[RMMV] SILVER KING PROJECT

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Hello! I'm new, and I'm starting a project for a new game tentatively titled "The Silver King". I'm using MV because as far as I can tell it's the only program that works on a Mac (My only laptop).

I'm just getting started, so I don't have much to show, but here's a brief teaser of the game without much in the way of spoilers:

The Silver King: A young street urchin seeks to avenge his sister's death. Unfortunately, his target is a nobleman, wealthy and powerful beyond his wildest dreams. In order to achieve his revenge, the boy will search out forgotten magics, and power. His success, and his failure, will only be the beginning...

I have a full story plotted out, as well as about 40% of the details. My goal is to have the first "chapter" finished in a month or two as a workable demo of sorts, then to have the rest of the game finished in 16-22 more months to put up for sale on Steam.




So why am I posting here? Well, I've lurked around the edges of this community a bit, but I know that there's bound to be tons of resources I'm overlooking just due to a lack of familiarity with the RPGMaker community. If anyone feels so inclined, I've got a list of things that I need to tackle to make this game a reality, and the less I have to reinvent the wheel the faster that will happen. If people can point me towards the posts and threads where some of these resources/scripts/etc. may already be explained/available then that would be a huge help.

I'm going to tackle all of the problems either way, and I'll be doing searching of my own, but I figured I'd just ask for directions while I go down the rabbit hole.

So here's a short list of things I'm looking for. And fair warning: this list will expand the deeper into the project I get.



Seeking Solutions For:

1."Invisible" sprites. A way to make the player's avatar look transparent like a ghost, while still being visible to the player. Think an invisibility spell that makes them not visible to NPC's but I need the player to still be able to see where the hell they are! XD

Edit: Well, changing the player's Opacity is simple enough and already built in. Cool.

2.Doors that open. It can be just one "map", but the MV doors all are just events that transfer you, and to make something I have in mind effective, I would really prefer to be able to transition from one "room" to the next more smoothly than that.

Edit: And this is also relatively simple. Just remove the transfer event option, then reverse the door's movement route. Heh.

3.Cabinets that open. Individually changeable tiles? For that matter, any scripts/plugins/resources geared towards changeable tiles would be a huge help.

Edit: Answered! Thanks to Liberty and Marrend for the help.

4.More hair colors. I want one of the character's hair colors to gradually shift from one shade to another (for reasons of plot), but I think MV really only has like three shades of each color. If there's a plugin that offers a wider variety, that would be pretty awesome.

Edit: This one is mostly just less of a priority now. Thanks to Liberty and Coelocanth for the help though, I'll probably implement it eventually.

5.One Color, Many Shades Sprites. At times, I want to use a hologram effect, where one of the characters is projected magically. I'm toying with the idea of having this visually represented by them being completely blue, but it wouldn't be practical if the whole sprite/faceset was the exact same color, because that would ruin the definition. They'd be a blob. I'm open to suggestions on this one.

Edit: Answered! Thanks, Coelocanth and Mirak for the suggestions. I'll let you know how that works out when I get to it.

6.A skill that transitions the character to another map, while saving their current position for them to transfer back to automatically I'm envisioning the player traveling within their own mind, sorta meditation-like, so it would make sense for them to be able to do this anywhere, and also for the character to physically stay in one spot. I feel like this might be beyond scriptable, but I dunno, I don't have much of a reference for what's possible.

Edit: And Answered! Thanks to Marrend and Narcodis for the help.

What's this? No more questions? Well, I have work and sleep to attend to, but rest assured there will be more. I guarantee it.


That's all for now. I know I'm asking a lot, but it never hurts to ask and none of you are obligated to help me. I'll definitely put anyone who finds me an answer to any of these in the credits when I finish the game. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me. Wish me luck! :)
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
6) I'm pretty sure it's possible to store player position using game-variables. I think Map ID might be under the Game Data -> Other category in the Change Variables event-command window, but I only have VX Ace to verify (though I doubt MV is much different in this regard). Player coordinates I'm pretty sure falls into the Game Data -> Character category in that window.

The idea here is to use Transfer Player and use those variables for the transfer back to "reality".

*Edit:
3) I feel like this could be done via a Self-Switch. Like, I'm imagining players searching the cabinet, whatever text appears does so, enable the Self-Switch. Page 2, require that the Self-Switch from before is active, ensure the graphic is the "open" cabinet (or whatever), and... done?
6) this is 100% possible!

If you're not familiar with the concept of variables yet, I would recommend reading up on some of the tutorials here on this website. This tutorial is pretty good, and covers a lot of basics. It's geared towards RPG Maker VX, but the concepts work exactly the same in RPG Maker MV.

Given that, you can store the current Map ID into a variable (Control Variables -> Game Data -> Other -> Map ID), and store the X/Y coordinates into two other variables (Control Variables -> Game Data -> Character -> Player, Map X/Y).

When you want to transfer back to that position, use those variables in the Transfer Player command.
3 - Events with self switches. Events can show a tile graphic for each page (and that visual can be changed using move event command). Just slap the tiles you want to change the visual of on a sprite sheet and then use switches (or variables) to change between the particular tile you want shown with the event. Easy.

4 - Sprites and events. You can recolour the sprite's hair to slowly shift colour and at certain points in the game use the 'change hero' event command to change which sprite is referenced for the hero. If you want it based less on plot points and more on time spent in the game, you can use variables to track time instead and use a common event to change the sprite using conditional branches that check the variable that is keeping track of time.

