How to place an NPC on a map to start?

I made a store owner outside of the main group, but I'm having a heck of a time placing him in the store with his profile.  I can place an image of him there and the menus work when he is approached, but I need his profile to be there so I can animate his movements some.  I hope I explained this good enough.

What do you mean "his profile"?  Can you show us your events and the maps where you have him?  What does "outside the main group" mean?

You create NPCs by setting up events, setting the graphic, and adding the event commands.  If you want to move them around, you can use a Set Move Route command.

Just in case you've gone this way ... NPCs who will not join your team do not need to be set up in the Actor tab in the database.

By his profile, I mean the profile I set up of him with the animation sheet for movements.  I guess he is not outside the  main group since I created him in the Actor tab, correct?  Now I will need to create him with events then, OK, off to try this now because he will never join any group.

Yeah, you ONLY need to set up party members in the actors tab.  Anyone else you interact with in game is done purely via events.

OK, then which event would set up my store clerk that also would include adding an animation sheet for him to move around with?  I have his picture representing him now, but no animations can be done.

NPCs don't get animations, other than the basic walking animations.  The same as characters in the img\characters folder.

I think he means the character sheet.

Can you take a screenshot of your store owner event and post it up here so we can take a look?  To add a graphic to an event you just double-click where the image goes, and choose one that you want.

In case you need help with posting an image to the forum ...

How to take a Screenshot:

You've heard people say to take a screenshot, but how does one take a screenshot of their game? Simple, while the game is running, hit the Prt Scr button on your keyboard, which is located right next to your F12 key. If you're using a laptop, you might have to use the Fn key in combination with the Prt Scr key to get it to work.


Now that you've pressed the button, it's time to paste this screenshot into an image editing software. If you don't have anything fancy such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.NET, no worries; you can use MS Paint instead. Open up your image editing software, create a new file, and then hit ctrl+v on your keyboard, or simply right click on the screen and select paste. This should instantly paste the screenshot into your image editing software. You can go ahead and crop the image to suit your needs, or if you don't even know what that means, you can just upload it as it is.


Save the image as a PNG, or if you really need to, as a high quality JPG. 

How to upload the image to the forums
Now that you have you have an image on your computer you'd like to show us, how can you get it to show up on the forums? Firstly, you need to find an image hosting site, photobucket.com or imageshack.us are popular ones. If you have another image uploading website, great - use that one! Either way, upload it to the site, and then get the direct link. Don't get the resized link, or the thumbnail link, but the direct URL. You'll know you have the direct URL if the URL ends with the file extension you saved your image in (which will hopefully be .png).

Once you have this direct URL to your image, simply use the IMG tags in your forum post and paste the URL in between them. If this image is big, please leave the image in spoiler tags.


IMG tags:

  This one does not want to work, so below is the same.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/21l20tofi81vr8m/Ned%20in%20shop.png?dl=0

The second photo I want Ned to walk around a bit behind the counter until a player talks to him.  That's why I needed the character sheet with the animations, and I would use the events for moving and turning.  I thought I was supposed to build all my characters in the Actors tab.  That's where Ned is now.

On the event where you have Ned, look for 'Autonomous Movement', select Random and he will walk around behind the counter.  Be aware, however, that the player can only speak to him when he is next to the counter.

Going by your question and your post count, I assume that you are a new user.  This sort of thing is fundamental, and I strongly urge you to work your way through Andar's excellent compilation of info for new users.  You can find it here.  It was written for Ace, but mapping and the Event commands are pretty much the same in MV.  Spending a little time now on this will save you a vast amount of time and frustration in the future.

I have been reading his tutorial but I really need to reinstall Ace and download the game he suggests.  I think he said to play it for two hours, no problem there.   :)  I will do that now before I go further.  I read everything I can get my eyes on and I wish there were more resources pointed at MV, but that will take some time.

One other question about where to put NPC's.  Right now I have Ned in the Actors tab.  He is NOT needed to be a party member, so should I delete him from there?  It seems that adding his image in the event, MV has access to the character sheet.  He is moving good now as I programmed some movements and it works good.  Thanks for your answer, that fixed it.  Thanks also for the tutorial advice, you're right.  I'm going to do that now...

NPCs should never be in the Actor tab, so remove him.

After reinstalling VX Ace, I miss it.  I wish it had mouse support and larger displays for the games, if so I would go back to it.  It is crisper and I miss having the script editor and resource manager.  The tilesets look better too and more of them.  The way to learn is to have VX Ace and MV open at the same time and go back and forth with something like Skyward Temple loaded.