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I am Vectra. Today, i will be talking about how to make an evented shape shifting. The idea has came from this: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/33541-shapeshifting-in-battle/#entry227802 Note: I'm going to use a wolf as an example and Imma show two ways to do this. Here's what you need At least 2 Actors 1 common event 1 Switch 2 Variable 1 Condition Branch Let's say Billy wants to be a wolf. You need a actor who is a wolf and one who is Billy. You need 1 variable that equals to Billy's EXP You need 1 variable that equals to Wolf's EXP Go to Control Variable Go to game data <= If you have VX, skip this step and go to step 6 Go to actor Go to the right, you should see level Change it to EXP It should look like this: Control Variables: [Var ID: Billy's EXP] = [billy]'s EXP Vx Ace Vx @>Conditional Branch: Switch [0051:Wolf] == ON @>Control Switches: [0051:Wolf] == OFF @>Change EXP: [billy], - Variable [0002: Billy's EXP] @>Change EXP: [Wolf], + Variable [0002: Billy's EXP] @>Change Party Member: Add [Wolf] @>Change Party Member: Remove [billy] @> : Else @>Control Switches: [0051: Wolf] == ON @>Change level: [Wolf], - Variable [0003: Wolf's EX] @>Change EXP: [billy], + Variable [0003: Wolf's EXP] @>Change Party Member: Remove [Wolf] @>Change Party Member: Add [billy] : Branch End @> The switch tells whether you are a wolf or not. You subtract the EXP because you want it to be 0 so when they come back, you'll just add the EXP + gained EXP rather than having to find the difference of EXP and gained EXP and all that extra work. Adding one member and removing the other is the "transformation." You are replacing Billy with his wolf self and vise versa. Once you do the above, you make a skill call the common event. If you are on Vx, in the skills' tab, common event is next to "animation." If Vx Ace, go to the "effects" section, double-click, go to the 4th tab, and you should see this... Pick the correct common event and BAM! You're done. Here's another way to do this...(2nd method) This is only used if you don't wish to create another actor, but it is highly recommended as this requires much more work. Here's what you need 1 Actor 2 Common Events 1 States 2 Skills Create a skill called "Wolf Transformation" (or anything you like) Create a skill called "Wolf Transformation OFF"(or anything you like) This is how the common event for "Wolf Transformation" should look... @>Change Actor Graphic: [billy], 'Faceset name', index#, 'Charset Name', index# @>Change Actor Name: [billy], 'Wolf' @>Change Parameters: [billy], stat name -/+ # @>Change Skills, + [Wolf Transformation OFF] @>Change Skills, - [Wolf Transformation] @>Change Skills, + [skill Name](Encase you wanted to add any additional skills) @> This is how the common event for "Wolf Transformation OFF" should look... @>Change Actor Graphic: [Wolf], 'Faceset name', index#, 'Charset Name', index# @>Change Actor Name: [Wolf], 'Billy' @>Change Parameters: [Wolf], stat name -/+ # @>Change Skills, - [Wolf Transformation OFF] @>Change Skills, + [Wolf Transformation] @>Change Skills, + [skill Name](Encase you wanted to add any additional skills) @> Change parameter is if you want to give the wolf extra HP or extra ATK. You add the OFF skill to the Wolf to change to Billy. You use the "Wolf Transformation" skill to get from Billy to Wolf. It's so Wolf doesn't have the transformation skill and Billy won't have the OFF skill. Add (or subtract) any extra skills that you don't want the wolf(or Billy) to know. To make the skills call them, you do the exact same thing you do for the first method. Any Questions?

Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm new to the community and just wanted to introduce myself.

Hello everyone. I have been a member of the forums for about a month now. Just realized I needed to make a post here. I was using the forum to get answers to problems I was having in making my games. Most of them are solved thanks to the many that know the programs so well. I started using VX Ace in April 2016, spent two weeks using the default maps to make a game. Then a month debugging. This I make open to anybody to play. http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/62242-entaria/ My new game I'm hoping will be good enough to sell on steam. Lofty goals? Well I've played a few games there and the cheap ones are that because they are not so good. It would be too easy to make something better, and so far I have. I don't think I have the best out there, I never will. While I'm learning the game development, I will never be able to do art work or music. Once this game is finished, I'll be starting with MV. So, hello and I look forward to becoming a valued member.

