Questing

Hey guys, I'm back with another one. :)

I'm making another fantasy rpg, and this time around I want it to be a bit more open than my first one. I really want to put in a "quest hub" of sorts in my game. Basically, one character that you report to, get a mission (or multiple missions), go beat the mission(s), then return to the quest giver for a reward and your next mission or missions. Is it possible to do this in VX Ace?

You'll have to be a little more specific, as I do not really understand your question.  In RPG Maker, you don't really get "quests", you simply give the player information on how to activate a bunch of triggers to get rewards and move on to their next adventure, which I guess would be how they work in every game too. :p  Are you looking for more information on how to work with variables/switches to create quests?

You can definitely do this with pure eventing in VX Ace.

There are scripts to help the whole system look better too.

Yes, and I actually have something like this in my game as a quest board. Basically I set it so that if the quest was unresolved, it was on the board, and if it was resolved (denoted by a switch that you set to ON once the quest is over), then the quest no longer shows up. As long as you don't have more than 999 quests in your game this will work pretty well.

That sounds like something that would work really well for what I want. There's no more than a few dozen quests in my game, so no need to worry about reaching the limits. Any chance you could talk me through the process to make this work?

How about I show you the event for my quest board (so far). It only has 4 quests at the moment:

As you can see, I had it set to give the first two quests if the switch was OFF only (if ON, the quest no longer shows), and the last two were dependent on a variable being below a certain point.  The first case (the missing dragon) had two steps, so instead of a switch I used a variable and once that variable is above a certain point it is solved and removed.

The last quest was a little more complicated as it was not to show up until the plot advances to a certain point (hence the chapter 1 flow variable >= 14 condition), and only available until the party clears chapter 1 (the 2nd condition). If all of those are still met, and all the rats are not defeated, the quest shows (there are 4 rats, it goes to 5 when you turn it in for the reward, hence the < 4).

You can use steps like this to also set it up so that one quest is only there until it is complete, then it advances a variable, and that grants quest 2, and so on!

Thanks! And now I need to brush up on variables and conditional branches... am I going too ambitious for just my second project? :p

Nah. Use what I gave  you there as a structure to mimic (all of the event but the "Do you want to see the quests, yes/no" is showing), and you can then change the switches to what yours need to be, and the quests as well. Though, this does mean you will see *all* the quests at the beginning if you use switches like I do. Otherwise, if you want them given in a sequence, you can do a variable, show quest 1 if variable x is at 1, quest 2 if it is 2, etc, and just increase it when the quest is done.

As for ambitious...I'm on my first, so don't worry about that, though I didn't even try to implement this quest board until month 7 of the project either.

I'm actually still working on my first game, but it's getting close to finished. I started this second game to keep the creative juices flowing. The first one is pretty linear and you could probably beat it in less than 3 hours. I wanted something a lot more involved for the follow up. If I can figure out this questing, that'll be a huge step in the right direction. I also need to completely redo the monsters, character classes, and equipment. I want to have as little actual RTP content as possible, while still maintaining its look.

I'd recommend using the Vlue Basic Quest System 

It gives you Quest logs (you can track / un track quests) info on the quest as well as the rewards.

Just read over the scripts instructions in the script and its pretty straight forward.

Uses script calls and its very easy to use!

It also stops you needing to use lots and lots of switches and variables e.c.t. to get loads of quests running (keeps that clean) as all quests are created in the script itself (there is a template)

It looks really cool, but I'm not too well versed in scripts yet. Is this easy to use?

Yes it is. You just have to be methodical, particularly if you have several quests under way at the same time.

Awesome, I'll have to check it out. :)