Category Archives: Tutorials

Event Triggers Part 2

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We are finally returning for Event Triggers Part 2! (It appears “Next Friday” is more fluid than I was thinking).

In Event Triggers Part 1, I covered the simpler Event Triggers: Action Button, Player Touch, and Event Touch. These three can be grouped together as Interaction Triggers. They trigger when the player character interacts with them in some way.

Today, we will look at the other two event triggers, which I will call the Automation Triggers. The reason I call them this is that these events activate independently of direct interaction with the player characters. These two triggers are Autorun and Parallel Process.

Autorun

Autorun

How it works: The Autorun trigger will start whenever the conditions are met. If the event page conditions are met, and you are on the same map as the event, it triggers. It will loop indefinitely until the conditions are no longer met.

What is this used for: Autorun triggers are used most often with cutscenes that start the moment you walk onto a map. You can also use it to reset a puzzle in a room, or set any conditions that need to be set when certain conditions are met.

Things to keep in mind: The biggest thing to keep in mind with autorun triggers is that as long as they are running, the player will not be able to do anything, and that until you end them, they will repeat forever. If something needs to happen every time you enter a map, you can use erase event after it runs through. If something needs to happen once and then never happen again, you will need to use some form of switch/self switch condition on a second page to stop it from occurring again.

Parallel Process

Parallel ProcessHow it works: Parallel Process triggers work similar to autorun triggers in that they start whenever the conditions are met, but instead of stopping player action, they run in the background allowing the player character to continue on while the process is working. They also, as with Autorun Triggered events, repeat indefinitely as long as conditions for them are met.

What is this used for: Parallel Process triggers can be used for anything where you need to constantly check for certain conditions. Examples of use include: Keeping track of the state of a timer, checking for a button press by the player, keeping track of the coordinates of the player or certain events, having a flash of lightning occur at certain intervals, etc. It can also be used in a lot of timed events, such as farming systems.

Things to keep in mind: As with autorun events, you will need to keep in mind that to stop it from repeating, you will need to end the process in some way. Another thing though to keep in mind with parallel process triggers is that you do not want to run too many at a time. The more of these events you have running, the more chance you will encounter a drop in your FPS.

And that covers all of the event triggers. A lot of systems can be made with only events without ever touching scripts, and mastering triggers is a huge part of eventing. Can you think of more uses for each trigger?

Mapping Tutorial: Inner Town Maps

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by Lunarea

Before you start

The first step to mapping is to come up with the function and the overall atmosphere you want to achieve. Is the home a place of business like a shop or an inn? Is it a basic NPC home where the player picks up a quest? Is the occupant rich or poor? Each setting has different considerations.

The next step is to gather your materials. Pick out what colors you will be working with, get your tileset ready and line up the NPCs that will be living and/or working there.

Shape and Layout

Inner mapping begins with a strong layout. Start by sketching out the same shape your building is on the outside. This small detail creates continuity and makes the transition between inner and outer maps feel natural. Note that you don’t have to work on a 1-to-1 scale. In fact, using the same scale for inner maps and outer buildings can lead to some funky-looking maps. You could end up with massive buildings that look awkward against trees and other outer decoration, while the inner maps will feel cozy or cramped. It is enough to keep the same general shape and proportions.

Rooms

The next step is to create sections or rooms. There’s two reasons why we want to do this. First, it is much more difficult to create a lot of detail in a wide, open space. The furniture ends up looking small and this makes the space look even more empty. Or the mapper might try to overcompensate and adds too much clutter. The second reason is that separate rooms are functional and they help us keep organized. Even people who live in studio apartments will sometimes divide their room with curtains, so to keep a sense of privacy or divide sleeping space from entertaining or cooking space.

Furniture

Now it’s time to fill the map with furniture. Start with the basic necessities: a bed, a sink, table or bookshelves. These are staples in every home and it’s believable that most homes will have them. You don’t have to use a lot of variety for the basic furniture, but keep in mind that too much repetition will be noticed by the player. Mix and match pieces and introduce variation in color to make even the basics look interesting.

One big important thing to remember at this point is the sides and the bottom of the screen. When all pieces are on the north wall, it creates an imbalance with the rest of the map, and it may also force you to want to add unnecessary furniture or detail to get the right effect.

