[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.][[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]We're looking pretty good already. One thing to note: RPG Maker XP has layers for its graphics - the ground is
layer 1, the flowers and some of the trees are
layer 2 and everything else is
layer 3.
You have to be careful about your layering because improper use can mess up the graphics.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Cat?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]They spawned a little kitty! Excellent.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]"I only say this message if Max is in your party."Conditional Branches can be used to check something through variables and switches, even going as far as checking if a playable character is on your active team.
I'll provide a more complete example with the big purple golem man below.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Oh good, I needed some help to explain this.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]We'll be covering switches first because it's actually the backbone of how the system works.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]"... Actually, I'll let Dan talk more about this one after he posts this screenshot up."Gah, you worthless swine.
Oh well.
Regular Switches are little tabs that the entire game (not just the one event it's activated on) uses to keep track of overall events. They can be used to activate other events... like the cat that was just summoned!
Get comfortable using them and think outside of the box, cause you'll need it.
Some more examples of Switch usage -
* Let's say you have a dungeon door that can only be opened with a key or two. Grabbing the keys will activate the switch needed to open the door.
* A more straightforward example like stepping on a button that opens a door in the same room
... And with that, let's talk Variables!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]First let's start off with some simple text code. As it says above, \c[x] is the code used to define text color. You gotta be careful with this one because you also have to put \c[0] at the end of the colored text so it doesn't spread to the rest of the text.
Like - \c[2]Bepis is good\c[0].
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Variables are different kinds of switches in that they utilize number-work.
From what I understand, this will allow you do to a bunch of stuff like create a bank where you can store money, create a calculator, or even a monster kill count before you can be allowed to access the next area.
I will refer again to Mr. Purple Golem Man for an example below, but this is just to show you what the text-code looks like. (Because RPG Maker XP doesn't have hint messages pop up when you hover over the options.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]This is useful because if you have a character that has a different name than the default (via. name inputting), this is how you can refer to them.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Like let's say 1 is Max because he's the team leader. But if you change it later with a different person, 1 would refer to that new actor as opposed to Max.
For example, let's say you put a Pokemon in the first slot of the fangame - it can refer to them like those sequences in Gen 7 where they directly addressed the Pokemon leading your party.
NPC:
"I'm activating a chest event for you to take notes."[A treasure chest appears above her]Oh snap!
What she did was set a variable to 5, which spawns the chest.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Hell yeah, it works.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]It's also empty for extra measure so you can't just keep grabbing stuff out of it.
Oh right there was another part I forgot to screenshot:
Common Events!These are extremely useful events that can be activated
anywhere, and oftenly through items and stuff. They allow dialogue to happen from like the menu, or something. (Which you can't do through, say, an event on a specific map.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]"I'll demonstrate."[Creepy doll pops out of existence][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Uh...
Okay. I'll just reset the map and...
[Transitions to another map][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Yep, she's right!
This is a huge beginner mistake - Erase Event only deletes the event from the map, as reloading the map by exiting and entering will regenerate it. However, setting a Self Switch can prevent that.
Control Self Switch makes it so that the event is able to recognize something has changed and keeps track of it when you open a new page (assuming you activate it on the next event page.) This is what prevents treasure chests from being re-opened for infinite items and allows characters to have new dialogue.
There are a maximum of 4 Self Switches - A, B, C and D.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Of course, my good man.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]This is the Number Input command - it's as straightforward as it seems and you can determine how many digits are needed (this is only two).
By itself it does nothing, but when you assign a conditional branch to it...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]"WE HAVE A WINNER - TAKE THESE FANTASTIC PRIZES!"Oh, I got it right?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Good shit. (
Now if only getting a Switch in real life was this easy.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Tomorrow? You have more prizes?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]... I, uh... This sure is turning into Earthbound.
[Max walks through the door, only to be teleported to the center of the screen]That was fun, I guess.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Talking to the angel lady brings up these choices -
Transparency is a player thing. It basically turns you completely invisible, which is useful for sequences where you don't want the player to be seen... like a cutscene with a completely different character or an intro cutscene.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Choosing "how about you" turns her partially invisible. This is due to changing her opacity to 125, which is useful for spooky ghost type encounters... or holograms.
That was fun and all but let's go deeper into what makes the game tick. What's the meat and potatoes of all these events?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The chest event for example! This is a relatively simple event that I... actually want you to copy, paste and modify for items in your proper game.
Me and Nyx have it a bit easier because if we really want to, we have a shortcut to make these events quick and easy... but copy and pasting the same event wouldn't hurt much.
Here's the options and what they mean -
Priority and Trigger:
- Action Button - You have to press the action button to activate the event (for me it's Enter or Z)
- Player Touch - You have to walk into it. This is how passageways without doors should work, because pressing the action button when you're on stairs seems counter-intuitive.
- Event Touch - This means the same thing as Player Touch but you don't have to actually press a button to activate it. This is more for a specific NPC that chases you, like a robot down a hallway.
