Bridges in XP

[MagitekElite]

(This should work in VX too, but I am unsure. I have not used VX much! xD)

I know I had problems with creating bridges you could walk on and over, or under. It was either "on" or "under". So a friend of mine over at RMXPUnlimited helped me out and showed me how he did the bridges. I am going to attempt to make a tutorial for everyone to know how to as well. I tried to get it as clear and coherent as possible, but I most likely got confusing somewhere (sorry guys, I really can't help that part. :/). If that is so, I would LOVE to fix it, and if you have questions or problems, please post them. I'll be here to help! Promise!

The Tutorial

You will need a tileset with bridge formation like this. You can either create a tileset with a bridge you want in the EXACT places the tilset has them, or use this one. Though only one type of bridge? You need variety!

Tileset & character set:

name this "Bridge Sets" please!

AND name the tileset "Big Forest" please!

First, you will want to upload that tileset and set the thing normally. Default, I have, is so the bridge can only be walked on, not under. Once you have everything set, make a map with a bridge over some mountains that has a little underpass.

But, DO NOT map the entire bridge down. "then how are we supposed to make the bridge?" you are asking. Well, we use events! Yup, events! And some mapping. Firs things first, look at my map for example. Everything boxed in yellow is the evented graphics, not the mapped out part.



Now, the only part that I have mapped from the map, is only two tiles, which you can see here boxed in pink/magenta:


Now, if you are new to RMing or RMXP (If not, SKIP TO SPOILER "NATIVE". If you are new, continue onward to spoiler "NEW USER"), you are probably like "evented mapping/graphic? What is that?" Well, in a simple way to describe it, it is an event with a graphic representing that event. Like say you had a "ghost" in the game that went "booooboooo!" but it was invisible, so why place a graphic with it? But, if you had a cat going "meow! meow!" you wouldn't want it invisible, would you? No, you would put a face to that sound and put the cat sprite with the event. How do you do this? Well, you right click in the map once you are on the EVENTS LAYER (Which looks like this: ) and you'll be brought up to see this box:

EVENTS BOX

"HOLY MOLEY!" You must be saying. Well, you shouldn't. It may look confusing, but once you get the hang of things, its really not. And you are talking to an idiot who took a year to understand that and is dyslexic. I know where the new users are coming from, believe me. That's why I'm trying to make this as user friendly as possible, and I don't lie like Microsoft when I say that.

What you see in the above image is actually the interface (or, if you know it, the "desktop" of the events menu). This is the start of how to make your game spring to life! Unfortunately, I cannot teach you everything about RMXP, so look at the end of this tut for some places to go that can teach you at the snap of a finger!

Now, let us deal with the colors I used in the above picture first and delve a little deeper into above image:

NEW USER:

NEW USER:

Red:
This is where you make your commands and events. If you click in this box, you will see a little window with many tabs with many selections to pick from. I'll get to that in a moment, for now, let's concentrate on the fact that the red boxed field is the most important feature in the window. I will come back to this next.

Blue:
The event name! Yes, you can name the events, like pets! I suggest to NEVER name an event the same as another on one map. If you have an event called "Cat eats fish" do not make another event called "Cat eats fish". It will only confuse you. That's all for blue. Its just how you name and keep track of events! :D

Yellow:
This little fellow, called "GRAPHIC" is what I was talking about earlier for the "evented graphic" thing. If you click into this, you will see this:



PINK:
The pink you see is a scrollbar, which you can drag around to see other files. Drag it all the way up until you see (TILESET). Click that and you should see this, assuming you downloaded the tilset I gave and set it as the map's default and through the Tileset tab:



The red in the above image, is to show you where and how it will look when you find and select the tilset. This part changes depending on the map and the map's default tileset selected for it. For now, you have the forest bridge tileset, so its showing up. So for the sake of this tutorial, click it and scroll down until you see the bridges in the picture. This is important, remember it.

Now that you are armed with the basic information needed to continue this tutorial, we'll move on and explain as we go. Remember at the start of the tutorial how I said I only MAPPED OUT two tiles? Let's continue off there.

Once you map out the EXACT pieces I did in whatever formation/position you want, we'll move onto the part where I boxed all the events in yellow. For that, please move onto the spoiler "NATIVE"!

NATIVE:

NATIVE:

Remember the image I posted at the start of the tutorial where I said I MAPPED OUT two tiles only? Remember that (tileset is "Big Forest").

