A question regarding multiple scenarios

Greetings,

My apologies if this has been asked before; I did some searching and did not find an answer.

I'm new to RPG Maker VX Ace, but have something fairly specific I'd like to do.  I wondered if I might ask for advice on the best way to proceed before I possibly waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel?

Essentially, I'd hoped to craft a game in which the player would choose from multiple scenarios.  After the choice is made, the player would be taken to a map and play the game as normal.  After completing the scenario or other certain conditions are reached, the player would be shown a summary screen detailing the results of the scenario, and then returned to the menu or other mechanism which allows them to choose a scenario.

To give a classic example, this would be similar to the Sequence from Final Fantasy 6 in which the player is allowed to choose between 3 branches of the narrative to follow.  However, unlike that game, I'd hoped to keep the inventories completely separate between scenario, and to have support for an arbitrary number of scenarios.  I'd also like to give the player the option to replay the scenario as many times as they wish, from the beginning.

The specifics of multiple scenarios seem like they could be handled using the existing events.  Empty the party.  Empty the Inventory.  Empty the gold.  Add the desired party members.  Add their items.  Add their skills.  Equip their items.  Transfer to appropriate map, and so on.

Certain aspects of this seem like they might be tedious to set up though, particularly emptying the inventory item by item.  But it seems like I might be able to make that a common event and just call it as required?

Creating a modified menu for choosing scenarios / summary screen on scenario completion seem like they will require scripting.  My first thought had been that I might use scripting to craft a new menu, probably copying most of the display from the existing item menu.  Then it occurred to me that I might be able to just make a modified item menu, changing only what I needed, and then make each scenario an item which would only exist in the inventory at the time of scenario choice, with the effect a common event call that called the reset common event and then made the necessary additions, etc.  That seems ...hacky, but it would probably allow me to utilize existing functionality.

To ask then, am I approaching this in the right way, or are there better ways of doing the things that I hoped to accomplish?

I'd appreciate any advice anyone might have.  My thanks for your time.

There is no problem with your idea at all, and in fact it can even be done without scripting depening on what you really want.


First of all, you can start the game with an empty party and make your first map a menu with evented show choices, and then add different actors and transfer to different maps dependind on the players selection.


Also, there are several menu scripts already available for free that allow you to change the default menues in almost any way you want.


And for possibilities like concurrently controlling all scenarios, there is even a "player switch" script where the game manages several different parties at the same time and you can switch between them by events (for example, switching when you reach the chapter end of your story). That would be easier than controlling and storing the different inventories and party members yourself.

My thanks for your response.  I wondered if I might ask two follow ups?

You mention that I could use evented show choices.  My preliminary experiments seemed to indicate that these were limited to 4 options.  Is there any internal choice menu functionality that supports an arbitrary, and scrollable list, or does this require scripting?

Additionally, could you suggest anything on implementing a summary screen?  I understand that it would likely depend on what / how I'd like to summarize.  Assuming that I just wanted to present data to the player (time spent on the scenario, hp lost in battle, etc.) in a consistent manner; could you recommend a place to begin looking.

Regardless, please let me thank you for your assisstance.  It sounds like, with a little tweaking, I should be achieve what I hope to do.

1) Default show choices is indeed limited to four answers. However, there are two scripts made by Tsukihime on the master script list, one of them removes the limit to 4 choices, the other adds options and conditions to choices.


2) A summary screen is probably best done by scripting. It might be done by eventing, but that woulö need a lot of variables and not be a screen, but text windows.


If you have no experience with scripting, suc a screen should be easily to get by free request on the condition that you can describe it completely and tell the scripter what you want displayed where.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions.