Character Sprites Over Darkness

[qwlea]

I've been trying to make a cutscene in a room filled with darkness where the event (the graphic is represented by a character sprite) can be seen above the darkness. I don't know if there is any way to do this without adding scripts, but if so, please tell me. 


You can try to give me a script and I will try to use it, but considering that I have zero scripting experience, it is not very likely that I'll understand what to do with the script unless it is extensively explained to me. Sorry about the blatant inexperience.


In the photo, the event in the lower middle is supposed to be a character graphic, but whenever I playtest it, the graphic isn't showing. The player/actor can still be seen, but I assume that this is just because the player is always shown on the screen, no matter what.


https://gyazo.com/6d02c2f1f4c959f24aed0081f10a6dc4


Thank you for the help in advance

 

[Shaz]

You don't give us very much to work with.  What is the black tile you've used?  What tab is it on?  What's its passage setting?


If you leave a map completely empty, it will be black and the character will be visible.


If you paint a map with a black tile, whether the character is visible or not depends on whether the tile has a star passage or not (star means "draw above characters" so the character will be below the tiles).


If you've used a black tile and it is NOT set to a star passage, check the System tab to see if the "start transparent" option is turned on.  Also make sure you have a starting party in the system tab and that the first party member does have a map sprite.  I assume these last two things are okay because you can see the player on the map in your screenshot.

 

[qwlea]

The tile is "Darkness" in the "A4 Interior Tiles" (Walls I believe).


The sprite that you see is the one that I want to appear, but when the actual scene plays, you cannot see it. (This is a picture taken from the editor)


I went to the tilesets tab of the database but couldn't find the bit where it displays a star for 1 (on). 


Based off of what you said, I'm assuming I can leave the whole map to be transparent tiles and do it that way, so I'll try that before doing anything else.

 

[Vox Novus]

I think it would be worth seeing the event's page as well.


You said the player was visible when you playtested and the event wasn't, so that tells me this might not be a passability problem.

 

[qwlea]

After leaving all of the tiles as transparent, it still didn't seem to work

 

[qwlea]

I think it would be worth seeing the event's page as well.

Here is the event page right here.


https://gyazo.com/724f75abf2cfbabb5e416925b0e0c511


I have tried putting the pritory to "above the player," but that still didn't seem to change anything.

 

[Vox Novus]

Are both those switches currently on? The event won't show or run that page if they aren't because you've set both of them to be a necessary condition for it to run.

 

[qwlea]

Yep, the switches are turned on and the event runs. This must be true since I can see the text from that event.

 

[Vox Novus]

Okay, I noticed you used a self switch early on. Did you switch to a new event page with self switch A as a condition that has a blank graphic?

 

[qwlea]

Okay, I noticed you used a self switch early on. Did you switch to a new event page with self switch A as a condition that has a blank graphic?

Ah yes, I made the self switch right after the event starts and it just leads to a blank action button event. 


Is the graphic of the event directly related to the current event that is happening, unlike the event progression?


I always thought that the graphic would be preserved until the event ended, but maybe this is not the case. 


I'll try changing the graphic of the blank event and seeing if that helps.


Edit: What you did seem to have worked. I didn't understand that the graphic changed based off of the actual event rather than the simulated/progressing event. Thank you so much for the help

 

[Vox Novus]

Yes, that's the problem. Its showing the current pages event graphic. Event flow goes until it ends but the graphic is related to the current page. There should be no need to use a self switch until you want the auto-event to be switched off anyway; it should be at the end of the auto run event not the beginning.

 

[Shaz]

The event flow might not go to the end, either.  If there's any kind of wait/pause in there, the event commands might stop.

 

[qwlea]

Yeah, it was more of something I did at the start of every event with autorun/parallel processing so that I didn't forget to do it later on. I hadn't noticed this until you pointed it out because beforehand I was using "Move Sequence" commands and classifying the graphic there rather than giving the event pages graphics. Thanks for the info.

 

[Vox Novus]

@ShazDo they? I thought they would continue. I did a quick test with a wait command the event keeps running.


@qwlea No problem, happy to help. Keep in mind not to double post like you did there for the future, as there are rules against it. You can read the forum rules at the top of the sites page under the forum rules tab.

 

[Shaz]

I know it works like that with parallel and autorun events when you turn off the switch that activates them - they might run a few more commands before stopping.


There was some discussion here a while ago on how they work - I think it might have been based on Ace at the time.  A few people ran some experiments and worked through the interpreter to see what was going on.  I think the reason we were talking about it was to decide what commands might run after a transfer event to a different map.

 

[Vox Novus]

Ah, interesting to know it works like that.