Current Events > Learning RPGMaker (2003) Progress topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I say this is a progress topic, but who knows if I'll keep up with it. I purchased 2003 (which was on sale for like $1.99), because I have no idea if I'll stick with it long enough to actually make anything. No point in buying MV or MZ or whatever, if I just drop it. Pirating them would've had me feel like they were just taking up space. Besides, Yume Nikki was made in v.2003, so it should serve it's purpose. Seems like a system that could easily overwhelm you, without looking up a bunch of guides. It comes with a bunch of information, but parsing it can be kind of a pain. Haven't done much so far.

I made a basic World Map of sorts, with a Transfer Event to another map. I made it so you can pick up the sword (in the 2nd image), and it'll be in your inventory, and stay gone (I didn't actually pick it up here, but it works properly, I swear). Then I added a static monster event. Probably the most basic of basics, I haven't even tested if I can beat the monster there or not, doesn't matter much to me.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/8/0/AAZRZrAAEy1M.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/8/1/AAZRZrAAEy1N.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/8/2/AAZRZrAAEy1O.jpg
If it isn't obvious, I'm using the most basic of basic assets. Again, no reason to overreach, when I barely know the system. What I'd probably like to do next is make some kind of town with NPCs. I feel like the assets available aren't really good for that type of thing, but I might not have explored it well enough.

For the future, I'd like to make some sort of 'chat' function, where a party member has commentary after different events, such as talking with an NPC. Might be easy, or it could be way harder than it needs to be, hard to know.

You know what's surprisingly annoying? Getting a door to open and close, and play sound effects at the proper timing.

Tag, keep at it, TC!

Later versions have a create quick event for doors, does rm2k3 not?

It's a lot of trial and error, I was addicted to these RPG makers when I was younger, there was one before this I used a lot also. Just toy around and learn as you go, starting off with just the basics is absolutely the way to go imo.

I'd definitely suggest getting a version with scripting support (anything from XP onwards) if you get very far into working with this. 95/2k/2k3 can be fun to play around with, but you're going to want the newer ones if you ever try to make a serious project.

MV and MZ have the further advantage of creating cross-platform games, while VXA and earlier are limited to Windows.

PerseusRad posted...

You know what's surprisingly annoying? Getting a door to open and close, and play sound effects at the proper timing.

In later versions they have "put door here" and "put chest here" buttons that automate that for you. I mean it's not very difficult to do it manually but it helps with tedium.

RPG Maker during my earlier years was fairly decent. I moved on to Game Maker, which I actually prefer. Yeah, you have to play around with code, and sometimes it can be a bit frustrating, but you have full access to making any and all sprites yourself.

PMarth2002 posted...

Later versions have a create quick event for doors, does rm2k3 not?

I'm pretty sure no, unless the stuff I'm looking up is completely omitting it. There do seem to be alternate ways to get the effect I'm wanting, but the way I've done it seems fine as is.

MabusIncarnate posted...

It's a lot of trial and error, I was addicted to these RPG makers when I was younger, there was one before this I used a lot also. Just toy around and learn as you go, starting off with just the basics is absolutely the way to go imo.

Definitely feels pointless to try and do anything advanced when I'm stumbling trying to get a door to open

I remember using this in 2004. Having a brain blast rn. I use to love this guy https://www.makerpendium.de/index.php/Klaus

Well due to how I set up some flags, I'm getting immediately warped from one room to the next after going through a door. I'm pretty sure there's a way to prevent it without having to change the numbers, we'll see.

Trumble posted...

I'd definitely suggest getting a version with scripting support (anything from XP onwards) if you get very far into working with this. 95/2k/2k3 can be fun to play around with, but you're going to want the newer ones if you ever try to make a serious project.

MV and MZ have the further advantage of creating cross-platform games, while VXA and earlier are limited to Windows.

Yeah, I feel like if I get enough into it, I'll upgrade.
Ivany2008 posted...

RPG Maker during my earlier years was fairly decent. I moved on to Game Maker, which I actually prefer. Yeah, you have to play around with code, and sometimes it can be a bit frustrating, but you have full access to making any and all sprites yourself.

I actually checked out GameMaker, but I never actually got around to using it.

The door sprites are basically just NPC sprites set up so that facing one direction is the closed sprite, one is open, and the other two are inbetween.

What you want to do is basically, use a Move Event command on the door itself, to cycle through those directions (face left, face up, face right, with a short Wait inbetween each step; I may have the order of the directions wrong but that's the right general idea).

