#oh and also there's no pixel sprite you just gotta step around and see what happens

[firedragon1321]

Giving Some Earthbound Players PTSD in my Humble RPG Maker Game

(This event does actually do something but the game doesn't tell you what.)

[scrawnydutchman]

The Point Sonic Mania Proves About Relevance

Sonic Mania, The beautifully animated, retro, nostalgic callback to the genesis days of Sonic the Hedgehog has made quite an impact in todays market in a way that the Sonic the Hedgehog brand hasn’t made in a long time. It’s the highest rated Sonic game released in years and to this day receives plentiful praise from fans and critics alike. Much to my dismay, I have yet to play the game hands on in order to completely sing it’s praises, but truthfully I’ve been having boundless fun just watching playthroughs of the game online. It helps when you have both pixel sprite and traditional animation that’s some of the best the two mediums have seen in some time respectively. The game captures the 16 bit aesthetic and feel of the genesis installments of Sonic but includes more frames making for more seamless transitions between movements. And the intro . . .OH MY GOODNESS the intro to this game. The classical animation done by Tyson Hesse and Yotta warms my heart and fills me with joy every time I watch it. It’s just fantastic. The pop in colour, the expressiveness in the characters eyes, the smears, the angles, the smoke effects. It’s simply masterful. 

Now, the visuals of this game are the real reason I’m talking about it in this blog post, because I think the very existence of Sonic Mania and it’s positive reception makes a very important point about what it really means to be relevant. Many people, including the staff behind the Sonic franchise in the past, believe that relevance means keeping up with the times. It means knowing what people are into today and capitalizing on societies current sensibilities. Marketing always tries it’s hardest to adapt as quickly and frequently as we change. But often times it misses the point about why we as an audience cling to the things we cling to in the first place. Fads may get you a quick buck in the moment, but that revenue will die quickly if what you’re selling had no identity outside of being “what the kids are into nowadays”. For a brand to be profitable in the long run and be something so lovable and influential it remains within our culture and continues to shape it, it has to have timeless qualities. More specifically, it has to have qualities nobody will find quite the same anywhere else. I can’t think of a single property more telling of this point then Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic the Hedgehog was invented by Sonic Team and Sega as a means to be as competitive a brand as possible. His sole purpose from the get go was to rival Nintendo’s Italian plumber in popularity, and thus provide the Genesis with the means to compete with the NES because being twice the bits wasn’t enough to push itself forward. When it comes to creating a compelling rival for Mario, goddamn . . .did Sega ever knock it out of the park. I’ve heard people say in the past that Sonic the Hedgehog’s design and conception is genius and I wholeheartedly agree. There should be an entire class around studying the design and conception of Sonic because he was practically destined to become a huge success. His design is the perfect combination of curves + points = cool. I’ve talked in the past about how linework can play an influential role in the impression a character design makes on an audience, and how curves are often associated with cuteness, innocence, youth and a sense of safety, whereas points are associated with danger, sinister motives and villainy. Sonic is one of those designs that emplores both; he’s got a stubby, plump little design with a large head and larger expressive eyes, but his quills give him an edge of adventure and his pointy smirk gives him a sense of mischief. Not to mention he’s a compilation of old sensibilities from retro cartoons. Large shoes, dotted eyes, white gloves, and instead of straight up eyebrows he has this one eyeball two pupil thing that had a narrow gap in the middle that almost makes him look like he’s frowning, very similar to what Felix the Cat has (sounds weird when you say it out loud, but tbf it looks much more natural on classic sonic then the more modern spin). Add these familiar sensibilities with a pop in colour and a great animal theme, plus a game mechanic not featured in any other franchise at the time, and you’ve got a franchise that will fly right off the shelves. Sega set out with a goal to make a memorable mascot and they grasped onto something truly timeless.

It’s too bad they didn’t recognize how perfect their inception was and decided then to try and fix what wasn’t broken. Enter late 90s/early 2000s. Sega is falling out of the console race in a hard time when Sony and Microsoft are beginning to enter the scene and make their stay. They’re clinging on for dear life and know they have to create something that will maintain their relevance. So they premiere with the Dreamcast, a console fondly remembered with a cult following but at it’s time was hilariously outsold by the PS2. More important then that though, they premiered Sonic Adventure . . .and with it, the new Sonic.

