Character Shops

[Notsalony 12]

Okay, does anyone else remember the old games like the early Dragon Warrior games where they had the adventure's guild and for a price you could hire non story line heroes to fight in your party?

 

I'm looking for a script that does this.  Or a way of doing this short of building a complicated event.  If you know of one or you can build one, would you please share?

[Galv 1,387]

You could have NPC's hanging about the adventurer's guild and when you talk to them you can event giving them money and them joining your party. It wouldn't be complicated at all

[Notsalony 12]

I like it.  And if I can't find a more elegant solution to the problem, I can go to that.  I'm kind of wanting to go with a vender for now, because I'm building a script testing demo and want to be able to just "buy" characters instead of putting them all over the place.

[VagrantEnchanter 0]

I like it.  And if I can't find a more elegant solution to the problem, I can go to that.  I'm kind of wanting to go with a vender for now, because I'm building a script testing demo and want to be able to just "buy" characters instead of putting them all over the place.

If you don't like the "hanging around" portion of it, you could do the same thing with choices and conditional branches.

For example, say you have around seven members  you can hire. Set up your vender npc to show the buy or leave options.

Select buy? Show the first three, have the fourth option be a "more" option leading to the next three, followed by anther "more" option ended with the last character, a help option (If you want to add any notes on characters), and the "back" option.

When someone selects a character, this is where the conditional branches come into play. Have it set so that if "Henry" is in the party, it says "Hey! I'm already here!" or something to that affect. If he isn't, subtract the gold and add him to the party.

 

It's not too hard, I played around with it myself not too long ago. It just takes some testing to work out all the kinks if you haven't done it before.

[+ Crossroads 12]

Just have the shop sell you a "mercenary contract"  It'll be a usable item.  Have the condition that the player must use the item while inside the merc shop.  The item just runs a common event that adds x actor to their party. (the merc)  This is the easiest solution I can think of that involves actually having a shop to buy the mercs from.  You could even make this item remove all other possible merc actors from the party so they can swap out whenevr they feel like it by using a different merc contract.  (like keeping your extra party members in your pockets lol)  Otherwise, just have it be a one-use item that disappears.

 

*edit.  you don't even have to make the common event.  Just have the shop sell them the merc contract item.  Then have a spot by the counter with an invisible parallel process event that adds an actor to the party based on the condition that they have a merc contract item in their inventory and no other mercs are in the party.  Then, to swap mercs, you could have the shopkeep remove the old merc by telling the party, "you can only have one merc at a time.  Do you want to cancel your old contract?  yes: remove actor, change items: merc contract -1 shop processing blah.  No: "Well come back when you're ready to start a new contract, etc"

 

You could also have the other event be just an invisible event that will switch event pages based on which merc contract they have in their possession. This allows you to make one event IN the merc shop that appears with the desired mercs appearance and you can go talk to him to have him come along.

 

Use your imagination and a little ingenuity and there really is very little you CAN'T do with eventing.

[Notsalony 12]

You know, I went trolling on Galv's site and found a character selector script I liked.  I maid some script call changes and now it's a working character shop.  All I need is a script that basically says

 

if there's 1 member in the party you can hire 4 characters, if 2 then 3, if 3 then 2, if 4 then 1, if 5 then none.  I have the party size set at 5.  And I need to toy with the conditional branch so that it only shows the characters that are NOT in your party.

[Koru 11]

So I know you said you found a solution for part of your problem but I thought I might offer this as a possible solution as well.  I tend to use this script a lot of times when I want to let the player buy something unconventional.

 

http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/menu-scripts/common-event-shop/

 

This script basically let's you buy common events.  When the "item" is bought, a common event is launched.  This can lead to a crafting system to a "cheat" shop and even buying characters.  Whenever you make a common event purchasable, all the settings are done by comments in the common event for each item.  Among the comments is this, what you would need.

 

 

<shop enable eval>

  $game_party.members.size <= 4

  $game_switches[1] = false

</shop enable eval>

 

So basically what you would do is, to make a character unable to be purchased twice, you have the common event add him/her to the party but also flip a switch (I used 1 for this example).  The <shop enable eval> thing in the comment basically says there that an item can't be bought unless switch 1 is off and the number of party members is equal to or less than 4 (since you said you're using 5 party members).  So if you have too many party members, the character to buy is grayed out.  If you already bought that character and that switch is on, the character is grayed out.  You can then also make common event "items" near the bottom of the list for "selling" those characters back if you'd like to dump some and buy new ones.

 

I'd be more than willing to help with the gritty bits if you decide to do this.  It may seem a little complicated so by all means keep with what you're doing if you want.  I just thought I'd throw an alternative out there.