Hi Guys, the newbie here.. please your support, comment, input. thanks

Hoof to: Making gif's Using GIMP Free and simple way to create awesome banners! ~ Intoduction For the second or third time, I was asked how did I make my animated banners in my signature. Though I wish the answer would be 'professional' sounding, I'm actually using a simple method. + PROS - It's very easy (assuming, that you know the basics of using GIMP) - It's 100% Free - No quality loss like it happens with movie-to-gif converters (pixel~shading corruption) '- though there is still the gif type file's color limit - FULL control on every single pixel, frame and timing - CONS - It requires some time to make gifs - It may take ages to create complex gifs - Requires patience (dependable on complexity) ~ Let's hoof it! Don't be scared by the amount of steps and text in here. ^^ There's that much stuff, because I'm showing step by step, how I'm making my gifs, but if you have your layers ready (let's say you have 5 images and you want to make a gif with them to display all of them in one image file), then simply skip the first steps and check how to create a gif with your images. STEP 1: Create a New Image [►] SKIP TO NEXT STEP IF YOU KNOW THE BASICS OF GIMP [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Just click "File" tab and select "New..." or simply use [Ctrl + N] shortcut. Then select your dimensions and click OK. For this tutorial, I'll create a simple progress bar gif with a size of 300x20. And we'll get this: And you have a new image! Well done! That's it! Now export it and upload to your signature! JK! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) STEP 2: Draw or Import Your Banner [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Well, now you need to draw your banner. It is important to keep things in separate layers, to not have problems later. For this tutorial, I've made a silly progress bar: STEP 3: Animate Animated Parts [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Now we'll have to multiply our blue layer and make a simple animation with it. In this tutorial, I'll be simply moving these 'arrows' to the right. Complexity of the gif depends on how fast you'll get back to the beginning, for example I'll need 12 layers to make one arrow cover another, which will allow me to loop it. So first, let's duplicate the blue layer and move its content to the right by one pixel: I have marked the copied layer with purple, so now let's copy the purple layer and move it again to the right by one pixel: Repeat that action until you'll get a loop with the first frame (the blue layer): WARNING! Big gif, opening this spoiler may cause lag ( i ) NOTE: As seen on the gif above, the animation goes from the BOTTOM to the TOP, so the animation starts with the very bottom layer and goes all the way up. Now as you can see, it will loop, so now we're able to move further. STEP 4: Clean Remainings [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Probably you have noticed, that the arrows are getting out of the bar and that's right, we need to remove them. Make every animated layer visible at once and you'll get this: Now you can see all animated layers at once and you can clearly see how the arrows are getting out. Now use selection tool (it can be either the normal Rectangle one or "Free Select Tool" or whatever you're comfortable with) to select the area with the arrows outside the bar: Now simply scroll though the animated layers and delete these parts. You can highlight the top frame and just press [DEL] then [ ↓ ] and again [DEL], [ ↓ ] and repeat... Be careful to not delete that part in a BASE layer etc.. After cleaning, you'll see this: STEP 5: Merge Stuff [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Now let's merge the animated part with the base, but keep the percentage layer separate for future. Our awesome animation took 12 frames, so let's duplicate the BASE layer to make 12 of them and merge animation layers with the base ones, so each layer will have BASE and the ANIMATION: Now we have the base prepared! STEP 6: Put the Values! [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Let's assume we have 20% of the progress, so we'll have to edit the percent layer and create a new one (I'll name it "FILL"), where we'll fill the bar: Note, that all the BASE (with animation) is at the bottom and the changeable stuff is at the top. Now SAVE all of this as a PROJECT to be able to access it (the layered version) later in case if you would like to change the percentage and move the bar etc.. As you can see, the banner looks generally ready, but we still need to put the percentage and fill on each frame, so when everything is ready, merge FILL with PERCENTAGE and duplicate it to be able to combine it with each BASE. Technically do the same as when merging arrows (animation) with BASE. Now don't save! Because you'll have troubles with editing it later as the layers will be merged. You may however, save this as a new project if you want to, but keep the raw version, because it's important. STEP 7: Exporting GIF! [◄◄] GO BACK TO SEE AN EXAMPLE ON HOW TO PREPARE IMAGES Now there's the main point of this tutorial, so if you have skipped the previous parts, because you know the basics and stuff, then you'll be totally fine from there. We have a project with 12 layers: WARNING! Big gif, opening this spoiler may cause lag Now we want to make a gif of it, then it's a very simple process. > Click 'File' tab and select "Export As..." OR simply use the shortcut by pressing and holding [Ctrl] and [shift] then pressing the [ E ] button. > Name your file and put .gif extension to it. For example name it: Progress Bar.gif > Oh noes! A warning emerged! This is because for some reason (I wasn't paying attention where it exactly happened) my layers are bigger than the image size: ~so this warning box is telling me, that I need to get rid of the extra-size of the layers in order to export the file as a gif. Don't worry it's nothing scary, just use the "Crop" skill and you'll one-hit-KO that enemy. Fun fact: When you'll click "Cancel" then GIMP will freeze for a moment. I think it's a bug, but after ~20 seconds it will un-freeze and throw an error, that you need to crop the layers or something. > Setup your gif ● Tick "As animation" box ● Tick "Loop forever" box ● Set delay between frames (it applies to ALL* frames) ~ the less, the faster '-> 15 is minimum. A value less than that, will result in slow-motion ~ the gif will be played weirdly ● Set "(replace)" in the frame disposal, so it will be displaying the layers one after another (You can use "(combine)" when dealing with transparency stuff ~ ~ one layer will be covering another and combining ~ you can experiment with that) > AND CLICK EXPORT! ^^ * ALL - I'll show how to setup different delays for each frame later, no worries. [ I I ] PAUSE HERE AND CHECK HOW TO SETUP DIFFERENT DELAYS NOW Step 8: Checking the exported gif [◄◄] GO BACK TO SEE AN EXAMPLE ON HOW TO PREPARE IMAGES [◄] GO TO PREVIOUS STEP TO SEE HOW TO EXPORT A GIF Now you have your gif file, so you'll probably want to see how it looks like. You can open it with "Windows Media Player", but this guy doesn't play gifs very well, especially when dealing with transparency. As long as you don't have any transparent points and you're basing only on "(replace)" then it should play it nicely. Personally I'm checking my gifs by opening a new tab in "Google Chrome" and just drag'n'dropping the file to the browser, then it will play the gif perfectly. Now when it does look right, upload it to image hosting sites, such as Imgur and simply use the image's URL in the text editor like with normal (like .png) pictures. STEP +: Setting Different Delays to Each Layer As you know, you can set the delay between frames during exporting the gif. You probably also noticed, that it says "where unspecified" - yes, you can set it before exporting. You just need to add 'commands' in the layer's name. for example "(50ms)" - will set the delay of this frame to 50ms. Putting for example (10000ms) in a layer's name will make it stop for a while on that frame. How it looks like in GIMP: You don't have to setup delays in every single frame. You can, for example when wanting to let's say put a delay of 2000ms in two frames and put 40ms in the rest, then you can simply add "(2000ms)" to the two frames and the rest fill automatically during exporting, where it asks what delay to set for frames, where it is unspecified. You can also during exporting tick a box, that will overwrite ALL layers and set the delay you'll enter there for all frames. [◄◄] GO BACK TO WHERE YOU'VE PAUSED (BEGINNING OF STEP 8) RESULT: With delay set to 40 ms: With delay set to 15 (minimum) ms: With the delays (with stops) set manually from Step +: THE END [ I◄ ] BACK TO THE TOP FAQ Q: What is the maximum possible delay of one frame? A: To be honest I don't know. I was using values like (20000ms) and it was working. I wasn't using higher values, but I guess you could go much higher than that. Q: How to edit the gif when I'd like to move the bar and stuff? A: That's why I told to save the project and keep the raw version. After you'll merge the layers and export the gif, it is quite difficult to edit. Having the 'raw' version will allow you to start from step 6, which is easier than struggling with each frame, though it also depends on complexity. Q: The gifs that you were posting all over the place - are they all made that way? A: Yes, all of my gifs were made using GIMP. Even this one: Q: Why it takes ages to export a gif? A: The more layers gif will have, the more time it will require to render. This process is not visible, so just wait. Q: I don't have GIMP, but I would like to download it, where I can do this and it is free? A: Yes, this program is free and you can download it from here. Q: I don't like GIMP - I'm too pro for this and I'm using Photoshop, how can I make a gif there? A: Sorry, no idea. I'm using GIMP. Q: Can I do this in Paint? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) A: I have no idea, but I doubt it ~ haven't checked, at least. Q: How big and long gifs I can make? A: I was making gifs that had about 200 frames and besides slightly long export time I've not encountered any issue, so I'm not sure if technically there's any limit. Q: For a comparison, how many frames your gifs have? A: My MLP Progress bar has 20 frames and each frame have delay set to 40ms. The MLP banner above the progress bar has 24 frames and also with delay set to 40ms for each frame. Q: lol Riki, how much time did you spent making this tutorial? A: 6 hours. Yes, I have really spent 6 hours on that (from ~8:00PM to ~2:00AM) working along the tutorial to give as much accurate images as I could and then polishing stuff at the end. If you'll have any questions or if there's a problem with something (grammar issue/typo/other) then let me know! ^^ I hope it will be useful for somebody! (= [ I◄ ] BACK TO THE TOP [ I◄◄] BACK TO GENERAL RM TUTORIALS [ I◄◄◄] RETURN TO COMMUNITY INDEX

