What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

[Rodak]

Wow, I used my first icon! I always hated those things, but I figure "know your enemy!" is a healthy attitude!

Anyway:

Has anyone found a good use for the duplicate command in RPGM2?

I was playing with the commands I had been ignoring just to see what I was missing and found many questions about this command. First thing I did was to just tell it to duplicate a character 1X, 1Y, 0Z away. I wound up with a train of that character!

Trying to make the best of it I thought I could populate a town with scripts that would change the character model depending on it's X or Y coordinate and spread the separation out. That just did not work. They all acted based on the coordinate of the placed event.

So then I thought I could save a ton of memory by making a single block building and duplicating it for the floor of a dungeon. Apparently this command works only with Characters or Objects, not buildings.

Which lead me to question what this command is used for.

Anybody?

[The Final Rune]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

Wish I knew. My experience with RPGM2 scripts is just above the eye level of a slug. WilliamKirk or DungeonWarden might know. Hopefully they'll come this way today and we can both find out.

[Crimson Knight]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

DW uses it in his waitressing game I think. I do know what to do with that command, but I think I'll let DW fill you in, I'm kind of foggy ATM.

[Rodak]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

Ya know, sometimes just asking can be enough. While I was off working (yes I actually do that!) it occurred to me to use it for a nice cloudy sky (many clouds moving east-west or north-south for 1 event's worth of memory) or many little fishies in the ocean under your boat (the wander motion does work with this and all duplicates wander differently), or even a row of guards or judges or something contained in a building with limited camera rotation so the ones that run too far to one side are blocked.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but I'm still interested in what other people do with this weird command.

======

EDIT: Or Birdies! Lots of Birdies in the sky for the cost of 1 lousy Boid!

[The Final Rune]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

I need to go home and play with this command. It sounds promising.

[WarDragon]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

oh this command is very helpful indeed

[Rodak]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

oh this command is very helpful indeed

Yes, I'm sure it is.

Now how about letting the rest of us in on just how this command is very helpful indeed? It would be appreciated.

[Dungeon Warden]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

The duplicate event command is used to make duplicates of any normal event. If an onscreen event has the duplicate command in its script, the new event will appear relative to the old one (these need not be the same event, but they can be). If you use the duplicate command in a system event, the new event appears relative to position 0,0.

This command is useful when you want several identical events to appear and disapear independent of each other. It saves memory and makes the temporary removal command far more useful. Using temporary removal on a duplicated event removes it premanately (until duplicated again) put doesn't effect other duplicated events.

Duplicated events act as the same event in their action scripts but as different events in the content scripts. I don't want to take a lot of time to explain what I did in my waitressing mini-game, but I used duplicated events to create 24 different customers that came and went independent of each other. If you play my game, it would be easy to think I created 24 different events, but the events will continue to appear over and over in random order.

Anyway, the duplicate event command is a powerful, but tempormental option that can be used to save memory when you want several identical events to appear. Not everyone will find this useful, but it's there if you need it.

[The Final Rune]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

This would be great for creating townies in our games.

[Rodak]

Re: What's the "Duplicate" command in RPGM2 for?

Thanks, Dungeon Warden, for the clear explanation. I didn't expect you to reveal all your tricks, but what you said really helped. I had not considered using conditions and different models to save memory!

I re-read my earlier post and noticed I forgot to mention a few things that probably made me seem like I did not know what I was talking about. First, to get the long trains of characters I had it in a repeat loop. This must have been obvious, but not saying so was dumb! Oops.

The ideas I had while working (Birdies, Fishies and Clouds) are all useless! Ya can't have flying things move without snapping to the ground and even with "bypass objects" the fish do not swim in the water. Oh well.

Here's something that did work out well: I set the wander to a really long distance at a very low frame rate (with the bypass members motion). Then I started a repeat loop (Repeat:Flag 00 constant off: Off) and told it to duplicate a tiny fishy at X1;Y1;Z0. I placed this in a dungeon and had what looked like tiny mice running all around!

Anybody else find any simple but cool uses for this?