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Rebuilding RPG Maker systems

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but that's mostly because I've been digging in. There are a lot of pluses about working with Game Maker (multiplatform export, big community, expanding features) but it's a daunting task to build a lot of things from scratch. Today I finished one of the systems those of us who code in RPG Maker take for granted -- queued movements.

My solution was to create a channel system where the game would pause for a cutscene as soon as channel 1 is activated. All NPCs that have movements on channel 1 move at the same time. When all NPCs have finished their moves/animations, the system checks for any movements on channel 2. Repeat until all channels are cleared.

It's nice to have these down, especially if I look to remake my first game Tiamat Sacrament in GM (and I would like to do that... how cool would it be to have an iPhone version?). Now that I've made cutscenes easier to script, I should be nearing release for the second demo shortly.