5 - sprites can be set to transparent...
3. This has already been answered, but look at how chests and doors work if you want to animate opening and closing the cabinet.

4. Use your favourite image editor to recolour the hair, even if you're using a character generator to make character sprites.
You can do a "cross fade" effect in a cut scene between two character images by placing an event above the player with the old image, and gradually fading it out with transparancy.
For an example of this, see the opening scene in my game "Contagious Magic", which changes the character's hair colour for plot reasons.

(I otherwise used the "change actor images" event command exactly as Liberty describes)

5. Another option for a hologram effect, since you're using MV:
Look at the "magic and SF pack" which was a free update (it'll be in your dlc folder if you have the steam version), which has a shader plugin. One of the example effects looks a bit like the hologram of princess leia in star wars.

Shaders are pretty hard though, so use transparency if you can't figure out the example projects.
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
Also a bit of a tip, MV uses png like xp and vx ace, which means you can brute-force transparency by using an image editor to lower the opacity of the sprites you're using and saving the pic like that, then placing it in MV and replacing your actor sprite with the transparent sprite. This can help you create fade in/fade out animations that only affect certain sprites without relying in the engine's built-in fixed transparency values.
Thanks for your help everyone! I've made good progress on things, but still have a way to go before I have a decent size demo ready. I've mostly just been tackling things one problem at a time and discovering the vast world of plug-ins already available.

author=Liberty
3 - Events with self switches. Events can show a tile graphic for each page (and that visual can be changed using move event command). Just slap the tiles you want to change the visual of on a sprite sheet and then use switches (or variables) to change between the particular tile you want shown with the event. Easy.

author=Marrend
*Edit:
3) I feel like this could be done via a Self-Switch. Like, I'm imagining players searching the cabinet, whatever text appears does so, enable the Self-Switch. Page 2, require that the Self-Switch from before is active, ensure the graphic is the "open" cabinet (or whatever), and... done?

I tried something like this earlier today and it didn't work. I'm going to assume that's due to "user error", since that's the cause of most of my difficulties right now. This one was probably because I wasn't using a sprite sheet. I'll give this a shot, thanks!

author=Liberty
4 - Sprites and events. You can recolour the sprite's hair to slowly shift colour and at certain points in the game use the 'change hero' event command to change which sprite is referenced for the hero. If you want it based less on plot points and more on time spent in the game, you can use variables to track time instead and use a common event to change the sprite using conditional branches that check the variable that is keeping track of time.

I'm not entirely sure how to recolor the hair though. The basic character generator only gives one shade per color, and I don't have much in the way of artistic skills. I'm not so much worried about how to get the program to reference the right sprite sheet as how to produce more sprite sheets to reference.

Specifically, I'm looking for hair that'll go from Black to Silver. There's lots of programs out there to provide extra colors, but nobody seems concerned with the intermediate steps, which is unfortunate.

Ultimately, this is a lesser priority though. I mostly just wanted it for aesthetic reasons, but this is an RPGMaker game. I doubt I'll be winning any awards for my outstanding graphics.

author=narcodis
6) this is 100% possible!

If you're not familiar with the concept of variables yet, I would recommend reading up on some of the tutorials here on this website. This tutorial is pretty good, and covers a lot of basics. It's geared towards RPG Maker VX, but the concepts work exactly the same in RPG Maker MV.

Given that, you can store the current Map ID into a variable (Control Variables -> Game Data -> Other -> Map ID), and store the X/Y coordinates into two other variables (Control Variables -> Game Data -> Character -> Player, Map X/Y).

When you want to transfer back to that position, use those variables in the Transfer Player command.

author=Marrend
6) I'm pretty sure it's possible to store player position using game-variables. I think Map ID might be under the Game Data -> Other category in the Change Variables event-command window, but I only have VX Ace to verify (though I doubt MV is much different in this regard). Player coordinates I'm pretty sure falls into the Game Data -> Character category in that window.

The idea here is to use Transfer Player and use those variables for the transfer back to "reality".

Thanks! I've figured out how to get skills to trigger events, so this is the rest of the puzzle I needed.

author=coelocanth
4. Use your favourite image editor to recolour the hair,

Three days ago the idea of having a favorite image editor would have frightened me. Having fumbled through my desperate need for recolored tiles, I now consider GIMP to be somewhat workable. Are the hair components of the generator just in the data files somewhere? I'll have to take a look. I guess colorizing them then re inserting them to the CG, then colorizing to a slightly different shade, Etc. would work. I might do this after I get the first chunk of the game done though. I'm trying to get enough of it done to release in a month or so for feedback, and hair color just might be less important than everything else.

author=coelocanth
5. Another option for a hologram effect, since you're using MV:
Look at the "magic and SF pack" which was a free update (it'll be in your dlc folder if you have the steam version), which has a shader plugin. One of the example effects looks a bit like the hologram of princess leia in star wars.

Shaders are pretty hard though, so use transparency if you can't figure out the example projects.

I'll have to check that DLC out. It sounds perfect for what I need, although I haven't reached the point where I need it yet. (My plan was to just use the CG to make an all blue version of the character, then set the event's sprite opacity to 100. It'd work I think, but hey, more options are always a good thing.)

Thanks again for all the help! I'll probably post up some more questions as they arise, but I've got a busy week ahead and what time I can direct towards this is going into the game itself so it may be a week or so before I have another list ready.
All the generator components are PNGs in a folder named "generator" in the application. There are subfolders for the different sheet types.

Some tools exist like the "extended character generator" that give you more options for using the parts. Unfortunately that's a windows app.
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