Details

Lastly, add the details. This part can be a very fun process, because you can use details to express personality or history for your NPCs – something you may not be able to do otherwise. Surround your writer with books, your romantic with candles and roses or your cat lady with a dozen cats on various surfaces.

How do you achieve this level of detail? You can use some of the tilesets that our community members have provided (just check out Resource Showcase section). Or you can create your own by layering pieces in an art program.

Here is the set used in my screenshot. Use it as a launching point:

Creating Tiles Part 3

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Guide to Creating Tiles in RMVX-Ace Style
by Lunarea

Part 3: Shapes, Edges, and Palettes

Tutorials 1 and 2 covered the theory necessary to creating tiles. Part 3 will also be covering some of the basic theory, but will also begin to introduce practice.

Included in this tutorial:

Shapes

  • Understanding basic shapes.
  • Creating top-down perspective with basic shapes

Edges

  • Anti-aliasing edges and transparency
  • Straight edges and right-side RTP edge

Palettes

  • Understanding Contrast and Saturation
  • Creating a palette from RTP.

Read the full tutorial by downloading the PDF here!

Event Triggers Part 1

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One of the many things that may be a bit tricky for beginner’s is how to start events. Some triggers are easy, but some you may start wondering “what’s the difference here?” or “what do I use this for?”

To make things easy, I’m going to go over all the event triggers. This week we will go over the simpler triggers: Action Button, Player Touch, and Event Touch. Next Friday, we will explore Parallel Process and Autorun events.

Action Button

How it works: When the player presses the action button while in the proper position (when on the same tile for events that are above or below the characters, when adjacent and facing the event for events that are at the same level as the characters) the event starts.

What is this used for: This is probably the most common type of event trigger. Any time you want the player to activate the event, you should probably use Action Button triggers. Examples of use include talking to NPCs, flipping a lever, opening a treasure chest, or any other situation where the player should be in control of whether to start the event or not.

Things to keep in mind: There generally isn’t any special considerations with Action Button events. The only thing that occurs to me to keep in mind is that facing doesn’t matter on above or below level events, so if your scene will need the character facing a certain way, make sure to use a Set Move Route command so they are facing the direction you want them to.

Player Touch

How it works: This is also a relatively simple trigger. The moment the character moves into contact with the event (either bumps into it for events that are set to the same level as characters, or moves into the same square as the event for those set below or above the characters) the event starts.

What is this used for: Player Touch events are also incredibly common. Any time that you want something to happen when the player is in a specific location, regardless of whether they start it themselves, you use Player touch. Examples of use include depression switches on floors, all types of transfer events (stairs, edge of town, etc.), and starting cutscenes.

Things to keep in mind: The biggest thing to keep in mind when dealing with Player Touch events is that it comes into effect only when the player moves INTO the event. If the player is standing still and the event bumps into him, it will not activate.

Event Touch

How it works: This works a lot like Player Touch, except it activates whether you touch the event, or the event touches you.

What is this used for: The main use for this is anything that MOVES that should affect the player. Examples of use include wandering monsters, flames, and moving blades.

Things to keep in mind: Remember that unlike Player Touch, this activates whether the player touches the event or the event touches the player. Also, if the event does not move, this operates identically to Player Touch.

Tune in next week when we cover the two more complicated event triggers: Autorun and Parallel Process.

Creating Tiles Part 2

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Guide to Creating Tiles in RMVX-Ace Style
by Lunarea

Part 2: Perspective

In part 2 of Lunarea’s Creating Tiles tutorial, she is going to tell us all about the perspective used in RPG Maker VX Ace’s tilesets, a common perspective used in video games know as the Top Down Perspective.

Included in this tutorial is:

  • Discussion of what top down perspective is and how it is a combination of two real life perspectives used to create the illusion of depth in a 2D game.
  • How to draw some real life shapes in that perspective.
  • What steps that are needed to “rotate” a tile.

Read the full tutorial by downloading the PDF here!

Creating Tiles Part 1

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Guide to Creating Tiles in RMVX-Ace Style
by Lunarea

Part 1: Tools

RMVX-Ace tiles are created through a process of digital painting. This process is different from traditional pixel art, both in terms of technique and in tool requirements.