So remember that perfect balance of cute and dangerous classic Sonic had to capture that timeless sense of cool? Sega decided to disrupt that balance by making Sonic’s design and overall outlook shift further into the dangerous edgy aspect. He got taller, leaner, looked angrier, hands and feet larger, green in his eyes. He went from speechless to extreme 90s skater dude. And ever since this change he’s been delving further and further into gimmicks, edgy storylines and pretty much drifting as far away from that timeless charm he used to have as possible. Now I don’t mean to bash anybody who likes this version of Sonic; if you’re a fan, more power to you. But this version is more a guilty pleasure for me then anything else. I think of him less as a high quality piece of popular culture and more just a hilarious over the top dated product of his time. This Sonic is like the kid in high school who grew up as the nerd all his life and is trying desperately hard to reinvent himself and live down his past of mockery, hiding behind trends, current lingo and a pseudo personality to try and maintain some credibility. It’s more desperate then anything else. The only difference is, Sonic was never a nerd. He didn’t have anything to prove or to live down; he was ALWAYS loved because he was simple and fun and never needed to be anything beyond that. Plus it’s worth noting that down the line he got more realistic textures like shine in his shoes and eyeballs which, for a design as cartoony as this, it’s not charming; it’s just creepy. That single eyeball thing is significantly more eerie now that he’s demanding to be taken more seriously. 

The Sonic Adventure titles may not be inherently bad games and are quite impressive for their time, I understand that. But they DID introduce some newer issues that would stick to sonic for nearly 2 decades after the fact. Issues that would eventually become so problematic that Sonic would lose further and further credibility with the fanbase it established. Sonic 06, Sonic Riders, Shadow the Hedgehog, bits of Sonic Unleashed, the storybook saga, aspects of Colors, Sonic Boom, Sonic Lost World. While not all of these games are completely awful they do hinge on gimmicks and some sort of experimentation that misses the point on why Sonic was so popular to begin with and, again, it tries to fix what wasn’t broken. Some of the changes they make work, most commonly the changes made to alter the physics based gameplay to not only move faster but to have tighter controls and a greater sense of freedom. It also doesn’t help that design wise Sega would further disrupt what was once a delicate balance in Sonic’s design, making for an awkward unappealing abomination.

*shudders*. Everything I hate about the Dreamcast Sonic design is a million times worse in Sonic Boom.

But, bringing it back to Sonic Mania (like what this title suggests), it seems like Sega is starting to wake back up. Sonic Mania just seems to get everything that’s great about Sonic with nothing superfluous. Bright colours, fluid motion, tight controls, great physics based gameplay. THAT’S IT. No gimmicks. No lingo or speech that will become dated in 5 years. No stepping away from what made your brand the icon that it is today. Notice that I never said 3D was inherently a step backward like many people profess. I’m convinced you can accomplish this in 3D and to an extent Sega has. They just gotta trim the fat.

Now I can already see a few typical criticisms coming. People are going to think I’m a 30 year old Sonic fan blinded by nostalgia governing my opinion rather than an objective look on the series as a whole. They also think I hate experimentation and that I just shun the idea of anything ever changing. Here is my rebuttal.

I am not 30 years old. I am actually 21, and my first introduction to the Sonic franchise was the Dreamcast version. For a while that was my favorite version, up until my brother got me the sega genesis collection on Gamecube disc format. I didn’t understand at the time why sonic was so fat and I was confused as to why none of the games on the disc were the classic sonic adventure titles, because I was a dumb uncultured piece of shit. But I played the games anyway and came out of my shallow sensibilities. And you know what? Those titles gave me more enjoyment then the sonic adventure games ever did. I mainly credit this to just how much more immediately accessible they were. No awkward cutscenes, no loading screens, no walking around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go, no boring alternate character missions. Just press start and go. Like I said, trim the fat.

As for the idea that I hate experimentation . . . no, I don’t. If anything, the biggest reason I love classic Sonic so much is because it brought something for it’s time that was completely new and not recaptured by anything else, and seamlessly altered our sensibilities for years to come. Experimentation is great because it moves culture forward; makes us as people more adept and refined in the kind of things we enjoy and gives us a greater understanding as to why we enjoy them. Without all the experimentation we’ve been given in gaming our opinions on the medium would have never evolved to the culture it’s developed today. But experimentation has to be properly motivated. It can’t be misguided. It should only replace what was established if what was established sucked to begin with, otherwise it should be BUILDING on that foundation. I’ve gone on record in saying that modern day is far too filled with remakes and reboots of old properties and I stay true to that, but I ALSO said that if you’re going to bring back a property it should be for the sake of exploring potential not fully realized the first time around, like with the Samurai Jack series. It shouldn’t be for the sole purpose of just retracing the same steps again. Sonic Mania may be nostalgia based, but what really sells it for many people including myself is the little but NECESSARY changes it makes. The appealing animation is even smoother, the controls are tighter (from what I heard), the nostalgic stages have neat little changes and mechanics they didn’t have in years prior. Sonic Mania does what Sonic has been missing for so long. It builds on it’s great foundation rather then tries to reinvent it entirely. If we wanted a game vastly different from Sonic, WE WOULD BE PLAYING SOMETHING OTHER THEN SONIC. 

Conclusion:

Sonic Mania is a solid reminder and a great lesson on what It means to be truly relevant. It’s not about keeping tabs on current trends, it’s not about straying away from your old self as much as possible. It’s about knowing what you bring to the table regardless of what era we’re in and owning it, and if you DO make changes, make changes that further reinforce and greater purpose the thing you’ve got that people can’t get anywhere else. Sonic remains popular even to this day when it’s copycats like Bubsy have fallen hard from grace (that they may or may not have even had in the first place), and it’s because Sonic’s more then just a few one liners, fourth wall breaks and a “dude with attitude”. He’s an ideal on how games can be played, on how platformers can work and how familiar sensibilities can be made better.

[nyrator]

So, now I want to make an Effect, but oh my god RPG Maker 2003′s Event Systems are so intimidating, how do I start? A Yume Nikki fangame reference

WELL, you’ve come to the wrong right A place.

Now this tutorial’s gonna require a liiittle bit of familiarity with RPG Maker’s mechanics, but you can brute force your way through it and learn along the way (that’s what I did~) I’m going to be using the Not-Steam version of RPG Maker, because it’s a lot more condensed (and because I don’t want to port Yume Nikki to the Steam version)

Now, of course, the best way to learn how to make a fangame in general, is to see how Yume Nikki itself works. Feel free to explore the game, both inside AND... deeper... inside. Yeah. Go through the maps, see how things are made, and ohhh man if only they weren’t all Japanese-oh wait, that’s what I’m for.

(I’ll also be releasing an English version of Yume Nikki’s coding eventually, I was going to release it with this but decided to wait and see how much I can clean it up)

So if we look at this page, in Database > Items, we see all the list of Effects.

So, it’s as simple as just writing a name here and pixelling up a CharSet for it, right?

Haha... ha... ha...

Well, first thing’s first. You should notice that the Effects are each listed twice. Why is that? What’s different about the two? Well, the only real difference is that one is marked for FIELD activation (aka, can be used on the overworld map of the RPG), while the other isn’t able to be activated at all. Why would you want that?

Because in Yume Nikki, there’s Dream, and there’s Reality. In Dream, you go into bed and can use your wonderful effects on the Field. In Reality, you’re stuck in your Bedroom and your Veranda. However, if you pause and check, you still can see all your Effects, but you can’t activate them whatsoever. So, that’s why. Dream is activate-able, Reality isn’t.

But, what does that other stuff mean, anyway? Why should I have it like that?

Name and Description are simple, they’re the name, and the description of the item. Simple. I’m gonna name mine “Ball”. There’s number of uses (you’ll want to keep it Unlimited, unless you want some kind of durability or consumable or something). Price means nothing, unless there’s a shop in your game, in which case, that’s the price you have to buy the Item for.