Greetings reader, I'm Chaosian, I'm a professional game developer by day, and a game hobbyist by night. Overview This is a tutorial intended to give some (relatively) quick and in intuitive instruction, free of crazy complex legal-ese and forms, on the concept of Copyright Law. This tutorial will cover the fundamentals and basics, that everyone should be aware of whilst making their own RPG Maker game - as well as a few nuances. A lot of developers, (especially new developers) can easily loose themselves in the miasma that is copyright law, and decide to just say "screw it", and continue developing their game any way they want. After all, they're just a developer, and they can't be bothered with such silly affairs such as federal / international law! For the most part, these people won't actually see any repercussions for doing this (more below: Copyright Law is Perfect and Should Never Change), but for those wishing to be responsible, professional, or would just rather not see a cease and desist (example) in their mailbox - this is the tutorial for you! I will post a disclaimer as many do who give this kind of basic law advice will: that I am by no means a lawyer, and have not studied law, but have merely been educated in the basics of it by teachers, peers, and through my own private investigation. I have also- never been sued! That means I'm totally qualified to talk down to people about copyright law. Also bear in mind that copyright law changes, depending on the country the creation (your game) is being primarily made in. This tutorial will cover the more universal aspects, but expect details to shift between countries. What's the Big Deal with Copyright..? For the uninitiated, the concept of copyright might seem pretty strange, really broad, and really messy. It might seem that people are legally lashing out at one another seemingly randomly and without any real reason- and that's not too far off. Does anyone remember this scandal that occurred a few years back? Naughty Dog, the developers of the multi-million dollar AAA title, Last of Us, found themselves in the proverbial dog house because of a completely innocuous map that could be found in the game. Perhaps someone is familiar with the names of fan projects like Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, Fighting is Magic, Streets of Rage Remake, Metal Gear Remake? These were all projects shut down because corporations threatened lawsuits against the developers. I assume everyone is familiar with the Ninendo Creator Program, or tangentially, the danger of Youtube's copyright strikes? Or the absolute fallout with the public because of it? It's all because of copyright, and copyright law. If you don't take precautions with your game - you have absolutely no legal defense for these kinds of things happening against you. You deal with the ramifications or you get sued. Fear-mongered enough yet? Great! On to the meat of the discussion. What is Copyright? Copyright is the label that is placed on a creative work to signify that the creator has the rights to. Put simpler: it's who owns stuff, and how they say it can be used. It's essentially how someone legally comes up with an idea or piece of art, and legally has the ownership to it. What is Copyrighted? When just like "copyright" when something is "copyrighted", it is labeled as being the creative work owned by either the creator, or a license holder. It's pretty much as simple as that. Typically, a lot of the time people who know nothing about copyright law will ask if some piece of art they like "is copyrighted" or not. The answer is pretty much always: yes. Since the late 1980s, every creative work is owned by it's creators, and they hold the copyright to it. They do not need to write on any kind of paper they own it, nor do they need to display notification for the copyright - by default they own it regardless under intentional law called the "Berne Convention". So what's © then? "©" or just "the copyright sign" (it really doesn't have a cool name), is a bit of a hold-over in the times since before the 1980s, when it's presence actually meant when something was a registered material or not. It is not required anymore to signify that something is copyrighted under the aforementioned Berne Convention (of the previous section). For the general public it mostly serves as a reminder now that, no, you are more than likely never going to be able to do anything legal with this material. It is relevant in another sense but only to your great grand-children (more below: Public Domain). What is my Copyrighted Material? For RPG Maker, you own the copyright to your games, probably including the whole shebang of character, story, scenario, plot, map, design, and name. You probably also own the copyright to the project file (I don't know for sure, but it'd be very difficult for anyone to fight your ownership of those). What don't I own? The RPG Maker Engine for one, some things around your actual .exe file as you signed away in the End User Lisence Agreement - but probably most damning, potentially the assets in the game. Enterbrain has granted you license to distribute RTP materials (you don't actually own the RTP assets at all) when you bought the program. They can also revoke this license from you at any time, but seemingly only if you break the agreement. It's in Japan Law though, so good luck fighting absolutely anything against a Japanese corporation. What can I do with my Copyrighted Material? Pretty much anything you want. If you create something, you are only limited by the law and materials of the pieces you used to create it. Would you like to show something you made? Put it on DVDs and distribute it? Sell it? Advertise it? Go ahead and edit it? Remake it? Change the license for it? Burn it and snort the ashes? Sell the rights to it so other people can do these things instead of you? By default, you can do all those things! Legally! And what can I do with other people's Copyrighted Material? This is where all the real problems come from. By default, there is VERY little you can do with another person's copyright. What may be able to do in some abstract cases is take someone's image, or music, have it on your computer, listen to it alone, and never do anything with it ever. Oh joy though, if you wanted a list of what you can't do with other people's stuff, then this is the page for you! You can't steal their work. That's called theft. You can't quote someone's work without attributing it. That's called plagiarism. You can't distribute, appropriate, or obtain any part or any amount of someone else's work. With credit, or not. That's called piracy. You cannot make derivative works (stories, songs, games, videos) about another person's copyrighted material. That's generally considered theft of intellectual property. You cannot take parts of someone else's work and integrate it in your own. Even if those are fictional and intangible such as “charactersâ€. That's also considered theft of intellectual property. You can't name your work after someone else's work. If you do any of this you are infringing copyright and are eligible to be issued a Cease and Desist / be sued (more below: Copyright Law is Perfect and Should Never Change). It's worth noting though that a lot of this can be negated by getting permission first, so it's great to have that, it opens a lot of doors (written word is always a lot more valuable than spoken word). Is it really so bad? I appropriate stuff all the time! You would, wouldn't you? But that's the thing, we all do! Web 3.0 is based upon doing it! It is highly likely that the use of your forum avatar is an illegal offense that you could be prosecuted for. It should be noted that the law often has stipulations about the severity of offenses based upon how much of the original work was stolen, what the context was, and what how much harm the end result was. The nice thing about Canada here is that there's quite a lot of stipulation around this, “Purposeâ€, “Characterâ€, “Amountâ€, “Alternativesâ€, “Natureâ€, and “Effectâ€. In practice these all exist so courts can throw out extremely petty cases. It won't stop you from being sued over your wedding music though, which is surprisingly common. (More on that all in: Copyright Law is Perfect and Should Never Change.) But-! But-! Fair Use! Yeah... no. And stop being so defensive, gawd. I would be quite surprised to hear if 0.1% of the activity RPG Maker is used for what actually constitutes as Fair Use. Let's take a quick peek why, and really take a moment to chew through the text. Fair Use in the United States consists of: commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. Other legal structures such as the Commonwealth's Fair Dealing are quite similar. So… Are you making commentary on the subject? Highly unlikely. Are you a search engine? No you are not. Are you criticizing the subject? No you are not. Are you explicitly making fun of the subject? Highly unlikely. Good luck getting fair use parody laws to work for you in Canada. Are you reporting the news? No you are not. Are you doing research? No you are not. Are you teaching as part of an accredited, federally recognized institution? No you are not. Are you creating an archive for a public library? No you are not. Are you writing for scholarship? No you are not. You are not doing anything under fair use. Learning to read copyright, where to look? So now we understand who, what, when, how, and why copyright is but the question remains: where? As stated above, it's pretty much to be expected now that by default, something is copyrighted – even if it isn't labeled. But, a lot of things still are labeled, and it's up to you to find where those labels are. Here's a few basics to look out for: The words “licenseâ€, “licensedâ€. The words “EULAâ€, or “User Agreement†The word “copyrightâ€, or that aforementioned copyright symbol. The words “Creative Commonsâ€, “CC†(more below in: Creative Commons) Small text. Text at the bottom of a page, or in the sidebar. Occasionally, text in “About†pages. Here's some example images of where I found copyright information, and licensing terms. Linkin Park's Song “The Catalyst†on Youtube: Labeled with a “Standard Youtube Licenseâ€. This means that “The Catalyst†is a complete no-go for me, as I highly doubt Youtube's standard license is going to give anyone on the street the ability to just use the music (more the recording of the video, actually! More on that in: Additional Concerns / Pitfalls) however they'd like. Some RPG Maker sprite work I found on Deviantart: Labeled with “Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 Licenseâ€. This is a good sign, and a good license (More on that in: Creative Commons) but it doesn't mean I'm totally out of the woods. I can't sell content that uses these materials, and I might want to consult a lawyer about taking donations for my work – if my only work involves this. Newgrounds: ...had an interesting side-box that didn't have any technical licensing terms, but it had a nice and easy to chew set of rules for a good song I found on it. YouLicence: I found actual licensing terms, and proper financial compensation for the use of the song awesome song “Standalone†on the You License website. The SCP Wiki: A large psudo-creepypasta website, has text at the bottom of it's footer stating that everything in it is part of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 license, which is honestly pretty brutal to read, but survivable (Again, more on that in: Creative Commons). It's not always easy though. I for the life of me cannot figure out where one would begin to look if they wanted to license Frank Sinatra's “Fly Me To The Moonâ€. I suppose it's by a contact / offer only: something for a lawyer to already know about, and be able to perform. I would possibly have the same problem if I actually wanted to license (and pay for) “The Catalystâ€. Good Alternatives for RPG Maker Developers. So? Life sucks then 'ya die, right? Well, it's not all doom and gloom. There exist quite a large repository of resources out there for you to exploit legally take from. It's all about where you look! Free for Use / Royalty Free / Stock / Library What exactly is something when it's “Royalty Freeâ€, or “Stockâ€? In truth, I couldn't properly define it, but as I understand it - when something is “Royalty Freeâ€, it means that you do not have to continually pay money to the license holder for using their music. If I wanted “The Catalyst†to play in my game, I might have to pay $5 for every sale of the game, in addition to $50K in distribution rights. That isn't the case with Royalty Free or Stock Assets / Libraries. It doesn't mean that you own the resources you use, nor does it actually mean that the resources are free, you may have to pay even several hundreds of dollars to obtain them. What it does mean is that you get to keep them once you own them (often times for as many projects as you want). It's very much the fire and forget way of buying things. Creative Commons Creative Commons is a massive sub-topic in copyright. Essentially, Creative Commons is a foundation that's created a bunch of universal licenses for people to use and refer to, called in turn Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons could have it's own tutorial, but the gist is: it means other people can do things with someone else's work and it's all around a nice, altruistic, thing. It's especially nice for video games, because a lot of licenses forget that video games exist, and won't specify if you can use that material for video games or not; with Creative Commons you can use the material for just about anything. Creative Commons has gone through several legal iterations with 3.0 (and 4.0 now I think) being the latest and most commonly used versions. Creative Commons has a few permutations and variants that almost work like plug-ins. They can effect the license from ways that specifying the requirements for use, to the very license your own work has to be under if they use it. Once something enters Creative Commons, it cannot be undone – you are essentially giving up ownership of it. Attribution: Means don't be a jerk, and give credit to me if you use my stuff. Non-Commercial: Usually means, nobody can sell my stuff. You might be able to sell it with permission. No-Derivatives: Means you can have it and use, but you can't change it at all. I'm not sure how far remix goes (is fading in and out the beginning / end to a song considered a remix?), but it's best to err on the side of caution. Share-Alike: Is something you can think as a zombie virus of freedom. If something is under the Share-Alike license it's free, but any material that uses it, or parts of it, also has to be under the same Share-Alike license. Unless you want to completely give up ownership of your game AVOID. The term “Copyleft†often refers to this kind of freedom zombie license. 0: Or Zero. Is the Creative Commons way of saying “public domainâ€. Anyone can do anything with work under Creative Commons 0, though they don't technically own it. There are no restrictions, and credit isn't even needed. Public Domain / GNU / Open Source I'll admit, this is the field I know the least about, and that's a shame, because all these similar license types basically mean: go nuts. Public Domain is the end-all result of all licenses after they expire in a long, long time – it's like the white dwarf star of licenses. When something enters in the Public Domain, it can be used in absolutely any way by anyone. Sherlock Holmes is a great example: anyone anywhere can make a story about Sherlock Holmes – he's part of the zeitgeist, our collective consciousness, nobody owns him. How do you measure Public Domain? Well, things can be placed into the public domain by their creators, or the license can expire after a lot of time has passed since the death of the creator. It's pretty messy to figure out when the actual copyright for something expires, but thanks to those colossal [censored] lobbyists at Disney the rule of thumb for the US is until all the authors die + 70 years. Sinatra Singing Fly Me To The Moon will enter the public domain in roughly 2067. Fantastic, everyone hates you Disney. It could be better / worse though. That 70 is 50 in Canada, and 100 in Mexico. GNU, “General Public Licenseâ€, mostly commonly used in Wikipedia is a completely foreign entity to me. As I understand it, it's an awesome free reign license just like Public Domain. Software under GNU seems to always be copyleft however (See above: Share-Alike). Open Source, as my pa says, “is gonna save the worldâ€. Pretty much exclusive to software, Open Source means that the license and ownership is maintained, distributed, and moderated by a singular entity, but, anyone can go in and edit it / mod it / customize it for themselves and publish their own iterations of it. Pretty irrelevant to RPG Maker, but good to know what it is anyways. Maybe some scripts are under Open Source. Additional Concerns / Pitfalls… So you're all in the clear now, right? You know what you want: Handle's Messiah. It's perfect. There's no country in the world where that's not in the public domain. You go to put that in your game, and BOOM HEADSHOT! Lawsuit right in-between the eyes. What happened?! The problem is that while yes, Handle's Messiah is in the public domain across the entirety of the world – the recording of Handle's Messiah you used was not. When obtaining potentially licensed material, you need to be careful of absolutely any and all people who might have been in the process of the work. That is to say: All this is okay. This is not. This is okay. This is not. Recommendations. So it's a super-big super-scary super-lawsuit-headshot world out there, right? Is there anywhere that's safe?! Well, the good news is that yes, there is. Here are some of my findings... Art Steam Store: All packages you buy from the steam store are free for your use for as many projects as you want. Just don't redistribute the packages, that'd be that good ol' piracy again. Restaff: Each restaff package is free for you to use, but individual assets may have some terms of use, as included inside the package. Mostly it's just attribution (credit), and stipulations about commercial use without prior contact. Resource Requests: As part of the terms of agreement when you fill out a resource request for someone, they can have free reign on it. I personally, put all my content under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 when I help someone out with a resource. Distributed Resources: It's often difficult to find any actual terms of use, or licenses for them, but it is the generally accepted that when someone puts a sprite sheet up on the internet for RPG Maker as a resource, they are saying it is free for use, with credit. This would probably classify as a royalty free license. Be very careful not to steal resources though! Especially on the forum here. Many artists are simply looking for feedback. Always ask for permission, if you're unsure. Deviantart: Take this with a good grain of salt because a lot of artists, understandably don't want you to use their work without them saying you can. There is however, a modest community of people making art on Deviantart (often under a Creative Commons license) which is free for use. Be sure you aren't stealing anything, and be sure you give credit! Clip Art: Kind of an odd-ball, but often Clip Art is placed under the public domain. Take a look, you might be surprised. Music / Sound Kevin MacLeod: Ow, my credibility. Despite being a very, very, tapped well on the Internet, Kevin MacLeod's work is of high quality, and the community he's fostered is an impressive one. All his work is Royalty Free, and individual pieces are also free of charge. It's always nice to donate to such an altruistic soul though, or if not, purchase the entire library. Newgrounds: Ahh Newgrounds, my childhood. Newgrounds audio in particular is a massive repository of pretty much exclusively free music. Very friendly for indie developers. Freesound.org: Mostly for sound effects, this website is great! Each sound has it's own license it's placed under, but for any aspiring audio engineers, or anyone competent with Audacity, it's an awesome place to find a huge amount of uhh… free sound. Free Music Archive: Spanning all genres of music and all shades of Public Domain / Creative Commons – the only downside is that the search isn't all too powerful. Be careful though. Share-Alike plagues a massive amount of the archives. You License: If you're a serious developer (probably more serious than anyone who'll ever be reading this), and you're willing to shell out some cash, this looks be a GREAT website to get high quality (mostly indie, or small time) music. Vimeo Music Store: My secret weapon that no one else knows about. ._. Vimeo's store is one definitely for the savvy who how copyright works. A lot of the licenses for music require dissection, and don't support games, but they still have a very notable amount of people who contribute work under Creative Commons, especially my favorite of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Use it in good faith, my brothers and sisters. [Edit: as of November 2016, the Vimeo Music Store has been taken down. Fuck.] I Understand Now: Copyright Law is Perfect and Should Never Change. It wouldn't be a copyright lecture without someone standing up at the end and saying “nahâ€. And that's a perfectly valid response, even after this entire tutorial. The truth is that copyright law exists to protect corporations, so that their precious IPs that they run into the ground aren't touched upon the filthy, disgusting, plebs. Thank you again Disney. That big list of illegal things near the beginning is a list of things that happen hundreds, if not thousands of times over every minute across the world: the law does not suit the state of the world. That doesn't justify any of these things you probably do on a daily basis, it's still illegal, you can still be fined / go to jail / be sued over any of those things – but it is just a testament to our ever changing social contract. It's pretty much an unspoken rule, known to everyone, even corporations – that's why EA pays big names to do otherwise technically illegal Let's Plays of their games: because the world acts against the law, and it'll continue to thrive while doing so. Copyright is a rigid and ancient thing, actually pushing 150+ years old now, with the last big revisions occurring about 40 years ago. Copyright use is a fluid and spontaneous thing that happens every second, nearly always undocumented when it happens. If you, as a game developer, feel no obligation to copyright law, or feel you are not a target worth bothering over it, is a perfectly valid, and common occurrence to ignore Copyright law, and make your game using whatever. It's not professional, or responsible, it doesn't exempt from the ramifications, or the fact you could technically be a felon, especially if you're profiting from your work in any way – but, it works out for a lot of people. You survived! Thank you for reading my tutorial on Copyright. If you learned something through this whole tutorial, that's enough for me – hopefully it got you thinking at least. And even if you didn't, then… maybe that's a good thing too. If you have additional questions, comments, corrections, or concerns, please PM me, or post them below. Have a good one, folks.

