Need guidance

So basicaly this is the cry for help. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I can't understand these switches no matter how many videos I watch or tutorials I read. I don't know what is wrong, no matter how I move them around, trun them off or on, move them to another page I can't seem to make them work.....

I am desperate, I need guidance. If anyone here can just sit down with me on Skype of screen share for a few minutes and explain the order in whitch these things work just once I will understand.

My problem is with anything that requiers and event to be active only after another event has happened, an event that can only be active if a certain thing is with you char and if not than the event is gonne.

I have tried branching, tried so many switch variations, common events. I honestly don't know what's wrong, I'm sure it's something very small and silly that when I have shown to me I'll be the bigest noob but I honestly have no clue.

So please help me.

You need to learn how to structure logic, and you need to understand what a switch does and what it does not.


Compare it to the light switches in your home.


The switch itself (when bought in store) does exactly nothing - same with the game switches, controlling them on or off does nothing by itself.


For the switch in your home to cause the light, it needs 1) a lamp and 2) a connection to the lamp.


The lamp is the condition where you check the switch, and the connection is the logic you need to use to make sure each switch is connected to the correct results.


If you want to learn logic, look for flowcharts and flowchart tutorials - then create the flowchart of the event/cutscene you want to create, and only after the flowchart exists place the commands into the event pages following the flowchart you have written.


You should also play the variables guide - follow the link in my signature to find it, it will teach you a lot about variables (which can be seen as an advanced for of switches with more than two options)

I can't do skype, but if you post images of your events I can probably help you.  What is needed is a clear step by step narrative of exactly what is meant to happen.  For example, in your post things seem to be in the wrong order of when things happen.  Should it be something like this:

Character has item X

Character speaks to NPC.  If item X is in the inventory then ... happens and a switch Y is turned on.  If item X is not in the inventory, then a bit of dialogue and after that the opportunity is lost for ever.

Somewhere else an event is conditioned by switch Y.  If Y is ON then ... happens.  If Y is OFF, nothing happens.

Is that what you are trying to do?

So let me run it down.

friend in the party(action button)  ->goint to the forest-> finding a boar and friend leaves->boar fight(only after friend leaves)-> gettin yelled at back home(wining the boar fight, auto run)->going to the store with money(auto run)->getting robbed

(auto run)-> fighting the thieves(action button)->returning home->taking rabbits(needs to be certain amount)->going back to store with the rabbits-> taking  what you wanted-> going back home eating.

without the boar fight they will just do normal text events that they always have.

also i want them tu return to normal after all this.

Each one of those events is just move and talk mostly.

This could be done by simply adding to a variable and using that as your condition, but I think it will be easier to understand using ordinary control switches.

Party of 2 goes into the wood. Friend leaves. The event with the boar fight needs a conditional branch: is [Friend] in the party.  If YES, nothing happens.  If NO, then the battle takes place.  After the battle, in the same event, turn on a control switch AND NAME IT (e.g. Boar fight)

Go home.  Speak to whoever shouts at you.  Conditional branch:  Boar Fight ON - get shouted at; Boar Fight OFF, normal dialogue.  Turn on switch and NAME IT e.g. Shouted at.

Go to the store.  Meet the thief event.  Conditional branch - Shouted at ON - get robbed; Shouted at OFF - nothing happens.  Fight the thieves.  Turn on switch and NAME IT e.g. Thief fight.

Go home.  Conditional branch - Thief fight ON - take the rabbits; Thief fight OFF - nothing happens.

Go to store.  Conditional branch - X number of rabbits in inventory - take what you wanted; not enough rabbits - either "go and get some more" or nothing.

You can then turn all those switches off, and everything will be back to normal.

Like that? that's for the boar.

does the place of the switch matter? like not just on the event page1/2 but in theorder of contents.

third one on the right is when he goes back home

The switch Boar Defeat should be after the battle, not before it.  Keep the flow of events and switches logical in their chronology.  That self switch A should be inside the branch with the fight.  By having it outside the branch, it means that if they interact with the boar while the friend is in the party, the self switch will activate, and then you will never get the battle.  I think you will find that you need to set it as Player touch, not event touch, assuming that it is triggered by the character interacting with the boar.

Page 2 should indeed be blank, as you have shown it.  But why have you put it as a parallel process?  Change that to action button.  Never use parallel process for a blank event.

From what I can see of the third image, it looks fine.

so i removed the parallel and inserted the switches in the branch, but now the event is invisible. what do you mean boar defeated switch should be after the battle? it's a box i check on the side I can't choose where it goes, or make 3 pages the midlle is where the event is and page 1 is the switch. or like i have done in the pic.

It's probably invisible because you have removed the graphic from the box on the left.  Actually, the way I would do it is this:

No graphic in the graphic box.

In the first part of the conditional branch don't have anything

In the second part, instead of turning transparent off, I would just use "Change Graphic" and select the graphic for the boar.

