In RPG Maker VX Ace, most of the real meat in developing your game (beyond the conceptual stage) occurs between three areas of the program. The two more common areas are the Map and the Database. The third is the Script Editor, which is available for more advanced developers, who wish to delve into the code and change how the program actually functions. The Database is responsible for defining the details of much of the common and non-map-based elements of your game, such as playable characters (including their attributes and growth patterns), items (including weapons and armor), skills (including damage formulas and animations), enemies (and the formation of 'troops' they attack in), and things of that sort.
The Map is, I think, where you'll probably spend most of your time (unless you're an avid scripter), at least in the earlier stages of development, although the Database is also very important. But the Map is where you actually get to build your world. There are different 'layers' to the map, the first being the obvious one where you get to lay down tiles and dictate how any given map is going to look. But equally important - if not more so - is the eventing layer. Events are super important in RMVXAce. They can accomplish all sorts of tasks. The single most important article I read in my beginning days with the program was this one, which I linked before, that really clarifies the power and function of events in a way that the RPG Maker's official tutorials critically leave out.
So what are events? They can be lots of things. But basically they are the interactive bits of the map, and the engines that guide actions that occur on maps. Probably one of the first things you learn to do with events is create an NPC. You see, an NPC is not a character you place on the map, so much as it is an event that you place on the map, that can be interacted with by the player (if you so choose to program it), that you can assign a graphic to, and a "move route", and some dialogue if you like. But events don't have to be people. An event can be a flickering fire - utilizing sprite animations instead of the limited (and a bit more complicated to customize) tile animations on the map layer. An event can be a door that transfers the player to another map. And every event's effects can be controlled by conditions (usually user-defined switches and variables).
But, perhaps most importantly, an event has the power to control the flow of a scene in the game. One event can control other events - NPCs or otherwise - move the screen around, even control the player. Eventing is how you accomplish "cutscenes" in an RPG, and understanding how they work is crucial to learning how to develop good cutscenes in your game. My prologue, for example, is one long event that controls all the action over two or more maps, almost like a puppetmaster pulling the strings on several other events dressed up as NPCs, and controlling where the "camera" (i.e., the screen) is focused. I'm not going to get into how to - technically - accomplish various tasks via events, as that is a task for a more hands-on tutorial; I just want to impart to you the importance of events and the basic theory behind them.
The latest part of my game that I've been working on involves a lot more "cutscenes" than previous portions. Take the forest chapter, for example. There are only really three scenes with any significant "weight" - the one that introduces your next quest, the one that occurs during the climax of that quest, and the one handling the aftereffects of the quest - none of which (with the possible exception of the second) are all that long or involved. All the rest of the action and adventure is player-oriented; it's a pretty straightforward quest. Not all of them will be that straightforward, though. For example, the Sea Shrine chapter I'm working on now is very involved (as you will soon be able to find out for yourself), including multiple cutscenes over multiple maps, and a lot more (necessary, I fear) controls on the player's actions in this one section of the game.
Designing a map is hard. It takes a lot of creativity, and a good visual sense. Designing a cutscene is more like being a film director than a set designer. Of course, you have to have a good storyboard to start from, before you start moving your characters around on the screen. And dialogue is often an important part of a scene. And when you get multiple characters moving simultaneously? The choreography can become mind-boggling - like in the one scene in my prologue, where twelve different cloaked cultmembers file into a single tile-sized doorway (and not while moving in a single-file line). I had to work out their movements like pieces on a chess board to get it running smoothly. And then when you start manipulating switch conditions, changing other events' graphics, and moving from one map to another...
Considering that the narrative flow of a cutscene can be improved greatly by something as subtle as a 1/3 second pause between a character's movement and their subsequent dialogue, having to sit through the majority of a cutscene multiple times, while making little tweaks here and there each time, is hard enough. When the scene begins to drag on, or sprawls across multiple maps, or manipulates too many outside agents, the workload quickly becomes overbearing. I'm not exactly trying to elicit sympathy, so much as a respectful understanding of the effort that goes into developing an RPG - especially when you're just one person, all by yourself, and not a member of a team (although I can imagine that applying multiple brains to a single project introduces creative difficulties of its own).
In any case, I will hopefully be able to release this section of the game (in a not entirely finished state, it should go without saying), fairly soon, and then you can just see for yourself what I've accomplished, and perhaps provide some tips for how I can continue to polish it and perfect it in the future!
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