- Autorun - The event automatically plays out regardless of player or environment input. Useful for cutscenes.
- Parallel Process - From my understanding, Parallel Process repeats an event over and over regardless of player input but doesn't have the priority that Autorun has. Like a bell sound effect playing over and over - that sort of thing.
Movement, Pt. 1:
- Move Animation - The character has a walking animation when they move. If you turn this off, they'll slide around like a ghost.
- Stop(?) Animation - Stepping animation, dunno how they typo'd that. Stepping Animation means the character has an active idle animation.
- Direction Fix - The character is always facing a certain direction. Good for chests and signs, and it can be disabled as seen above.
- Through - Means that the event can be walked through. Good for that button event I mentioned.
- Always on Top - Means the event's sprite is layered above yours. Good for hanging lanterns and stuff like that.
Movement, Pt. 2:
- This decides the autonomous movement of the event.
- Fixed - The event stays still by default
- Random - As it says.
- Approach - The event walks towards the player.
- Custom - Whatever you want. Works the same as the "move route" function.
- Speed - Defines how fast an event is. (4 is normal speed, 6 is crazy fast, 1 is lethargic.)
- Frequency - How often the character moves.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]See, when you open the chest, it has a second page where the activated
Self Switch: A decides it'll be forever empty. Keep this in mind when you make events, especially the ones that are supposed to give new dialogue.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Here's the door event from before. I recommend you copy and paste this one too, because you'll be needing it a lot.
Normal transfer events (i.e from one map to another, no doors or anything) don't really need all of this, just that you have to set them as "Player Touch" so the playable character doesn't need to press a button to proceed.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Here's the Purple Golem Man and his Conditional Branch. Getting it right or wrong will activate the self-switch, but simply refusing will not.
The Number Input directly influences the branch, so use this as a base for any password system you have in mind... or any other event, let's be real.
This is a very powerful tool that I hope you get the hang of, because it can add a lot of depth to your eventing skills.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Now let's move onto the actual Database, shall we?
This is where actors are stored. I used Max because... yeah, this is the engine where his original game came from. Max's Journey was the first RPG Maker game I ever made (arguably even before any Starlit Heroics, funnily enough) and he was the title character.
The colored graphs determine different stats, but this isn't actually where status ailments and stuff is stored.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]... This is actually where it goes!
Classes determine what items you can and can equip, although this is kind of a clusterfuck let's be real. Me and Nyx have it easier because all of this is simplified through item categories... but I guess this could be more flexible if you really need it.
Elemental affinities are... quite a bit different. In RPG Maker VX Ace and onward, you can set it to be a percentage... but here you have letters.
C is neutral, D and downwards is ineffective, and B and onwards is effective damage. I'm not sure how this works with Essentials, but just keep it in mind, yeah?
(The same applies to the states - which by the way are the "status effects" of the game.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Here's the skills for you. Heal does negative damage to heal, apparently.
Dex-F is... I'm not quite sure, but PDEF is physical defense and MDEF is magical defense.
Variance is min-max damage - like hoping Hyper Beam will only do enough to leave you with 1 HP. Putting variance at zero means it will always do that exact damage, barring enemy defenses don't interfere.
The common event thing is useful because what if you want an item/skill that lets you fly, as opposed to having a Pokemon use fly (ala. the flute from ORAS.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Ditto for the items, although there's some things that need to be clarified here.
Occasion:
- Always - Can be used in the overworld and battle
- Only in battle - Duh
- From the menu - Can only be used on the overworld
- Never - Cannot be used. Useful for key items when combined with "Consumable: No", since there's no difference in base RPG Maker XP.
Parameter permanently increases a stat of your choice, like HP, Attack, etc.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Enemies are more or less the same, just that if you need an attack to be effective, tag them with "A". Not sure if attacks can be completely nullified, but whatever.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Troops are how enemies are actually arranged where random battles and direct battles are concerned.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]And finally we get to the states themselves. Nonresistance is a weird one because I think it means it can't be blocked.
If you want to cut a stat in half, set it to 50%. If you want to boost a stat to double what it was, set it to 200%. Regard as HP = 0 is a feature I'm jealous of because I had to install a script to make that happen.
Rating is status priority - statuses are replaced if the priority is higher.
Slip damage is damage that's applied on the overworld - think Poison from Pokemon before Gen 5.
Other things I didn't cover with screenshots:
Tint Screen allows you to change the brightness/color tint of the screen. This will also affect how combat situations work, so be careful with what you choose.
The
Common Events tab is where you go to make them. It has three triggers - none, aka. triggered when called.
Autorun which automatically activates when say, a switch is triggered. Ditto for
Parallel Process. (Both of these are good for activating an event no matter what map you're on.)
Tileset which determines the solidity of objects on the overworld. Bush tags means it has the "tall grass" effect. You can even set the specific directions of objects (like not being able to walk through a bench.)
I hope you guys have enjoyed this as much as I have and maybe I've helped teach you something about how this all works.
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