custom menu system in this engine.

And if there are any good tutorials or template projects floating around, then I’d happily look at those too.

Lastly, two specific questions;

* Is it possible to adjust the volume of the music / SFX with eventing?
* Is it possible to refeer to the playtime and load that into a variable? If not, is there some stable workaround to getting the playtime to display in a custom CMS (maybe using one of the two timers or some variables?

 

[Milennin]

I've made some custom menus in RM2K3, using pictures for everything, including text. If you know how to event, it's not difficult per se, it just takes a lot of time to put together.
For lowering the music in the menu, I just had an identifier for each different piece of music that could possibly play and make a branch to change volume of the BGM that way (a lot of work, but worth).

 

[AkiraKotatsuhime]

To create text as pictures on-the-fly ingame, you could give Maniac Patch a try if you are using [RPG2003 1.12] (not compatible with RMWeb Edition; DRM-free Steam only). It adds an incredible amount of new functions and recently the engine-part of it got completely rewritten which increased overall performance.

Patch website is completely JP, but everything in the patching tool, editor and engine is available in english too. Also, if you plan to use any other patches meant for RPG2003: Beginning with mp210519, ALL patches for RPG_RT 1.09/1.10/1.11/1.12 in existence are incompatible.

～炬燵あ

 

[Parallax Panda]

@AkiraKotatsuhime
That’s nice but I was leaning towards the EasyRPG wrapper. Would that be a problem? I really want porting to different platforms as an option as well as the .ogg support.

I don’t know too much about Maniac patch though. Is it legal/stable?
I use the latest official STEAM version of rm2k3 btw.

@Milennin
So there is no simpler way to change the fx/music then. That’s too bad

 

[Dev_With_Coffee]

* Is it possible to adjust the volume of the music / SFX with eventing?

In-game there is an event command that opens the video settings, but also opens the game's audio volume:

* Is it possible to refeer to the playtime and load that into a variable?

Game time can be counted with variables at game startup without the need for a patch.

Thing that can be controlled with the simulated settings menu:

• Text speed with a variable \s[\v[ID]]
• SystemSet Graph
• Font style (2 options, RPG 2000/RPG 2000G) <- SystemSet
• Full Screen (Event Command)

Good Luck

 

[Parallax Panda]

@Dev_With_Coffee
Thanks, I wasn’t aware we could change the text speed like that.

 

[Dev_With_Coffee]

Sorry, about the audio I posted the wrong image, that is that I was going to explain a way to do it with VBA.