Howdy partners. This is my first time using RPGMaker MV so I figured this jam would be a fun thing to to see what's new about this program. This isn't my first time working with RPGMaker however. I'll strictly be using just eventing, very little use of additional plugins or javascript.
So the fun thing about this game is that it has a photo snapping mechanic, although it is limited and not as quite robust or free roaming as a 3D first person game like Pokemon Snap or the camera in Wind Waker. The fun part is designing with what little you have (at least in my experience). See you can't look through your camera, only look at what you snapped. There are some interesting ideas you can do with this.
So the goal for me is to make:
- A method to take photos in a designated spot, photos change depending on characters or environment triggers in the levels. These photos are written and remembered in a set order depending on the player.
- The only menu in the game without words in which you can browse your photos, these photos should be displayed in the order you took them in. Sorta like an inventory.
- A prompt in which an NPC asks for you a photo to select in order to show them the photo.
- Some kind of film(ammo) mechanic to encourage more exploration
- ...And any kind of sequences or puzzles within the levels + adding in art and fitting it properly.
Hopefully somewhat efficiently.
So in the first day or so I dealt with number 1 rather simply. If you have a camera, and you step on the placeholder circle, and press the action button, it'll execute a common event that'll show a referenced picture doing a little animation and then lets you look at it before pressing a button to make the preview go away.
So an event like this
◆Show Picture：#1, pol_1, Center (640,-100), (100%,100%), 0, Normal ◆If：Script：Check.any_inrange(21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 1, 1) ◆Text：None, Window, Bottom ：Text：You already took this picture :( ◆Exit Event Processing ◆ ：End ◆Control Variables：#0012 PhotoTaken = 1 ◆Save BGM ◆Common Event：PhotoShot ◆Replay BGM
https://pastebin.com/TEctqHeN Triggers this line of stuff
But what about remembering the photo and when you took it in relation to other photos? Well I have a list of variable slots that'll store the ids of each picture taken. The variable: Photo Taken is the main thing I'll be using to assign to the "slots" of the inventory. This will be essential for the ordering part of the menu part (number 2). But here lies the weakness of RPG Maker MV, there's no variable pointers!!!!!! This article explains better than I can about what the older rpgmaker was capable of https://rpgmaker.net/tutorials/523/, but it's handy if you want to quickly use a variable based on another variable.
So................ I'm just going to copy paste a bunch of conditional branches that check all the photo slots in order. If the variable is above zero that means a photo has obviously been taken, if it's not it'll write the given photo id that I put in the camera circle event.
Oh yeah, and there are other behind the scenes stuff I added in that's a setup for later, like PolaroidMaxShots getting increased to 1, that'll be used for in the menu so it knows when to stop scrolling the photos or for ammo and stuff.
That's about it, stay tuned for more.
P.S if anyone knows how to effectively recreate variable pointers in MV let me know!