Having thought a bit more about this, I may have been mistaken in what I said about event touch/player touch.  If the event is triggered by the player approaching the boar and interacting with it, then use player touch with "same as character"; if, on the other hand, the boar rushes at the player, then it would be event touch, and you would need to have 'approach player' instead of 'fixed' in the autonomous movement section, with both speed and frequency increased.

You now have the Boar Defeated switch in the right place i.e. after the battle.  I don't understand what you mean when you say that "it's a box i check on the side I can't choose where it goes, or make 3 pages the midlle is where the event is and page 1 is the switch. or like i have done in the pic."  You always choose where it goes in the flow of the event by choosing where to insert the command.

Yeah it works now, what i ment was to conditions(left side of the event window). I thought that is where you pick if a switch will active.

let's say, in order to run the house event i needed to turn the condition switch on for the boar and then in the house event in the comments place a switch.

i didn't know that you can do it this way, i was so convinced.....

what is the condition switch for then? Does color coding matter? sometimes switches are red instead of blue, is that a style thing of the game or something that warns you?

Like I said at the top after finding out what the problem was I will look like a total noob.

Thank you to all that took time to help.

What I was talking about was when you turn a switch on or off.  That goes in the flow of event commands, as I described.  The reason for the subsequent events being the way I described them is that you want either X to happen if a switch is on, or Y to happen if it is not.  Therefore you need a conditional branch.

Where you don't need that either/or, but just want something to happen once a switch is on, then you use the box on the left.  For example, your player goes in and out of his house loads of times.  However, after a particular event, (e.g. a kidnapping) you want a letter from a mysterious person to appear on his floor so that he can pick it up and read it.  So in the kidnapping event you have a switch 'Letter', which you turn on.  In the house, there is an event on the floor with everything (including the envelope graphic) in it; but the condition box on the left is checked with Switch 'Letter' is ON.  Until that switch is activated, you see nothing.  Once it is activated, the envelope becomes visible and you can pick it up and read what's in it.

So I could actually just set the house event to work on the condition switch after the boar fight then the store condtion switch on the house event and so on. Or am I completly wrong.

boar fight(end switch in comments)->house event(conditions switch plus end switch in comments)->store event(condition switch) so on.

if i use a condition switch do still have to do the self switch two page thing?

Wrong, in this instance, because suppose the player takes the character back to the house or into the store before fighting the boar.  You won't have the proper dialogue to deal with that.  Presumably you would have nothing at all, and there are few things more irritating to players than to try and speak to an NPC and absolutely nothing happens.  You always have to factor in the possibility that players will do things in the 'wrong' order, and you have to ensure that in that case they don't break the game.

Going back to the use of the condition box on the side, one thing I use it a lot for is for NPCs.  e.g. They are talking away on the usual mundane things of life.  Then something happens, and they now start talking about something else ("Oh, isn't it terrible that the king's son has been killed"; "Is it true that a dragon has appeared in the east?", or whatever)  That second page is conditioned by a switch (when the son was killed, when the dragon was spotted) and helps to ensure that your game is immersive for the player, as s/he can see that events in-game do have consequences.  It helps make the story much richer.

Oh, thanks for the examples.

but bad news, after some playtestin it seems that the event works in the proper order only if i fight the boar on my own.

don't take Dain with mme in the party or just set player start there.

if he's with me in the party everything up to the boar works, but when i go back home nothing happens.

But isn't that what you said you wanted to happen?  "finding a boar and friend leaves->boar fight(only after friend leaves)->"  So therefore, if the fight is only after the friend leaves, then of course you will fight it on your own.  If he is in the party, then the conditional branch in the boar event will not allow the fight to take place.  If you remember, that is why I told you to put the A switch inside the fight branch.

i was talking about the event in the house, if i fight the boar alone the event in the house works.

if i fight the bor after the friend leaves the event in the house does not run.

it's supossed to be:

get friend->friend leave->forest boar fight->home (all these are events)

but i get:

get friend->friend leave->forest boar fight->nothing happens when i go back home.

when i try alone, because i set starting possiton next to the boar.

fight boar->home, and the home event only works now.

if i try alone but from the normal starting position it does not.

the pics from left to right:

friend leaves event->boar fight event 1/2-> home event(three pics are just one page the forth is page 2)

First of all, I cannot see now how you are setting up the boar fight event (event ID 022) so that it only activates after the friend leaves.  There are no conditions in it, so it looks like it will run, no matter whether the friend is there or not.

yes it will i decided that i was best that way, i'll just add a event before the entrance of the forest that won't let the player continue unless the friend is in the party. so they don't get a choice.

why?

Well like that(pic bellow), it would not activate at all, it just disapears when i touch it.

 would you like me to just send you all the project?

You have the control switch A outside the branch again.  As I said above, if you do that the event will disappear when you interact with it.  Now you can see what I mean.

that does not matter so much as why the hell is the house event not working. with friend, without friend, once the boar is dead it should work.

but it does not. it only work if my starting possition is next to the boar and that is the first event i trigger.

The boar event i changed, when you touch it it disapears, but it look weird when there was a sprite there and then it's just gone.