Hi, My name's g0tick and I decided to make a game to my girlfriend. The plot is supposed to be our self story, from the day we met. The thing is, i already watched a lot of videos and guides how to make a game and i'm totally lost. I don't know how to start, how to make my ideas come true. Can anyone help me? thanks

As a hobby, I create NES, Genesis, and SNES styles of existing songs using famitracker and milkytracker. (here's my soundcloud; https://soundcloud.com/liam-mcneaney) but I'm interested in getting started with composing original pieces of music that may or may not be used in video games with a NES/Genesis/SNES aesthetic. The will's there, I have a good knowledge of musical theory, but...nothing. I'm not getting any ideas for original tracks. It's like musical writer's block. How do I take that first step? Maybe the other video game music composers here could help me. Thank you.

Footstep Sounds with Region ID Tutorial on Footstep Sounds with Terrain Tag here. This is a very easy tutorial on how to create footstep sounds with using region ID's. To make things easier, we are not going to use the common events tab and will keep this event on our map. If you want this as a common event, you will just make it as a parallel process and connect it to a switch. Step 1 is to create our map. For this tutorial, I am going to have a wooden floor and a carpet area (I wanted to do grass, but we don't have any in the interior tilesets). Next, we are going to add the region ID. In the top area where the blue character is (the event button), click on the button to the right of it. It should be a square with different colored boxes. When you click on it, you should see all these numbers pop up in the tileset tab. I am going to use 1 for the wood floor and 2 for the carpet. Fill in the whole map with the region IDs that you want to use. Now switch back to the event tab. Create a new event and have the trigger be parallel process. The first thing we need to do is set up the Player's X and Y. To do this, just create two variables called Player X and Player Y. Now, set the variable Player X to Player's Map X in the Game Data area. Do the same exact thing with Player Y, except have it go to Player's Map Y. This is how the event should look so far: Next we are going to set up the region ID. Go to the third tab in the event commands and in the top right corner should be an area called Map. Go to the last button in that area that is called Get Location Info... and click on that. Create a new variable called Player Region ID. For the info type, you will pick Region ID, and click Destination with variables. Choose the variable Player X and Player Y. Now you are going to make a conditional branch. You will have the if the player region is equal to 1, else if the player region is equal to 2. This is how the event should look so far: Now make another conditional branch and have it where if the up button is being pressed, if the down button is being pressed, if the left button is being pressed, or if the right button is being pressed. You will do the same exact thing in the conditional branch where the player region ID is equal to 2. Inside the new conditional branches we made where we pressed the buttons, we are going to add a wait command so it doesn't sound like a machine gun is going off when we walk. I like to use wait 15 frames myself, but you can play around with it and see what speed you want the footsteps to be. Inside the region 1 conditional branch, we are going to add the sound effect. I chose the "knock" SE that come with RPG Maker. Place this under your wait commands. In the region 2 conditional branch, I used the "blow6" SE since that was the closest I could find to a carpet sound. Here is what the finished event should look like: And that is how you create an evented footstep sound. You can add as many region ID's as you'd like and can turn it on or off on any map.

I helped someone with this a few seconds ago. This does not require eventing. This is how you do it. State 1 = State to Target State 2 = State to Caster b.add_state(1); if b.state?(1); a.add_state(2); else; 0; end; damage formula There you go If you want it to be done by chance, I suggest using this: Let's say you want a 60% chance for states to work rand(100) <= 60 ? b.add_state(1); if b.state?(1); a.add_state(2); else; 0; end; damage formula Any questions or problems?

Okay! It's been a while since I've written one of these, but lets dive right in shall we? This tutorial is going to show you the basics of how to control time, time of day, days of week and so on with a few simple variables and common events! The first thing you will need to do is create three events; Time, Time of Day and Day of Week as I chose to call them. The first one acts as a clock, counting time. You will need to create a common event, the very first step is to set a variable of Time and have it constantly add 1. This will count as a timer with each 60 variable counting about roughly 1 second, similar to the wait event. Secondly you will need to create a conditional branch, this will check for Time to have hit a certain point, and will allow you to change the Time of Day. I chose 3000 for testing purposes, giving about 1 minute per change. Now within that conditional branch you will Add a set +1 to Time of Day, this causes the time of day to change, night, morning and so on. Next you will wait 5, this allows the variable to change before you reset the Time by setting it to 0, which causes the process for the next time of day to restart. Next you will have another conditional branch, this one checks the Time of Day to allow it to reset. I set mine to 5, for sunrise, morning, daytime, sunset and dark, this is done using variables of 0 - 4. Once it hits 5 it resets to 0 and becomes sunrise again. I then increase Day of Week changing the day as it indicates. The following step is to have another conditional branch, this one checking the Day of Week variable, once it hits 7 it simply resets Day of Week back to 0. Now for flavor I have multiple conditional branches to check the Time of Day so that I can adjust the tint of the screen for effect. Look below for the event itself. Now you can use this for a variety of things, simply have your events through out the game check the variables to see the Time of Day, or Day of Week or even both to allow your entire to game to really live! Feel free to add on, you can make more variables to do weeks of the month, month of the year and even year itself! It just depends on how much detail you want to control! Next I actually created an event to display the day of week and time of day. I attached this common event to an item, but you can also set it to do a button press by adding the following event into a conditional branch to check for that button being pressed. This one is pretty simple so all I am doing is going to display the event. I hope this was easy to follow as I am a bit rusty in the tutorial department. Enjoy!

