Either way, Lunarea’s Giant Mushrooms can fill some gap!

Free for commercial and non-commercial use in RPGMaker.

Free for commercial and non-commercial use in RPGMaker.

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

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

How 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?

One of the greatest challenges facing indie game developers is finding effective ways to promote our games. With this article, I intend to offer some tips and advice that may help you in your goals. With that said, let’s get started.

Strategy #1

One of the biggest problems that get in the way of promoting your game is the fact that most indie games are never finished. Most of the time, we tend to overestimate our ability to get seemingly simple tasks done in a game, or we try to make RPGs that are absolutely massive, and get burned out early in development.

Before I go any further though, do yourself a favor and read this article.

That isn’t a “read once” kind of article. That’s a “read every day” kind of article. Bookmark it and read it every day. You’ll be thanking yourself later.

Now, let’s get cracking.

An easy way to combat unfinished games is to practice iterative development. Here’s how it works:

1. Break up your game into small, simple “chunks”. For RPGs, you could call them “chapters”. A chapter consists of a small part of your RPG’s overall game play. It can be a single quest, for example. Or just one town.
2. Rather than trying to create the whole game at once, just focus on creating the first chapter of your RPG. If it’s small and simple enough, you could achieve this in an hour or two using RPG Maker.
3. Once it’s finished, release your RPG chapter to the world.

It may not be a comfortable idea, to put an unfinished game out into the world, but it can have some big benefits. For example, you can build up an interested fan base early on in your game’s development. It may not be big at first, but even just 5-10 loyal fans can have a huge impact. For one thing, your fans will offer you encouragement and help hold you accountable so you will actually finish your game. For another, you’ll gain valuable feedback that will help improve your game early on, so you’ll catch big problems in your game’s design early.

Pro Tip: Try to implement “cliff hangers” into the end of your chapters. This will give your players a very good reason to watch the development of your game and continue to play it as you release additional chapters. For an example of this in action, check these guys out: http://www.youtube.com/user/elementanimation. Watch some of their videos (especially “An Egg’s Guide to Minecraft”). That will give you some ideas for what to put into your cliff hangers.

Strategy #2

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful YouTube is for promoting games. Popular titles like Minecraft and Slenderman can owe their massive popularity to people doing let’s plays on YouTube. You too can harness this marketing powerhouse, with the right approach.

Here’s an example of a Let’s Play video. As you can see, this video has over 2 million views. It’s not uncommon for Let’s Play videos to get hundreds of thousands of views over time. By the way, “The Witch’s House” was made with RPG Maker.

Here’s a step-by-step blueprint to help you find success on YouTube:

1. Figure out which games are most like yours, and search for people who have played them. Let’s say your RPG is largely inspired by Final Fantasy IV. What you would then do is go to YouTube and search for something like “Let’s Play Final Fantasy IV”. Do this for as many RPGs that are like yours.
2. Make a list of all the YouTubers who have done a let’s play of games like yours, and the best way to contact them. A spreadsheet can work well for this.
3. Contact these people and ask them if they’d be willing to do a series for your RPG. Tell them that your RPG is like another RPG they have played, but that it has X differences (“X” being whatever makes your RPG unique/better from the one it’s similar too).

That’s it! You’ll want to keep track of how they respond to you (yes, no, no response, etc.) to keep things organized. Also, bear in mind that there are different ways to contact YouTubers.

You may be wondering how important a YouTuber’s subscriber count is. The answer to that is; it depends. Someone with a very small amount of subscribers may not be able to get you a lot of new players, but some of their viewers can be other YouTubers who do let’s plays. In addition, if a YouTuber has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, it’s not likely they’ll do a let’s play of your game, but it never hurts to ask.

Like any marketing technique that’s worth doing, this can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. But with patience, you could end up getting thousands of players from this strategy alone.

Pro Tip: Be sure to include the url to your website in the title of your game. Why? Most people who do let’s plays will often spend several seconds talking about a new game they’re playing before they actually play it. And while they’re talking, their viewers will see the title screen of your game. That’s some prime real estate there. Take advantage of it.

Strategy #3

The RPG Maker Web forums are a great place to get feedback on your game from other experienced RPG Maker users. It can also be a way to forge alliances with other RM users, which in turn can get you a load of players.

Forum Topic for “You Are Not the Hero” by Seita. Click the picture to see the full topic.

Most people will simply post a thread in the RPG Maker forum telling people about their game and that’s it. That’s fine, but it’s not as effective as it could be. Here’s a few tips on how you can leverage your efforts and get the most from the RM Forums:

• Spend a few minutes every day to post meaningful feedback on other people’s threads. Spend at least a few paragraphs telling them what you liked most about the game, and offer a few suggestions on how it could be better. This is a great way of starting off a relationship with RM users you don’t know very well.
• Reach out to people who have games of their own and tell them about your game. Offer to do a link-exchange on each other’s download pages if your games are a good fit for each other.
• Offer to collaborate with other people on their projects in exchange for a link to your game. This is a great way of gaining experience and promoting your work at the same time.

These are just a few ideas. With a little bit of creativity, there’s virtually no limit to how you can leverage the RM forums to help get the word out about your game.

Pro Tip: You can also do link-exchanges directly inside your game. All you’d have to do is add an extra option in the game menu which says something like “Other RPGs”, and when the user selects that option, it opens up a dialog box showing the name of other RPGs and their respective URLs.

Strategy #4

Following up on promoting your RPG inside the RPG Maker Web forums, you can also search for niche forums that would be a good fit for RPGs. For example, forums about fantasy video games could be a good place, as well as Play-By-Post (PBP) Role-Playing forums. These types of forums are just text-based RPGs, and can be a great place to promote your game.

When promoting your RPG in other forums, there are a few practices you should follow to get the best results:

• NEVER spam. This means don’t make your first post a promo post about your game. This will get you banned. In most cases, the only place you’ll be allowed to promote your game is in your signature. If you’re not sure if it’s acceptable to promote your game, ask a moderator for clarification.
• Try to become a contributing member to the community. This can be a time-consuming process, and it may yield slow results, but successful forum promotion is all about building relationships with other people.
• Focus on helping people. If you show a genuine interest in helping other people solve their problems, they will show a genuine interest in you and your game.

“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich

As with asking YouTubers to do a let’s play of your RPG, promoting your game in niche forums can be time-consuming and frustrating. But it can also yield results, sometimes in as little as 24 hours of starting. Plus you’ll get to meet some interesting people along the way.

Pro Tip: Here’s a fun idea for you to try out: ask the forum admin if they’d be interested in holding a video game tournament featuring your game. You can design a special level just for the tournament, and players can submit their playthroughs via YouTube. Use your imagination when deciding on what the tournament will be about and what the prizes will be.

Strategy #5

This one is for the brave souls who sell their RPGs commercially. I imagine that most of you who do this already have an affiliate program for your game (or at least know what an affiliate program is). What I’d like to do for you is offer you some suggestions on how you can better promote your affiliate program. Here they are:

1. Don’t be stingy with the commissions you offer affiliates. Ideally, you want to offer at least 50% of the sale price, especially for cheaper games. Getting paid 10% on a $5 game isn’t going to appeal to a lot of people.
2. Promote your affiliate program in the RPG Maker Web forum (in your signature), and in other video game dev forums too. As with Strategy #3, hooking up with other RM users can be a great way to promote your game.
3. Run a affiliate contest and let RPG devs, video game bloggers, and anyone else who might be interested in promoting your game know about it. People love contests, and with a hard deadline in place, bloggers and game devs will be jumping to promote your game (assuming the prizes are appealing enough).

If you are selling your RPG commercially, I’d like to congratulate you. It isn’t easy to take the plunge from hobbyist to pro indie game maker, and precious few indie game devs even try. I wish you the best of success in selling your game.

