Eventing - Chapter 1

[deValdr]

Learn eventing
Chapter 1 - the very basics

About this tutorial
This tutorial is for you, if you are new to rpg maker and want to get going making your first game. Fine, but what is eventing? Eventing is fun, and it's also very important. Eventing, means designing what will happen in your game. Making text appear, making an NPC give you quest when talked too, and even awesome battles between your main character and main bad-ass. Wanna learn it? It's quite easy.

1. The interface.
First of all, we will take a look at the rpg maker application in which you will make your game. Remember, this is only an eventing tutorial and it will only explain event related things.

Playtest: Clicking the button will make the game you are working on run, to let you see how it looks, and if everything works.

Layers: Layers aren't relevant to eventing so I wont explain them in this tutorial. Just make sure the fourth layer (the blue cube icon) is selected. If it's not, click on it.

The map: This is your game's first map. A map equals a location (Area, Level, Stage, town/forest/cave etc.) in the game. Designing them is called mapping and wont be covered in this tutorial. Well, a map in the game, contains terrain, maybe houses, maybe some trees, but also events. The events aren't necessarily visible. They make things happen on the map.

The 'S' on the middle of the map marks where the player starts when the game runs.




2. Creating your first event
Ready, steady, action! Let's get going. In order to make an event, double click somewhere on the map. A new event will be created where you clicked and a window will appear on the screen. In this window, you will design the event.



Name: The name of your event. What you choose to call it doesn't matter.

Graphic: Although events doesn't have to be visible, most are. This means that they need to look like something. Double click the blank box to choose what the event should look like.

Command list:

The command list is where you design the actions of this event. In other terms, what this event will do. I will explain this in detail in the next section.
Trigger: When will this event do whatever actions you have chosen in the command list?

• Action button: When the player presses ENTER while standing next to the event (aka. Talks to/interacts with the event).
  
• Player touch: When the player is touching and facing (thats what she said) the event. No need to press enter.
  
• Event touch: Same as player touch, but the player doesn't need to face the event.
  
• Autorun: At once the player enters this map. Freezes other events and player (aka. cutscene)
  
• Parallel process: At once the player enters the map, this event starts running in the background. Not freezing other events or player and not freezed by autorunning events.

3. Making your event do something.
It's time to make something happen. We're gonna make the event show some text when talked to. First of all, set trigger to Action Button. If you haven't set a graphic for the event yet, do so. Now, double click in the command list.


Three pages of commands to choose from. Not too shabby, huh?

Click 'show text' and a smaller window will appear. Type in the text you want the event to display.



Press ok, and notice how the show text command has been added to the command list. You have done it. That wasn't so hard, was it? It's playtest time. Click the green arrow to run the game. Walk over to the event using the arrow keys and press enter when you're touching and facing it. That's it for this time people. Hope it helps you a bit. :)