An Event Primer for the Editor

[HWalsh]

Is there a good tutorial that focuses more on how/where to find the settings in the editor? If so, could someone please direct me to it.

I know programming logic, and thus tutorials telling me how logic works don't help, my main issue is properly finding things in the editor.

An example:

I want to set the game to display a text dialogue box when the game loads in.

I can make the event, but if I set it to auto-run it will constantly loop... This is fine... If I could set the map to set a variable on load so that I can have the text message event flip the variable off after it displays... I can't do that however because if I try to set a variable that is needed for the event to trigger it never triggers because I can't find where in the editor I am supposed to go to set initial variables and switches.

If I were coding this manually I'd simply have a variable for the initial message that comes by default set as a 0, then I'd just code it:

if (textVariableA == 0)

{

displayText "blah blah blah";

textVariableA = 1;

}

While I was excited about using RPG Maker VX Ace the learning curve is a bit frustrating and I am not exactly finding the product as user-friendly as I was initially lead to believe. This may be simply something which corrects itself in time but I'm finding some "common sense" settings missing from the editor, especially with events. (I'm really shocked there was no "Execute Once" auto-setting in the event wizard... I would have figured that would have been a no-brainer.)

 

[Yato]

I think the problem is you're overthinking it.


Rpg maker will only execute the last page in which conditions are met. So all you need to do is set a self switch on at the end of the event and have a second page with the condition of that self switch being on. This second page would not be auto-run, of course.

 

[Andar]

RPGM events follow a slightly different form of logic than most programming languages.

There are some reasons behind the decisions that lead to this different logic, and while I agree that some things could have been handled better the RPGM-logic is relatively easy to follow once you got the hang of a few special rules.

Unfortunately there are too many options available, and some are hidden rather deep into the menu structure (control variable : game data for example).

So I advice you load the sample game from this site and look how the events were used there, and then spent a few hours exploring the editor settings.

Believe me that time (about 1 hour playing Crysalis (no need to finish it unless you want), one hour looking through its maps in the editor and 2-3 hours clicking on every button in the editor) is well spent to prepare you for making your game. Not doing this first will have you wasting much more hours when looking for how to do special events for your game.

 

[HWalsh]

Thanks for the replies, I managed to start getting the hang of it after a bit. Still having some odd issues but I am puzzling them out. In particular I am having a problem with getting a variable of my own creation to work in the program itself for an attack.

If anyone can help me with a formula for that I'd appreciate it.

I *tried* to follow the steps in the program on it... And it *should* work. The attack is firing, so I am not running into a critical syntax error...

the formula I am using is: v[alignment] * 3 - b.def * 2

No damage any time.

I know the alignment variable is there, and I know it is at a value of 100 (I made an NPC that will reveal if it is at 100 for the purposes of testing) now, how I understand it, I should be getting 300 - b.def * 2, but every time the enemy takes no damage.

----

Edit.

I just got it. You can't reference the variable by name, you have to do it by its numeric code. So in this case v[0001] * 3...

----

I'm designing a game I made from a design document while I was in college. I ended up getting out of the industry (I teach now) so I figured RPG Maker was as good a medium as any to finally make it. So an embedded alignment system was completely needed. A lot of the other things I have in it are simply me taking some trial and error to work out.

Though yes, to the above poster, I was indeed over-thinking it. Once I realized what I was doing I managed to come up with some work-arounds pretty easily.

 

[Celianna]

I'd like to point out that there is no 'execute once' option in RPG Maker, because it doesn't follow such logic. Events continue to exist, and they never fully go away or stop working forever - they're just there, and will do things based on what you tell them to do.


If you only want them to run once? Well, based on RPG Maker logic, you can't exactly 'delete' the event, so you must do something else. You have to make the event run a different event page than the one you're using. You can do this in any number of ways (just look at the event conditions on the left side of the event page), but it's mostly done through (self) switches. Create a new event page, select a condition for it, leave it blank, and in your first event page, at the end you make sure to comply with the event conditions for the next event page (if a switch was needed, turn on this switch) etc.


Probably this image (even though it's for VX, they still use the same logic) will help out a lot:

 

[Andar]

I just got it. You can't reference the variable by name, you have to do it by its numeric code. So in this case v[0001] * 3...

eventing is not scripting - those two terms describe different contexts in RPGM.

scripting is done in the script editor and that is programming, with everything possible (including using the name of self-defined variables for reference)

eventing is a very limited form of setting a logic sctructure for the game - even if it looks like programming on the content part of the event windows, those lines use a very specific and limited interpreter to check them. Mainly because you can't expect every hobby gamer to know of programming, so you'll have to restrict them in their access to the data to prevent more serious bugs...

 

[GrandmaDeb]

Is there a good tutorial that focuses more on how/where to find the settings in the editor? If so, could someone please direct me to it.


I know programming logic, and thus tutorials telling me how logic works don't help, my main issue is properly finding things in the editor.

 
FWIW, you do know about the help file in the editor, and the pop-up information on-screen, right?


It may help you to play working games which have been released in unencrypted form, so you can go see the nuts and bolts for yourself. There is a list of them here