We will go over the tools you will need to create tiles in this tutorial:

  • Art program with transparent background, brushes and ability to save in .png format (examples: Photoshop, GIMP)
  • A hard round brush and a soft round brush
  • A 32×32 pixel grid, created through art program settings or made manually
  • A mouse or a tablet

Take the time to get used to making fluid and uninterrupted lines with the mouse or tablet. Practice drawing curves as well as straight lines (see PDF for examples of shapes).

Read the full tutorial by downloading the PDF here!

Part 2 will cover RMVX-Ace’s perspective, object depth and object edges/outlines.

Tracking Time in Common Events

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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. :)

Creating a Bank

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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 →

Consistency – Keeping Your Game Smooth

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by Paul “Reynard Frost” Walker

If you’re a member of the RPG Maker community, you should be almost intimately familiar with the phrase “RTP”. The default graphics that come with each RPG Maker that we know and love. Sometimes it gets the job done, but other times it’s just not enough! We need a song that’s got a bit more fire to it, we need a priest with an afro, or a battler of a unicorn wielding a machete in its mouth. Whatever your need, sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone and find new and better resources to make our game just that much better itself.

Yet are these resources better? Sure on their own that battler might look absolutely amazing, much like a bar of chocolate can be a delicious snack on its own. Yet throw that bar of chocolate into a plate of spaghetti… While some might enjoy the contrast in flavor, others will widen their eyes in surprise and react with, “Why is there chocolate in my marinara?”

This is where we get to the core of our topic. Consistency. What is consistency? The dictionary describes it as, “Correspondence among related aspects; compatibility”. To put it simply, consistency is the act of making sure that nothing in your game feels out of place. If you’re making a bowl of spaghetti, then you’ll want to use the usual ingredients that make that classic dish so tasty. Yet what about that bar of chocolate you love to snack on? Chocolate in your ice cream is far more compatible than in the middle of your pasta! Yet I’m sure we’ve both had enough of the food metaphors, how does this apply to RPG Maker? Let’s discuss the two main types of resources and how you can keep work towards keeping them consistent with each other.

Graphics

Tilesets, character sets, battlers, etc. All of these graphics make up the pieces we need for the visual aspect of our game. To start, let’s take a peek at this screenshot of a battle scene I pulled randomly from Google:

Those player battlers look mighty well drawn don’t they? And that background? Even better! Why the two seem to go hand in hand! The similar color tones, the drawn or painted style. Like a page from a storybook brought to life, right? Well there does seem to be something out of place in this lovely shot… Those bees! Notice the difference not only in colors/brightness, but the actual drawn style? While the background and the player battlers are different styles of drawing, they at least blend well due to their colors. Not to mention a scenery and a character can be slightly different without being too jarring to the eye. But those monsters? Why they look like cartoony critters that belong on a saturday morning adventure show, not the comic book style epic that the player battlers would lead you to believe you’re playing. Now let’s take a look at something a bit more consistent in its art style!

Ghost of Aliens (2k3) Showing off an almost Earthbound style of art.

Here we have the player on the right and the enemies on the left in usual jRPG style. However, notice a difference between the art in the first example and this one? Well for starters, both the player and the enemies are drawn in a similar style. Sure the enemies are larger, as battlers often are, but they’re both drawn in a retro 16-bit style that has a matching style of color and shading. The two of them don’t look any more out of place than the other. The UI is also consistent with the art style above.

What’s the simplest way to make sure your graphics are consistent? Well to have them drawn custom for your project! Can’t draw? Don’t know any artists? Not a problem. If you want to borrow assets make sure that the two styles look compatible. (Only recommended for hobbyists, as ripping any graphics for a commercial endeavor will just get you into trouble). If you want to use the RTP, then I’d recommend picking up the RTP style art packs that are sold here at RPG Maker Web. If you’re strapped for cash, your best bet is to try your own hand at art. The beauty of RPG Maker is that you aren’t stuck with only Pixel Art. You can try hand drawn graphics, or make 3D images and use those instead! Just remember, keep them consistent. If you’re going to use 3D Battlers, make sure your characters are also 3D, as well as your environments. Want to mix and match? 3D Environments look good with 2D Sprites, or vice versa! (See: Ragnarok Online for the former, and Final Fantasy 7 for the latter.)

