In the game that I've been working on for the past couple of years, Jello and the valley of Duh, there's a part where it temporarily turns into a Phoenix Wright parody/fangame. I have all of the investigation stuff covered but I've hit a snag: I'm not sure how I should go about with eventing the cross examination. These are some things that I have so far:
Each piece of evidence is an item (most of which common items that do nothing. Pictures activate a common event that shows a picture until you press a button)
and I use a variable to keep track of the progress of the trial.
I use battle animations for the Hold its, Take thats and Objections, and I use RTP-sized chars with facesets instead of pictures for the people.

I'm pretty sure that I have to have a loop or a label for the main part of the cross-examination and I might have to do something with a parallel process, a key input thing, and something complicated with pictures to make a functional court record.

I need help with sorting this mess out so that I can continue working on it. Here's a pic of the courtroom:

and here's what I attempted with the first witness:


I suck with putting ideas together correctly... I guess that's why I'm an artist type and not a programmer type...

It's been a long time since I've played an Ace Attorney game, and even then it wasn't very much of it.
Correct me if none of this sounds right, but here's one way you could try approaching it:

-Before the cross-examination dialogue begins, set the Message Display Options to allow other events to occur.
-With each segment of information there can be a switch activated for it, then turned off when passed.
-Create a new common event (parallel process), make it active for the time, and use the "Input Key Processing Command" to set up your Hold-its and Objections. When either of these are called, the common event will check to see which switch is currently active in the sequence and can then act however you want it to.

How detailed are you looking to make this scene?

EDIT: Looking back at this, I dunno what I was thinking... I should really sleep more.

Thank you for your help!
I've never attempted something this crazy in 2003. I'm so excited!

Edit:
I have a problem here. When I press the hold it button, it only shows the hold it animation and it doesn't go to the text boxes. Also, I can only use the hold-it button once and I can never use it again, even though I reset the button variable. Is there a way to automatically exit out of a text box in an auto-start to show one from a parallel process?
Here's my events so far:


I'm sorry about my sloppy eventing. I've never worked with key input processing before.
I'm sorry once again for completely screwing up/hitting the limitations of an outdated program/asking strangers for help on how to use said out-dated program to make a horribly thought out mashup fanfic filled with colorful mary-sue/furries that I based off of my doodles in middle school ever since I arrived into high school/making run-on sentences and justifying them with long winded explanations and slash marks./being overly pessimistic for no reason and then whining about it and crossing it out.

It's not a problem, RM2003 is still my favorite, out-dated or not and even if most of my time is being spent in VX now.
I might be a bit rusty with event developing, so bare with me...

I know that typing " \^ " in a message box will automatically close it at the point it's reached in the text, but what you really need is a command elsewhere to interrupt the box...

As far as I know, there's no real way of doing that, BUT! It's not hopeless.
Are you ready for this?

What you could use are differently placed conditional branches (As if things aren't mixed up enough, right?)

After a bit of the testimony, immediately have the event check to see if the "Hold It" button has been pressed during the time the box was up (much like what you already have going, but make it a branch). If true, it will go off into the new dialog. (This way you won't have the whole segment split between the event and a common event too).

Your common event won't have to be much at all, just the Key Input and probably a switch to dictate when a "Hold It" is active or not, this is checked after the bit of testimony. Just be sure you deactivate it again once it's been used so you can keep using it, of course.

It's not EXACTLY like Ace, hard to make a sudden interruption at any given moment, the actual shout-out will have to be after you close the testimony box yourself...

I suppose in the common event once the button is pressed you can keep that "Hold It" battle animation to signify the button had actually been pressed at that moment, as long as you set the Message Display Options to allow other events to occur. No pesky message box will stop that from happening.

Also, I'm terrible at explaining things, let me know if anything is confusing. Worst come to worst you could send me the project and I could work hands-on with the segment. Been too long since I've dabbled with RM2003 XD

I managed to get the hold it thing working! My internet was kinda on the fritz earlier so I had to fix it on my own. I figured out that I had to use pictures for the testimony text boxes.
Now I have to figure out how I should go about making a court record... I'll probably be cheap and use show choices to pick the evidence, have a short description (with a pic of the evidence as the face-pic) and then give a choice whether to present or not. And since I'm using pictures for testimony, I can show that AND the real text box!