Two ideas.. Are they doable?

[thelegendaryX]

I don't know if anyone else has tried either of these things, but here are my thoughts.

1. I don't like the fact that every warp point you place can only take you to one location each. I mean, really, what's the point if travel is so limited. So I've decided to make a dungeon room and call it "Purgatory". It's going to be the destination for every warp point in my game. I'll scatter a bunch of warp points here! When you arrive in Purgatory, you'll have several destinations to choose from.

2. A bit more complex, but maybe possible, I'm going to try a system where the player can replace characters at will. Using a similar room as in the Purgatory idea, I'll make exact replicas of every playable character and place them all around where you (the player) warps in. You'll be first resembled by some "NPC" as you walk about and choose your first party member. Each character will ask "Recruit me?" and if "Yes" is chosen just once, an event to warp out will appear. Of course, I'll replace the NPC with the first chosen character.

So what do you guys think? Am I aiming too high (in that second one, particularly)?

[Ωbright]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Both ideas are totally do-able.

The first one can be done easily, as can the second one...but that one will eat up quite a bit of your 100 characters, I'm afraid. Each 'replica' will take up 1 character, and if you have say 8 playable characters and 10 possible locations, that will be 80 characters right there. That's not counting NPC's, either.

[Wavelength]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Both do-able and not even that hard. I'm even doing something exactly like that second idea in my game. May I recommend you have a variable for each character to track whether or not they are in your party. This will make things a lot easier if down the line if you need to figure out whether a character is "with you" for an event, item gain, etc.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Thank you both for your replies.

Bright, I'll probably have 6 characters, but I won't go through near that much space. I'll simply have one room you warp to when you go to change characters.

Wavelength, I'm yet another poor sob who's totally confused by the whole "variable" thing. If the player tries to add one character twice, nothing'll happen anyway. The only "flaw" would be that, in trying to add a FIFTH character.. would one of the first four just be replaced automatically? Or would the game start glitching. I suppose I could learn about variables if you could give me a step by step, applying them to this situation?

[Wavelength]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Wavelength, I'm yet another poor sob who's totally confused by the whole "variable" thing. If the player tries to add one character twice, nothing'll happen anyway. The only "flaw" would be that, in trying to add a FIFTH character.. would one of the first four just be replaced automatically? Or would the game start glitching. I suppose I could learn about variables if you could give me a step by step, applying them to this situation?

It's most definitely worth it to learn variables before you do any scripting. There's a LOT of help around the site for it, but I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you've got.

The reason I like tracking who is already in your party is, say, if your party splits up into two groups. Based on who is in your party at the time, you can script dialogue to run only from the members of your group at the time. Or let's say you want only the characters who were in a battle to gain experience. After an event battle, you can use the "Add Experience" event command, combined with Value-Conditional branches, to give experience only to those four characters who are in your party at the moment. You can see that while none of these are essential, they can go a long way towards making your story and gameplay creative.

As for the five characters at once thing, that's a good question. I don't know the answer for sure, because I've only set up 3 out of my 6 characters so far. But my guess is that nothing at all would happen when you tried to add the fifth member. You simply wouldn't add them. So if I'm right, it would still technically work to not track things with variables, but it would be a lot better if you did and could say "sorry, your party is already full!" Same goes for if you want to drop the only remaining member of your party. "Sorry, you need to add someone else before you drop me!"

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Okay, so what do I do exactly to make the variable thing work. I need a step by step on what event codes to put in and where, etc. I think that's why people are so easily confused about the variables and all; the manual doesn't really give a detailed example..

[Wavelength]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Okay, so what do I do exactly to make the variable thing work. I need a step by step on what event codes to put in and where, etc. I think that's why people are so easily confused about the variables and all; the manual doesn't really give a detailed example..

That's going to take a while to type up. I could have sworn I've done it a FEW times before, but maybe that was back when I frequented the GameFAQ boards for RM3 (and unfortunately they didn't save threads at the time).

I'll try to give you a good example of code for this in the next couple days; if I don't by Saturday night, then bug me about it.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Hehe, deal! Thanks

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

I did the exact same thing that you seem to be describing! I used 10 playable characters, but it was definatly possible to accomplish!

