Saving during an autorun event.

[Rpg Guy]

I'm working on making a visual novel game and I've encountered an annoying issue.

I can get the save menu to come up and I can save the game without issue. My problem comes when I work on the game.

The game is basically a string of autorun events and when I save; IF I work on the event before play testing again, the background defaults to the original parallax: the one set in the map editor, and the event does not update with what I did.

The only way to get everything to work correctly is if I start a new game each time I make changes.

I have over 15 minutes of game play and it's not fun to have to play through the whole game again every time I make a change. Is there any way to fix this?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Tommy Gun]

It would help to know a bit more about how your game works. Are you using multiple maps? Do you walk around, or is it all text and stuff? Maybe post a screenshot of an event so people can get an idea.

 

[Rpg Guy]

I had everything on one map and ran it through autorun events. To change the background I used the "change parallax background" event.

However I have changed my game to use multiple maps, one for each parallax image, this solved that issue.

My save problem is still something I haven't been able to solve. I've set up script calls to autosave the game at different points. The entire game is run fully through autorun events and is only text, but if I save the game durring a playtest no changes I make in the editor after will take effect unless I start a new game.

I believe; though I haven't tested it a lot, that that issue only happens if I edit the same event that the save was made durring.

Please let me know if I need to elaborate more, I'd post screen shots but I'm not really sure how to show that problem in a screen shot.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Well, I don't know if this technique would help with your game, but you could set an autorun event on each map:

- run a condition that checks to see if you've started from the beginning (check if a basic variable has been set), if not:

- set all variables/switches for that point in the game

This lets you START your character on a map further into the game, and playtest from there. If you have a really complex game, then this would be a pain. But if you're changing events that would affect your save game, I'm not sure there's really a way around that (except maybe editing your save file).

Someone else may have a much better solution.

 

[Rpg Guy]

Thank you, but I don't think that would work. I have to many branching pieces of the story. I don't think that would be doable in my game.

This is doubtful but does anyone know of a script call; or any other way, to have an event re-freash itslef upon loading the game without the play-tester losing their place in the event?