Art not your thing? Not sure where to start? Then look no farther than here on RPG Maker Web! There are plenty of tutorials available for the beginner artist to try their hand at their own custom assets. It will take time, and it won’t be easy, but it is possible. I myself didn’t know a thing about pixel art a year ago, and now I can put together some competent art assets. For example:

June 2012

January 2013

These two shots also show off a difference in consistency. Look at my combat in June, the numbers and health bars didn’t match the battlers at all, the backgrounds while pixelated, weren’t the same proportion as the battlers, and the menus are all transparent! Totally breaking the immersion of the game. The latter on the other hand, looks like something you would have played on the NES! (Or at least I hope it does). Notice how the characters and the battlers are both drawn in a simple, 8bit style. If I had taken some rips from Final Fantasy 7 and put them in there, imagine how awful THAT would look!

Tilesets being the main chunk of the RTP, aren’t as often mismatched as the battle system might be. No, the other chief culprit of mismatched assets is the message system! While those Kaduki facesets look nice, they’re a completely different style than the RTP facesets. Heck even the Samurai pack has drastically different face sets than the ones used in the basic RTP. Just keep in mind that if you’re going to use face sets, that you use the same style of face set throughout the game. Not only that, but make sure that what types of characters that get face sets is also consistent. If you give face sets to only key characters, like quest givers and the party, that’s great! But if you give a random villager or two a face set but nobody else, then it will just confuse the player! Yet that’s not all you need to keep in mind for consistency! Next, we’ll discuss the audio aspects of our game.

Audio

Man, Final Fantasy has a really great soundtrack doesn’t it? But how would it sound mashed up with the music from Deus Ex? Not that good right? Or how about a song from Final Fantasy 7 mixed with the combat music from the first Fire Emblem? Even worse, right? As it is with graphical assets, a piece of audio may be amazing on its own, but it has to blend well with the rest of the audio you’re using or it will just sound jarring to the player. If you want to use 8bit music, make sure that not only is the music 8bit, but your sound effects are as well! Want to use high def orchestral tracks? Make sure that the sound effects you use are high quality and modern as well. Yet the type of music you use is only one piece of the puzzle! You also need to keep audio levels in mind! What are audio levels? Well if you take a peek into the editor when you’re applying a piece of music or sound effect, you can also control the volume at which that piece of audio is played. Depending on how many different sources you’re pulling audio from, you may need to sample these by ear and mix and match volume levels. Does your world map sound fairly quiet and then you jump into a battle and you’re rushing for the volume control to turn it down before the blaring rock music destroys your ear drums? Well just slide down that volume slider in the editor so that your battle theme is around the same volume as your world map!

That bad boy right there can help you prevent an audio disaster.

Like face sets, voice acting is also something you want to keep consistent. Do you use simple grunts for key characters, but a long speech for a random quest giver? Seems quite out of place doesn’t it? If you give full or even partial voice acting for every single character in your game, that’s great! But make sure that [i]every[/i] single character gets their own voice! Only want key actors to have voice acting? That’s also great! But make sure that you don’t give a random bartender some voice over and neglect the other villagers in town who are forced to be silent! Keep it consistent!

Another example is with environment sounds. Do you have one or two chests that make a sound when opened, but all other chests remain completely silent? Out of place once again! Or do you have a cool sound effect that plays when one character joins your party, but no fanfare is heard when the rest of your party members join? Out of place!

In Closing

Keep in mind that we are making video games here! When a player is playing your game, you don’t want them to get snapped out of their immersion and get a frown on their face when they find out that you suddenly threw in a cameo from a character that is portrayed in a completely different art style than the rest of the characters in the game! As a homework assignment from me to you, take a look at the games you love and keep an eye out for how things match, how they blend together, how they look so consistent! Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Paul Walker works as a quality assurance tester who has worked to help perfect games in series such as God of War and Uncharted (And Hannah Montana The Movie Game, but I’m sure he would rather forget that). When not working on games, he works on games, and is currently working on the game Ruins of Rydos using RPG Maker.