About Despain

Jason “despain” Perry has been using RPG Maker for over a decade, and in that time his articles, tutorials, and graphical resources have helped countless RPG Maker users on community forums. He currently runs the website finalbossblues.com, where he co-hosts an RPG Maker podcast and regularly posts new articles and tutorials.

Tracking Time in Common Events

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Despain

Yo. Uncle Despain here, with my newest RPG Maker VX Ace tutorial. Last time around, we made a bank where the player is able to store and withdraw gold. A lot of people have been asking about adding interest, so today’s tutorial will explain a way to do that. And more!

What we’re going to learn today is how to track time in common events. It’s easier than you might imagine—in fact, it’s super simple. The important thing about the idea is what to do with it.

When you can track the passage of time, you can add a tremendous amount of interesting mechanics to your game. I mentioned interest for your bank. You can expand the same idea for all sorts of other things—growing plants for a farm/planting system, items that level up as time passes. A day/night system, or weather, or seasons. All of these mechanics are possible with a simple common event that allows the game to keep track of time.

So let’s take a look. This is the most basic way to accomplish the idea.

(click for full view)

Ridiculously easy, right? As simple as this event is, let’s take a moment to look at what it does.

You understand how common events work—we went over those in a previous tutorial. So we know that this event will continually run in the background while the player is exploring your game world.

Every ten seconds, this event increases a variable. In this example, the variable is called “Hours”, but it can be anything you want. Don’t feel the need to measure time in longer “hours”—even if that’s what you name your variable, the player doesn’t see it. We’re just tracking time, and I smaller increments allows for more accurate tracking. You’ll see that, in this example, we wait ten seconds before an “hour” passes.

Of course, that amount of time can be changed—you might want to wait a minute, or more. All you’ve got to do is add more wait commands. Remember that one frame is one sixtieth of a second, so a sixty-frame wait will be about one second.

This is the only most basic way of tracking time. You might want to add a little more depth to the idea, so let’s consider tracking minutes and hours together.

This version uses two variables. If you understand conditional branches, it’s pretty straightforward. Every sixty frames (every second), the event goes into a conditional branch. If sixty minutes have passed, it adds to the hour variable and resets the minute counter. If not, it adds a minute. In this version, a “minute” passes every second, and an hour passes every sixty seconds. You might want to change that for your game—it’s just a matter of changing the number in the conditional branch, or changing the wait commands.

That’s all it takes to track time in your game. The parallel process common event will continually loop in the background of your game. Remember that you can turn it off with its Condition Switch, so you can make sure that time doesn’t pass when your player is in a cutscene. Just remember to turn it back on afterwards.

“Sure, that’s cool”, you say. “But what do I do with it?”

In my next tutorial, we’ll dive a little deeper. We’ll make a simple day/night system, and we’ll add interest to our bank account every day that passes. Stay tuned. And happy game making.

The RPG Maker Marriage Proposal

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Despain

RPG Maker is changing lives. Redditor Marchaka proposed to his new fiancé by creating a game in RPG Maker VX Ace.

Michelle’s Quest is a fun, short game in the classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest style that RPG fans love. It has about four hours of gameplay. Personal touches like the censored snake (Michele hates snakes), inside jokes, and plenty of humorous video game references give Michele’s Quest a unique charm. The game led her to four real-life keys that opened a locked chest, and when she opened it, Marchaka appeared behind her and popped the question. No wonder she said “yes” to such an unforgettable experience.

The best part? How easy it was to make the game! Michele’s Quest wouldn’t have been possible without RPG Maker VX Ace. Marchaka created the entire game in less than a week, but says that “it would have taken years” without RPG Maker.

Marchaka has been kind enough to share his game online. You can download Michele’s Quest here.

Whether you have a special someone to propose to, or you want to craft your own world and adventure, RPG Maker VX Ace is the perfect tool. Marchaka said it himself: “You don’t need to know any programming languages to make a game”. Have an idea? Dive right in!

Create your own game with RPG Maker VX Ace. Buy it today for only $69.99.

Creating a Bank

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Despain

Howdy! Your friend Despain here, with another RPG Maker VX Ace tutorial. Today, we’re going to be using variables and conditional branches to create a simple bank event. The player will be able to check his current balance, or deposit or withdraw money. A banking system like this can add depth to your game, especially if you want to encourage your player to manage his finances.

This is what the event will look like when we are done with it:

(click the image for a full view)

This event is going to use three variables. You can create them with the Control Variables event command, under the Game Progression category on the first page of event commands. Continue reading →

Password Input using Actor Names

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Despain

Yo, Despain here with my latest RPG Maker VX Ace tutorial. Today I’m going to show you how to create a password—and I’m not talking about the Input Number type of password. We’re going to be creating an event where the player can enter an actual text password, and we can do that by using the Name Input Processing event command.

The Name Input Processing command will call up a screen where the player can create a name for an actor. It’s mostly used to give the player the chance to make up new names for the heroes. But like most all event commands in RPG Maker VX Ace, it can be used for more than that.

The first thing you want to do is create a dummy actor in the database. This actor shouldn’t be used anywhere else in the game—he can’t join the party. Don’t worry about his graphics, class, features—the only thing we care about is his name.

Now that your dummy actor has been made, you can create your event. You’ll find the Name Input Processing command on page 3 of the event commands, under the Scene Control category.

Choose the dummy actor. For the sake of this example, I’ve named him PASSWORD. Note that the name of the actor will be displayed by default when the Name Input Processing screen appears in-game, so you might want to give this actor a blank name.

The max characters field should be easy to understand. When I use this command to create a password functionality, I always make sure that the amount of characters is equal to the length of the password. That way, it avoids potentially confusing the player.

The Name Input Processing command will change the selected actor’s name to whatever the player enters. Now, if we use a conditional branch, we can check that actor’s name. In this way, we are able to simulate a password function.

You’ll find the Conditional Branch event command on page 1 of the event commands, under the Flow Control category.

On page 2 of the Conditional Branch box, you’ll be able to check an actor, and you can check to see is he has a specific name. All you need to do is type the password into this box. The conditional branch will essentially read “if the player entered whatever as the password”.

Here’s something worth noting: the name field of the conditional branch is case-sensitive. That means that it cares if the player enters the proper capital letters. You can avoid this by using additional conditional branches in the “else” space, and check other instances of the password (for example, Hello, hello and HELLO). For the sake of the example, we’re going to keep it simple. The player will have to enter Hello in order to continue.

This is what my event looks like.

If the player enters the password correctly, the guard will tell the player that he can pass. Otherwise, he’ll tell the player to turn back.

This example doesn’t really do anything after the player enters the correct password. The guard might move out of the way, or it might transfer the player immediately. You might even want to add a cutscene. This event also doesn’t use a switch or a self switch—yet. You would normally use a switch of some kind to prevent the player from entering the password multiple times. If you want to learn about how to use switches, check out my tutorial here.

This is what the Name Input Processing screen looks like in-game.

The face is the face of the selected actor—the actor whose name we are changing. You might want to leave the face blank. In this case, the face is a guard, because the guard is asking the player to enter the password. You might create a graphic of a locked door. Use your imagination.

Hopefully this tutorial has shown you a cool new trick. Have fun with it. Thanks for reading, and happy game making.

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