[RMVX ACE] PLAYER SPAWNS TRAIL ON ITEM USE?

Alright, I'm aiming for something kind of ambitious here, and so far every method I've tried to get it to work hasn't really panned out.

The concept: I want the player to have an item that, when used from the menu, starts a common event which causes a trail to spawn behind them (like footprints in snow, though this isn't what I'm doing specifically). When the item is used again (when the common event/switch is off) the trail does not spawn.

So far I've played around with a few ways to do this, but each presents its own problems and hasn't worked fully.

1. I was using YanFly's Event Spawner in the common event to, well, spawn events with the graphic of the trail I wanted. The problem here is that it seems it only accepts strict x,y coordinates and is not set up to allow for the parsing of a variable instead, i.e. the player's current location. Thus I don't think I can use this to create a constantly-updating trail as the player moves.

2. I found another event spawner by Kal, which was a lot more customizeable but similarly does not seem to allow for the parsing in of a variable in place of a coordinate. Also seems to only work from a parent spawner object and thus cannot be activated from a menu item.

3. The most effective method I found so far was using Galv's Region Effects, and simply connecting the common event to trip the switch that activates/deactivates the effects. Thus essentially turning on and off the footprint spawning whenever. This works exactly how I want it to--the problem is the footprints will only spawn on terrain with a specific ID. I want this item to be used anywhere at any time throughout the game, which means I'd need to have every single tile on every single map marked with this region ID, which could very well interfere with any other ID-specific events I may need to use in the future. I could probably just design around this if I really had to, but I want to know if there are any other options.


It's a lot to digest, sorry, but I'm not sure what else to try from here, short of getting a custom script made. Any suggestions on ways to make one of the above methods work, or another method I haven't tried yet would be super appreciated.

Thank you very much!

author=NeverSilent
I don't think you read this quite right, kory. They were talking about a trail, not a tail.


That said, Saki, I'm not familiar with this third script you mentioned, but off the top of my head: Is it possible to key the footprint effect to a region ID number of 0, so that by default any tile would have that setting enabled? That would at least save you a lot of work.
Or, perhaps, is it possible to set the region ID needed to activate the footprint effect to more than one number? That way, you could just set it to trigger on region IDs 0 through 63, meaning it would always be active.
Otherwise, can you input the value of a variable for the ID the script requires, instead of a constant number, and just have the variable always update to the region ID of the tile the player is currently standing on?

You might have already thought of these ideas yourself, or they might not work, but I figured I should at least make the suggestions.

Welcome to RMN, by the way!

Oh my god what a simple solution, and it totally worked! I never really thought of that--I just assumed that using ID 0 would be inactive and not trigger anything. I might try and experiment with getting the ID of the player's location and using that if I need to for special instances, but right now setting the effect to 0 is working just fine! Thank you so much!

Also haha thanks, I actually had another account here back in like 2010, but I can't remember the username and I'm sure the posts on there are old and noobish anyway so best to just start anew :P

author=kory_toombs

author=NeverSilent
I don't think you read this quite right, kory. They were talking about a trail, not a tail.

Epic fail on my part! Now you must have a character that can do that!

Bahaha, you're fine. The player does have access to a dog costume in the game so, close enough!

author=NeverSilent
Oh, wow, I'm surprised myself that actually worked the way you wanted it to. I was basically just grasping at straws here, haha!

Let me correct myself: Welcome back to RMN! Share your creativity with us!

(I really like your avatar, by the way.)

Well it is game development, so there's always the possibility it will seem like it's working for now but will crash and burn in a week for no reason lol

And thank you! But unfortunately I can't take credit for it myself ahaha. It's from a dollmaker!