Welcome to Maki's Boss Battle Design Tutorial! Intro: Boss Battles have been pretty much a staple in almost every RPG out there. What make Boss Battles (and Bosses themselves) stand out is that they're usually pretty different and unique in design and executions than the usual battles. However, designing a nice Boss Battle is a challenge in and of itself. Yes, you can probably just take the graphic, make its stats triple than the party, make it immune to all status effects, insert it in its lonesome into a Troop, and call it a Boss... But doing so would make the battle bland and boring; and it also took away the fun in designing! Always remember that designing... is art! Well, that's why I write this guide. I want to share some advice, ideas, guidelines, etc. in creating more interesting Bosses, especially to the newer users of RMVXA. I'm not saying that you cannot create generic, "plain" boss. It's just... Wouldn't it be fun to spice up your boss battles with unique seasonings? Oh, and you can help to if you'd like! Just leave your feedback and, suggestions in the comments, or even additions you think would make the guide better! I'll see if that could be added later into the guide~ So without further adieu, let's begin! Chapter 1: ~What is a Boss?~ "Salazar went Berserk!" Yep, let's start and reflect from the very basic: What is a "Boss"? or What makes enemy a "Boss"? Answers may vary a lot, but I personally think that Bosses are special and usually stronger enemies that are there to either advance the plot or serve as "checkpoint" for the player in learning to play the game- It's not unusual to get a certain ability only to find it crucial in the next boss battle; the Zelda games are particularly fond of this. Some are locked into thinking that Bosses needs to be bombastic, one-of-a-kind enemy with 4xxxxx HP, scary stats, specials attacks and hours to beat. But in actuality, you don't need to fill all those criteria to make good boss fights. Looking at the beginnings though, these "cliches" are actually justified; it's just that they're just so overused they became tedious and sometimes annoying to go through. Boss Battles are usually set-up differently than usual enemy battles. There's a cutscene, the dialogue and stuff, and even a random winged lion in the forest usually have a short cutscene just about the monster appearing to the player. RMVXA itself has its own settings to determine if an enemy is a "Boss" by enabling the user to choose different collapse effect, SE, and the RTP is bundled with more than one "Battle Start" SE just in case the user wanted a different one to use in Boss Battles. Chapter 2: ~Boss Types~ There are a lot of Boss Types, it'll be quite difficult to explain them all here. I'm just going to highlight some of the more simpler ones, and you can expand from there. Be creative! "The Damage Sponge" As its name implies, the Damage Sponge can take a lot of punishment before going down. It also has a lot of stats, and usually the best strategy is just beating it to death with every offensive move you got. Sounds familiar? Well, it's the "basic" template for a Boss, and usually, when people think about Boss, they think about this type. Unless they play too many SMT games, probably. This boss type can be commonly found in older, retro games. The Final Fantasy series are also particularly fond of these. Example: Too many to count and give. Just grab your nearest RPG and play it, nine out of ten you'll encounter one. "The Puzzle Battler" The polar opposite of the Damage Sponge, the Puzzle Battler requires certain strategy to be taken down. This usually involve out-of the box tactics, but once the player figures out the way, they're usually pretty easy to take down. More prominent in platformer or side-scroller, but can be found in RPGs too. Examples: Wallman from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. House of the Red Rose (Second Battle) from Yggdra Union. (Gotta love that game's difficulty...) "The Elemental Changer" This Boss mess with Elemental RPS. They constantly change affinities, and can be pretty annoying in games that use the "Accumulate actions, then execute turn" mechanic as the player usually can't help but seeing their Whirlwind gets absorbed by the Boss' new WIND -150% affinity. They usually stand in the border between Damage Sponge and Puzzle Battler, depending on the Boss. Examples: A certain "Hipster Angel" from Persona 4. Seiryuu from Final Fantasy V. "Undefeatable" Undefeatables are... Well... Undefeatable. You can't beat them because the plot said so. However, they're usually not Game Over-inducing, and some even give Game Overs if the player actually manages to beat them. Additionally, a Boss might be Undefeatable and/or certain point. The player could do something to make it defeatable. Examples: Beauty Queen Etna from Disgaea 2. The Black Knights from Final Fantasy II. "Multi-Limbs Boss" One of the favorite classics, Multi-Limbs Bosses are those who needs to be taken bits by bits, until ultimately brought down. They may be a giant octopus, a multi-headed dragon, or even a mob of angry people! Usually, there's a "core" part that serves as the hub/main part of the boss. More often than not, destroying the "core" instantly wins the battle. May overlap with Multi-Stage Boss if the limb-tearing takes multiple stages. Examples: Polaris from Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2. Menace from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. "Multi-Stage Boss: Another classic favorite, these are Bosses that transcend a stage to continue the fight. They usually do so by transforming into their "stronger" or "true" forms. Most of them takes really long time to beat, and they usually gets all their stats fresh like a jar o' skippy during the transition while your party have to cling on those Mega Potions or Greater Heals. May overlap with Multi-Limbs Boss if the battle involves battling various part of the boss. Examples: Kefka from Final Fantasy VI. Death from... Almost every Castlevania game he's in. Chapter 3: ~Tips and Tricks!~ Here are some of my tips, tricks and ideas in designing Boss Battles. You don't need to take them fully, these are just suggestions and advices for you. I'll be happy if they could help you out~ 1. Sense of Progress How convenient. Make sure that the Boss Battle is meaningful to the player. Or at least, not just a button-mashing galore (Except if your game is a hack-and-slash, probably.). I don't mean you can't pop a Chimeric Steed out of the mountains. You can. What needs a meaning is not the Boss, it's the Battle. Unneeded Boss Battles can be a hassle to some players, so take account into that. Of course, you can just ignore this advice completely for Bonus Bosses or Secret Bosses, as they're purely optional. Just make sure that the players don't feel like they're just wasting their play time by fighting the boss. 2. No "Attack Spam", Please... Just sleep, just dream. It's only a battle... One of the most glaring thing I saw when playing some RPGs is some of the Boss Battles consist of nothing but Attack-spamming. (Although it's inevitable if you chose 4 Warriors in Final Fantasy XD) The battle becomes pretty tedious by that, and the Boss Battle would just turn into a glorified random battle. Don't misunderstand- I'm not against it, everything can be cool if properly executed, it's just that I advise to be against Attack Spam design just for the sake of it. 3. Let's Party! (Author's note: It kinda looks like Oscar is dodging the rubbles ._.") How about making the Boss do something to the Party? It doesn't have to be the Boss joining after battle like pictured. You can use other options such as: a. The Boss being a bertraying party member all along! The reverse from the above situation happens, and the boss is removed from the party member. a. The Boss is actually a nice guy, and one of your party member's a traitor. The Boss joins in the middle of the battle, and a new battle starts against the betraying party member. A mix of the example picture and example a. 4. Utilize Those Status Effects! Aah... Succubus! You make Enchanter-chan sad Nine out of ten, you know that feeling. When you play a game where there are like 15 "Ailment" States present... But none of them worked on the Bosses. What's the purpose, then? The Warrior and Mage can just slash and burn through the small fries, so it's usually moot to Ailment them. So how useful would the Enchanter be? So my next suggestion is, make States more meaningful to the mechanic. Although, you'll need to manage which are affected with what. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to make Firespirit affected by Burn or Toxic Wyrm affected by Poison. Although I also suggest that the "Death"/"Knockout" State should not be able to be used on Bosses, since it could break the game's challenge. Or alternatively, don't add insta-death Skills. 5. Make a Duel Boss! Natalie would actually look pretty sweet as a cheerleader... Duel Boss is a kind of Boss where only a certain number of your Party may join the fight (Usually only one). You can specify whether only the Chosen Twins may fight the Twilight Ruler, or that only the Star Princess can soften the Solar Dragon's anger. Executed well, Duel Boss can make a Boss Battle challenging and/or fresh without looking too cheap. 6. Make "Irregular" Battle A Hero Arrives! (Spoiler: It's Noah) Alternatively, you can make a Boss Battle that ended in an unusual fashion. Be it a mysterious hero rescuing your Party and defeating the Demon once its HP reaches 40% or below, a Greater Demon that kills the Lesser Demon and replaces it during battle... The plot potential is strong! 7. Alternate Win/Lose Condition! You take care too, Isabelle. We need your Spells but your MHP seems to be against that. Usually, the main goal of a Boss Battle is to take down the Boss by making its HP reach 0. However, you don't have to always stick upon that. You can make alternate goals such as surviving for 30 Turns, protecting a friend who's channeling a Barrier, or walking the usual beat-to-death route, but with a mix such as making the Grave Squirmer only killable by casting Holy Spark! 8. Linked Enemies! SLASHTHEM You can make Multi-Parted bosses too in RMVXA! There are scripts for that I'm sure, but you can also make simpler ones with eventing. Multi-Part Bosses are essentially multiple Enemies set up in the same Troop. Once the "Core" dies, an event triggers that places Death state into the others. 9. Reverse Multi-Limb! Of course, talking is easier than executing. ... ...That pun. How about making a twist to the usual Multi-Limb fight, and make that you're easier/possible to win the less you bother with the "Core" enemy? If that sounds too easy, then remember that you could "Invoke" (Guess the hint?) the player to attack the forbidden. Be careful with balancing, though... There are many possibilities with this one: A Chaotic Spirit that is unaffected by all Magic but has Magic Seeker skill to turn all Elemental Magic toward him? Your hero's hostage girlfriend forced into an armor that redirects all Sword Skills toward her? Up to you! 10. Outside Battle Tweak (Suggested by AlliedG) MY EYES!!! (I luckily captured this state though SS ) Who says you cannot tweak the battle externally? You can apply circumstances that makes the a Boss Battle different depending on your doing outside it. You can make a Boss gets a weakness to Fire by completing a sidequest involving sabotaging the Boss' magical capability, or makes an NPC that will strengthen the Boss if you failed his request! XX. Hair-Pulling Edition: Yuu Narukami Myriad Truth SWAG (Requested by Casta) This basically emulates the final phase of the final boss fight in Persona 4, where you manually cast a certain skill on the boss in a scripted fight, which finally leads to winning. It's quite tricky (and long), and requires multiple Database setup, so please read and proceed very carefully. 12. The Persona Reaper Encounters! (Requested by Casta) This one is more into map eventing than battle eventing, but still cool for me, nonetheless! The Reaper encounter style from the Persona series 3, 4 and 4 Golden. The Reaper itself is a really tough special enemy that appears in Persona 3 and 4/G that is well-known for its extreme difficulty and special encounter method. And now we're going to mimic those encounter systems! This request would be separated into 3 parts, divided by the game the Reaper appears in, because the encounter method is different in each game. This is another one that's a bit more into the intermediate-to-advanced skill level, so please read thoroughly. Especially the P3 one. I spent the whole night figuring that one out, while the others don't even take 10 minutes. 12. 1. The Reaper Encounter (Persona 3) 12.2. The Reaper Encounter (Persona 4) 12.3. The Reaper Encounter (Persona 4 Golden) I hope you find these useful~ Useful Links: "Boss Battle" on TV Tropes. Basically a witty exposition about Bosses and Boss Battles, complete with a huge list in Tropenese. Are you One of Us, too? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BossBattle "Battle Systems 101: Creating Bosses" by Lowell Richards. A neat guide found in this very forum. Has a well-written pointers and insights, including some small details not found in here. Despite seeming a bit incomplete, it's definitely worth reading! http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/1098-battle-systems-101-creating-bosses/ Outro: Well, I think that's all for now! I'll update the guide once I got more, so stay tuned for that! Don't forget to give feedback and leave comments if you have any! I hope this guide would help you in designing cooler, more interesting Bosses and Boss Battles. Happy designing! -Maki

Hello Folks, today I will teach you How to event a Character select Screen, Below screen is How it will look like. First you might need a little understanding of Variables and switches before you begin, i suggest you read tutorials on variables and switches. So let's start, first thing is to have the characters pictures for the screen. I have 12 pictures for my 12 Characters. I used photoshop to edit the pictures, I made a map for them to stand on and I used Hime's Map Screenshot, But u don't need to use this if you aint using sprites standing on something. Then I made my pictures in Photoshop and added some text and glow effect and the other characters darkened so when i don't have them selected the player KNOWS. Next step is exporting into the game folder, u can either use this in rpg maker itself, or just placing in the project folder under grapics/Pictures. Which I myself find easier. This next part is the the trickiest, getting it to appear right. What I do is conditional branches and variables, and when u have selected a character turn a switch on (for story purposes). Below is the branches i did : Its very simple really, the variables are telling which characters is what, and when u move to another character it increases to whatever number is next. I only have character 1 Go to next event. But u can just copy and paste the event to do same thing or a different thing depending on what you want to happen. For the picture events, i have it set up like this: If you followed all the pictures the same as me, you would get the same result. Remeber the variables and switches(if you want people sayng different things depending on the character). Hope I helped, If you used this tutorial in any of your games, please give me some credit :)I Won't mind if you don't, but it would be nice if I helped you in some way.