Pro Tip: You can recruit your players to promote your game too. Advertise your affiliate program as a way to earn some extra cash on the side. In addition to that, you can run a contest/tournament for your fans to help promote your game as well.

Well, there you have it. Hopefully this article will have given you some ideas on how you can better your promotional efforts. With that said, there are two pieces of extra advice I’d like to give you, and they are FAR more valuable than any of the strategies above, or indeed, any other kind of marketing advice I can give you. They are:

1. Focus on ONE strategy at a time. If you spread out your efforts over multiple different marketing techniques, not only will you burn yourself out, you’ll end up spinning your wheels and go nowhere fast.
2. CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS. Never forget that. In most cases, you won’t get results right away, even if you spend hours per day promoting your game. That’s fine. Just remember; you will get FAR better results if you CONSISTENTLY promote your game every day for 15 minutes, than if you were to spend several hours promoting your game sporadically over a few days.

Well, I think I’ve done enough brain damage for one article. I hope that you were able to get something out of it. If you did, tell me about it in the comments section below. Also, if you have any questions at all, by all means please leave a comment and ask me anything you like. I’ll try my best to answer all questions.

Thanks for reading, have a great day, keep staying awesome, and I’ll see you in the next article.

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:

So, you’ve found yourself facing the exciting world of game development. You’ve done your research, crunched the figures and now you’re ready to jump into those little details that will really make your game stand out. In other words, you’re ready for art. But where to start?

Most developers will start with what’s easily available: the RTP.

The RTP has a lot going for it. It’s essentially free with the purchase of RPG Maker, it’s done in a single and cohesive style, and it’s got a huge variety of edits from many community members. If you’re creating a classic medieval-style game, it’s got most everything you’ll need. As a style, it’s bright, cheerful and reminiscent of adventure.

However, RTP also has some downsides. It’s very commonly used – which can make it difficult to establish a unique identity for your game. Though it fits a general medieval fantasy game, it offers very little in terms of other settings. It’s more challenging to create tense atmospheres – such as horror or darkness.

Faced with the downsides of using only the RTP, a lot of developers turn to hiring artists to create unique pieces.

Custom content has the advantage of being unique to your game, as well as being tailor-fit to the story and setting you’re working with. On the other hand, custom art can quickly get very expensive – not to mention very time-consuming. Custom art and music of the same size as the RTP could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars and take 6 to 9 months to complete.

There may also be a shortage of high-quality artists – and among them, there aren’t many who are currently free from another project or commission. All together, this makes the choice of going completely custom with resources into a risky venture.

So, what’s a developer to do?

Well, the first step is to take a long and close look at the RTP as well as the affordable add-on content you can find in our official store. Together, they can create a strong base for your game without breaking the bank. Look at everything you can use, and be creative in how you use it.

Step 2 is to start editing and rearranging the RTP. You may not be an artist, but you can still layer together different tile pieces or experiment with changing colors. Putting some books on top of a bookshelf adds a personal touch of detail to your tileset and these little details are the beginning of what can set your game apart. Look at recoloring and rearranging tutorials, as well as various screenshots other developers are posting.

The next step is to develop your game as close as you can to completion. Graphical and visual resources are fairly easy to plug in at any point, but there’s nothing that can replace dialogue, cutscenes or battle balancing. Use placeholder art where you can. Not only will it allow you to progress with development, but you will be able to give the artist you hire specific details on what you’ll need.

Lastly, invest in buying custom pieces for the most iconic or easily-recognized pieces:

• For characters, invest in custom sprites of your party – as well as their facesets and/or portraits
• For tiles, invest in custom pieces that are repeated throughout various maps – trees, windows, flowers/plants, rocks, cave walls, basic furniture such as beds, and small objects that can accent different rooms
• For music, invest in an introduction theme, game over theme and battle theme

How much of a difference can a few details really make?

Here’s a screenshot that uses mostly RTP:

The setting is a magic school, but there’s very little that actually says “magic” in the screenshot.

