Help with opening cinematic

And I'm back with another question. :)

I'm making an opening cinematic for my game, and I'm having a bit of a problem. I want the screen to start out blank, there's a flash, and then a character appears. He speaks to the player, then the screen fades to the next screen. I've figured out a lot of this on my own, but several parts aren't doing what they should. The biggest issue is that when the game starts, the speaking character is already visible. And when the screen flashes, the main game hero is suddenly visible. And to top it all off, the flash and text repeat themselves after the screen fades out. Can anyone help me? Here's what my event looks like so far:

Start your game in an empty map.


With no character sprite set.

How do I do that? It always defaults to the main character's location as a starting point.

First thing you want to do is change the Player's transparency from the get-go. Open up the Database (F9 key) and go to System. You change wither the player will be visible or not when you start the game. Next make a map and leave it blank. This is where the player will start so it will automatically black. Make that character sprite blank. And with that self switch you need to make a second page and and turn the Self Switch part to A so when Self Switch A turns on it will go to the second blank page.

EDIT: You can Right-click and choose the player's starting position.

Does that really apply in this case, though? The speaking character isn't the player. And I already made the player character transparent in the database. The problem is, he turns visible after the flash of light, and he isn't supposed to.

Your event says otherwise.

He turns visible because you gave the command to make the player visible - your very first command in the event is "Change Transparency: ON" - that is the command for making the player visible, or what did you think it would do?

That was supposed to make the speaking character appear in the flash of light, not the player character. I fixed the problems with the PC, but I still can't seem to make the speaker appear that way. He just stays visible from the beginning.

You have to use the Set Move Route command in the event to change what it can do like the transparency.

You mean your main character?
For that you make the character that is in the sequence a blank charactersprite, so chose from menu "none".
Then you make an event call, that say's "change character graphics" and change them to the visible state.
That's how I've done it with the group members. ;)

If it's an event, then make the first page invisible, so chose no sprites. Then activate "Self Switch A".

After that, add a new page with the condition "Self Switch A=on" and the chose the sprite you want to use and continue editing the event. (\s/)

Thanks everyone, got it fixed. I now have a full beginning. :)