HOW TO USE the O.H.R.RPG.C.E                         ---Updated June 4 1999

   Okay. Nothing is really finished, and alot of stuff isnt in, but here 
goes anyway. This is probably more than you can remember, so you might
want to print this file.

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 NOTE: If you want to password protect your game to prevent others from
  altering it, you can do so in the "General Game Data" menu. A password
  is never required to _play_ a game, only to _edit_ it.
  DONT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD!!!
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  CONTENTS:  
   Keyboard Conventions
   Getting Started
   Making Maptiles
   Making Walkabout Graphics
   Moving on to Map construction
   Battles   
   How to use NPCs and Tags
   Adding, Removing, Swapping, Heros
   Animating Maptiles

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Keyboard Conventions

Most of the CUSTOM.EXE is menu based. You can move up and down menus with
the up and down arrow keys. Submenus can be selected by pressing ENTER
or SPACE. You can always go back to the previous menu by pressing ESC.
Numbers and other values can be changed either by typing, by pressing the
left and right arrows, or when the left and right arrows are unavailable,
by pressing the < and > keys (period and comma)

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Getting Started

Run CUSTOM.EXE

You will want to create a new game. If you want, you can pick WANDER from
the list, and try out editing the prexisting game-- it might be easyer to
get used to that way.

First of all, You should draw some graphics. You dont need to draw them all
to begin with, you can make them as you go along, but you will need some
graphics to start out.

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Making Maptiles

Pick "Draw Maptiles" from the menu, and then pick "Tile Set 0"

You can Pick "Draw Tiles" , "Cut Tiles" or "Define Animation". For now, just draw some tiles.
Cutting tiles will be explained later.

See that blue box up in the corner? That is your cursor. The screen is 
divided up into 160 tiles. The first one (top left) is the default tile
You will want this one to be grass, water, void, whatever you want the
map to be full of before you edit it.

Press Enter, and you will start editing the tile.

  * Arrow keys move your cursor
  * SPACEBAR places a pixel, fills a area, or sarts/finishes a line or box
  * Hold ALT and press arrow keys to change your current drawing color
  * period and comma also change drawing color
  * ENTER or Right-Click matches the current drawing color with the pixel
    under the cursor
  * D switches to the "Draw" tool
  * B switches to the "Box" tool
  * L switches to the "Line" tool
  * F switches to the "Fill" tool
  * BACKSPACE flips the tile on the Y axis
  * CTRL+BACKSPACE flips the tile on the X axis
  * [ and ] brackets rotate the tile
  * Press ESC when finished

Draw a tile, and then press ESC. you will see your tile at normal size. 

When you draw your tiles, bear in mind that the hero's feet will be five
pixels up from the bottom.

You can copy tiles with CTRL+C and paste them with CTRL+V

Animating maptiles will be explained later in this file.

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Making Walkabout Graphics

Okay, use ESC to back up to the main menu, and pick "Walkabout Graphics"

Walkabout picture are the small pictures used for heros and NPCs on the
overmap. Each character uses eight pictures, two for each of four directions.
Look in the top righthand side on the screen. See where it says "Up A"?
Press right, and this will change. Start with "Down A" of "Set 0", and
press ENTER to begin editing.

The procedure for drawing sprites is a little different from drawing tiles.

First, you need to define a palette. See the empty rectangle just below
the word "Pal 0"? That is your palette. By pressing period and comma, you
can change which palette color is selected. The leftmost color is 
transparent, and cannot be changed, so first press "." to select the next
color.

Now hold down ALT, and use the arrow keys to pick a color from the big
palette above. The press "." again and set the next color, and so-on.

Now that you have your palette, you can begin to draw in the same way as
you drew the maptiles. You are limited to 16 colors, so choose them
carefully.

After you have drawn a sprite, press Right Bracket "]"

Dont worry! Your picture has not dissapeared, you have just switched 
palettes. If you press left Bracket "[" you will switch back to your first
palette. Remember the brackets, because you will need to make many palettes.

