Animated image and show text at the same time.

[Radlemus]

My goal is to have show text and player choices with an animated image playing on our screen.

With some help from Google (and very nice people leaving info) I was able to use an event and five images to make an animated image.  Now I want to have the same animation play but also have show text working that leaves time for our player to read and move on with the action button. Choices should also be useable.

I have tried in two ways. The first was to make two events. One held all the animation info in a loop that would turn on with a switch. The npc we talk to would turn that switch on and call the event and keep talking. That did not work... The npc kept talking and the animation never played. The second is to put both event pages on one event. Telling the npc to turn on a self switch, keep talking and at the end turn it off... that also does not work...

New and still learning RPG maker. Any help is great! I will leave some images to help understand what I have done so far.

 

[Cadh20000]

My goal is to have show text and player choices with an animated image playing on our screen.

With some help from Google (and very nice people leaving info) I was able to use an event and five images to make an animated image.  Now I want to have the same animation play but also have show text working that leaves time for our player to read and move on with the action button. Choices should also be useable.

I have tried in two ways. The first was to make two events. One held all the animation info in a loop that would turn on with a switch. The npc we talk to would turn that switch on and call the event and keep talking. That did not work... The npc kept talking and the animation never played. The second is to put both event pages on one event. Telling the npc to turn on a self switch, keep talking and at the end turn it off... that also does not work...

New and still learning RPG maker. Any help is great! I will leave some images to help understand what I have done so far.

EventPage1.png

EventPage2.jpg

I won't swear to it, but it sounds to me like the first method should work, the one with the animation would have be on parallel process so it could run at the same time as the talking one though.

 

[Shaz]

No. Only one event page will be active at a time. When self switch A goes on, the second page will become active and the first will stop processing.


Make two events. The first will be your NPC and the dialogue. It will turn a regular switch on and off at those times, instead of a self switch.


The second will be what you have on the second page of the NPC event, conditioned by the switch, and run as a parallel process.

 

[Cadh20000]

No. Only one event page will be active at a time. When self switch A goes on, the second page will become active and the first will stop processing.

Make two events. The first will be your NPC and the dialogue. It will turn a regular switch on and off at those times, instead of a self switch.

The second will be what you have on the second page of the NPC event, conditioned by the switch.

The "first method" I said should have worked was what s/he described but didn't show.

I have tried in two ways. The first was to make two events. One held all the animation info in a loop that would turn on with a switch. The npc we talk to would turn that switch on and call the event and keep talking. That did not work... The npc kept talking and the animation never played. The second is to put both event pages on one event. Telling the npc to turn on a self switch, keep talking and at the end turn it off... that also does not work...

2 events, one for talking one for animation.

 

[Shaz]

Sorry - my reply was to the OP, and directed specifically at the screenshots, not to your post I should have been clearer.


I agree - the first approach (which is what I basically described as well) should work. If it didn't it's because your events were set up incorrectly. In that case, show us screenshots of the two-event method and we'll tell you where you've gone astray.

 

[Cadh20000]

Ahh, okay. I wondered if I hadn't been clear what I was talking about or what.

 

[Radlemus]

Thank you both.

I have gone back to having two events. Here is how they look.




I can tell the dialogue event is turning on the animation event by seeing the star graphic I gave it show up in place. But the animation its ment to play does not show up on the screen at all. Once the dialogue is done and our player can move again the first image in the animation shows on the screen and does not go away or change.  I'm pretty sure I am not setting up the events right or RPG maker is unable to run two events in the way I'm asking.

One thing stands out from what you have said - "conditioned by the switch, and run as a parallel process." Now my thought is that I am setting it up by conditions by telling the event to only work if that switch is on. Should I change it so the event is always on but looks in the event page to see if the switch is on? Really am unsure!

Thanks for your time again and for the replies.

 

[Cadh20000]

You are using a variable to tell it what image to show, but you have it adding one to the variable at the start and resetting the variable to 0 at the end without ever adding any more to that variable between pictures, that would make it so only the first image ever displayed. If you just skip the variable completely and have it go by order only it should work. Show one picture, wait a few frames, show the next picture, etc... Just remember to erase the pictures when you are done so it doesn't leave them sitting there after it is done.

 

[Radlemus]

The event at start up is adding + 1 to the variable pool. At that point the pool is 1. The next part of the event says IF our variable is 1, show image 1. The next lines of events want to know if we have 2,3,4,5 or greater than 5 in our pool.

At the bottom we wait 3 frames and start again. Now when we add + 1 to the pool we are at 2, We are not at 1 anymore so we don't show image 1, we are at two so we show image two, we are not at three so we don't show three. so on and so on.

This keeps working like a chain till we have added above 5 to our pool and are at 6. At this point we are not showing any image and are now going to change the pool from 6 back down to 0. The script starts again and we add + 1, bringing us up to 1 in the pool thus showing image 1.

(Super sorry if that sounded rude I was not meaning to ONLY trying to show how the event works!)

Now the animation event works just fine if I have it start with the action button or auto run. Our Animation plays nice and smooth, have not got around to stopping it yet but I hope to do that with a switch haha. The problem is having the animation play WITH dialogue. If I put dialog right on top of it we will loop the dialog or only run the animation once and that's just not the end goal.

