allignment bar(s it possible?)
 

You know on Star Wars KOTOR 1 and 2. Well can you do that? like an extra pause menu option. If so tell me how please

Never played either of those games.. so I'm going to ask for more info on what exactly you need.

He's asking if you could add a system that tracks your evil/good deeds and affects your appearance/stats and displays that information in the pause menu. Basically he wants to know if it's possible to make a dynamic character alignment system in RPG Maker.

In the pause menu? No, unless you're using RMXP, in which case, have fun scripting that one in (I'm not even touching that .. HORROR).

Anyway, in RM2k3 at least, you can set a 1x5 picture that will just be your bar, and set that to the width of a variable ([xxxx]Alignment, I guess).

Then use a keypress (or an item) to call a Common Event that will display the bar. You can even have another picture be the "background" for it, and have it scroll in.. whatever you want, really.

Not too difficult, I think I'll build a demo later.

Looking at what RS said, I've got a little idea of what could be done...but as it is me, my idea involves lots and lots of switches...:D

Maybe if throughout the game different options pop up on what to do...for example:

Old woman with lots of money trying to get to bank, do you: Help her to the bank, or kill her and take the money?

Crude example but...by helping her, you get points added to your hero status if you will, which start you off going to good, and with the second option, you ose points, but get a lot of money...

But then you would need pictures for every points thing...though you could have a little bar down the side of the screen, split in the middle by a line...if you get points, green starts appearing above the line, if you lose them, red appears below the line...and the two bars stay there, not, say if you lose points the green goes down, just red appears...and then you can have different abilities for the hero status...more good if you are dominantly green, and more destructive if dominantly red...

So the more green you get...the more helpful you get...the more heroic, with legendary swords, and protective shields...and the more red, the more evil with extremely powerful evil spells, and destructive swords...

And maybe the players appearance can change...their clothes...their face...

Thinking back to the bar...if the green gets to certain stages, then the red disappears...how to explain...the two different parts of the bar have marks every so often, close together at first, before widening out...(kinda like experience points needed to get to the next level), and when a certain mark is reached, the opposite colour loses a bit of it's bar...say a mark is reached on the green, then the red reduces...

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Im forgot the switches part...


Each answer puts on a switch which changes the bar picture to show the consequences of the action...

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The start screen...if you create a sprite for a few bar pictures...then you can keep on taking away the current hero...and replacing it with the hero that suits the current bar position...but there will be a lot of positions...maybe do it for every other mark reached...but then you need to add in part of the other bar to make it seem different...

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I said something about different weapons etc....common events for all the shops...the different common events tie in with each switch...

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I write too much...I'll stop there...

Yeah, I would follow Bluecubes example. It is quite easy to use the pictures, and the hero/bad guy tutorial thing can be found at Gaming World! Have fun!

http://www.freewebs.com/bluecube/files/alignmentdemo.zip

I didn't feel like doing ALL of the negative values, but it's not that difficult to add those. You can hit the period key on your Numpad to bring up the meter, or it can be called via the ForceBars event (which is called by the kitty). Either way.

Soooo how did you do that? :) (The bar) I mean, did you have to make a picture for every time it goes up or down. If so that's fine with me. and how did you make the bar transparent? And how what size did you use for the picture of the bar. I used 1x5 pixels. Too small. 1x5 in. too thick and was vertical. cm too small. HOw did you get the keypress to be different each time you gain evil or good points. Variables, right? And that's it.

My bar section is 5x3 pixels, and the background image is 199x16 pixels (which is 4 width off from what I should have done. Oh well, it's just a demo). My demo simply adds a bar section every 5 points up and down, using a different picture number.

RPG Maker does pictures assuming that 0,0 is the center, which is retarded and wrong, but you'll have to work around that. To put something in the upper left, you put it at (width/2, height/2) generally, so the background went at 100,10 (to add a 2-pixel buffer at the top.. and a 1-pixel buffer on the left).

This means that since the first bar (5 points towards good) would be at 100, 1 on the image, it's at 101, 3 with the buffers.

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Now, I have that 5x3 bar segement to add. The center is really easy to find:

http://www.picaroni.com/5by3_center.png

It's at 2,1 (0,0 is the upper left by most standards). To get the upper left to go to 101,3, I need to add that 2,1 to that, making the first segment go at 103, 4.

Every other segement is a piece of cake from here - Just keep adding 5 to the x value, since that's the width of the bar and we don't want to overlap them.

Basically, the answer is math. If you have a background image ready, I'll calculate out the whole deal for you if you want - RPG Maker has a really, really strange picture system. Just make sure that the height/width is an odd number to save me some calculating time.

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Truthfully, the last bars on both sides will overlap the background since I was stupid and used the wrong image size. Oh well, it was late.

MATH THAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE:

Since I wanted 5 pixels for every 5 points (with a max of 100), I needed a 100 pixel bar for good, and a 100 pixel bar for evil. I used a 1-pixel border and a 1-pixel center line, making the whole bar supposed to be 203. (Do yourself a favor and stick to odd-numbered pixels. Much easier to find the center.)

Beyond that, the rest of the image is the words GOOD and EVIL, so the height is just based off of that. Now that I actually am not up at midnight working on the images, I can look back and say that I made my work harder by using 16 as a height and not 17. It's still fine though.

Using that system, the center is at 101,8 (though I'd add buffers, so I'd put the image at 103,10) and the first bar would have gone at 105, 6. From there, it would have continued normally, just adding 5 to the x value.

The math is really simple, yet difficult to explain in words.

Nm I edited this post and I was stupid to delete all I had on this. Okay I hate math but I'll try to figure it out. Thx BC EDIT: OH NO my hero side of the bar is overlapping the evil side. WHat's wrong.

I'd have to see both your backdrop and your bar segment images to help much with that question, heh.

Ok I'll show you....LATER! >:)

Alright, good luck in figuring out what went wrong then, heh. Should be good practice, at least.

yes its very possible, but you have to make 1 enter the pause menu

What? You're a bit late here, heh. I already have a demo posted and everything.