The main problems that I ran into (and the reason I never finished the game) was that certain characters were not effective until late levels and other characters were godly if leveled much at all. The unbalenced nature of the party became even more unstable when (as a player picking their favorite) characters were taken to multiple locations and/or "power leveled" thus creating a team of veritable juggernauts who can easily wreck anything standing in their way in a matter of rounds.

The only thing I would reccommend is that you have no random battles, or do not give out experience in the random battles. Without the possibility of characters gaining level upon level in all the areas that they aren't supposed to be in, your game will run smoother and have a better all around feel to it.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Thanks, Magus. I'm going to still try and give experience points for random battles. But if necessary, I'll decrease the number of points the enemies give.

Wavelength, I'm starting a new game and I'd still like to get that code, ahem AHEM! lol

[Stormy]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Variables aren't complicated at all. A variable is a 'thing' that stores a value for you. Thats it. Its your job to have that value represent something.

For example:

Lets say you have to defeat at least 5 out of 7 possible monsters scattered around a dungeon in order to escape. These monsters will be in the form of event battles. In the code of the event you will increase some variable, lets say Variable05. 'Variable05' is the name of the variable, the 'thing' or 'object' that holds your value. Think of it as a box or a chunk of dry-erase board. The value of the board would be the number drawn on it. So in the code for the event battle, after the monster is defeated, you will have a line that says

Increase Variable05, or something like that.

Now, in an auto event you will have a script that will remove some kind of obstruction from the path of the party whenever Variable05 is equal to or greater than 5. To check this you would have a code like this:

IF Variable05 > 4 (all numbers bigger than 4, i.e. 5, 6, and 7)
THEN DisplayOff Obstruction01

Or something to that effect. If RM3 doesn't support less than/greater than checks, you will have to check for each of the three valid values of Variable05.

[Wavelength]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Thanks, Magus. I'm going to still try and give experience points for random battles. But if necessary, I'll decrease the number of points the enemies give.

Wavelength, I'm starting a new game and I'd still like to get that code, ahem AHEM! lol

Awesome. I'd thought you had quit with RM3 after the technical problems--I'll try to type it up for you tonight!

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

"You can't keep a good dog dow-ow-ow-own" lol

I appreciate it! And also, I understand variables (or shared variables anyway). What exactly is the difference between internal and shared variables? I can't make sense of the manual's definitions..

[Wavelength]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

There's no functional difference between Shared and Internal variables. The distinction exists purely for the sake of the game maker's organization. You can do the exact same things with both.

I guess there's one tiny difference: shared variables are never deleted, whereas if you delete, say, a character in the editor, you'll also delete its internal variables. So if you need to track certain data about a dungeon, character, etc., it's usually good practice to use that dungeon's/character's internal variables to do so.

---

CHARACTER SWITCHING: Let's say you wanted six different playable characters. And the way you wanted it set up, all six are in a room; plus, when you start the game (or did you mean EVERY time you enter the room? If so, this is easy to do as well...), you instead control a non-playable character until you select your first party member.

Here's the initial setup: create NPC models of the six playable characters, and place them in the room. Because the last thing I read was a book about Tarot, let's call the characters 'The Magician,' 'The Priestess,' 'The Empress,' 'The Emperor,' 'The Hierophant,' and 'The Lover,' and we'll call the initial NPC 'The Fool.'

You'll also need to pick variables to set aside and devote to tracking which characters are in your party. Here's how I would do it:

Shared Var 1 = Tracks Total Number of Characters in Party (starts at 0, and should be equal to the number of members currently in your party)

Magician Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Magician is in your Party
(If Magician Internal Var 1 = 0, he is not in your party. If Magician Internal Var = 1, he is in your party.)
Priestess Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Priestess is in your Party
(If 0, she is not in your party. If 1, she is in your party.)
Empress Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Empress is in your Party
Emperor Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Emperor is in your Party
Hierophant Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Hierophant is in your Party
Lover Internal Var 1 = Tracks whether Lover is in your Party

Set up the Magician NPC's Event Script as follows. It's easier than it looks, because the Conditional Branches require very little effort to set up when you're actually using the software. I've shown each Branch in the same color as its possible results/choices, in order to make things a little easier to follow.