There’s also the Type, which for an Effect, you’ll want to keep as a Switch (no, you can’t make a Knife and call it a Weapon, unless you’re actually messing with the RPG side in which case more power to you). Most of those elements are for, as I said, the actual battle system in RPG Maker, which who needs when we just want to explore a dream and/or dream-like area?

Now, what’s a Switch, you ask?

Well, a Switch is currently the latest system created by Nintendo, in which the system can be considered a hybrid by combining TV and handheld play...

A Switch is like... an On/Off Switch. It’s a huuuge part of your game. Like, seriously. Switches and Variables will make up the bulk of your scripting, so you’ll have to learn them.

So in this scenario, using the Item turns the Switch On. But we have to choose which Switch it’ll turn on, in the “Turn on Switch” tab. Here will give a list of all the Switches that are or will be in your game. For clarity, you might want to plan ahead of time where you want your Items to go, because you’re going to need a lot of Switches and organization can be tiring. So, we just turn on the “Ball” switch, yes? Name the Switch “Ball”, turn it on, and we have an Effect?

But wait... if we look at Yume Nikki’s Switch list...

There’s at least five sets of Effects!

Why is that? Well, each one has a purpose. It’s own little job to in the grand scheme of Effects. In order of how Kikiyama places them:

Finding the Effect - How to get the Item

The Effect is in your Possession (for Egg)

Equipping the Effect - How to turn your sprite into the Effect

The Effect is Active - What happens when the Effect is on

Removing the Effect (as an Egg)

There’s also a few of these for certain Effects

[A]ction Switches - Secondary abilities for Effects

Depending on how you want to go about doing this, not all of these may be needed (the Egg ones). There’s also three sets of Common Events, dedicated to the meat of the Effects

[E] How the Effect gets Equipped

[X] How the Effect turns into an Egg

[A] How you can perform Actions

but we’ll talk about those later. Let’s step back from the Item Menu for now, and explore each one in order and see how it works...

FINDING THE EFFECT...

These Switches determine whether or not you have found the Effect. Say, you just started, you have zero Effects. You find the “Ball” out in the wild, interact with it, and now “You Got Ball appears!” And now the Switch is on.

Why is it important to do that? Well, let me interact with the “Ball” again. Oh boy, I got another one! ... And another one, and another one... oh wait, now I have twelve Balls when each one has an unlimited use anyway. Uhh.

That’s why we have the Switch to tell the engine we already got it, and we don’t need another one. But you also need to tell the Game “Look, when this Switch is on, that means I don’t want any more of your “Ball”s, got it?”. For that, you’ll need a Conditional Branch, another thing you’ll be using a lot of in your game. Let’s take a look at the steps for the Frog Effect for a nice visual representation.

Okay, so, the Branch is like a “what if” scenario-izer. Do you meet the conditions of the branch? Then it branches. If not, you can make something ELSE happen, or you could just not do anything (instead of putting Else statements without anything in there~). In this scenario, we have one thing to figure out- whether or not we found the Effect.

So, make a Branch if we DON’T have this Effect. In other words, if the Switch isn’t ON. This means something will happen if we don’t have the Effect. And here we have all the little details:

Sound Effects, Animations, the Message Box, the Message Text saying the item you picked up, erasing the Message Box once you’re done reading the Text... And then turning the FIND BALL Switch ON, so next time it tries to read that Branch, it’ll skip right over all this code stuff, as well as the POSSESSION BALL Switch ON, since you now have it in your Possession. There’s also the Level Up command (which Kikiyama uses to keep track of the Number of Effects you have), as well as, well, giving you the Item itself. The Field/Dream one, specifically. How do you get the Reality one?

Kikiyama just swaps the items (depending on whether or not you already own said item). The Branch checks for the Dream Switch, and the Else Handler checks for when you’re not dreaming (aka, Reality). So this is a case where the Else Handler comes in handy.

Simple? No? Welllll, you’ll get the hang of it! Maybe!

Fun thing to note: Kikiyama uses Call Events for several things. They call on certain Common Events since, well, they’re Common. Things like, “Oh hey, I play this same Sound Effect every time I get an Effect, let’s save all the settings of that sound in this Common Event”. That way if you wanted to, say change a graphic, or replace the sound effect, you don’t have to do that in every single instance of that graphic/sound.

