Part 56: Behind The Fangs, Part XIII - RPG Maker Basics: The Events, Part V

Behind The Fangs, Part XIII - RPG Maker Basics: The Events, Part V



♪ BGM: Single Inference ♫

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Only one more set of commands to go before we start truly descending into hell.



So, what's next on the list?

Well, to start with, Open Save Menu is an optionless command that does exactly what it says it does, it opens the save menu. Exciting!



Allow/Disallow Saving is another fairly simple option. It allows you to allow or disallow saving for a specific map. So if you want to allow the player to save only on the overworld map, for instance, you could do it with this command.

Open Main Menu is an analogue to Open Save Menu which just opens the regular menu - you know, the one that shows your party, lets you check your items, equipment, that stuff. Not the main menu that you see at the beginning of the game. That's a different option.



Allow/Disallow Main Menu is an analogue to Allow/Disallow Saving. This could for instance have been used in VD1's Vincent Weynard segments, which are really just glorified cutscenes, and there's really no need for you to be able to access the menu.





Now this is one of the real bread and butter commands. Conditional Branch gives you rudimentary IF-statements to tinker with, with an assortment of different conditions for you to use. In fact, let's go through them. With these branches, you can check...

- Whether a certain switch is on or off.
- Whether a variable is equal to, greater/equal, lesser/equal, greater than, lesser than, or not equal to either a specific number or a different variable or not.
- Whether a timer, either the first or second one, has more or less time remaining than a specific time or not.
- Whether the party's money is greater/equal or lesser than a certain value or not.
- Whether the party possesses a certain item or not. No option for checking for how much of an item unless you mess around with variables.
- Whether a certain condition applies to a particular hero or not, the options there being:
- - - Whether the hero is in the party or not.
- - - Whether the hero's name is a specific name or not.
- - - Whether the hero's level is at least a specific value or not.
- - - Whether the hero's HP is at least a specific value or not.
- - - Whether the hero can use a specific skill or not.
- - - Whether the hero has a specific item equipped or not.
- - - Whether the hero is afflicted with a specific condition or not.
- Whether a certain sprite (hero, the vehicles, and all events on the map are available here) is facing a specific way (up, down, left, right) or not.
- Whether a the party is in a specific vehicle or not.
- Whether the event was started using the action key or not.
- Whether the BGM has already played through once or not.

That's a lot of options! Anyway, you can either have a check for a condition where something happens if the condition is met and nothing happens if the condition isn't met, or you have a check for a condition where something happens if the condition is met and something else happens if the condition isn't met. Both are necessary in certain situations.





Label and Jump to Label is a set of options that basically allows you to implement a BASIC GOTO in your event code. The easiest way to show this would probably be with an example, so here we go:



Here's the event showcasing the weather events, with some extra additions that I just made. I put label 1 at the very top of the event, and if the player decides they want to see the weather effects again, the choice makes the event jump back to the beginning of the event by way of label 1. That's basically all this does, though of course you can get really complicated with shit - you have a grand total of 100 labels per event to play with.

Next, we have two optionless commands, Loop and Break Loop. Loop inserts a loop into your code that would run certain commands forever without intervention. The only way for a loop to be broken is to actually use the Break Loop command. It's then your job to use conditionals and that kind of stuff to actually make a proper FROM/WHILE loop out of it. Hey, it's like we're using a real programming language, wooo...

After that, we have End Event Processing, which does exactly what you think it does - it just terminates the processing for the event this command is in. We also have Erase Event, which just murders the event out of existence, however only during the time the party is on the map. The moment you return to the map, the event is back.



Call Event lets us trigger other events based on this current event. We can call a certain common event, call a certain page of a specific event on the map, or call an event and page based on variables, which is just more of this "reference IDs based on variables except you have no way of knowing what the ID is beforehand so why are you even doing this" shit.



Insert Comment is a very good command. It lets you insert comments into events, allowing other people to understand the shit you do in events by typing out what certain parts do in plain text. Comments are very very good. Events need more comments.

Then, we have two more optionless commands: Game Over and Return to Title Screen, which also do exactly what you think they might do. Not sure why we needed two of those with one displaying the game over screen and one not doing that.



Finally, we have two more event commands shuffled off to their own page.



Change Class lets you pull a "Cecil becomes a Paladin" thing by changing the class of a particular hero. You get a whole bunch of particulars to play with, like whether or not the level for the hero resets, how to deal with skills (either no change, remove old skills and add the skills you should have with the current level and the new class, or keep old skills and add the skills you should have with the current level and the new class), and how to deal with stats (no change, halve all stats, change stats to the level 1 stats for the new class or change stats to the current level stats for the new class). Fun stuff.



And finally finally, we have Change Battle Commands. With this, we can either remove or add battle commands to particular characters. A character can only have six battle commands at most.

And that's it! That's all the event commands we have available, and that means that we're officially done with the basics for the events! And that means I actually need to think about what to do next. We're probably going to look at some system from VD2 in greater detail, but I'm not sure which one yet. Well, either you have some suggestions, or I'll just pick something.