Common Sense Corner

[DerVVulfman]

If we allowed players to change the wardrobe of the characters, does that mean we'd have to make battlers for every outfit available? That would be an awful lot of job.

Well, not necessarily... one bodysuit can go a long way... erase pants for a longsleeve shirt, erase longsleeve shirt for a short sleeve shirt, erase sleeves for a sleeveless... so on and so forth.

And if you're going that way, a decent script that lets you use these outfits should also have a hue setting. A plain blue shirt could also be made green, gold, pink, orange, red... just by messing with the hue IF the script lets you. Different colored trim on the shirt? Well, that would be affected too.

One simple shirt like this could become nearly a dozen. But that's more like a combination of common sense meets technicality. Aaaand, probably all that needs saying for multiple wardrobes and using a paperdoll system.

Here's something about tutorials and lengthy explanations. How about a library or a built-in help system or guide?

A library could contain many tomes on the world at hand. Look at the Elder Scrolls games and you'll find hundreds of books, be they historical and filler to describe the world's culture and political structure, or something to give the player a nudge in the right direction. OR they're a needed item to complete a quest. "ORC: Want a statue built? Get me a book on making statues!!! PLAYER: Sigh.... Okay, I'll see if I can find one." That really happened. Or, you can have some book within like "Dummies guide to Alchemy" if you have a crafting system in your game. Just put it in some booky... artsy... way so it reads like someone wrote it but have it describe your crafting minigame.

Or, have something like an extra 'Help' menu option if you know how to edit your main menu. Don't have everything revealed though. If you have a special 'Summons' feature, don't show it in the help options until the player finds out "Oh, you can summon ... skunks now!" Just have like the basics at first. Then as the player finds out he can do other things, have those options become visible. Hey! Good use for switches there.

Minorly Technical - Not flooding with Tech Speak

Spoilered only for the technically minded to read.

*The switches you turn on/off in RPGMaker's [Control Switches] map command can be used in a script too. The class that handles these switches is called Game_Switches, and you mess around with it by bringing up $game_switches.

If you turn on *RPGMaker XP's Switch #3 in the map, it's like saying

Code:

game_switches[3] = true

And if you wanted to see if RPGMaker VX's switch #30 was turned on, you would be like

Code:

if $game_switches[30] == true

Likewise, you 'COULD' make a script that manipulates $game_switches to turn on/off a switch in the map, but that's more complicated because you need to do a couple more things.... so I'm not gonna talk anymore on the subject.

*Same switch classes exist between RPGMaker XP, VX and VXAce, so the practice is the same.

But how he finds out about these options are probably through an NPC who mentions something on how they work too. But I wouldn't want him to keep saying 'You press the [A] button to jump.' every time you talk to him. Just cut that dialog to a first time appearance and throw it in to the help screen if you got one. Repetitive tutorials from the NPCs doesn't make sense and makes it look like they're ... overly stereotypical and idiotic RPG NPCs.

If the player keeps doing something stupid though... The NPC could berate him with a series of random phrases though. "Hey, MORON! I said use [A] to jump!'.... 'You're doing it wrong! Hit [A]!' ... 'When are you going to use [A] to jump? You're looking like an idiot.' .... 'Dude, total fail! Just try the [A] button.'