First tutorial here, I want to show you how to add texture to your paths (or whatever you wish to add texture to) so your game can look beautiful and have "depth." Let's get to it! First, let's start a new file with GIMP Let's highlight our Clone Tool and select a grass pattern and let's make a beautiful green square. (don't know what a grass pattern is?! WELL THEN! check this out! Wow, that's a delightfully green square. Now, let's grab our Clone Tool again, selecting our Dirt Pattern (same as grass above, just get some dirt! Psst! I prefer Celianna's for this one as well!!) And let's make a beautiful winding, realistic path (lol). Wow, your path looks crazy good, it's psycho-pathic. Amaze. Alright nice job, let's wrap it up, great path! PSYCHE. Now we need to do the hard part, but it'll be easy if you listen close. Let's make a new layer and lets title it "Bump Map." THEN, we need to select the Bucket Fill Tool and fill the whole bump map with GREY "808080" as such: Next, we need to select the Paintbrush Tool and we need to change our color back to black. Check it out! Now, listen close. Uncheck the eyeball so we dont see the grey screen from the bump map, but make sure that layer remains highlighted, because we want to ensure that our next edits occur on the bump map and not our literally perfect path. Carefully draw your path with the black paintbrush (I use the Acryllic 01 paintbrush) and make sure the width of the brush is the same as (or close to) the width of the path. Carefully draw the path onto our invisible bump map, like this Awesomesauce. We are almost there. Now select the Path layer and let's float on up to the top toolbar and select Filters > Map > Bump Map and you should see this screen. Make sure the Bump Map is selected in the top right for the bump map select because that map that is selected is going to be the one that is referenced here. Lots of big words and confusing stuff. If you have "preview" on then you can tamper with the controls to get an idea of what each thing does. The three most important for you will be the depth, elevation, and azimuth. Mess with them until the preview looks decent (you can always undo and tinker with it until it is perfect!) and then WHAM BAM check this out: Not bad ehh? Compare it to the path a few images above -- it looks WAY more realistic. And then once you've gotten really good, you can do this!

Presently I'm using all the default RTP content (and some DLC) for music. And really, it's working out so far, but I would eventually like to get some sweet custom music in there. Here's the problem: I have NO idea what I'm doing when it comes to making music. At all. I've tooled around with mixers before, like Dance2eJay, MTV Music Generator, and a few other things like that, but that's about it. With literally no knowledge of developing music or where to go to get samples and so on, what would you say is a good program and place for resources? Keep in mind, I am absolutely, 100% noobish on this, so something more complicated my not work out. I have worked with Audacity to a small degree, but only for the purposes of splicing together stuff for podcasts. As usual, if I've put this somewhere utterly incorrect, please feel free to move it. It's possible that I won't HAVE to use different music, but I definitely want to learn about making it and would at least like that as an option, especially for future projects.

This is my first VX Ace tutorial which simply came into fruition by not already existing and the frustrations I went through myself going over other tutorials which while not bad, were just simply lacking in information for what myself and many others wish to achieve: Simple Lighting Effects like the ones shown below . -without the use of Scripts -how to make them -how to implement them. Now, there is already a decent bit of documentation on simple things like this but again, it's spread out in bits in pieces across the web so I've created my own tutorial that shows the entire process from start to finish with added tweaks, tips, lighting practices, and methods to get the most out of simplicity (sound complicated lol. It's 1a.m. ....i've had a lot of coffee). Step 1: Creating the images to be used for your lights. You will need an image editing software such as Photoshop or Gimp (I prefer Photoshop so this tutorial will be using Photoshop images/hotkeys but just apply the same methods in a different program and you should get the same results). In Photoshop create a new document (ctrl + N) set the Width to 333 pixels and the Height to 484 px. Next go to the View drop down menu and choose Rulers. Drag rulers onto your document from the Top and Left side rulers to set up a template like this: Each square section will be a Light Radius, the number of segments (from Left to Right) will determine the complexity of flickering light effects (Candles, Lamps, Torches, etc.) but i'll get into that a little further down. Duplicate your base layer 2x (ctrl+j), Select the 2nd layer, get your Paint Bucket Tool and make the background of Layer 2 Black, this will provide a contrast for your to work with so you can visually see the fall off radius of your lights. Step 2: Select the Elliptical Marquee tool and make a selection (holding Shift keeps the marquee uniform) of a single square on your template. Select the Gradient Tool, Set the type to Radial Gradient, and make it's fill type "Foreground to Transparent". Set your Foreground color to whatever color you would like your light to be then inside your Marquee Selection place your cursor in the center of the circle (sometimes slightly above), hold shift and left click + drag down slightly outside the bottom of the circle, this will fill it with the Gradient. At this point you should have something like this: While you technically could stop here (without the black background of course, needs to be transparent) and have a semi decent looking light, Lighting is such a beautiful and critical aspect of a game and it can completely change the mood, tone, atmosphere and many other factors of a scene so we are going to polish this up. Step 4: Next, Select your Filters drop down menu, Blur, Gaussian Blur and set the px from about 6-10px. MAKE SURE YOUR MARQUEE IS STILL THERE WHEN YOU DO THIS. If it's not and you blur the light, the color may run to the edges of the image which will cause your lights to appear square and not circular. Note: The more blur, the softer the light. Try not to go crazy with blur in your image editor as there are easy ways to tweak the softness of the light in RPG Maker, but for arguments sake, More Blur = Softer Light. That's it as far as a static light goes that will not flicker or animate. Animated Lights/Flickering Effect: This is really just a couple more steps and some repetition of the previous process with just a few simple editing rules to keep in mind while creating your lights. 1. RPG Maker reads the image sheet from Left to Right so your softest light will be at the left and the brightest at the right. 2.Logic from step 1. Flickering Lights should be ordered softest to brightest within their color range. This allows a smooth natural looking flicker/transition between the contrast tones without the player noticing any sharp ugly rapid changes in color. 3.Color Range should make sense. Let's use a candle as an example with the above template. You would have a very soft orange tone/color in box 1, a little more orange saturation/hue in box 2, then more orange/red-ish tone in box 3. Color spectrum of a light is a noticeable thing to say the least. If player walks in and your candle goes from orange to red in 1 flicker, they will notice lol. 4. THIS IS IMPORTANT: Make each Light on the grid on it's OWN LAYER ,(ctrl + shift + N for New Layer) this will save you tons of editing grief when/if you need to adjust the tone of a light. Failure to do so can result in rage inducing headaches. *CaptElfimis is not responsible for any actions a user takes during a rage inducing headace for failure to follow instructions. Once you are finished creating your lights and you are satisfied with them, delete the layer with the black background. Save your Light/Light Sheets as $Lights or whatever you want to name them as long as it has $ as a prefix and file type as .png (or atleast that's what I used, feel free to correct me if there is a better file format, I'm fairly new to this). Open your RPG Maker VXAce project, go to your Resource Manager (F10) ) Then choose Graphics/Characters Folder (That's where I put mine anyways, organize ya own mess) and Click the Import button: Choose your file and once it's imported, select it and hit preview to make sure the image appears correctly. If it did then you are free to use it as a graphic for your lights Making them work: For static lights such as lights from a window or source that will have no variation (flicker) you just simply need to follow these steps: Create New Event (Name it....for the love of god...name your events) and set it up like this: Choose your graphic Untick Walking/Stepping Tick Direction Fix/Through Priority ABOVE Characters (ignore where it says Same as Characters in that image....i need more coffee) Trigger: Parallel Process Movement Type: Custom, click move route, and add Change Blending -> Add. For a Flickering light source, follow the same steps as above but change the following: Tick Walking/Stepping Speed: Fastest Freq:Highest And Viola! Beautiful and subtle lighting effect, no scripts, no hassle. Once you get the hang of creating your own Lights, it's really a fast process to create and implement more sheets to have varying color ranges and light sources. I may in the near future just create a nice set of Light Sheet Graphics depending on demand. Tips/Tweaks: -Add Tints to your scenes that use lighting to adjust the overall light appearance of the scene. This can vastly effect the quality and atmosphere of the lighting. -If your lights appear a bit harsh/bright in game, go to the event and edit the custom move route and change Change Opacity, tweak this until your satisfied. -You can achieve Light Rays for outdoor lighting as well using this method (I'm working on that now, possibly a future tutorial depending on demand) -Experiment with a broad range of colors and light environments. I would make a map solely for testing/editing lights. -Pay attention to Shadow Placement if you really want to get the most out of your lighting. -Make sure your lights make sense. Bright Yellow/Orange lights from the sun shining through your window at night would look rather silly and break immersion for the player. -Study lights and how the interact with environments, search the web, your own home, etc. This can give you excellent perspective to work from. If you have any questions/comments or feel like I missed something, please feel free to say what's on your mind. Capt_Elfimis

I've observed a lot of great artists here who can draw perfectly without getting stuck, not sure if they were stuck when they get started with art; but I am deeply stuck and not sure where to get started with art. Drawing is my one of two interests and my wish and goal is to provide my skills to others for helping them to develop their projects and my skills can also help my own projects as well. However, if you're an artist and do digital art, I'd like to know: How did you started with art? Did you tried to build your own art style first, learned human/creature anatomy first, or something else? How much time you spend in practicing for drawing? In how many years/months you became a perfect artist? What program you do use? Mouse or Pen tablet? Your art style? Anime, realistic, chibi or any custom? (I'd also like to know what other drawing styles are called) These things can help me where to begin and how to begin a good artist, in case you'd like to know, here's some of my artistic details: Learning since 4 months Program Paint Tool SAI Art style Painterly style Tool Pen tablet Please feel free to correct me on anything I've mentioned. Thank you very much!