Here’s a screenshot of the same area, using objects from the RTP and from Celianna’s school tiles:

The area is now more memorable and distinctive.

Both screenshots make use of the RTP, but the second screenshot illustrates just how much a variety of those custom details can enhance a map.

If you would like to read the full version, right click save as the pdf version HERE. But now, let’s get on to the preview!

Opening Thoughts

With this tutorial, I am going to be doing something slightly different than I did with all the others. We will not be opening our sample project during this tutorial, instead we will focus entirely on theory and the basic commands available to use.

In Events Part 2, we will then apply this theory to our project, fleshing out, and leaving only polishing up the sample game between us and being finished.

Events: What do they do?

Events are used for two major purposes in RPG Maker VX Ace.
The first is to provide objects for the player to interact with. This can be an NPC for the player to talk to, a switch for them to pull, or even just something to move your characters from map to map.

We’ve already made several simple events that fulfill this purpose, such as the Merchant we made in the fourth tutorial shown to the right.

Simple Event made in Tutorial IV

But there is also a second, very important role for events is controlling game flow. For instance, how do you determine where a character can and can’t go, how do you open up new areas for him to explore.

All of this is done with events.

Approaching Event Design

Event design is all logic. There are lots of tricks and tips you can pick up over time, but the best tool you will ever have is your own brain. What I hope to teach in this tutorial isn’t how to create a specific type of event, its how to walk yourself through ANY event.

To start with, we are going to be designing the treasure chest we created in Tutorial IV, except this time, we are going to do it from scratch, and we are going to go step through step of the logic it takes to create it.

Creating the Treasure Chest

The first thing to do when planning an event is to think, in plain speak: What does this event do?

With a treasure chest, this is a pretty simple thing to describe: Player opens it, gets an item. The item given with this one is a cloth shirt.

To illustrate event flow I’m going to be drawing each step as a flowchart.

I encourage everyone to use flowcharts in their event design, as it will give you an excellent idea of how to organize your events.

Below is the simple plain text explanation of what our event does. The event starts, it gives a cloth shirt to the player, and then it ends.

Do you see the problem with this flowchart?

—PREVIEW END—

To read the full version of this and the rest of our Make Your Own Game Tutorials click over to our RPG Maker VX Ace Tutorials!

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!

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.

The bonus resource release includes:

• Viking-styled House
• Viking boat
• Dragon throne and torches
• Viking torches
• Viking door
• Viking facial hair for the character generator.

Our contributors have also submitted some modern pieces, such as a modern version of RTP’s Erik, behaviors for a dog, howling wolf and a pig character set.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Member+ program, it’s a great subscription service that gives you:

• Access to unique, high-quality resources that are released on a monthly basis.
• Insider information about projects/resources being worked on: including screenshots, themes and progress reports.
• Big discounts on items for sale in the forum store.
• Ability to create a blog hosted on the official forums.
• Larger download limit in the download center. Perfect place for hosting games and game demos.
• A new forum title and badge.

You can sign up right here.

We will be holding another 24-hour Golden Week sale this upcoming weekend: Saturday, May 4th, 12:00PM (noon, 8pm GMT) PST to Sunday, May 5th, 12:00PM (noon, 8PM GMT) PST.

To keep celebrating Golden Week, we will also have giveaways for the next 4 days! Each day is a new chance to win something from our store.

Tuesday: FaceBook Giveaway — To participate, you will need to share a trailer video from our FB page (it will be posted on Tuesday).

Wednesday: Forum Giveaway — To participate, you will need to create a blog post on an off-site blog and reply to the giveaway thread (thread with details will be posted on Wednesday).

Thursday: Twitter Giveaway — To participate, you will need to re-tweet a message that will be posted on our Twitter on Thursday.

Friday: Steam Giveaway — To participate, you will need to recommend RPG Maker VX-Ace to your friends (or add it to your wishlist) and post in the community thread that will be made on Friday.

Happy Golden Week, everyone!