Trumble posted...

The door sprites are basically just NPC sprites set up so that facing one direction is the closed sprite, one is open, and the other two are inbetween.

What you want to do is basically, use a Move Event command on the door itself, to cycle through those directions (face left, face up, face right, with a short Wait inbetween each step; I may have the order of the directions wrong but that's the right general idea).

Yeah, I got that way to work just now. For some reason it felt difficult to understand, the tutorial I was reading had weird wording compared to what it actually was.

edit: Well I say I got it working, but for some reason it only worked the first time, so I went to try editing some stuff, and now it doesn't work at all.

Hmm actually, so Switches are meant to be one and done, essentially (barring exceptions). Some of the terminology messes with me, so I ended up getting confused and reusing switches. Let's see...

Yeah the 2nd door method is broken for me for some reason, I dunno how I got it right the first time, but I'll have to delete it and try again from scratch.

PerseusRad posted...

Hmm actually, so Switches are meant to be one and done, essentially (barring exceptions). Some of the terminology messes with me, so I ended up getting confused and reusing switches. Let's see...

No switches can be toggled as many times as you want.

PerseusRad posted...

Hmm actually, so Switches are meant to be one and done, essentially (barring exceptions). Some of the terminology messes with me, so I ended up getting confused and reusing switches. Let's see...

Switches can be changed as often as you like, though they're limited to On or Off. Variables can hold any numeric value (and in XP onwards, can even hold data that isn't numeric).

Tyranthraxus posted...

No switches can be toggled as many times as you want.

No I mean more, if you have Switch 1 turn on forever to remove an item from the ground, for instance, then if you use a Switch 1 to activate a completely separate event, that event will already be active if you picked up the item earlier. Unless I'm misunderstanding what was happening to me.

Probably just bad wording on my part, since I wasn't explaining well my issues.

PerseusRad posted...

No I mean more, if you have Switch 1 turn on forever to remove an item from the ground, for instance, then if you use a Switch 1 to activate a completely separate event, that event will already be active. Unless I'm misunderstanding what was happening to me.

Probably just bad wording on my part, since I wasn't explaining well my issues.

Yes one switch should control one event or one group of events under a categorical similarity.

Like if you want it so that you can talk to one of 5 characters but doing so locks you out of talking to the other four, that can all be done with one switch.

I don't know if this feature was added in 2003 but at some point they added self switches. Every event gets a small group of switches that only it can see. Very useful for things like treasure chests so you don't have to mess with global switches for every single chest you make.

For general storyline progress, it may be better to use a variable. Every time the player passes a story milestone, increase the variable. Unlock and lock story events based on its value. Switches can then be used for minor side stuff (major sidequests may be better off with their own variable) or environmental things like flicking a lever.

Trumble posted...

For general storyline progress, it may be better to use a variable. Every time the player passes a story milestone, increase the variable. Unlock and lock story events based on its value. Switches can then be used for minor side stuff (major sidequests may be better off with their own variable) or environmental things like flicking a lever.

Yeah, so far I haven't even gotten into variables. Right now I'm just doing minor stuff. I figured out that I just didn't have enough wait time for the door to open for the second way. Though I'm now trying to figure out a way to see if I can edit the Wait time in the Move Route.

rm2k3, now that unlocks some memories. You can make some pretty neat games using that engine if you're crafty with events. I recall some impressive battle systems before the advent of plugins.

I've used this a bunch. My number one piece of advice is to do small projects. Don't try to set out to make some big giant RPG. Do little self contained stories. Eventually you'll know when/if you think you could pull something big off.

Also I wouldn't get super stressed about learning how to script and stuff. There's a ton of stuff you can do with the software's basic rules that a lot of people don't even know about, they just warp straight to the "gotta use this script!" mentality. Switches and variables and events can do so much.

The main thing I like about RPG Maker is the story telling ability. I've made games where there isn't even any battles or stuff. You can straight up recreate Mass Effect style party conversation and bonding systems, just using the basic tools the software gives you. All variables, switches, etc. You can do your chat idea from your first post. You can keep track of a party member's bond with your MC using variables, then triggering events depending on if they like you enough. Choose the correct dialogue choice/give them the correct gift, that increases their bond with you (a variable), then later on they'll want to bang you because their bond number is high enough! That's the kind of stuff I really like!

Trumble posted...

For general storyline progress, it may be better to use a variable. Every time the player passes a story milestone, increase the variable. Unlock and lock story events based on its value. Switches can then be used for minor side stuff (major sidequests may be better off with their own variable) or environmental things like flicking a lever.

