[HELP] making events disappear on time during a cutscene?

[mchoneybee]

The title is a little vague, so I'll explain.

I'd love some help figuring out how to do this. I have a scene in which there's a path of candies leading away from the player (each their own event of course), and an NPC is supposed to walk slowly along the path and "eat" them as he approaches.
So far, I've been able to get them to all disappear at once, and that's about it. I won't be showing screenshots of what I have right now in terms of event pages; I keep changing it entirely in my attempts to get something to work.
I've tried using the event touch trigger (but those don't seem to work during an autorun event, understandably), using the NPC's movement route function to remove the candy images between steps... is there anything that can be suggested that I might be missing?

 

[Jennavieve]

If each is their own event then you should just be able to turn a self switch on for each individual piece of candy when the player picks it up. Set a second blank page for each event that triggers when that self switch is turned on.

And did you get this idea from Family Guy? I can't help but think of James Woods with his "ooh, piece of candy" bit.

 

[mchoneybee]

If each is their own event then you should just be able to turn a self switch on for each individual piece of candy when the player picks it up. Set a second blank page for each event that triggers when that self switch is turned on.

And did you get this idea from Family Guy? I can't help but think of James Woods with his "ooh, piece of candy" bit.

The player actually doesn't move for this cutscene, so they won't be picking up the candies... it's the NPC that's meant to do it, unfortunately. Also, no, but that's very funny and I'll have to tell my writer you said that LOL

 

[Shaz]

Rather than one big move route for the NPC, you can break it up into several much smaller ones.

Move NPC to next candy
Make candy disappear
Move NPC to next candy
Make candy disappear


OR if you want to be really clever about it, is the NPC moving in just one direction, and in a straight line? Are all the candies in a straight line? Let's say the NPC if moving down, so their Y coordinate will be increasing. You could have a parallel process event that does a Wait 10 frames then a Control Variables, setting a variable to the NPC's Y location. Then on each of your candy events, have a second page with no image, conditioned by Variable >= whatever the Y coordinate is of that variable. So when the NPC's Y coordinate is the same as the candy event's Y coordinate, that page will be true and the candy will disappear. There won't be any animation or sound effects though. You could also do it using the X coordinate if the NPC is moving to the right. And if they're moving up or to the left, you'd have to do it the other way - page 1 with no condition would have no sprite, and page 2 would have the sprite and the Variable >= condition. Of course if you're going to do more in this room or come back to it later, and the NPC could end up on the original side of the candies again, you'd want to use a self switch to ensure they don't reappear, rather than just a variable (or disable the parallel process event by turning on a self switch on IT when the cutscene is over)

 

[Andar]

I've tried using the event touch trigger

without seeing the screenshots I can't be sure, but this sounds as if you made one of the biggest mistake in a cutscene: distributing commands through different events and triggers.

Each cutscene should have a single controlling event that remotely controls all changes. ALL other events should be empty placeholders without a single line of content.
And then that controlling event can switch on or off the other events exactly like shown above, using different methods depending on what you want.

Having each event their own commands and triggers will cause you to get timing problems of all kinds, not only losing you the control of their timing when exactly what happens, but also other effects.

 

[Shaz]

oh - you also misunderstand what Event Touch means. Events do not trigger other events. The only triggers that happen are between the player and events.

Player Touch means the player must initiate contact.
Event Touch means the player OR the event can initiate contact.

In both cases, the interaction is between an event and the player, not an event and another event.

Also, an event with Event Touch or Player Touch will not be triggered when the player character is moving because of a move route.

 

[Jennavieve]

The player actually doesn't move for this cutscene, so they won't be picking up the candies... it's the NPC that's meant to do it, unfortunately.

Sorry I totally missed that you said it was an NPC. In that case you would want to control all the action through the NPC's eventing. Set a movement route for them to approach the candy then have them pick it up by setting a movement route for the piece of candy he's approaching that changes the candy's image to a blank one. Just keep doing that for each piece until they're all picked up. Make sure the candies are set to below player too so they don't block movement.