Message: "You know you want me in your group!"
3-way Choice Branch:

Choice: "Add Magician to your Party"
..2-way Var-Conditional Branch:
..If Magician Internal Var 1 = 0: [if Magician is not already in your party]
....2-way Var-Conditional Branch:
....If Shared Var 1 < 4: [if there are less than 4 members already in your party]
......Message: "Sure, I'll help you out. Let's get 'em!"
......Add Party Member: The Magician
......Remove Party Member: The Fool [once anyone joins, we no longer need The Fool as an initial NPC]
......Increase Shared Var 1 by One [to track that one more member has joined the party]
......Set Magician Internal Var 1 equal to "1" [to track that The Magician has joined the party]
....If Shared Var 1 > 3: [if there are already 4 members in your party]
......Message: "I can't join your party if it's full! Remove someone first!"
..If Magician Internal Var 1 = 1: [if Magician is already in your party]
....Message: "I am already in your party! Let's get 'em!"

Choice: "Remove Magician from your Party"
..2-way Conditional Branch:
..If Magician Internal Var = 0: [if Magician is not currently in your party]
....Message: "I'm not in your party right now, so you can't remove me! Nyah!"
..If Magician Intenal Var = 1: [if Magician is currently in your party]
....2-way Conditional Branch:
....If Shared Var 1 = 1: [if Magician is the ONLY member of your party]
......Message: "I'm the only member of your party; you can't remove me! Add someone else first!"
....If Shared Var 1 > 1: [if there are currently at least 2 members in your party]
......Message: "Okay, I'll leave the party. Let me know if you change your mind."
......Remove Party Member: The Magician
......Decrease Shared Var 1 by One [to track that one less member is in the party now]
......Set Magician Internal Var 1 equal to "0" [to track that The Magician is no longer in your party]

Choice: "Never Mind"
[No scripting necessary for this option.]


Then do the same for the Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, and Lover. As a quick example, here's what the "Add Priestess to your Party" part of the Priestess event would look like:

Choice: "Add Priestess to your Party"
..2-way Var-Conditional Branch:
..If Priestess Internal Var 1 = 0: [if Priestess is not already in your party]
....2-way Var-Conditional Branch:
....If Shared Var 1 < 4: [if there are less than 4 members already in your party]
......Message: "Okay, I'll do what I can to help you out there!"
......Add Party Member: The Priestess
......Remove Party Member: The Fool [once anyone joins, we no longer need The Fool as an initial NPC]
......Increase Shared Var 1 by One [to track that one more member has joined the party]
......Set Priestess Internal Var 1 equal to "1" [to track that The Priestess has joined the party]
....If Shared Var 1 > 3: [if there are already 4 members in your party]
......Message: "Looks like the party's too crowded. I can join if you remove someone first..."
..If Priestess Internal Var 1 = 1: [if Priestess is already in your party]
....Message: "Thanks for the confidence, but I'm already in your party!"

---

Okay, I hope that helped! Let me know if there's anything in particular that's confusing, or if you wanted to do something slightly different.

I'm having a bit of a brain leak here; I can't remember whether the first member of your party is automatically the "leader" you see on the map, or whether you can set the leader via events... and I don't have my PS2 plugged in at the moment. If it's something you set manually, I can add in a bit of scripting to allow the player to set that as well or to have it default to the first person the player picks. Just let me know if you want to see that.

The really cool thing about tracking who is in your party, is that you've given your game "knowledge" that it wouldn't normally have. So you could script an event before a boss battle to show dialogue from only the four members in your party, or, after a battle, boost the stats of only the members who fought in the battle.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Two ideas.. Are they doable?

Ok, that sounds great! Thank you Wavelength!

Yes, I want it so the player is given the option to change characters every time they enter the room through a nexus of warp points (I hate that the warp points don't give you a list of places to warp, so I made them all warp to the same nexus, where the player can choose their next destination).