If you dont have your picture centered just right, you can realign it by 
holding CAPSLOCK and pressing the arrow keys.

As with maptiles, you can copy and paste with CTRL+C and CTRL+V
and you can also copy palettes with ALT+C and paste them with ALT+V

And lastly, You can mirror the picture with BACKSPACE. I find this very
usefull for saving drawing time. Draw left facing pictures, copy them
to the right facing slots, and reverse them! haha!

Once again, the controls for sprite drawing are as follows:
  
  * Arrow keys move your cursor
  * SPACEBAR places a pixel, Fills an area, or start/finish a line or box
  * Hold ALT and press arrow keys alters your current palette color
  * period and comma change wich palette color you will draw with
  * ENTER or Right-Click matches the current drawing color with the pixel
    under the cursor
  * TAB starts a box. Size the box with the arrow keys, and finish
    with the SPACE BAR.
  * [ and ] pick your current palette
  * CAPSLOCK + arrow keys move the whole picture
  * D switches to the "Draw" tool
  * B switches to the "Box" tool
  * L switches to the "Line" tool
  * F switches to the "Fill" tool
  * BACKSPACE reverses the image
  * CTRL+C copies the picture
  * CTRL+V pastes the picture
  * ALT+C copies the palette
  * ALT+V pastes the palette
  * I allows you yo import a 16-color BMP file
  * Press ESC when finished

This process applies to all sprites-- that means Walkabouts, Heros, Enemys,
Weapons, and Attacks.

Many people would much rather create graphics in their favorite drawing
program, and then import them. This can be done by saving images as 
16-color BMP files (4-bit BMP) into the IMPORT directory. When you reduce
your pictures to 16-color, you may be dissapointed with the loss of quality,
but this loss can be minimised if you are carefull.
 -Carefully choose your colors. Avoid overuse of halftones, and half-greys.
  Your images will convert better if they have high color-saturation
 -Make sure your drawing program is optimizing the palette. Avoid using
  Windows Paintbrush. It has the worst palette managing I have ever seen
  in any program.
 -If you can, draw the picture in 16-colors to begin with, rather than
  drawing it with more colors and converting it.
 -Make sure that all your frames use the same palette. Some drawing
  programs allow you to save and load palettes, but for other drawing
  programs, you may, for example, have to draw all 8 frames of your hero in
  one large picture, and then cut each one out and save it separately.

To import a BMP, press "I" while editing a sprite. You will be able to browse
for BMP files. Pick the one you want, and then choose what you want to do
with the palette. You can press left and right to pick which slot the palette
will be written into.

Then choose the background color (transparent color) and boom! You have
your picture, ready to use.

The size of sprites are as follows:

 Heros..........32x40
 Walkabout......20x20
 Small Enemies..34x34
 Large Enemies..50x50
 Huge Enemies...80x80
 Attacks........50x50
 Weapons........20x20

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Moving on to Map construction.

Pick Edit Maps from the main menu. Map00 is ready to edit. As you go along,
you can make more maps. There is a limit of 99 maps.

First, pick "Resize map..."
you will see a small preview of your map (now empty) where each pixel
represents one tile (it _is_ possible to have a map wider than 320 and taller
than 200). A screen is 16 tiles wide by 10 tiles, so size your map
accordingly.

The arrow keys resize the map, and CTRL+arrow keys offset it.
Hold ALT to move fast. Press ESC to cancel, or ENTER to confirm and resize.

I reccomend starting off with a smallish map. Try 40 wide and
20 high. You can change the size later.

