Page 4 - Cause and Effect

There's only so much fun you can have with the skills we've learned so far, so let's learn something that adds a whole new perspective to the game: switches! Say you wanted the game to react to things you've already completed in your quest, like a townsperson saying something different after you've defeated a monster, or a door only opening up to you if you've talked to the old man in the cave. All of these things need switches. A switch is turned on when you complete an action, and other events use that switch as a signal to come into the game.

Setting up Switches

First, open up the Command List for an event. I'm going to use my campsite. So originally I had the player throwing a fireball at the campsite to try and light the fire, but nothing happens. The player could do this over and over again. But I want the player to only be able to do it once, and then have the campsite say something different.

First, I'll add an event after "Show Animation" in the list.

On the top of page one, select "Control Switches..." All of the defaults should be ifne. Basically this box is saying that this command will switch the Event "EV001" from off to on. This means we can make other events rely on EV001 being switched "on" in order to work.

 

Now click on the button at the top of the event window labeled "New Event Page." This will open a second tab for a new list of event commands. Near the top of the tab you'll notice a box labeled Conditions. Check the first box labeled "Switch".

Notice how it says "0001: EV001 is ON", just like the control switch from page 1 says. Now I'm going to add a Show Text command that says "That didn't seem to work... why don't you leave it alone?" I'll leave the Trigger as Action Button. This means that once a player has tried to start the fire once, they will get this message every time they check the campsite again! Go ahead and test it out =)

Switches don't have to be included in the same event! If you wanted, you could set the Event to the door of the tent to be conditional on the fire as well, so that the player would have to try lighting the fire before they could get in the house. With so many possibilities, why not experiment?