CREATING A STEP COUNTING SYSTEM

This will count steps that you take into walls too. What you should do is record the player's X/Y before they push a button then after they do, get the player's new X/Y. If either of them has changed, the player moved so increase the StepCounter. Otherwise the player ran into a wall or something so don't increment the step counter.

Alternatively, you can have a loop that starts with recording the player's current X/Y, wait 0.1s, then take the player's new X/Y and if they're different, increment the step counter. If you want specific numbers you can actually do the math to see how many steps the player took in the 0.1s (although I can't imagine the player moving very far in 0.1s). This should deal with running into walls or long, continuous steps and I've used this method in a custom encounter system in RM2k3 without either of those problems.