Sliding bookcase?

So in the cutscene I'm making, I want this bookcase to slide left and reveal a doorway. I've seen some tutorials on rolling boulder puzzles and secret entrances, but they didn't really help with what I want. Moving boulders is pretty simple, but bookcases are two pieces and I can't seem to move them at the same time?? And the secret entrances tut basically just had the obstruction vanish and reveal the doorway, which just doesn't feel natural to me. If that's the only option, then alright, but I'd like it to move. I googled the hell out of it but that was all I could find.

I'm not sure if this is in the right place, and sorry if it's not; this is my first post in the forums. So, uh. Hi all.

I'd just make a sprite with the moving animation.

If you have two events and want them moving at the same time, you need to set frequency to max and on the two move route commands, the first route has to be without wait for completion.

@Sharm: that sounds simple enough I guess but I'm very very new to this and don't even really know how to put in an animation like that, let alone make one.

@Andar: okay, I understand, but when I activate the first event the lower half moves and the upper half still doesn't. does it need a different kind of trigger or?? how do I tie the two together so they move as one?

I can answer this!  With pictures!!!

I'm guessing you want to do something like this:

Door hidden:

In this picture the door is hidden behind the shelf.

Door shown:

In this picture the door is shown behind the shelf after it's been moved.

This is pretty simple to do. 

For my example I had to make 6 events on the map with 2 tabs each.

Since the book shelf graphic is 4 squares big, I made 4 events each with one of the 4 sections of the bookshelf in it on tab one.

On the other 2 tabs, I had to leave the graphic blank since the bookcase is not in that spot yet.

Then in the contents of one of them, I set a event for the player. 

* The player goes to the bookshelf and gets a message that they see a switch in the shelf.

* The player gets a option to flip the switch.

* If the player chooses YES, they a switch turn ON (in this case I made switch 15 the event switch) and then the book shelf "moves".

When the player "flips the switch", then the 6 events are set to go to tab 2 which is set for condition "switch 15 = on"

On each of the events on tab 2, I have it set where I moved the book case graphic over 1 square. 

Did that make better sense?

@XCOM: with your solution, the bookcase will "jump" to it's new position, it will not slide there.

Please post a screenshot of your event - all move commands for all parts should be on the same event page (which means they react to a single trigger, there will be no way to give them different triggers), but you need to have them in specific order to prevent them from blocking each other, and that order depends on the direction they should move in.

Okay, if you do want to see it move, try this instead.

You still need to set up 4 events, each with a section of the bookcase in it.

So in my earlier example, when the player flips the switch it runs a event that moves the bookcase.

The MOVE ROUTE makes the 4 events move over 1 square to the left in my example. 

You may notice there's a door moving to!

You can't have (or at least I don't think you can) have 2 events starting on top of each other, but you can have them move through/on each other with the THROUGH command in the MOVE ROUTE.

So I have the hidden door start as a black square above the bookcase until the player flips the switch.

Then when the player "flips the switch", the autorun event starts.

The first line causes the "door" to quickly move in place.  Notice the TRANSPARENT ON and THROUGH ON command and the speed set to 6! 

You also have to make sure that the top 2 sections of the bookcase are set to PRIORITY: ABOVE CHARACTER.  So when the door moves into place, it slides "under" that bookcase tile.

Then bookcase itself slowly slides to the side, which then revels the door behind it.\

Another important thing, you need to make sure when you set the MOVE COMMANDS for the sections of the bookcase, (except for the very last one) that the WAIT FOR COMPLETION is left blank!  That way all the sections move together.  If you leave the WAIT FOR COMPLETION checked off, then the sections will move one at a time.

Did that help?

this has gotten very complicated very fast

@xcom: the first part of your method works really well, even if it does make it "jump" into place. give me a minute and I'll try the new example, and get back to you.

@Andar: okay, I think the part I'm not getting is how do can I have both parts on the same event? this is the screenshot for the bottom half

since there can only be one graphic per event page, how can I get both halves of the bookcase together?

edit: I meant for that to be "move away from player" and I've changed it

There is another way which is not complicated at all.

