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Hello everybody! Now, I appreciate everything you lovely programmers, artists, and maestros add to this huge and friendly community, however, I was quite hoping if someone could help me with a little dilemma. Well, to be more specific, it wouldn't exactly be a dilemma... would it? Sorry, I'm rambling again. I have been using the Name Input Processing feature that comes with Rpgmaker VX Ace. And I am loooooooooving it! But I was wondering if there was some kind of script out there that would let me also implement a last name input as well as a first name input. And also allow me to set up NPCs to refer to the main character by either their first name or last name? Such as a military officer calling them by their last name, which the player can choose, or the main character's best friend referring to them by their first name? Games like the Shin Megami Tensei series used this feature as well, here's a visual reference:

I had a heck of a time trying to get something that I considered to be, at least from a gamer angle, to be relatively simple to work properly in RPG Maker VX and it caused me to wonder if maybe there was a better way to go about it or if I should have coded instead tried to do everything within events. So here's how this worked. In my game, you get to select 3 staff members out of 10 to assist you with your initial consultation for a mind jump, wherein you jump inside a person's dream and the 3 staff members that sit in for the consultation will also assist you in your jump. The patient that you're getting ready to interview is ex-military and during the staff meeting prior to the consultation, Tyler, your chief security coordinator (also ex-military) vehemently declines being included in the consultation, even though you wanted him in as a sort of expert, given his background. As a result, he's either locked in to the consultation or out depending on your decision during the staff meeting. So here's how I wrote the events. X Y Z ABCDEFGHIJ X - StaffConsult1, Y - StaffConsult2, Z - StaffConsult3 A-J - Initial staff member positions. The best way to think about the above is think about the scenario in Final Fantasy 6 (3 on the U.S. SNES) where the team divides up and you can select which scenario you want to do and in what order. There are 2 pages for each event. The first page is the one we'll be looking at mostly, but the second page is there just in case the person is dead, at which point it checks for KaremaDead=ON for example and has no graphic selectable there if that is so. Let's say you go to select Karema (initially at the A position). First it checks if Karema's number (1 in this case) is set to StaffConsult 1 or 2. Why not 3? Because there's a parallel process running where as soon as 3 is not 0, it asks if you'd like to confirm your selection. If you want to start over, it resets all character positions (except Tyler) and resets StaffConsult 1, 2, and 3 to 0. Anyway, back to Karema. If it's confirmed she's at StaffConsult 1 or 2, it asks if you'd like to remove her or not. If so, that StaffConsult (1 or 2) is set to 0 and she's reset back to where she was. HOWEVER...this was my first issue. There doesn't seem to be a way to do an OR statement. See, what I really wanted was... If StaffConsult1 == 1 OR StaffConsult2 == 1... But you can't do that, at least not with eventing. As a result, I have it set up like this... If StaffConsult1 == 1 Choices - Keep, Remove Keep, Skip to Label End Remove, Reset Karema, StaffConsult1 == 0, Skip to Label End If StaffConsult2 == 1 Choices - Keep, Remove Keep, Skip to Label End Remove, Reset Karema, StaffConsult2 == 0, Skip to Label End Lots of other eventing stuff that I'll explain momentarily Label End Don't get me wrong, it works, it's just that there's redundancy I wish I could get rid of. What I WISH I could do is set up some sort of quick array feature that would check them both for 1, then replace with 0 if the choice is to remove. Alternatively, I could also disallow the ability to change people in the middle of the operation and have it where you have to select 2 other people, then choose to start over. The other problem is without any sort of array or indexing function, I then have to call a common event called NumberToName that simply says if StaffConsult1 is 1, then StaffName1 is "Karema"...but that particular event line is repeated 10 times...then 10 more for StaffConsult2 and StaffName 2...then 10 more for StaffConsult3 and StaffName3. Again, it works, it's just a pain. Furthermore, it's going to need further refinement somewhere down the road because as it stands Tyler is not selectable within this instance ONLY because I deliberately exclude that ability this time, so I'll need to create a clever locking method for that. I am actively studying Ruby as well as several other scripting/coding languages (I actually have a bachelors in computer information systems, but I'm not a huge fan of coding, go figure). What are your thoughts? And definitely let me know if I posted this in the wrong area. Edit: I just realized I didn't explain how the rest of the eventing works. So let's say Karema is at position A and StaffConsult1, 2, and 3 are all 0. If you select Karema and it confirms StaffConsult1 and 2 aren't 1, it asks Add/Don't Add. If you choose Add, it checks if StaffConsult1 is 0 and if so, then StaffConsult1==1 and Karema's position gets set to X. If StaffConsult1 is not 0, it checks if StaffConsult2 is 0 and if so, then StaffConsult2==1 and Karema's position gets set to Y. If neither of these are true, then StaffConsult3==1 and Karema's position gets set to Z at which point the parallel process kicks in.