Page 2 - Making Things Happen

Now that we have a place for our RPG, let's make some things happen! For everything that happens in a game, you need something called an Event. Events handle everything from talking to townspeople, to going inside houses, to what weather conditions are in a certain area.

For this demonstration, I've added some more tiles to my map from Page 1. Now there are flowers and patches of overgrown grass. I've also added a little campfire site. This is where I want my first event to take place. You can have your event take place anywhere you want.

To get started with events, first we need to click on the Event button. This is the cube button to the right of the Layer buttons on the toolbar.

In a way, the Event button is sort of like another layer. It looks at the map as a whole, and your events are placed on individual tiles of the grid, not entire pictures or sprites.

So I want an event to happen on the little fire pit at the campsite. To add an event to a tile, double click that tile in Event mode and a box will come up that says "New Event."

First, look down near the bottom and you'll see a box labeled "Trigger." What this option wants to know is what will make this event happen? Do you want something to happen when the player goes up to the campsite and presses a button? Or do you want something to happen suddenly, just when the player touches the campsite with the character? For now, let's leave the Trigger as "Action Button," so that the event will take place when the player goes up to the campsite and presses a button.

Now look at the big white area labeled "List of Event Commands." This is where all of the things that will happen will be listed. Double click on the only thing listed there, "@>", and a box will pop up.

Holy cow! There's three pages worth of events to choose from! Let's pick the very first one, "Show Text..." This means that when the character goes up to the campsite and presses a button, some text will pop up!

A box will appear and you put in whatever text you like! I'm having mine say "The fire went out long ago."

After you're happy with your text, click OK, and then OK again in the Event box to take you back to your map. Go up to Game > Playtest and test out your new Event! When your character appears on screen, walk him over to the campsite (or wherever you put your event) and press either Enter or "C" on your keyboard (these are the default "action" buttons. You can change these by pressing F1 during the game). A little text box should pop up with your text in it! Press C or Enter again to get rid of it. Totally awesome!

Congratulations! You just made your first event! But let's make it even cooler by adding mulitple actions to one Event list!

This time let's have the game ask you a question when you approach the campsite. Close your test game and double click on your Event tile again to open the Event page back up. Right click on the Text event and go to "Edit" to change the text to a question. I'll make mine say "Do you want to try and start the fire?"

Press OK and you'll see that the text has changed in the Event list. Now let's add another event. Double click the "@>" underneat the text event. Hey, it's those three pages of events from before! Now we'll choose "Show Choices." Since my question is a Yes or No question, I could leave everything as it is, but I think I'll change it up a bit with a little "Sure" and "No way." If you add more choices, make sure to specify which choice will be chosen if the player hits the cancel button.

When you click OK you'll see that there's a lot more in the Event list than before! Most imprtant are the two pieces, "When [Sure]" and "When [No way]." These tell the game what to do when your player makes a choice. I probably won't have the game do anything when the player chooses "No way" so I'm going to leave that one blank. But I do want something to happen if they choose "Sure." Double click the "@>" below "When [Sure]" and yet another three page event options box will pop up! As you can see, there are lots of possibilities with Events! This question could branch out into more and more questions until your player finally gives up and turns off the game! But let's not do that.

RPG Maker comes with some pretty cool preset animations for your character! Since I'm trying to light the fire, maybe I'll have the character look like he's casting a fire spell! This type of event is called "Show Animation" and it's on page 2 of the commands list.

We want the animation to happen on the our player, so leave the Character setting as "Player." The animation "Fire 2" is a pretty cool looking fireball, so I'm going to use that one. Choose your animation and click OK.

Hit a bunch of OKs and let's test the game!! How exciting! Go up to the campsite and hit C or Enter and make your choice!

Wow! Wasn't that exciting! Too bad he's just an apprentice mage who can't even start a campfire yet. More importantly, you just made a complicated Event! Awesome! Now that you've come this far, go crazy experimenting and seeing what other kind of reactions you can make the player have to checking out this campfire. You could have other things happen after the fireball, or have something happen if the player chooses "No way" or all sorts of things!