A bunch of questions

[Wondering]

Ooookay, so i decided that i've been making too many threads with questions, so i decided i'd make 1 thread every few days with all my questions cluttered into on post!

so here it goes please answer in order! :]

1.) I've been working on my game for 2 months now, and decided before i got any farther in it, i'd make the little intro movie in the beginning for example i what i'd like is this

After pressing "Start new game" your screen will slowly fade to blackness for about 5-7 seconds, and then you'll start hearing soft dramatic music, and you hear rain drops falling, and you see the bottom foundation of a castle (A castle that i built in the game) and then it slowly starts moving up, the camera view starts slowly rising and you see window pains and holes on the castle and the camera keeps rising, slowly and while all this is happening there are words appearing on the screen saying "blah blah blah the year is 1789 the empire is at war blah blah blah" and the player is basically being fed the story line of the game while you see the screen move up up up and then when you get to the top of the castle theres a man standing there, and it slowly fades back to black
Now i don't want just any old picture of a castle, i want the castle I MADE in game and the man i put in.

Now.... just typing that made me very worried that i will get a reply saying that it can't be done. =[
I will do ANYTHING to get that working, and if it is possible but very difficult and requires close instruction, it would be wonderful and mean ALOT to me if we can take this private and talk in either PMs the IRC, MSN, AIM anything.


2) When i put in a monster graphic, give it the command to fight, it works fine and everything, but then i give it the set move route command to change its opacity to 0, so i it is not visible anymore, but it STILL attacks me even when i can't see it, now i know i need to put in a command to make it die when the battles done, but how ? thank you.

3) I'm trying to make Fog in a deep dark scary forest, but the change fog opacity doesn't seem to work, i set it to work on a event, but nothing happens, can someone shed a little light on this matter ?

4) I have a great battle system "tanketai XP" side battle system, and it shows the sprites i selected for the characters in battle.
It works fine and everything, but i was wondering where i could get pre-made skill animation ? good ones too. I looked around, used the search, can't find much =[



Thats all i have at the moment, thanks SOOOOOO much for the help, you honestly have no idea how thankful i am for this support section and all you helping out with questions.

 

[Desecration]

Hey thought I'd give your questions a read and see if I could help out answering some of them.

1. This style of introduction is very possible and fairly simple, requiring only events and a little bit of times.
2. This again is very simple just add a Switch to the event to earse the event after the battle is done.
3. Not entirly sure on your problem here, if you explain it a little more I may be able to help.
4. This is just a resource question, not really something I can answer other than search it a bit more.

 

[Fusty]

3. If you want a fog to change to a different color you have to use the Change Fog Color Tone command, not the Change Fog Opacity command.

 

[Unka Josh]

After pressing "Start new game" your screen will slowly fade to blackness for about 5-7 seconds, and then you'll start hearing soft dramatic music, and you hear rain drops falling, and you see the bottom foundation of a castle (A castle that i built in the game) and then it slowly starts moving up, the camera view starts slowly rising and you see window pains and holes on the castle and the camera keeps rising, slowly and while all this is happening there are words appearing on the screen saying "blah blah blah the year is 1789 the empire is at war blah blah blah" and the player is basically being fed the story line of the game while you see the screen move up up up and then when you get to the top of the castle theres a man standing there, and it slowly fades back to black
Now i don't want just any old picture of a castle, i want the castle I MADE in game and the man i put in.

This is not even remotely impossible. Honestly, it's not hard at all, although a point or two may need minor tweaks.

Step by step.

Start game, go to blackness. To do this, you'll need to do two things:

First, whoever the lead character is in your initial party should start the game with no character graphic at all. None. Don't worry-- you'll give them one as soon as they actually show up, and one Change Actor Graphic command will last until you say otherwise.

Second, we need to have a totally black starting screen. There's two ways to do this-- take your pick.

One, start the game on a totally black map. This is actually pretty easy-- make a totally empty map on a tileset that doesn't have a panorama set. From here, have an Autorun event that uses an assortment of Play BGM and Play BGS commands, plus Wait commands for timing, and also Change Screen Tone to blackness, before finally using Transfer Player to change to the map of the big castle, which I'll get to after I explain number two.

Two, start the game on the map with the big castle, but on that map, have a Parallel Process event that turns the screen black, and then shuts itself off. After that, you'll need an Autorun event that does the Play BGM, Play BGS, all the stuff that I just mentioned.

The difference here: Parallel Process is faster. If we didn't use it to turn the screen black, there would be a half-second view of the starting map before the screen turns black, and then it would fade in to the scene we just got a glimpse of, which would look kind of dumb, if you ask me. However, Parallel Process allows the player to take whatever actions they want-- moving around, opening the menu, whatever-- and we don't want that. So we need to change to an Autorun event right away. Players can't act during Autorun events, you see.

So, here we are on the castle map. There's rain, soft music is playing, and it's totally dark, so we can't see anything.

This is, of course, the castle that you created in the game. This map has an Autorun event, and it kicks in now. (If you used option two, it is the exact same Autorun event.) Here, we use Change Screen Tone to slowly bring up the lights, fading in to the castle. We use Scroll Map to have our viewpoint slowly move from the foundation of the building to the top. And we use Show Picture to have the text appear. (We could use Show Text, but Show Text waits for the player to push a button to continue, and that could really wreck the dramatic timing of this scene.)

Show picture, Wait command, Show Picture some more. Erase Picture when you're done, Move Picture is an option if you want to do cool FX like having your Show Picture text scroll by, shrink or grow, or fade away. All this time, that slow-moving Scroll Map command is moving the viewpoint up this huge castle, eventually reaching the top, where you have strategically placed this mysterious figure who is key to your plot. Maybe here you want a few Screen Flashes and Play SE commands for thunder-- who knows?

At this point, another Change Screen Tone command will black out the screen again, and Transfer Player will take you to the actual starting map. Don't forget on that new map to Change Actor Graphic and Change Screen Tone to bring up the lights again.

Play around with the timing and music and everything. Fiddle with Wait Commands. Maybe you'll want to include a Set Weather Effects (Rain) command in that castle map Autorun event, too, so that we can see some rain to go with the sound effects. You are the director of this scene, and it's your baby, so don't settle for the timing being about right-- you can have Wait commands that last 1/20 of one second, so make the timing perfect. It's worth it.

Uh, if that was unclear, or you need more detailed help, feel free to PM me.

2) When i put in a monster graphic, give it the command to fight, it works fine and everything, but then i give it the set move route command to change its opacity to 0, so i it is not visible anymore, but it STILL attacks me even when i can't see it, now i know i need to put in a command to make it die when the battles done, but how ? thank you.

Changing the opacity doesn't do a thing except make the monster invisible. As said above, you'll need to create a second page with no graphic. Make the page conditions for the second page "Self Switch A is ON." The first page, after the battle processing and whatever post-battle FX you are using, needs to end by turning Self Switch A ON.

3) I'm trying to make Fog in a deep dark scary forest, but the change fog opacity doesn't seem to work, i set it to work on a event, but nothing happens, can someone shed a little light on this matter ?

If no fog has been set for the tileset that you used to make the forest, there isn't anything to change the opacity of. Go into Tilesets in the database and pick out a fog for the tileset that you used.


I'm afraid that I can't suggest much for point four--search around for stuff, or go to Resource Requests.

 

[Wondering]

Thank you soooo MUCH for the feedback :] ill work on all of it now and inform you on how it goes, so look back here every now and then

P.S: yet again josh you've outdone yourself with a stunning guide :]
THANK YOU!!!

 

[Unka Josh]

Awww, I'm flattered. You're quite welcome.