Speaking of...

COMMON EVENTS...

Now, what are Common Events? Well, in short, they’re Events that you can use at any time. They have a Name, a Number (which is how they keep track of it since you can change the name at any time- Changing the NUMBER will require you to go in and change said number for any time you use that Common Event, so pick your numbers wisely).

There’s also the Trigger. That’s how you, well, trigger the Event to occur in the first place. There are three ways you can Trigger a Common Event:

Call, where the Event is simply off hidden away, doing nothing, until you call it over and say like “yo buddy let’s hang out at my Event”, which, as it has nothing better to do, usually will come right over.

Auto Start, where the Event will start as soon as it can. It’ll stop everything else that’s going on and jump right in and take center stage, it’s all about this Common Event. So you miiight want to pull on the reigns a bit, and give it a Trigger Switch. This means that it won’t start the moment you boot up the game, it’ll start whenever the Switch of your choice is ON. Then, it’s all about that Event again~ ... of course, if it’s all about that Event, then nothing else will happen BESIDES that Event. So, You gotta make sure to turn that Trigger Switch to OFF within the Event Page once you’re done doing everything you want the Auto Start to do.

Auto Starts are useful, as they stop everything else going on around them, but you have to make sure to specify when they start and when they end.

Last is the Parallel Process, aka the “I’m always here, running alongside you, never getting in the way... except when I do. Sorry about that”. They start automatically, but they don’t interrupt anything directly- The player can do whatever they want while it sits in the background. That sounds good, but you can easily clash with it by doing something that conflicts with the idea “oh, you want to move left while I say to always move right? We have a problem”. In general, Move Events and Parallel Processes never get along, so be wary about that.

Parallel Processes are good for when you want to passively wait for some kind of Input or something. Like, it can do variable operations like determine your current location, count your steps, weird things like that that I won’t get into detail about right now. For Effects, they’re good for Key Inputs, where “okay, the Effect is on, so that means whenever they press a button, this thing will happen”.

It’s a bit tricky to get the hang of at first, which is why you’ll have to experiment a lot with the three different types and see how they work for you.

Of course, to make things even more complicated for you, let me point out something: The three sets of Common Events dedicated to Effects! We’ll label them something simple, the [E]quip Event, the [X]/Removal Event, and the [A]ction Event.

So what do these do? It’s a little more simple (to keep track of, at least) than the Five Switches, and the names give a good idea.

[E] events are the ones used from the Item Menu. It does the transformation sequence, it sets your move speed, turns on any Switches it needs to depending on the Effect, stuff like that.

[X] events are tied to the Egg Removal Events, which will talk about soon.

[A] events are related to the actions you can do with an Effect. Each one of these is different, and some Effects have multiple [A] events. They’re really complicated to explain, but it’s mostly related to Key Inputs, which allow you to bind certain events/actions to whatever Key you push.

So now, time for the thing you’ve allll been waiting for.....

[E]QUIPPING THE EFFECTS...

Remember the whole Item Switch? Yeah. That’s this Switch. The Switch to say “Hey, I wanna hold a Ball and use it.”

Okay, so we turned the Switch on, but what do we have it turn on to tell the game to do all the Effect things, like the animation, changing your sprite, etc etc?

That’s where the Common Event comes in. These babies are what define what the Effects do, and so the Trigger Switch will be the switch the Item turns on- the Equip Switch.

We’re also going to need the Active Switch as well for this Common Event. The Equip Switch is like lighting the pilot or something, while the Active Switch is like, the car engine running, or some other simile that makes more sense.

Because this is a direct, one-time action, we want to make the Trigger an Auto Start. Now it’ll stop everything else that’s going on, and focus solely on our Magical Girl transformation sequence.

Let’s break down what’s going on in this page. There’s a Branch with an Else Handler. First, it wants to know if the Effect is already OFF. Of course, we’re turning it on right now, so it’s OFF at the moment. It may be hard to keep track of all the branches and Else statements, just know that clicking on the source shows you the entire area it covers, and to keep an eye out for the connecting Else statement (the Steam version also color codes everything but it’s also much bigger and thus a lot less on the screen at once!)

