Misbehaving Tint Screens!

[LadyHammer]

Hello!

I'm having a heck of a time with tint screen effects, heh. Every tutorial I've read and seen makes it look so painfully simple, but somewhere I'm messing it up, I just know it lol.

Okay, so I've read that the best way to do it is to create an event on parallel process that has the desired tint screen effect, and then a self-switch turning on, and on the second page of the event, with that self switch on as the condition, to have "erase event".

Every time I do that, the effect actually erases itself, and the screen goes back to normal. So I forego the "erase event", and it works great! Except when I have a cutscene. An NPC move route or balloon icon seems to undo the screen tint. It'll go back to normal, until another NPC has a move route or a balloon icon. Then it'll go back to the tint screen. And it just goes back and forth until the scene is over and the autorun event is erased. Then the effect goes back to the way I intended it.

Does anyone know what could be going on? This is currently the tint screen effect. The switch turns on my autorun cutscene. After trying so many different things to fix this issue, I thought that maybe the cutscene on autorun was happening before the tint screen effect, so I did it this way so that the cutscene wouldn't happen until the tint screen happened.

 

[EternalShadow]

Er, donn't erase event. Not sure where you read that, but it will literally restart the event. Hence the looping.

 

[Miss Nile]

Hmm I can't pinpoint the problem exactly, but I bet it has something to do with the switch being with the tint effect in the same event . . . try having the switch getting ON from somewhere else? I always prefer the tint effect to be on an event on its own. And I'll agree with Hotfirelegend-don't erase the event as that would mess things up. XD

Also, try having the cutscene work at parallel process. That tends to work more smoothly than Autorun.

 

[LadyHammer]

A lot of tint screen tutorials I've read have said to include "erase event" somewhere. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding that. Which is possible. This is one thread in particular that I saw it in, but I've seen it in video tutorials too. I don't know how they make it work, but as you said, it is literally erasing the event lol.

With erase event, the tint doesn't even appear.

Without erase event (like in the screen shot), it goes in and out constantly during the cutscene.

 

[GrandmaDeb]

hi Lady hammer.

Take a look at the event page you posted.

As a parallel process, you know it will begin automatically and repeatedly until stopped, allowing other events to continue

(see here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/15098-conditions-triggers-and-event-pages/)

So you tint the screen and set a switch over and over.

So even if another event turns the switch off, for example, the parallel process turns it back ON.

One of the most important questions to ask is "How does this process END???"
 

Okay, so I've read that the best way to do it is to create an event on parallel process that has the desired tint screen effect, and then a self-switch turning on, and on the second page of the event, with that self switch on as the condition, to have "erase event".

I think what you mean is
the best way to do it is to create an event on parallel process autorun that has the desired tint screen effect, and then a self-switch turning on, and on the second page of the event, with that self switch on as the condition, to have "erase event". to have a blank page triggered by the action button

This would tint the screen one time

Keep the erase event and only one page if you want to tint the map every time you come to it.

This is a great tut:

http://blog.rpgmakerweb.com/tutorials/event-triggers-part-2/

 

[bgillisp]

Bad advice. NEVER run a cutscene on parallel process, as you will (eventually) lag the game.

As it is, you have to have something that is resetting the tint that is (also) on a parallel process, as that is the only way it would do that. Otherwise, as long as you have the initial event to set the tint, an erase event should work perfectly. Since it is not working as an erase event, that means something somewhere else is resetting the tint to normal. That could be a script, that could be another event. Check all the events on that map and see if one of them has a call to set the tint back to (0, 0, 0, 0).

As for how I do tints: I set them on the transfer event leading into the map. I have it do fade out, transfer to new map, set tint, fade in. This way the player doesn't see the tint get set at the same time. Though, an autorun set to tint, then erase event will work too, if you don't mind the player seeing the map tinting when they first arrive.

Edit: Ninja'd by Gramdma Deb,

 

[LadyHammer]

Thank you all for the quick responses, I really really appreciate it. I've been messing around with this for about a week now, and it's driving me crazy lol.

So, originally the cutscene was happening in a dungeon that had quite a bit of space and other things going on in it. I decided to take the room that the cutscene was happening in and make it its own map, to cut down on events and more easily monitor what was going on. The ONLY parallel process event going on was the tint screen. I got rid of everything else, including some little 'ball of light' events I had hovering over lanterns.

There weren't any changes at all until I changed the cutscene to Player Touch instead of autorun. I just bottlenecked the entrance so that the player was forced to walk over the specific tile. The tint screen only disappeared once during the whole cutscene! That's huge! Still an issue, but not nearly as bad as it was before.

