Question about how to set up events for Yanfly's Gab Window plugin

[ddblue]

Hello everyone!

I really love the idea of Yanfly's Gab Window, and while I understand its basic operation, I am a little confused about how we're meant to set up the gab events. I watched Yanfly's tutorial and another YouTube tutorial, but both kinda skip over this part.

Are the events meant to be parallel processes? Or do we hide them around the map to trigger when the player walks over them like little conversation landmines?

I should clarify that I'm aware that having a parallel process that triggers when the party enters a map could work, but depending on certain player choices, party make-up will differ... so I was hoping to do conditional statements like, "If Harold is in party, run x gab". I also know that ideally players would step over a spot that would trigger a gab, but I have a lot of overworld / field type maps, and it's not really easy / natural for my game to force players to walk over 1 single square to trigger a bit of conversation.

What is the best way to go about this? Basic operation of this plugin is straightforward enough, but how do I do the eventing efficiently?

Suggestions and feedback greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

The plugin can be found here:
http://yanfly.moe/2015/12/18/yep-46-gab-window/

 

[caethyril]

A parallel event is good if you want the chat to start playing the moment you enter a map. Don't forget to end it with an Erase Event command (if you want it to play every time you enter the map) or a switch/variable to change the event page (if you want it to only run once). Other event triggers are just as valid, though: "conversation landmines" in particular are quite popular.

The Conditional Branch command has a "Actor in party" option if that's what you were seeking. ^_^

Maybe something like Yanfly's Region Events plugin could help reduce the number of events necessary? You don't even need a separate "gab" common event per map, since you can check (via a variable) what the current map ID is by using another Conditional Branch command.

 

[ddblue]

What a great reply - thank you!
The Erase Event command is extremely valuable in a case like this - thank you for that advice!

I'm curious, the second half of what you said - using Yanfly's Region Events - I actually use this plugin already for other reasons. Could you elaborate a bit more on how I might use it in this situation?

 

[caethyril]

Whoops, I ought to check back here more often.

With the regions: I just think drawing a line/block of regions rather than a whole load of events might make things neater. I imagine you'd be using common events anyway, so as to have one Common Event command per "landmine" event rather than each one having a copy of the same gab commands...that makes things much easier to maintain! In that case you don't really lose anything with the region events approach. You'd still need some switch/variable sort of thing to track what's been said, unless you're using the Erase Event thing.

The map thing I mentioned should be fairly simple: you can set a variable equal to the ID of the current map, and check the value of that variable to see what map-specific gab should be going on here. Depending on what you want to be said (and when), it could be that you don't need any map checks, e.g. maybe you only want the gabs to depend on a "story" variable and a couple of other checks like who is currently in the party.

Also: depending on how many gabs you have, you may want to consider splitting it into several common events, just for ease of management.