So yeah, the Active Switch is OFF. So, since it’s off, we want to turn it on. But we also want to make sure that anything that might conflict with it are off, which Kikiyama has in a Call Event. Once that’s done, you can turn ON the Active Switch.

There’s also the other details, like when you first grabbed it. Tint screen, turning on a Switch that says “Effect is currently in use, please wait your turn”. Kikiyama also has a Branch for the FC worlds, so that it changes the aesthetics appropriately. You only need to worry about this if your character’s graphics change at all depending on the World.

In that Else Handler, there’s the thing we want to see: Change Sprite Association, which changes your character’s sprite to whatever you choose. Kikiyama also has an Animation for each individual Effect, though most look the same to me. Animations are tricky business, usually used for particle effects, and something you can experiment with in your own time in the Animation tab.

Now, it does another Branch immediately after that one, checking to see if the Removed Switch is OFF. Since it is, you’ll also change the Face graphic (aka, the preview graphic of the Effect in the menu). More on the Removed Switch later, but it’s pretty much there for when you turn an Effect into an Egg.

There’s a Wait Command, Wait Commands are good for timing based things, and as shown here, a 0.0 second wait command helps let everything above it finish up so things don’t all happen at once. Like catching a breath, except with no actual pause. And because Kikiyama’s checking the same Switch twice, he wants to pause so he doesn’t confuse the game. And with this next Branch, he has a Switch to turn off Blocked button inputs. This is something I like, but can be confusing to newer people, it’s pretty much a bug-proofing thing (so that you can’t say keep pressing the Sit button while transforming into an Effect and glitch them together somehow).

Now the confusing thing is, why check those two things separate, and why does the Egg being dropped have anything to do with it? That, honestly, I’m not sure. There may be a reason, it might just be superfluous, who knows, I’m sure I’ll eventually understand.

But finally, he caps off the whole thing by turning the Equip Switch OFF. Why turn it off right away? Because, it’s an Auto Start. That Switch was meant to start that event, and turning it off gives the player reigns again.

Of course, there’s always the original Else Handler from way-back-when. If, say, it WASN’T off, then that means it must be ON. Aka, you have that Effect equipped kiddo. So we want it so that using the Item again would automatically revert to the Hero’s default state. Kikiyama has the whole thing saved to a Call Event, where it pretty much reverts any changes the Effects have done, and turns off any Switches they might have turned on. The only other Switches he needs are something to turn the Active Event OFF (since it’s different for every Effect), and to turn the Equip Switch OFF, because, again, y’know, Auto Start.

And there you have it! An overtly indepth look at how these Event pages work.

Important to note: That’s only a generic Effect. Some Effects have special passive quirks about them when they turn on that you’ll want to add. Take a look at Kikiyama’s pages to get a good idea. Umbrella creates Rain., turns off a Snow Switch, and turns on a Rain Switch for Events that only work in certain Weather to understand (like Lightning from the Demon).

Some also Increase or Decrease the Hero’s Move Speed. Move Events can be tricky to keep track of, it’s a series of adding and subtracting depending on what Effect is used. There’s only six Speeds, but you can’t set them specifically by number or anything (Frequency is something completely different), what Kikiyama does is have a Normal Move Speed Event to Call from, where he Decreases the move speed to the absolute lowest it can go, then Increases it by Two. And also an alternative one for when the player is in Water that slows them down

and even then Kikiyama still has the Bedroom Chair glitch, thus never allowing the Speed to revert, aka infinite Speedddd

AND THAT’S A DETAILED LOOK AT HOW TO MAKE AN EVENT.

There’s a looot of checks to make sure nothing clashes, more than you know. But for a good tl;dr:

Conditional Branch to make sure you’re not already using the Effect (if you are, it’ll revert you back to normal in the Else Statement).

Turn on the Active Switch saying you’re currently using this Effect

Do whatever you want to make it fancy with animations and tints and whatnot

Change your CharSet and your FaceSet

Turn off your Auto Start Equipped Switch

Okay, so that’s the main thing people like to see. But y��know, that’s not all there is to an Effect. Some, maybe, but not all.