I see this complaint fairly regularly; that the dev wants an npc to move around a shop or whatever randomly but not block the doorways. There is already a YF script that deals with this but since I prefer to figure this kind of stuff out for myself, I may as well share my findings. Unfortunately, I'm not much in the way of an educator so I'm just going to let the event speak for itself. If you can understand why this event works then, great, you're going to able to do a lot more with it. If not, then you can still just imitate it for its basic purpose. Note: This is best used for single npcs in a region. If there's multiple npcs in a single parallel process then it will only process one of them at a time with 'Wait' selected and you wont want a bunch of parallel processes checking for each npc individually. Likewise, if you don't select wait or you select 'Skip' they can block each other and break out of the region. There are ways around having multiple npcs in a single region but they'll tend to be specific to your situation and, so, not suitable for a tutorial. I appreciate that this is not a clear tutorial so if you're struggling I don't mind being PMed about it; just triplecheck that you've entered the script call correctly and set the event to parallel process before doing so. Good luck with your games. Edit: updated image with a more pertinent region example.

Welcome to my parallax mapping guide! This tutorial will take you through the process of starting your first parallax map and adding it to your project as well as making simple edits to help your map look great. There's also some tips for semi-experienced users! Have questions, opinions or suggestions? Feel free to post your thoughts! Message me or add me on the forums if you need personal assistance, I'll try to help if I can. While you're here why not check out my project and show it some support? Highlight the image and press CTRL+C then use CTRL+V to paste it in your signature. Text images created at cooltext.com

This isn't really a tutorial so much as some information to refer to. I'm sure a lot of people have tried to set a keystroke as a condition and been left scratching their heads when it turned out 'Z' doesnt actually equal z on their keyboard. I know I have. So here's a list of what the inputs actually are: 'A' = Shift 'B' = X / Esc 'C' = Z / Enter 'X' = A 'Y' = S 'Z' = D 'L' = Q 'R' = W A few things to note: -Some of these inputs have existing methods associated with them, namely 'C' and 'B'. 'C' is a confirmation input and 'B' is a cancel input; if you set a method to act on these inputs then they will still perform the default methods simultaneously. -If you're on the map then 'B' also opens the menu by default; if you don't need a menu then you can disable this function and gain an extra key. -There are, likely, ways to alter these defaults but I couldn't find them in the script editor. I'm guessing its a hidden module because all the scripts I've looked at essentially overwrite the existing methods. It would be convenient if someone could correct me on this last point. Good luck with all your games.

So i'm starting to get an idea of what i'm going to do for my combat system. Still needs to be fleshed out. I want my project to have the general controls of Rogue. Turn-Based, enemies only move when you move, etc. This will not feature random dungeons or permadeath, so this will not be a roguelike. I want to implement an AP system. Whenever the player uses any sort of attack, they use AP. You regain +1 AP every time you move a square. I also want to simplify or remove any extra stats. HP, AP, ATK, and MAT are the only stats I want to use. Numbers will also be made smaller in scale. All(or most)of this I want to do without scripts. What would be your advice?

So I've been getting my toes wet with RPG maker, learning the basics(Eventing, Tilesets, Using basic scripts, etc). I want to implement ABS Combat. How difficult would it be to use and modify this to my liking? If it's possible, what's the simplest ABS to use? I have modified some scripts before, but they were very simple changes.

This is Lord Vectra, the Master Eventer. Today I will be showing how to make a timer without using the built-in timer. What made you think of this? In a series I'm remaking, World of Chaos, on the 3rd game, I needed a timer for when the character transformed to a werewolf. So I evented a timer because when the built-in timer went off, it will interrupt battle AND you can only have one timer at a time. So I improvised. You will need the following... 1 Variable for each timer you want 1 Conditional branch 1 Common Event for each timer 1 Switch Go to the "Wait" in the 2nd event tab in the upper-right corner. Make it 60 frames as 60 frames = 1 second. You need to make a variable for the timer. Name it whatever you like, imma name mine "Timer 1." After that, you need to check when the Timer = 0 by doing a conditional branch for it. Vectra, what's happening here? The variable is treated as the timer. Every 60 frames, the variable (timer) will go down by own. This should be in a parallel process common event. Due to this, you'll need a switch to activate it (its that "condition switch" in the upper-right corner). Notice how I turn the switch off when it reaches zero. That is so it doesn't continue into the negatives. When you want the timer to start at a number, you make the variable equal that number before calling the common event: Any questions?

Hello Friends! My name is Ashley, and I just picked up RPGMVXA during the Steam Summer Sale so now I'm tasking myself with learning how to make games with it. I don't have a real plan yet for the future/what exactly I will make, but I'm excited to learn about the program and how to use it. My goal is to master it so I know what I'm doing when I do make a plan! Hope we can all be friend. c:

I am Vectra. I know a lot of people are wondering how to work expansions. There is some limitation to this which will be explained later in the tutorial. How to get your game ready for expansions Make 2 copies(or more) of the game. Note: Know what expansions you want to add ahead of time Warning: Keep ALL data in the original game in the expansion one!!! This allows the player to keep everything he has in the original one to the expansion one and not doing this can create serious bugs in your game. If it's after the main quest & is not separate from the actual game You need to activate a switch once the final boss is killed ahead of time before you make the expansion. Transfer them to whatever(Ex: The Main Town). Therefore, people who already beat the game can play it. Have the player go somewhere to start the expansion. For example, go to the prophet in the main town and he'll tell you that some Plague Lord will come to kill everyone and you start the quest. If it's during Example: Guilds, Factions, etc. Do you know them three files called "Game"? Transfer the encrypted one from the expansion to the original and you should be fine or transfer save from original to the expansion. Either one works. Note: Just to be sure, don't forget to transfer the .dll in the systems folder. I don't know if that does anything but just to be sure, do it. If the expansion is a totally different game Example: Dragon age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening If Expansion is only playable after player beats the 1st one You need to activate a switch once the final boss is killed ahead of time before you make the expansion. Transfer them to Map 1. Create the expansion game as usual. In the beginning of the expansion game have a conditional branch of switch X has to be on. When you're trying to play this game from the original, you need to do something special. Vectra, does the coordiantes of MAP 1 have to match MAP 1 in expansion? No, I suggest making the Xcoord less than 17 and the YCoord less than 13. You can relocate the player by having a transfer player in the expansion game. Once you transfer the player to MAP1 MAKE SURE THEY GET A CHANCE TO SAVE IT!!! Vectra, you said we needed to do something special... what is it? You can do two things. Do you know the three files that all say "game"? Transfer the encrypted one from the expansion to the original. That has all the current variable values and whether the switch was turned on or not. Note: Make a copy of the original and then take the expansion one and insert it into the original one(the copied version) Note: Just to be sure, don't forget to transfer the .dll in the systems folder. I don't know if that does anything but just to be sure, do it. OR If you want to be different, you can have the expansion ask a question or ask for a password. You get the answer only when you beat the main quest. You might want to do something like a code you need to input in a variable to play the expansion. Like the code is 629475 and the player only knows that when they beat the 1st game. Vectra, people can cheat and tell each other the password! If all the monsters are high-leveled ones, I promise you they will regret coming in at lvl.5 against lvl.30 monsters lol. Note: If you use the code idea, remember to make it long so the player will have a really hard time guessing. Make it like 6 digits long. If it doesn't matter You create the expansion game as usual. The player just have to move over the save file. Note: Just to be sure, don't forget to transfer the .dll in the systems folder. I don't know if that does anything but just to be sure, do it. If you want more than one expansion I don't know. If they're separate expansions then it's very easily. If not, it's best to think of ALL your expansion packs you want and put them into one big one because when it comes to adding things like Factions, you can only do one. Same thing goes for separate expansions if you have expansions for the separate expansions. Perks from doing expansions Like Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening, you can have it where choices you make in one game and their effects will follow you to the next one. Like I said, expansions will have to be thought-out before hand UNLESS the expansion is created separately from the original game. Use your imagination and this can be really good for a game if done correctly. Warning: If adding scripts, make sure they are compatible!!! I think I've covered everything. Any Questions? Do you need anything explained more?