With that down, we're gonna move onto the EVENTED GRAPHICS. Access the even interface and click into the "GRAPHIC" box (the one in yellow!) and select "(TILESET)" and you'll see the tileset I gave in the thread. Scroll down to the bridges I showed above and select this piece first:



After you make this event, COPY AND PASTE as much as you'll need the ACTUAL bridge part of the event. This will keep you from having to hand make the events 5+ times if needed. Four example, on my bridge I had to have FOUR of them. We'll call this event "Boards".

Next, we're gonna move onto the polls/railings/rope railings of the bridge! First, make a new event and go into GRAPHIC and scroll down to the CHARACTER SET I GAVE YOU not the TILESET I gave you. You should have called it "Bridge Sets" as directed.

Find this:


You'll need FOUR of those for the bridge I'm making to count as EACH CORNER OF THE BRIDGE, so we'll need to duplicate it!

Now we want the ROPE part of the bridge that keeps the sucker straight and balanced for your walking pleasures. It is located in the same place as the pole/railings above, only it'll look like this:



Depending on how long your bridge is, you will have to make more events of the same above to correspond with the length of the bridge, so duplication will be needed -- BUT DON'T DO IT RIGHT NOW, WE HAVE TO SET UP THE EVENTS FIRST! WAIT FOR THE SPOILER TITLED "SET UP EVENTS"! We'll call this event "Ropes".

Don't worry about the event commands of any of this until I come back to it, right now we're dealing with the IMAGE and PHYSICAL part of the events, not the NERVE, FUNCTION and BRAINS.

Now, the part that requires the TILESET, in which you should have named "Big Forest" for the sake of this tutorial, so go into your MAPPING layer and find this piece, both right and left pieces:



And map so it goes on the outside of the CENTER bridge boards. It should look like this in my case (circled in blue):



This requires no event commands, just the IMAGE. There, we have the IMAGE and PHYSICAL part of the events done, now we need to move onto the NERVE, FUNCTION and BRAINS of the events which is in the next spoiler.

SET UP EVENTS:

SET UP EVENTS:

Now we set up the events and duplicate them to form the length of the bridge etc etc.
Remember what we called the above events? Ropes and Boards. We'll look into "Boards" first as it was the first we made. The below is what you will put in the ONE BOARDS event you made and duplicate according to your tastes and needs. First, before we move onto giving the commands to the events, we have to make the commands!

So, right click within the mapping area once you are in the Event Layer and click the empty field. On the first tab to the right, there should be an option called "CONTROL SWITCHES", click into it and you should see this:



Go inside by click the little ">" in the checkbox and make TWO switches. One called "Above Good" and one called "UNDER Good" and hit OKAY/SAVE/APPLY. This is what it should look like for you:



Now we finally move on to giving the commands to the events we made. We'll start with "BOARDS". This event requires 3 PAGES, so create three pages and then go back to the first page. I have taken pictures of all the pages and listed them below. I'll make some notes about them underneath the images' links.

BOARDS:
PAGE 1
PAGE 2
PAGE 3

NOTES:
On PAGE 1 we basically leave it blank except for the graphic picture and what I have selected. On PAGE 2, we see that the first box under "CONDITIONS" is checked and that the CONTROL SWITCH WE MADE EARLIER "Above Good" is selected and loaded, make sure you do that. We also see on PAGE 2 that we have the graphic loaded in the "GRAPHICS" part again so it doesn't disappear. On PAGE 3, however, we see some difference. We load up the graphic of the board again, check the first box under "CONDITIONS" and loaded, INSTEAD, the CONTROL SWITCH "UNDER Good". We have the trigger set up to "action button" and the OPTIONS set to "Move Animation" and "ALWAYS ON TOP", which I highlighted yellow. PAGE 3 is perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT page. MAKE SURE YOU GET IT ALL RIGHT.

Once you finish the above events, you may do the duplication I mentioned above for "BOARDS".

Now we are going to set up the ROPES part of the event commands. I have taken images of the ROPES event as well.

ROPES:
PAGE 1
PAGE 2
PAGE 3

NOTES:
The first two pages are exactly like the BOARDS event, only the graphic changes to the "ROPE" graphic I showed you above. On PAGE 3, however, we see another big difference in commands and functions. I have highlighted them in yellow. Make sure you CHECK, CLICK and ACTIVE them!