[A]CTIONS OF THE EFFECT...

We’re gonna skip the [X] section for now, and focus on the [A]s.

This here is what the Effects do besides look pretty or slow you down. These are the things you need to press a button to say, “yes, do this when I press a button”.

Some Effects have them, some don’t. Some even have more than one!

Now, this is when you need to really learn RPG Maker to make what you want happen, because Effects can be anything the program can create for you. They have a variety of Triggers and a Trigger Switches. Most are a Parallel Process, triggered by the Active Switch. Some have a secondary function, and are usually an Auto Start, triggered by a sixth Switch, the [A]ction Switch.

Now, like I said, there’s a variety of things you can do with the Effects. But let’s focus on some core details for these [A]ction Events.

This is probably the simplest of the [A]ction Events.

The first thing we notice in the Commands, is the Key Input Processing. This nifty tool lets you activate a Switch with the press of a button

... Well, kinda. For a more technical definition, it allows you store a number in a Variable. Oh boy, Variables. I haven’t gotten into depth about them yet, but they’re kinda like a Switch... except instead of an ON/OFF feature, they deal with numbers. So like a dial, kinda. When the dial is set to the right number, the thing you want happens. You can set things to a certain range of numbers, or if things hit a value higher or lower than a specific amount- Variables are super useful guys.

So, anyway, the Key Input.

whoa

Don’t worry, it’s not so bad.

First, you want to choose the Variable to act as your “Button Input number”. The numerical value of the key you press will be saved here. Aka, if I press SHIFT, Shift equals 7. So that variable is now 7.

The Options are a bit trickier to understand. Wait Until Key Pressed means that your Command list won’t continue until a Key is actually pressed. I thiiink. It’s best to leave it checked for now. The Store Amount of Time it Takes to Press Key, meanwhile, I believe is meant for holding down the button. It times how long you took to press the button, and records the number in another Variable. You can mess with it if you want, but I wouldn’t worry about it for now.

Keys to Process means what keys you want to be read. I’m not sure why Kikiyama has every key read for the Bicycle, other than he probably copy-pasted it for every Event (or maybe that’s the default state, I forget). Either way, the important one here is Number Keys 0-9. That’s the Numpad on the right.

Kikiyama likes to have the actions be bound to the 1 Key on the Numpad. So, that’s considered equal to 11. So if you made a Conditional Branch for a Variable, and have it branch if its equal to 11...

Well, first it does a check (is the “I’m not supposed to let you put in button inputs” Switch on?), and then it does the action- which is play a sound effect.

A nice little bicycle bell.

There’s also the Wait 0.0 here again, which I imagine is so that you don’t press the button so fast that it equals 22 or 33 (or press say 5 and 6 at the same time and have it equal 11). Though, I highly doubt that would happen, since the variable wants to be set equal to the ONE key you pressed, so it’s probably just some kind of spam prevention thing, because Parallel Processes are weird. 0.0 waits are nice to have on them.

But yeah, there’s a LOT you can do...

One more thing to note, is that there are also certain Effects that affect NPCs. The Cat and the Knife come to mind. If you look at an NPC’s event page, they have pages dedicated to certain Effects. If you use the Cat Effect, you can turn on a Switch that makes NPCs walk toward you. If you use a Knife, just having it on with the Active Switch will make NPCs walk away from you.

And of course, you can even stab someone if need be.

...

...

wait is Seccom Masada like legit a reference to Michael Jackson I thought that was just a fan interpretation

So yes, from there on it’s a lot of effort and hard work and trial and error. The best way to learn from here is to browse the in-game files (which again I will be releasing an easier-to-read English version eventually unless someone already beat me to it without me realizing it)

I think you have all you need to know about making an Effect. I’m proud of you. You did it, you. You read through this entire thing that I typed in a day. You did it. The power...

is yours

Or maybe you just skimmed your way down here, I dunno.

... ohhh right.

One more bonus thing about Effects.

[X] REMOVING THE EFFECT... for EGGS

As I mentioned earlier, you turn a Switch on to say you have an Item in your Possession. But, doesn’t the Find Switch kind of cover for that? Both are saying you own the item, the Find Switch just stops you from getting more of that item.