Create a character graphic of your bookcase.  If you have a spare 'door' graphic that you will not be using, put it there, and make sure that you fill in all the spaces i.e. 3 wide and 4 down, as if it were a door, though of course all the graphics will be identical, you are not 'animating' this.  Do not use the bookcase on the ordinary B-E tile sheet.  Use an ordinary graphic event to place your bookcase.  It will now be one event, and you won't have any complications about getting 2 events to move simultaneously.

Then use the ordinary 'door' event command - you can copy/paste from a door event you already have.  Edit it like this:

At the beginning put Direction Fix OFF

After the line "Turn up" put Direction Fix ON

Delete everything after that (i.e. the player step forward etc.)

You set your move route command for "this event", but the set move route command can move any event, not only itself - the top left of the move route window contains a drop-down list that contains all events on the map, not only the default "this event".
See the picture from XCOM's post (#8) to see how the move routes might be made (there are other variants that will work as well)

@Andar: I had completely forgotten you could do that to be honest. But I still can't get it working and honestly I'm getting too tired to care. I got xcom's working and while it's not perfect I'm just gonna stick with that one for now. Maybe later after I get some more experience I can go back and try again. thank you so much for taking the time to help me though, I really appreciate it!

@ksjp17: oh man that is amazing simple. maybe later I'll look for some tuts on how to make your own sprites, I've never tried to before! thanks for the tip!

@xcom: I had some trouble getting the door event to move to the right place but I FIGURED IT OUT WOO! thank you so much, your pictures and instructions were really really helpful!

now I have to take a break from this before I throw my computer out the window...

there's a bookcase door here. Would this work for you?

http://nicnubill.deviantart.com/art/Bookcasedoor-405696504

@rachellouise: holy crap that is a cool door. yeah, I'll try it, thanks!

What I've been doing for my game. Since I'm already doing parallax mapping, it doesn't take much effort to add a bookshelf in front of a door, and then duplicate the layer 3 or 4 times and have it slide slightly to the left or right. Then I save the bookcase images and have one do a show picture, parallel process, then when say when the player hits a switch or tries to slide it, it activates a switch that changes the fixed picture event to the next page, then erase picture, then shows the new one, then erase, then the last one and remains on that with a new parallel process. This gives it a simple slide animation, I usually do 4 on the slide, and add some quick wait commands between the erase picture, makes it look really smooth. Sounds kinda complicated, but it's really not. Once you do it for a few times, or in my case many times. It's quite simple. 
 
Here is a video that shows the outcome in my game.

Here you go, TheseThoughtsIThink, I made a video tutorial for you. It's basically what ksjp17/xcom said, with maybe a few extra things in there:




Hope that helps! See my signature for a video on sprite formatting if you need to make your own graphic.

Edit: Oh, I realized you were talking about using two events because you didn't want to make a graphic. In that case, you can probably still use this technique, but you'd put the second event above the first, and make it move left instead of right. The only issue is that I have the "tunnel" where the top of the bookcase would be, and you can't have two events on the same spot in the editor.

I have a sliding bookcase in my game and I also made a character graphic for it. Only I just made all positions the same, set it as the event graphic, and had the event slide.

This is what I made. You're welcome to use it.

What mlogan has given you is what you need for my suggestion.  Doing it the way I mentioned, the whole bookcase just slides one tile and requires no complicated eventing.

I'm writing on this forum because It's a related problem.  When ever I import my new image of the bookshelf and choose it in the graphics box there is a small white box that appears on the top corner of the image.  Would anyone like to help please?    

does it look like this?

if it does, change the file name of your bookcase so it has a $ in front, like "$filename". that changes how the program reads the file, so it treats it like a character sprite instead. the basics of file types are explained here. if it doesn't, I'm not really sure what it might be, sorry.

Yes that is what it looks like, although when I do it my file already has the $ sigh in front of it.  I've tried it about three or for times and the white box still stays where it's at.