Your map can be no smaller than 16x10 and it's total area can be no greater
than 32000 square tiles

Start by choosing "Edit TileMap". The last five options are the five editing
modes, Tilemap, Wallmap, Doors, NPCs, and Foemap. You can change between 
them while editing by pressing F1 thru F5, but for now, just worry about
Tilemap.
You should see the tiles you drew earlier along the top of the screen

While Editing the TileMap:
  * Arrow keys move the cursor
  * SPACE places a tile
  * Period and comma change wich tile you will place
  * ENTER lets you pick your tile full screen. ENTER again returns to the
    map.
  * Hold ALT and press arrow keys to scroll the whole screen around. 
  * Press TAB to turn on and off a box that will show you what portion
    of the map you are looking at.
  * Press CAPSLOCK to set the selected tile to be the same as the tile
    under the cursor
  * Hold CTRL and press F to fill the screen with the current tile.
  * Press ~ to see a tiny version of your map
  * Press Function keys to change editing modes.
  * ESC returns to the menu
  * Press 1 or 2 to make a tile animate (animatiing tiles explained later)
  * Press CTRL+1 or CTRL+2 to make all instances of a particular tile
    animate

After you have made your map, press F2 to switch to Passability mode.
This is the same as pressing ESC and picking "Edit WallMap" from the menu

The screen will start to flash in a very annoying way. Now you get to define
where heros and NPCs can walk.

The controls in Passability mode are as follows:
  * Arrow keys move the cursor
  * SPACE makes a tile impassable. SPACE again makes it passable
  * ENTER lets you pick your tile full screen. ENTER again returns to the
    map.
  * Hold ALT and press arrow keys to scroll the whole screen around. 
  * Hold CTRL and press arrow keys to selectively change the passability
    of a tile. Try it, and you will see what I mean.
    CTRL Up makes the tile impassable on the top.
    CTRL Down makes the tile impassable on the bottom.
    CTRL Left makes the tile impassable on the left side.
    CTRL Right makes the tile impassable on the right side.
  * Press O to make a tile overhead. Overhead tiles will be draw _over_
    sprites instead of under them.
  * Press TAB to turn on and off a box that will show you what portion
    of the map you are looking at.
  * Press Function keys to change editing modes.
  * ESC returns to the menu

Nobody, hero nor NPC can walk across a white line.

Now press F3 to go to door mode.
By this time, you should have the hang of the controls, so I wont go into
detail. 
  * SPACE places a door, and if there is already a door under the 
    cursor, SPACE will remove it.

Just for the sake of practice, create two doors on your map. Door 0 and
door 1. The press ESC, and pick "Link Doors" from the map menu.

Each of the statements links an entry to an exit. by default, all links are
Door 0 always leads to Door 0 on map 00.
Pick the first statement, and press SPACE or ENTER

The first number identifies the entry door. The second number identifies
the exit door, and the third number identifies what map the exit door is on.
The fourth and fifth numbers are for conditional tags.

Change the numbers to:
 Entrance Door 0
 Exit Door 1
 Exit Map 0
 Require Tag 0 [N/A]
 Require Tag 0 [N/A]

now press ESC, and pick the next statement down the list.

Change the numbers to:
 Entrance Door 1
 Exit Door 0
 Exit Map 0
 Require Tag 0 [N/A]
 Require Tag 0 [N/A]

Now Door 0 and Door 1 on your map are linked!

Before you can test out your map and your doors, you need to make a hero.
back up the the main menu.

First, Draw a set of walkabout graphics for your hero. If you want to do it
now, you can draw hero graphics too, but you will be able to test your map
without them.

Pick "Edit Hero Stats" from the main menu.
Highlight "Name:" and type in a name for your hero.
By highlighting "<-Pick Hero #->" and pressing left and right you can
choose other heros to edit. Just make hero 0. Right now, you automatically
start the game with hero 0. That will be changed later.

By picking "Apperance..." you can set the hero's picture and palette.

Okay, now you are ready to test. Quit to DOS, and run GAME.EXE

Pick your game from the menu, and voila! You will be able to walk your hero
around your map. Try out your doors.

By default, the hero starts in the top left-hand corner of the map. You can
change this in CUSTOM.EXE by picking "Edit General Data" from the main menu.

