[Beginner][Eventing]Newbie's Guide to Switches, For new RMers: about Switches and what they do. Options

[Dark Gaia]

The Newbie's Guide to Switches
Written by Dark Gaia

This guide is designed for people new to RPG Maker: learn how to make events only trigger once, how to delete events, how to make events trigger in a certain order, and much more, using the magic of switches!

*You can use this guide for any RPG Maker; RPG Maker 2000/2003, XP or VX

Introduction

Recently, I've seen some new users out and about who are asking for answers to their problems that are relatively easy to solve using switches. Switches are a fundamental aspect of any RPG Maker game - basically, they control the flow of your game and events, so not knowing how to use them is a very bad thing. I decided to write this small tutorial because, considering the importance of switches, many new RPG Maker users don't have a clue what they are! So, what is a switch? Read on, newbie, and find out.

What is a Switch?

Have you ever wondered how people get events to only trigger once? How is it that RMers are able to make cut scenes that do not endlessly repeat each time the player enters the map, or chests and doors that only appear after a certain task has been fulfilled (such as a boss fight)? These things are all done with switches.

Basically, a switch is a marker that RPG Maker uses to keep track of how much progress has been made in your game. You can have events turn switches on, and you can make RPG Maker cause other events to act differently based on whether a certain switch is on or off.

Consider this scenario; in the Haunted Castle, there is a chest on the second floor containing a rare weapon. However, this chest will only unlock once the boss of the area, on the top floor, has been defeated. What we would do here is cause a switch to be turned on upon the boss' defeat, and then add a new page to the chest event with a different set of commands that is triggered by that switch being on rather than off.

How can I use Switches?

Using switches in your game is very easy and you'll find that it makes programming your events a lot easier. Some new users, confused about how switches are used, create copies of maps containing important events that they teleport the player to after the event has run so that they cannot access it again. If you use switches, you won't have to do this anymore! You can have all your events either start running, erase themselves, or run differently depending on what switches are turned on.

To use a switch, you simply select the "Control Switches" ("Switch Operations" in RPG Maker 2000/2003) command when making an event. You can then select a number for a given switch, and name it to keep track of it, and toggle it to either on or off. Now that you've had an event turn a switch on, you can have other events operate differently. To make an event act differently if a switch is on, you simply open that event, and press the "New Event Page" button ("New Page" in RPG Maker 2000/2003) to add another page to the event. This new page is like a new event - you can place completely different event commands in this page to make the event run differently than it did before. Now, you simply set the switch being on as a Condition for that page - once the switch has been turned on, all event pages in your game that have that switch set as a trigger condition will be processed, instead of pages that don't have the switch condition.

Am I explaining it well so far? Here's an example of how a switch can be used;

An NPC talks to the player only once, and then disappears and never returns.
- The NPC event turns on a switch (called "NPC Done") after he is finished talking.
- The NPC has a second event page with the "NPC Done" switch as a condition, and this page is set to Parallel Process and contains only the "Erase Event" command.
- Once the player has talked to the NPC once, the switch will turn on and the event will erase itself each time it spawns, so the player will never see it again.

Or this example;

A player defeats a boss, and an exit appears at the back of the room.
- The event that triggers the boss battle turns on a switch (called "Boss Killed") after the battle is done.
- A normal teleport event has been placed in the back of the room, but "Boss KIlled" being on is set as one of its conditions.
- The teleport event will not actually spawn in the game until the switch is turned on.
- In addition, the boss battle event has a second page activiated by "Boss Killed" where it erases itself, so the player cannot fight it again.

Conclusion

That's about all there is to it! Of course, much more can be done with switches than the above, including accessing common events, calling up menu options and changing the outcome of a Conditional Branch, but these are more advanced uses and they will come naturally to you over time as you use switches and learn how they function. Now that you know how to use switches, there really is nothing stopping you. You can now effectively do anything with your game.

If you wish to know more about switches, check the RPG Maker help file. You can also download someone else's game (such as my Legionwood) and open it up in the maker to see how they have used switches to good effect.

Happy eventing!

This post has been edited by Dark Gaia: Dec 19 2010, 12:09 AM