How can I set up more than four playable characters?

[Cobb Illustrations]

Hello, I'm very new to this. I understand that RPG maker XP has up to four playable characters in battle, and that's fine. However, I would like a couple more characters than that to be available in general. Then the player can pick and choose which four they want at one point and switch later as they desire.

I don't know if that's possible from the in-game menu, and that's fine too. I figured I would make a save point event and have the option there to switch out characters. That works out alright. A set up a couple events and having characters leave or enter the party is pretty easy to do. The block I hit is that I can't figure out what variable I can use if the party's already full but someone tries to add another member.

Let me elaborate:

Let's say I have six characters, named, "One, Two, Three," etc. If One through Four are in the party, the player can choose to add the character named "Five," but if they do then nothing happens because it's full. What I want to do is make it so that if you try to add a fifth character, the text box will say, "You can't do that, the party's full."

I understand switches and variables and conditional branches all pretty well, I know how to make an option like: If Character Two is the party having the text say "Have Two leave" and then do so versus if Character Two is not in the party I can make it say, "Have Two return." So if there's a variable or conditional branch I can use that will only come into affect when the party is full, that would be ideal. (The player would then just have to have a character leave before bringing in a new one, which is fine: that I can do)

On the other hand, if there's a way to have five or more characters in your party at a time even though only four would battle but the player is able to reorder them so they decide who will fight and who won't, then that's great too.

If you know a solution either way, that's great and I would appreciate the help.

I do not understand scripting at all at this point, and I've tried different irrelevant scripts based on some tutorials I saw but it just completely lost me. If the solution to my particular question can be solved with scripts, I'm willing to try it but it will be way more difficult for me and I'll likely have a whole lot of follow up questions.

 

[Shaz]

Unless you've added scripts that let the player add/remove party members, YOU control when they can be added or removed, so it would be easy to increment or decrement a variable at the same time.


It's been a long time since I used XP with its default scripts. I thought you could add more than 4 to the party, and the rest would just be in reserve. Just tested it and it looks like it will LET you add more, but you can't see them even in the menu screen. So not sure what's going on there.


Have a search around for scripts, because I'm sure there will be some out there that let you have more than 4 party members, and swap around who's going to be in battles.

 

[Cobb Illustrations]

Unless you've added scripts that let the player add/remove party members, YOU control when they can be added or removed, so it would be easy to increment or decrement a variable at the same time.

It's been a long time since I used XP with its default scripts. I thought you could add more than 4 to the party, and the rest would just be in reserve. Just tested it and it looks like it will LET you add more, but you can't see them even in the menu screen. So not sure what's going on there.

Have a search around for scripts, because I'm sure there will be some out there that let you have more than 4 party members, and swap around who's going to be in battles.

Okay, well, I found a thread about someone who had six characters and needed help with displaying them in the menus, and it shows the script there and it looks like they are happy.

But like I said: I literally don't know anything about scripts. I've seen tutorials with them, I've tried inputting them into my game, but it never works for me. I would love to explain why, but I don't know anything about scripts. Please, what's on that page looks like it could probably solve my issue. But I don't know how to add it to my game.

 

[Shaz]

Copy the contents of that script.


Open your Scripts window (hit F11 in the editor).


Scroll down the list of scripts until you get to Main right at the bottom.


Select the Main script and hit the Insert key - this should add a new, empty slot just above the Main script.


Select that new empty slot, give it a name, click in the large panel on the right, and paste the script.


Change the line that says Max_Size = 6 to whatever number you want to use instead.


I do not see anything in there to change who is in the battle party, so it looks like the assumption is made that ALL party members will battle, which is why the second script there is needed. I don't know if you can just copy/paste that script as well - the person who pasted it did not put it in code tags so the forum has autoformatted some character combinations and turned them into smilies (just one of the reasons we don't like people pasting other people's scripts in to their posts).


There is a link in my signature to Andar's Beginners Guide to Using Scripts. Check it out - XP and Ace will be fairly similar, though I don't think XP has a slot that's called (Insert Here).