Retain items

[RipSkinned]

Is there any way to make a system where you can load a previous save and retain the items you already have?
i am making a time-travel story and I want my character to, at some point, gain an item in the present, go back in time (in-game) and use that item.
Another way I thought of is an event that turns off all switches needed to “go back” without necessarily going through the whole save/load thing. But I don’t know if that’s too convoluted.
Maybe there is a plugin that can do something close to this? Is it too pretentious maybe?

 

[bgillisp]

Usually that is just via eventing to send the character back to that part with their stuff and such. You'd need to reset any variables and switches that need to be done, and that will need to be done manually by you.

 

[Nowis-337]

If you want to look into the meta effect of having things carry over between save files, you can look into VisuStella Save core with "global switches/variables" function and maybe find a way to add those items into the inventory based on those carried-over values.

Save Core VisuStella MZ - Yanfly.moe Wiki

www.yanfly.moe

 

[RipSkinned]

Usually that is just via eventing to send the character back to that part with their stuff and such. You'd need to reset any variables and switches that need to be done, and that will need to be done manually by you.

That’s great for retaining the items. Now. I’d like to make it so that you can freely choose specific points where you can rewind time at any time (lol) instead of being fixed moments. As in, I have an item in my inventory that I can always use that makes me rewind time to certain points in the story.
any ideas as to how to make the eventing so that the item makes me choose to go back in time?

For example:
I am in a house that has a closed door. I find a book and i have two choices. Read the book or go to the last page. If I read the book, the story advances, I am transferred to another place and I never get to open that closed door.
if I look at the last page, I gain the key to the door, but the story also continues and I can’t return to the house.
It is possible to rewind time to before I grab the book, retaining the key if I choose to go back.
So I have to use the item that rewinds time to go back in time to before I even grab the book and use that key I gained on the closed door.

kinda like life is strange but not quite

 

[Nowis-337]

If you just view the "progress" in a game usually is controlled by what switches turn on/off / selfswitches of events / variables - you'll just have to keep track on what those values are and reverse them accordingly based on how far back you time travel (probably helps if you have organised those variables well)

You can switch off self switches with either script calls or with VisuStella EventMoveCore plugin commands.

Google Sheet of Scriptcalls

 

[Frogboy]

One typical way of tracking progress through an RPG Maker game is to have a single variable that tracks what part of the story the player is at. You just increment by one each time a new point in the plot is reached. If you want to be safe, increment by 5, 10, 50 or 100 just in case you decide to add in extra story elements while you're making the game. Give yourself some wiggle room.

If you need to go back in time like you describe, you'll also need a common event you can call that will reset all of the switches and variables to their default states each time the "plot" or "story" variable (or whatever you decide to call it) changes. So you'd basically have a bunch of IF statements that said...

IF plot < 10
Switch 5 = OFF
Switch 6 = OFF
Variable 15 = 0
etc.
END

IF plot < 20
...
END

... and so on. Tedious for sure but still probably the best way to do it. Even if you don't do time travel, this kind of functionality is useful for testing most games that aren't open world. The real tricky part is handling Self Switches and removing gear if that needed.

 

[RipSkinned]

Thanks, both of you.