NPC to dissappear completely.

[Mr. Detective]

Hi guys,

I have a parallel process that displays balloon icons above the NPCs that you can talk to. There is this one NPC who the player needs to talk to, then he would walk to a transportation tile, and dissappear. I did this by changing his sprite to "none" in the "Set Move Route" option. But then, the parallel process event still displays a balloon icon right where he left.

How do I fix this?

 

[Shaz]

Use switches. Make your parallel process NOT display the balloon after the NPC has disappeared.

 

[Tsaiuki North]

After he teleports, just set self-switch A(or any other), with a new empty event page with the condition of (self-switch).

If you want him to be only gone temporarily (until you leave the map), you can use the erase event after he teleports instead. 

 

[Mr. Detective]

Use switches. Make your parallel process NOT display the balloon after the NPC has disappeared.

Using another switch just for that small cutscene? Yikes... Guess I have no choice, huh?

After he teleports, just set self-switch A(or any other), with a new empty event page with the condition of (self-switch).

If you want him to be only gone temporarily (until you leave the map), you can use the erase event after he teleports instead. 

Neither of these actually fix the issue, though.

 

[Shaz]

If you're using two events to do something (one to show the NPC and one to show the balloon) and you want it to stop at some point, you need a way to tell both events when to stop doing it. That's exactly what switches are for


The other thing I do when you have a sequence of things that need to happen in a certain order, is to use a variable and increment it for each step. Then I can make all involved events reference the same variable, even though I want them to do different things at different points through the quest (or cutscene). So it's not a switch making EVERYTHING do something different at the same time, but it does keep the number of switches used down to a more manageable level.


For example, if I had a quest or cutscene that had 9 steps and I wanted some events to do different things at each step, I could either use 9 switches, or I could use 1 variable and make it go from 1 to 9.

 

[Tsaiuki North]

Wait.

Are your balloon bubbles being controlled by one external event, outside of the character event itself?

Nevermind. I see what's going on. Though I don't know how to fix it yet.

Ok, here's a question:

Is this npc the only one on the map that is using this?

If there are multiples than i'm not sure what to do.

But if this npc is the only one on the map that has this balloon icon, then you can use either a switch, or a variable. Either one, I don't see an issue with really. 

 

[Mr. Detective]

No, there are 5-6 more NPCs with balloon icons.

Well, I have never used variable before, so perhaps this is a good time to start. I'll try it and see what happens.

 

[Tsaiuki North]

Spoiler

I'm not sure why you're so concerned about not using a switch.

Also, if you wanted to use a variable, for progression, like Shaz said, you could replace that conditional switch with a variable = 0, and once the person teleports, have them set the variable regarding it, to 1. That will do the same thing. But you could also continue to use that same variable to progress with every event afterwards, rather than additional switches.

 

[Shaz]

He's not "concerned" about using a switch. He's hesitant to use it for such a simple thing, because when you do use switches for simple things like this, you start to accumulate a lot of switches. Not necessarily a bad thing (unless you have so many that it starts to affect performance), but it's always nice to simplify and minimize, if organization is important to you

 

[Mr. Detective]

Yeah. I used variable and it worked nicely.

Thanks, guys!

 

[Shaz]

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