So what does the Possession Switch do? Well, you may not even need it. But the reason Kikiyama uses it is specifically for the Eggs. Let’s go take a look at one in the Door Room, shall we?

It’s simply more of what the first Switch did, except now it’s using Event Pages. The first page is blank, for all intents and purposes, it’s a nothing space. You wouldn’t even know it existed. And this only exists when the Possession Switch is on. But wouldn’t it not exist even if the Possession Switch wasn’t on?

Well, yeah. But then we realize there’s a Page 2

 (ooo, aaaa)

So what happens on Page 2? This one only appears if the REMOVAL SWITCH is ON. So why does it exist? Well, if the Possession Switch is OFF, then you don’t own the Effect anymore. But you can’t just go back to the same NPC or whatever and pick it up again, otherwise you’d just use the FIND Switch. So, when the Possession Switch is off, it allows you to pick up the Effect from the Egg, just like when you first got it from an NPC (or whatever). And so it’s back in your Possession, the Possession Switch is turned ON, the Removal Switch is turned OFF, and so the Egg disappears once again into the Page 1 void.

Pages are funny. They’ll always go to the latest page (in this case, Page 2). If you turned off the Removal Switch, well, it’ll still be there. You need to force it to remember Page 1, by going back with the Possession Switch again. It’s weird, I know, but trust me it works somehow.

So, to see where that Removal Switch comes from, let’s take a look at the [X] Common Events...

For the most part, they all look like this. A few add things like movespeed adjustments and the like, but for the most part this is it.

Now, these are Parallel Processes. They’re passively waiting for you to do whatever. In this case, they’re only active when you have the Active Switch on. The first thing they check with a Conditional Branch is, “are you in the Door Room?”

If so, then it adds a new Key Input Process (with a different variable than the Action ones). Then, to be safe or to get the input to work (I think), Kikiyama does another Branch exactly the same. And then another Branch, where if this Key Input Variable equals 15 (aka, 5 on the Numpad), it will lead to one MORE Branch, just to make sure you aren’t doing anything weird that would interrupt the Egg Dropping process (like trying to sit down or something). Again, these little things are a pain to find but they’re great to have in a game and make a game seem so much more polished (at least to someone like me, who goes out of their way to break RPG Maker games as much as possible when I play them)

And after ALL THOSE BRANCHES, finally, you do your little animation. You block the player from going to the menu, you turn on the Removal Switch (thus the things that happen earlier with the Possession Switch happen), change items, memorize the location and change the hidden Egg Event to said location (so that the Egg will always stay in the spot you put it in), move the player out of the way, some Call Events, you get the picture. And of course, the Active Switch turns OFF.

And there you have it! My browser’s about to explode, but that’s a lot of words I typed and tumblr I swear to god if you fail to upload this I will flip

I lost the Ball Effect analogy somewhere down the line, and also had to deal with a very very needy cat (that I am allergic to) stepping on my keyboard every ten minutes as I typed this because he misses my mother and has not stopped stepping on my keyboard every ten minutes all day every day in almost a week

For a summary of what these Switches do:

FIND SWITCH: Turned ON by the Event that gives you the Effect, so you can’t get the Effect a second time

POSSESSION SWITCH: Turned ON by the Event that gives you the Effect, used in conjunction with the REMOVAL SWITCH to say whether or not an Egg will appear

EQUIP SWITCH: Turned ON by using the Item in your inventory, triggers the [E] Common Event

ACTIVE SWITCH: Turned ON by the [E] Common Event, used in general whenever you need to know if this Effect is active (like when trying to switch to another Effect, trying to Wake up, or Effect-specific things, like being able to speed up in water as a Frog), as well as triggers some [A] Common Events and the [X] Common Events

REMOVAL SWITCH: Turned ON in the [X] Common Event, used in conjunction with the POSSESSION SWITCH to say whether or not the Egg will appear

Have fun, and happy fangame-ing!

Additional Material:

How I learned to recolor a sprite and called it a fangame protagonist- A Yume Nikki fangame reference