If you want to pinpoint a specific spot, just edit the tilemap, and look at
the numbers in the bottom left of the screen. they show the X and Y location 
of the cursor. Put the cursor where you want your hero to start, and remember
the numbers. Then set them in "General Game Data"

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Battles

Okay. Now lets talk about getting a battle going. There are alot of steps.
Load up the game "SAMPLE". It is a single simple map, and some pre-made
graphics that you can use to learn to make battles.

Start up CUSTOM.EXE and pick SAMPLE

First, you should name all the stats. Pick "Edit Stat Names"

You will see a list of stats. For each of them, press ENTER, and type in
a name for the stat. I named the first few. Go ahead and name them all.
If you do not name them, then it will be difficult to set character and
enemy stats later on.

Okay. Now pick "Edit Hero Stats"

You should see HappyFace. Pick "Edit Stats". Now, you will see all of the
stat names, along with numbers. The numbers on the left are the character's
abilities at level 0, and by level 99, the character will have built up to 
the numbers on the right. Normally, you would want small numbers at level
0, and high numbers at level 99, of course, If you want your character
to get weaker over time, then you can do that too. If you have played Final
Fantasy II, you might have noticed that Tellah loses strength with each
levelup.

Anyway. Pick some numbers. You will probably want to re-adjust these numbers
if your character is too strong or too weak in battle. I would just start 
with something like:

100           1000
10            100
10            50
10            50
10            50
10            50
10            50
10            50
20            30
0             0
0             0
0             0

Anyway. Just get some numbers.
This is the meaning of each stat:
HP     Health Energy. Run out, and you die.
MP     Magic Points. Consumed when you cast a spell
Atk    Attack power. Normally determines the damage you do to your enemy
Aim    effects weather or not you miss your target
Def    Subtracted from the enemy's Atk stat
Dog    Effects weather or not you dodge the enemy's attack.
Mag    Magic power. Normally determines the damage your spells do
Wil    Subtracted from the enemy's Mag stat
Spd    How fast you get your turn. This should usually be within the range
       of 10-30
Ctr    Not implemented yet. Will effect counterattacks
MP~    A percentage by which your MP conumption is reduced. A high MP~ lets
       you cast alot more spells
Hits   Use this sparingly. It causes attacks to be duplicated. Nothing is
       more annoying that a game where every single hero and every single
       enemy does 20 hits with each attack.

Now go back to the main menu, and pick "Edit Attacks"

See the twitching fuzzball in the lower right? That is going to be the
attack.

First change the palette. I pre-defined a few palettes for you to use. Make
it blue or red or something.

For most of the attack-stats, you can just leave the defaults. Change them 
however you want.
The meaning of each attack-stat will be explained later in the this file.

Set "Attack Motion" to "Projectile"

the "Delay" option tells how many game ticks the character will wait between 
the time you tell the character to attack, and when they actually do it. 
I have not calculated it, but I would guess that 10 ticks is about one 
second.

And now, --this is important-- name the attack. If you dont name it, there
will just be a blank in your hero's battle menu.

Now to make enemies. go back to the main menu, and pick "Edit Enemy Stats"

Type in a name for the little booger. Dont bother with typing any death
text, because it isnt used yet-- and probably wont ever be. Im gonna use
that data for something else.

Now pick "General data..." I personally would give it the green palette,
but that is just a matter of taste.
Go ahead and set gold and experience, but dont bother with the Item stuff,
since you have not created any items yet.

Now go back and pick "Edit Stats" from the enemy menu. The enemy never grows
in experience, so there is only one set of numbers. I would set them 
something like this:

20
0
10
10
10
10
10
10
0
0
0

Just dont make them too much higher than the numbers you gave to your hero,
or you will get slaughtered.

Now back to the enemy menu, and pick "Edit Attacks"  Set one of the standard
attacks to the be the little twitching fuzzball attack you made earlier.
Then the enemy will attack the same way the hero does.