 

[Cadh20000]

Sorry, I misread it. I thought the resetting it to 0 was outside of the conditions.

Though I'm still not sure why you are bothering with a variable for that at all. I never use one when setting up something like that and they work fine. Of course, that is a single event without the concurrent talking event going at the same time, but that shouldn't effect that aspect.

 

[Radlemus]

One reason is that it makes starting animations from a frame I want pretty easy. Lets say I have an animation loop of 15 frames . I want to start at 0 and work my way up to 15 and restart but start again at frame 5. The last part would be a control Variable = 4, start again add 1 and now we are at 5 and showing image 5. Do that over and over till we are done with talking and turn it all off and set variable to 0 so we could do it again if we wished. (I think that's how it would work anyway.)

Again I am pretty new to RPG maker and what I'm doing may be the wrong road to take. The goal is for animations (with some controls to it like starting from a frame IF I can) AND dialogue at the same time.

 

[Cadh20000]

Separating it into multiple parts so you only show the beginning once does make sense. I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking you would be playing it all the way through each time which is why I couldn't see your reasoning. But for ones that will be played all the way through each times it just adds unnecessary steps to the setup.

 

[Radlemus]

Ill keep that in mind as I go on with the project. again if anyone thinks of a way to play the animations right along with show text I am all ears! Thanks again for your time.

 

[Shaz]

Okay, first, get rid of the loop/repeat. Parallel process events repeat by default, so you don't have to tell it to inside the event.


At some point, you'll need to do an Erase Picture 1. You can't really do it in the parallel process event, because you want it to wait first, and if the switch is turned off while it's waiting, it won't process anything else. So I'd do that in the NPC event - turn the switch off, then erase picture 1.


Apart from that, I really don't see any reason why it isn't playing. MAYBE getting rid of the loop will fix the issue, as I do recall people having issues when combining a parallel process with an all-encompassing loop, and the issues have gone away when they've gotten rid of the loop. I just can't remember the specific details of any of them. So give that a go and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Radlemus]

Some success!

The loop was not needed. So thats one thing out of the way that could be a problem. BUT still nothing played at the same time as the dialogue. Reading more about Parallel Process leads me to think that events are on layers and only the highest one plays. So an Autoplay or action button will play OVER the Parallel Process, thats why turning on a switch in the middle of dialogue does not mean we will see the image show up on the screen.

That got me to thinking why not start the dialogue with the npc saying hello and turning on two switches. Each one turns on a Parallel Process. One is dialogue and the other the animation... Looks like this.







My thought was that if the two events are on the same "layer" (Both Parallel Process) They would both play at the same time... and they did! sorta... With each dialogue window, ONE more frame would show up. After all three dialogue windows ran the animation ran three times and then stopped and the image removed its self.

I think the problem is telling the animation event to run over top of everything no mater what till an event turns off its switch. But I have NO idea how to do that. The only other way I can see is to find a script that runs animations that can be called in the middle of an event and told to turn off in that same event.

Again thank you for all your time and any ideas would help! thank you!

 

[Shaz]

No, bad idea. Avoid parallel processes when you can. Don't "try another parallel process" as a solution to a problem when you don't know what the cause is.


Go back to the original method with one action button event and one parallel process event (without the loop).


The problem is that many event commands will only run while there's no message being displayed. I tested this out by adding a Wait 60 Frames prior to each Show Text command. If you do the same (with the adjusted events as I've just described above), you will see the images flash quickly from one to another several times before the first text is shown. While the text is shown, the images won't change. As soon as you hit the enter button to close the text window (during the next 60 frame wait), the images will all quickly flash again. And again with the third pause between text.


What you need is a script that will allow events to continue running while messages are showing. I know there are some out there, so if you do a bit of a search you might be able to find one.

 

[YoraeRasante]

Okay, first, get rid of the loop/repeat. Parallel process events repeat by default, so you don't have to tell it to inside the event.

Uhm, Shaz...

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/57-rmvxace-tips-and-tricks/

 

[Radlemus]

I am not sure why it did not work the first time but I have come to the goal I wanted. Thanks Waterguy for that post. It made me retest some things that in the end work. And to all the others who put in ideas here and there.









The set up I have is in three events. Our first event turns on a switch and says hello to the player. The second is our animation in a loop with a variable pool. The pool allows us to start an animation on one frame, run it and start again on another frame. Our last event is the dialogue that will be shown on the screen as the animation plays.  At the end of that last event I turn off the switch and remove the image. For some reason setting up TWO Parallel Process where the animation was in a loop MADE the animation play as the dialogue was shown, I do not fully know why it did not work the first time I tested it.

the set up could be used for a talking head like in Star Control or other classic RPGish games that had animation when talking to an npcs.

If anyone has a better way to set up events or a script that is free to use in commercial or noncommercial work I would love to see it! As the game I am going to try to make will use a LOT of what I just set up and its going to be a ton of work hehe. Good luck and I hope you all make great games : 3

 

[Shaz]

interesting Waterguy. I will have to try that. Strange that it sometimes causes problems and sometimes fixes them ...