This right here is super important imo. It's better to just use a few big variables than a ton of different switches. For instance, you can have one big giant main story variable that increases by 1 value with each big important thing you do, then stuff happens. That avalanche blocking the players progress is suddenly cleared now that they talked to some old guy in town, etc.

In conclusion, I made a sex game with this. >_> People who've played it have said it's the best sex game they've ever played because the writing and freedom was so good. <_<

spanky1 posted...

I've used this a bunch. My number one piece of advice is to do small projects. Don't try to set out to make some big giant RPG. Do little self contained stories. Eventually you'll know when/if you think you could pull something big off.

That was basically the plan. Start a test project, get a feel for how things works, then try a short game, probably with the progression of Home -> Town -> Dungeon -> Back to Town -> Final Boss.

I haven't actually looked into variables yet. Since my last post, I basically just made a test area with encounters, haven't done much. My whole 'world' is connected though, which feels satisfying, but that's not saying much. Might try to flesh out a dungeon a bit, but figuring out NPCs would probably be soon after.

Variables and Conditional Events are probably the next step to go with the above.

So I didn't really get what Areas meant, and now I do. I was trying to make a second room of a dungeon, made an area, and then realized that editing the ground on the 'area' map changed the Map it was connected to. Areas are about encounters, not layouts. That's fine. Made a slight puzzle room, where you press a switch to get rid of an icicle. Made use of the toggle feature. Made a couple of NPCs, and a shop. I feel like I could pretty easily make a super short test game, but I should probably pay attention to more background stuff. Like there's no background music or anything. I doubt it will be hard to implement, but I just haven't looked at it. I'd post screenshots, but there's nothing that interesting.

Also the basic battle system isn't my favorite, never really liked ATB >_>. Not sure if there's a quick and easy way to switch that to be more Dragon Quest like. Probably not really worth doing for a test. I'd post screenshots, but it isn't anything interesting.

So I've been looking up how to do Party Chat (even for only one member). Variables make it seem very doable, particularly for only a single member and a short game, but I'm not sure I can actually do it with base 2003, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. I feel like it should be possible, but I can't find any way to add new keys, as it were. Based on the stuff I'm looking at, I should be trying to find rpg_core.js , and there's nothing of the sort. I imagine that could be for later things, but it's pretty hard to filter out stuff for that.

Edit: Actually, there seems to be a conditional key input thing... I need to look into this further.

Party chat is doable, me thinks, with just events. It's been ages since I tinkered with 2k3 but using a skill to call a common event and using switches and conditional branches makes it possible.

I prefer OHRRPGCE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Hamster_Republic_Role_Playing_Game_Construction_Engine

HannibalBarca3 posted...

Party chat is doable, me thinks, with just events. It's been ages since I tinkered with 2k3 but using a skill to call a common event and using switches and conditional branches makes it possible.

One of the things I wanted was the ability to call party chat from the main screen, just at the press of a button. I think going into a menu slows things down and would make people less willing to actually mess with it, or just forget that it even exists. So its be good if someone could press 1, for instance, and call the chat, though your idea with making it a skill could be easier. There were a couple of Reddit posts that made it seem viable with my idea, let me look for them.
Robot2600 posted...

I prefer OHRRPGCE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Hamster_Republic_Role_Playing_Game_Construction_Engine

I looked over that, its wild that something from so long ago got a stable release in 2020

I know this question is old but I want to share my cup of tea too. Was searching for party chat posts.
I have two common events and a variable for each playable character (but the hero, because I don't like talking to myself). The variables get set after talking to someone with the help of the script tag and text input as string.
Party chat: goes through all the different actors that are currently in the party and select one at random whose chat and name is shown with "show text". I don't know the exact variable but you can set that the name of actor with Id x is displayed and after that the variable like /v[1]. If only the hero is inside the party and nobody else you get some message like "There is nobody to talk to".
Second event is "clean partychat". It sets all actor variables to "..." It gets triggered after a certain amount of steps after talking to someone or when you enter another map. It also gets triggered at the beginning of the game, because otherwise the variables would be 0 and I don't like how that looks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGMaker/comments/ 5x2f0c/best_way_to_have_a_party_chat_feature/

(remove the space, GameFAQs is being finicky)
And then the stuff in here, where they want to make a Sprint Button, seems like it could apply to making a Talk button

https://rpgmaker.net/tutorials/142/