[Eventing]More Interesting NPCs Options

[ccoa]

Inspired to be reposted by a help post by Jaide. Here are some general things you can do to make your NPCs far more interesting then the little old guy who yells "Welcome to Corneria!"

Linear Talk NPCs

These are NPCs that say several different things in a set order. Use the Self Switches to get up to 5 sayings, or even throw in some global switches to get more. For example:

[Show/Hide] Basic Linear Talk NPC

Alternatively, you can turn OFF all the local switches at the end of the last page, and start the whole conversation over, like so:

[Show/Hide] Reset Linear Talk NPC

Or you can turn OFF all but A, and start the conversation from Page 2, etc.

Random Talk NPCs

These are NPCs that have more than one thing to say, and say one of them at random when you talk to them. For example:

[Show/Hide] Random Talk NPC

Lead Specific NPCs

These are NPCs who say something different depending on who your lead (showing) party member is. For example:

[Show/Hide] Lead Specific NPC

Will say something different if your lead party member is Aluxes, Gloria, or Basil than he will if your party member is anyone else. For easy copy and pasting, here's the code for the Conditional Branch:

CODE

$game_party.actors[0].name == "name"

Replacing name with the name of the hero. If you're using hero name input, you could alternatively use:

CODE

$game_party.actors[0].id == i

Replacing i with the id of the hero (from the database).

Weather-wise NPCs

These are NPCs that say something different depending on the type of weather. For example:

[Show/Hide] Weather-wise NPC

Will say something different for no weather, rain, snow, and storms. Note that in my weather script, you have more options than those 4, the numbers for those are in the comments at the beginning of the script.

Wordly-wise NPCs

These are NPCs who are actually up-to-date on world events, or, more specifically, what the party has been doing. For example:

[Show/Hide] Worldly-wise NPC

Where switches 0001: Village Burned and 0002: Emperor Defeated are switches that you turned on when those events happened, presumably.

Gold-digger NPC

This is an NPC that responds differently based on how much money the party has. For example:

[Show/Hide] Gold-digger NPC

Use your imagination with this one, you can do this with any variable. That means you can make an event-based reputation system, if you like.

Query NPC

This is an NPC that asks you a question, then thereafter says or does something different depending on your response. For example:

[Show/Hide] Query NPC

Feel free to make this as deep as you like, using global switches each choice could lead to a new choice.

Item-Specific NPC

An NPC that may say or do something different if you have a certain item.

[Show/Hide] Item-specific NPC

Really, you can do basically the same thing with any option in Conditional Branch. Take a look at the options yourself!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Feel free to combine NPC types, for example, a random talking wordly-wise NPC:

[Holder]

Great to see you here Ccoa, this is very useful information and I hope alot of people use this within their projects.

The screen shots and layout are a great help and the best way for anyone to be able to understand and learn from this. Very nice work

[jens009]

I've seen this tutorial of yours before.
Good submit anyway.
I find it very funny when RPG games like mine, always have NPCs who are up to date on current news.

[Oceans Dream]

Just be careful with what you have them say. Like in the random talks one, you have one that says "I lost my keys somewhere here". For some players, they'll assume it's a mini-quest and start looking for them in hopes of a reward. If it's not meant to be a quest of sorts, don't make their conversation seem like it.

This tutorial is a good start, but I wouldn't rely solely on this. You can go furthur with your NPCs. Some could provoke fights, some could give quests, some could even join you for a price. Others could provide some type of service.

For those that have a fixed party that never or hardly changes throughout the game, I would highly recommend that you have the characters interact with the NPC. In fact, maybe the NPC doesn't need to say anything, but just the characters comment on them (By thought bubbles, such as: "Ewww, nasty looking beggar. We should stay away. He even smells like Vodka"). Or you can have the conversation different depending on who's the lead. Or you can choose which character you want to talk to the NPC, and it'll turn out different. You can use the NPCs not just to say useless one liners like "Welcome to Corneria" but to bring out the personality of your characters. Like if you have a funny character in your group, use them to talk to the NPCs for interesting results, which would be very different than if you were to use a creepy, mysterious character to talk to them.

Yet another thing you can do is lower the amount of NPCs you have, and then put as much effort into them as you would main characters. They could have a schedule, they could reward you for stuff, occassionally be part of the story, help you out in some battles or in other ways, talk to your characters in cutscenes maybe, get to know them more, their pasts, them offering you food and a place to stay, or even making enemies with some. Again, this one requires a good deal of effort and shouldn't really be attempted with a lot of NPCs.

[Holder]

Some very good additional points there Oceans I've never really considered tto choose which character you want to talk to the NPC.

Yet another thing you can do is lower the amount of NPCs you have

Something that has always bugged me is the NPC to House ratio being completely off aswel especially in small village areas.

[ccoa]

This isn't intended to be THE definitive guide for NPCs. Just a jumping off point for people. I've played literally hundreds of RM games in which all the NPCs say exactly one extremely boring and irrelevant thing. Heck, for that matter, I've played dozens of commercial games that suffer from the same problem. Giving your NPCs some depth adds that much more depth and believability to your world.

As to the keys thing, it's only a problem if you do it only once or twice. If you make it clear from the beginning that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, then your player won't always assume everything is a sidequest.

[elfyelf]

I like what you called the npc, I have an Animal Crossing NPC chat, I have a random thing that says when you meet them, when you reject and over 50 messages they would say, not know much about scripting(nothing) but also used conditional branching and variables. Nice btw.

[Heavyblues]

hmm, that's an asshole of an old man X3

great ideas, great indeed! never really understood tabs myself D:

[Muskintig]

i know that i am a beginner and that i just joined, but i would like to say that this really helped me and is really interesting.

I have also read through other tutorials by you and would like to say they are some of the best!

haha keep up the good work!! and we all appreciate your work

[BUSTER C6700]

Nice tutorial, ccoa. The weather conditional talking thing is just what I needed! Thanks!
But I can't believe an old man would say stuff like that, it's right for his grand kids to call him Gramp Cranky.

-BUSTER C6700

[cheahjc]

Wow this is great thanks!
I added this with like people who give advice so he would give different advice with fishing.

Cheahjc

[Netto]

Thanks Ccoa, this helps a lot, my npc's were lame before I read this

[Xethion]

Thanks CCOA. I've read other tutorials you have created and all have been very useful.

[Calintz16438]

Thank you...

[Stress]

The random lines suggestion is really going to help me. Up until now the only way I've done any kind of talking is with branching convos.

At least setting a few random lines will make it easier on my brain in not having to come up with so many different responses to dozens of questions.

I mean REALLY. Who wants to have an in depth conversation with a 14 random soldiers?

(Other than me...)

[sweetlynx]

Great tutorial, taught me a lot Thank you!