Quick Events and Talking 101
I guess I should go over the different buttons for making events.
While I already made a working bridge, which involves multiple pages and conditional branches and switches, I'm going to backtrack here and just explore a basic event page.
Maps and Events are done in two separate modes in MZ, so to make any event you'll need to be in Event mode.
Now "Event" is a very, very broad term. These are the things that play on the maps. They can be anything from a talking NPC to a door that transfers you from one map to another to a treasure chest or a boss fight to weather effects and whole cutscenes. Basically they're everything but the map (and, like the bridge, that isn't even always true).
Now, the built-in tutorial explains this too. Play through that to get a number of good starting tips. You even learn how to make pushable boulders like in Pokemon in one of the steps, albeit a simple version.
I'm not going to dive too deep into what the built-in tutorial covers but consider this a supplement to that.
Right clicking in Event mode gives you the option to edit existing events and make new ones. There are even some Quick Events that the game sets up. These are useful not only because they're commonly used event types but because you can learn how they work by making one. You can also modify the way quick events work if you like.
For example, a transfer event is needed to leave the house. From Quick Event you get a popup that asks you where you want to put the player and whether you want them to stay facing the same direction upon reaching the new location or change it.
Once you've picked a spot the actual event it makes is broken down into the steps the game actually reads.
The way the basic event is set up, the player is meant to step on the event to trigger the effect - the priority is Below the character so the player won't be considered touching it until they're directly on top of it.
But you can also modify that like I have so the player pushes against the event from the side if it is on the same layer as the characters, which allows you to put the event on a tile the player cannot stand on (here representing a doorway). This would free the area for a different event if I wanted to put, say, a flickering light above the entrance way.
I also decides to modify the sound effects the event plays. Since you're going from indoors to outside I added the same door sound from a door's quick event and I changed the "pop-pop" move sound effect to one that sounds more like taking steps.
Don't worry about those numbers behind the event for now. I'll do a deeper dive later on. (Eventually I'll want to learn how to make my own sound effects but today is not that day).
I'm not going over every quick event in this post, as they pretty much go over their own instructions. I will, however, explore a little more about the event page. Just know that you can use them as is or modify how they work as you like.
There are a few ways to make the things around your player interactive with just a blank image event set on the map. Displaying text with the Show Text option is probably the most common one you'll use.
If the item is on the same priority as the characters, all you have to do is press the action button to display the message, whether the event is given its own image or is just a blank image over a tile on the map.
While I could have put the event on the wall, it's also possible to put it on the floor below the paper I want the player to read and set the priority to Below characters. The action button now only works to trigger the text if the player is standing on the event. In this case I also put the displayed text in a conditional branch so the player can only read the note when facing it, much like the sign in the built-in tutorial that can't be read from behind, if you've played through that.
Usually "same as characters" works fine, but it's good to know you can also trigger talking by walking on events - especially for cutscenes and the like (though you'd probably want player touch rather than action button as the trigger in that case).
As for the text display itself, there are a number of ways to adjust how that appears too.
Using names and faces is a quick way to add more personality to text, for example. You can even change the picture so the characters display different emotions as the dialogue continues.
Just remember to be consistent about however you choose to use these options. If only some characters get a face box while others don't it could look lazy, especially if you give it to some less important NPCs but not others.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the text will display as it appears in the box, line breaks and all. If you write past the line the rest of the text after it won't display, and the guideline is much more visible in standard mode than in dark mode.
Why does it even let you write past the line, then? Because there are special ways to write text that can change how the words display but don't appear in the text itself, such as the above examples where some of the text is yellow.
The \C[6] and \C[0] allow me to change the C (color) of the text to the 6th (yellow) and 0th (white) options. The backslash tells the game to read the text directly following it as code (called a control character) to display the text after that in a different way. Even though the word "my" is pushed past the guidelines from the added color coding it still displays because the \C[number] parts of the text do not display.
Unfortunately, the different control characters are only displayed in MZ by hovering over the text entry box. This makes it hard to reference without just taking a screenshot of the darn thing.
So here's the cheat sheet:
Each control character is preceded by a backslash. "n" is used to represent a number entered by the user.
For example:
"\V[n]" causes the control character to be replaced by the value of the nth Variable. (We'll go into variables later.)
"\N[n]" becomes the Name of the nth actor.
"\P[n]" becomes the nth Party member.
"\G" As G stands for Gold, the command character becomes the currency unit. Since you can adjust how the currency name is displayed this will always keep the name updated to whatever it's called in the database.
"\C[n]" is for changing the Color of the text after it.
"\I[n]" displays an Icon in the text box.
Following a backslash with curly brackets can increase (open curly bracket { ) or decrease (close curly bracket }) the text size by one. But using FS[n] instead after the backslash allows you to simply enter the n of the size you want.
PX[n] and PY[n] after the backslash change the X and Y position of the displayed text.
If you want to actually show a backslash, you put two backslashes in a row.
A dollar sign after the backslash causes the currency window to also appear on the screen alongside whatever other text is displayed.
a period tells the game to wait a quarter second before the next text and a "|" waits for a full second. The exclamation mark waits for button input (for if you want to have a dramatic pause but still show all the text in the same box).
Using the > after the backslash causes all the text to appear at once - as the tutorial shows for a sign, this can be used to show the player reading text that is all visible at once, vs the slight delay that types out the text when a person is "talking". The < will end this effect and the ^ will tell the game to not wait for input after displaying text.
That's a lot to put in a tooltip that's only visible while hovering the mouse. Until you're used to the control characters enough to memorize the ones you use a lot, keeping a screenshot of the tooltip is a must.
A lot of the ways to use the quick events (and learn from them) and text displays are pretty intuitive, especially if you've played the tutorial, but I figure a good breakdown of the details never hurts.
