RM made visual novel(s) and menu access?

This thread is to discuss alternative ways (and hopefully find a good method) to allow the player access to the menu (especially save/load feature) when playing a pure VisualNovel or text adventures made in RPG Maker MV.

If you don’t understand the dilemma, consider this. Making a VN (or text adventure) in RM basically means you’ll have one (or more) events run ”show text”/”show picture” commands without break. And if my memory serves me right, while you’re caught in such an event you can’t normally access the menu. You’re ”stuck”.

And that’s a HUGE problem.

For most VN’s, being able to save and load anywhere is a key functionallity. And being able to access the option menu whenever would also be considered a must. Ring able to access your inventory or other stuff would be good as well. How would one get around this, or at the very least, event the game flow so if you can’t access it always then almost always?

Is there Maybe some good example of what people have already done out there? Let’s diacuss!

 

This sounds like an engine-specific implementation question to me, so let's move it:

I've moved this thread to MV Support. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

If you're not doing anything to modify the engine of RPG Maker to turn your game into a VN, you should probably spring for the much more suitable format of VN Maker. Short of that, a few approaches you could take are:

• Implement Autosave. I believe there are a few competent autosave plugins out there right now, and as a bonus you could use this as a counter-measure to save scumming if the game offers Choices.
• Have brief "loading" screens every couple of minutes where the game shows a picture that shows "loading" for a few seconds. Allow the player to access the menu during this time.
• Use Show Picture commands rather than Show Text commands to show the normal VN game text (actually create the pictures of the text in GIMP/Photoshop/whatever and import them into your game as PNGs). This also comes with the advantage of allowing for much stronger presentation and more easily-readable text, though it makes it harder to do "dynamic" text (e.g. Name Entry) and takes much longer to edit if you want to change your writing later on.
• Get (or create) a plugin to allow menu access during text boxes.

 

I have made use of Krimer's Call Menu for this before: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/call-menu-during-messages.101958/

 

I made a very simple visual novel where I ran into this issue. It was mostly for the player to be able to save the game and access options, but what I did was that during different scene breaks I would have a 'continue' or 'menu' option, as well as allowing access to the settings every time a selection could be made. It was rather...interesting to program as it required me to make sure that after opening the menu the game jumped to a label before the 'show choices command that allowed it to loop back and so that when the game was loaded it was loaded back to those show choices.

Honestly, it was a mess.

If you haven't already, Galv's Visual Novel Choices is a nice https://galvs-scripts.com/2016/03/14/mv-visual-novel-choices/

Spoiler: Link to my VN Game

https://meikekima.itch.io/waffle-cone

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

@Wavelength
Thank you. And nice suggestions. I own VN maker (it even says ”primary uses:VN Maker” in my profile), but I’ve found that the engine has a lot of problems compared to RM. RM has a lot better performance and plugin support as well, and there is the battle system if you want to make a hybrid VN. Still, for a short simple VN, VN Maker might still be better.

The use picture command for text is a neat workaround but like you said, a lot of work. Even a short VN could have hundred if not thousands of pictures of text if one went with that method, but it does circumvent the problem.

Auto-saving was the first thing I thought about but it doesn’t solve the problem of loading so I’d say it’s an incomplete solution. Although that being said, auto saving is still a neat feature for any VN and I’d recommend using Yanfly’s plugin for that.

@WaywardMartian
Right, there is that plugin as well. I had forgotten about it, even though I’ve commented in the thread and all. Silly me. Would you say there is any downside to using this plugin? Besides that it doesn’t remember what choice you have selected if you save and load the game (that’s a very minor issue)?

@Meike
That does sound messy. Not ideal to event and not ideal for the player either since they still can’t jump go to the menu whenever they want. For something like limiting save/load functionallity, you can design your game around that. But not allowong the player into the options menu to adjust volymer/text speed and what not will come across as a slight annoyance (at best).

But, it’s a clever work around non the less.

—————

So far, I’d say Krimer’s plugin might look like the best resolution if it doesn’t have any unforseen compabillity issues. Otherwise, while a lot of work, @Wavelength ’s text as picture solution might also be a good one,

 

@Parallax Panda I don't recall having any issues with the plug-in when I used it. I don't remember noticing any 'it forgets my choices' problems but it might have been I never activated it right after a choice. It's been a year since I've played with it.

 

It works just fine. I've used it before and after choices. Haven't run into any problem.

 

@WaywardMartian
The loss should only appear if you move the select marker to another choice than the default (without actually pressning to select) and save, then load. The choice you had marked for selection will not be market anymore. Instead the default choice will be. Very small detail. But yeah, it’s there.

@kako05
Good to hear.

 

Try making default dialogue choice: none?

 

@kako05
I don't think it's a bug in the plugin since the creator is aware of it. It's more likely something that can't be helped due to how MV handles it's scenes (I think). He did manage to fix the same error from occurring after you accessed the menu though so I dunno.

@Meike
Also, just now realized you had put screenshots of your eventing and a link to your game in spoilers. Thank you for the examples, that's really nice