Thank you, all of you! The solutions work out great without this stupid cutscene lol.

Does it make a difference if the cutscene has an animation in it? The tint screen is disappearing when I put a balloon icon over an NPC, but reappearing after another NPC has an animation.

Maybe I just need to axe this balloon thing. Heh.

 

[Andar]

There are different ways to solve things, and you mixed them up.

More specifically, there are two ways to prevent an parallel process from looping:

1) switch to a non-looping page of the event

2) erase the event

The difference is as follows:

1) is permanent as switches are stored - NEVER erase the event after switching to a new page.

2) is temporary until the map is loaded again - and it is done ON THE SAME PAGE as the parallel process.

The second option is used only if the command is to be processed whenever the map is entered again - for example a weather effect when entering an outside map. The first is used when the effect should only appear once - for example as part of the storyline.

Now for the difference between autorun and parallel process.

As a general guideline, a parallel process is difficult to handle and should only be used when absolutely neccessary and when you know exactly what you're doing - the less number of parallel processes are on a map, the less chance of lag, bugs and problems.

However, there is one specific reason why parallel processes are used for tints and weather effects: they load at the beginning of the map process, about half a second before an autorun can start. A tint on autorun would result in the map being visible untinted for a short time before the effect appears - with parallel processes the tint would be there before the player sees the map.

Cutscenes should be on autorun, because in a cutscene the player should be stopped

 

[Kes]

There is no logical reason why having a balloon should affect your tint.

To recapitulate:

Put your tint into the transfer evernt, as bgillisp describes.  That clears it out of the way and means that in no way does it ever affect any other event on that map.

How are you eventing your balloon command?  

 

[LadyHammer]

Here's the show balloon icon in the cutscene event:

Spoiler

I understand the difference between parallel process and autorun. I get all my other other events to work just fine, but for some reason, this is the one rookie thing that is making me go mad lol. Also, ignore the switch condition in the screen shot. I axed that right after I took the screen shot, as I realized the switch was irrelevant now.

 

[Kvich]

Do you have any scripts that's affecting tint? Like the 'Basic Game Time' from Vlue, gotten through the Community DLC?

It sounds like something is trying to affect tint, while your event is running, making them conflict each other.

 

[EternalShadow]

I have my tints set up on ONE event page that's set to PP and simply, tint screen 30 seconds, no wait. Then add a manual wait of 30 frames afterward, so it only "tints" 2x per second at most. Nothing else. If that doesn't work for you, something else is wrong.

 

[GrandmaDeb]

I have my tints set up on ONE event page that's set to PP and simply, tint screen 30 seconds, no wait. Then add a manual wait of 30 frames afterward, so it only "tints" 2x per second at most. Nothing else. If that doesn't work for you, something else is wrong.

 I may be wrong, but it seems like a waste of cycles to tint the screen over and over.

Best practice seems to be to tint the screen and then change it when you want it changed.

My betters can correct me if I am wrong.

*******************

Unless you are suggesting this as a De-Bug, Hotfire.

********************

Ladyhammer, sometimes it helps to send someone a copy of your game when multiple events are involved.

 

[EternalShadow]

It is a waste of cycles, but it interferes with nothing else, has no special switches or anything, and is very simple. I haven't had any performance loss from it (big maps might suffer a problem though) but it is worth a try, especially if there's nothing to lose.

 

[Kes]

@GrandmaDeb

You are absolutely right, and having that run on a PP continuously, even with waits incorporated is not a good idea.  It is also completely unnecessary.  Once a screen has been tinted, that's how it stays until you specifically change the tint to something else (nothing, or a new tint).

If you want to set a tint using a PP, then use set screen tint command, 1 frame, uncheck the 'wait' box.  As you want this tint to load every time you enter the map (or at least that's what's normally wanted) then add the command Erase Event, so that it ceases activity until the next time you load up that map.  Nothing more.

EDIT

@HotfireLegend

We posted more or less simultaneously.  I disagree with you, and I think it is not a good idea to be recommending what is, in effect, bad practice to people.

 

[EternalShadow]

*shrugs* It's worth a try to see if the actual "bug" is being caused by the event, or some script.

 

[LadyHammer]

Thank you guys for all the responses!

I'm pretty sure it's an event interfering with it, because it was doing it before I put in any scripts. I have some Yanfly scripts (Core Engine, Message System, and some battle ones) and a script by Lemony that allows move routes and balloon icons for the followers.

It's frustrating because I massively cut down the map size and made it so that the only events on it were ones for this particular cut scene.

Ah well. I'm just going to continue making my game - and probably give someone a copy of it later on if they want to try and dig through it to see where I went wrong, lol.