By the end of this STEP and CREATION, you should have this:


RED: The stuff circled in red is the ROPE events, which shows you how you should have used them.

BLUE: The stuff circled in blue is the POLES, which shows you how you should have used them.

PINK: The stuff circled in pink is the BOARDS events, which shows you how you should have used them.

Now we're onto the LAST part of the tutorial! Yay! The next spoiler is called "FOOT ACTIVATION".

FOOT ACTIVATION:

FOOT ACTIVATION:

This is the final part of the tutorial and deals with how the bridge turns from "walking on" to "walking under". This was perhaps my favorite part because...well, I don't know!

Foot activation events are required to do this. These events will be "triggered" when your character touches them, telling the rest of the bridge that if "Above Good/UNDER Good" is turned on, the bridge should turn off "Walk on/Walk under" depending on the direction your character is going. It is actually very simple, so I'll try to explain it as simply as possible as well.

Okay, in my example my bridge goes ←→ (left & right) with the ↑&↓ (up & down) so I need to place events around such places enough so that the player can't go around and unactivate the bridge.

In my example bridge, such events are placed according in the PINK circles:

So everything you see in the pink is the "FOOT ACTIVATION" events that tells the bridge "Hey, let the character walk under/on you!".

The "FOOT ACTIVATION" event should look like this and should have 1 page respectively for each. But that's not all! You need TWO VARIATIONS of this event. "What does she mean?" you might wonder.

Well, I mean if your character is heading towards the bridge from UNDER then the events he must touch must turn ON the bridge for "WALKING UNDER" capability while if the character was walking towards it to walk ON the bridge, the events must turn OFF the bridge for "WALKING UNDER" so the character and safely go across. We'll call the even that turns the bridge on for crossing OVER it "BRIDGE OFF" and the event that turns the bridge off for crossing UNDER it "BRIDGE ON". Simple enough? :D

BRIDGE OFF EVENT:
(This event is for when walking on the bridge)
http://i40.tinypic.com/5pfklt.jpg

NOTES FOR BRIDGE OFF EVENT:
As you can see, I highlighted a lot of stuff. Do you see the blue text (yellow now that I highlighted) to the right that says "Conditional Branch"? You are going to need to make THAT command first. Now do you remember the CONTROL SWITCHES we made earlier called "Above Good/UNDER Good"? We're gonna need them again! For this event, we'll need Under Good!

After you create a conditional branch, you'll need to select the "DIRECTION OF THE CHARACTER" before advancing. What I mean is, saying the bridge is in front of the character and you are going to be walking under it, so you'll pick "PLAYER IS FACING (UP)" or right/left/down, it depends on the direct the switch needs to be.

Now make sure you select "CONTROL SWITCHES" and find "UNDER GOOD" and make sure it is set as "OFF"! Now make the TRIGGER "PLAYER TOUCH" and hit "OKAY/APPLY". Copy and paste this event as many times as you need it in that one direction. In my case, I placed all my BRIDGE OFF EVENTS to the LEFT of the bridge, see here.

BRIDGE ON EVENT:
(This event is for when walking under the bridge)
http://i43.tinypic.com/35at2pt.jpg

NOTES FOR BRIDGE ON EVENT:
You will need to create another event that is triggered by PLAYER TOUCH with a CONDITIONAL BRANCH select depending on the needed direction once again (in my case, it is UP). Once you find and select the needed direction for the CONDITIONAL BRANCH, find and select the CONTROL SWITCH we made earlier called "UNDER GOOD" once more. You might be thinking "Why under Good again?" Just trust me. Select it and turn THIS event "ON". Now hit OKAY/APPLY and copy and paste the event as much as you needed in that one direction. In my case, I placed all my BRIDGE ON EVENTS to the SOUTH/DOWN of the bridge, see here.

Now save your game and test the bridge! Please report back if you encounter any problem, need help or more. This took me forever to make, and I might have misssed SOMETHING. So don't be afraid to ask!

Videos

Links to learn how to use RM engines:
RMVX School
RMXPUnlimited

CREDITS:
RMXPUnlimited. Why? Because someone helped me with these bridges and I lost the PM and link, and name of the person. All my messages got destroyed. I think it was kaboth or Enigma, but I am not 100%. Its times like this I REALLY hate my terrible memory.