This is the way an enemy fights: Normally, it randomly picks one of the five
"Standard" attacks. If the enemy is almost dead, it will instead pick one
of the "Desperation" attacks. If it is the only enemy alive, it will pick
its attack from the "Alone" attacks. If there are no desperation or alone
attacks, then the enemy will just resort back to it's standard attacks. 
"Counter" attacks dont work yet.

All an enemy really needs is a single standard attack, and it will work.

Now make another enemy. Go back to the enemy menu, and switch to the next
enemy-- now you should see <-Pick Enemy 1-> instead of <-Pick Enemy 0->

Type in a new name.

Pick "General data". Change the "Size" option. There are three sizes of
enemy graphics; small, medium, and large. The size option picks which set of
graphics the enemy will use. When you change size to 1, you will see a
three headed thingy.

Go back to the enemy menu, and Edit stats to make this enemy different.
Maybe give it less power(third number), but more extra attacks(last number)

Since you only have one attack right now anyway, there is no point in 
changing the second enemy's attacks. Just make sure that it has one
standard attack set to the twitching fuzzball attack.

Good! Now you are ready to make some enemy formations. Back to the main menu,
and pick "Edit Enemy Formations"

Now pick "Edit Individual Formations"

Oh! I forgot! You have no background. A background is just for looks, it
doesnt affect gameplay, but naturally you will want one. Back to the Main
Menu, and pick "Import screens"

Pick "Replace Current Screen" -- you will be replacing the null-black
background. If you think you might want to use the blank background for 
something, then choose "Append a new screen" instead

I packaged one sample BMP file for you to test. You will see it's name
"SANDSEA.BMP"
You can make your own background in any drawing program. I use PaintShop Pro
or Corel PhotoPaint. Just make sure that the picture is exactly 320 pixels
wide, and 200 pixels tall, and is saved as a 24-bit BMP file. Just put the 
file in the IMPORT subdirectory, and it will show up on the list.

Pick SANDSEA.BMP, and it will be imported. This may take a few minutes if 
you are using a 486.

Looks kindof bad, doesnt it? The ground was supposed to be yellow, but
It was just a little too close to brown, and translated wrong. This is easy
to fix. Pick the "Disable Palette Colors" option. You will see a big palette
showing you all of the available colors. By highlighting a color and pressing
SPACE BAR, you can disable and enable colors. Eliminate the entire Brown row.
when you do this, you should see most of the picture blacked out. Now, pick
"Replace Current Screen" , and the picture will be re-imported. It will now
ignore the ugly browns, and use the next best color, Yellow.

(Note: The very same process of importing is used to import your Title
 screen. After you have imported a title screen, you can pick it in 
 "Edit General Game Data" on the main menu)

NOW you are ready to make formations!

Back to the main menu.

Pick "Edit Enemy Formations"

Pick "Edit Individual Formations"

Now you can see the background you just imported. The Blue Rectangles
represent the locations of your party.

"Victory Text" does not work yet.

You can set the "Battle Music" number, but it wont do any good until you
have imported some BAM files.

Go to an "-EMPTY-" slot, and press right. Your first enemy should appear.
Press ENTER, and you can move him around. (hold ALT to move him fast)

Press escape, and set another enemy. You can have up to 8, but I wouldnt
reccomend setting too many right now, otherwize your hero may get 
slaughtered. One or two is fine.

Now change the formation number -- <-formation 1-> instead of <-formation 0->
And set your second enemy instead. Then edit formation 2, and set a
combination of both enemies. Now you have three enemy formations, (0 to 2)

Press ESC, and go back to the formation menu. 
Pick "Construct Formation Sets"

You are editing formation-set 1. remember that. "1"
Set the battle frequency. 
There is a number, internal to the game, that averages about 100. Every
time you step on a spot where an enemy could be, it subtracts the battle 
frequency from that number, and when that number reaches 0, a battle happens.

So, A battle frequency of 0 means no battles at all.
A frequency of 1 means about 100 steps between each battle.
A frequency of 10 means about 10 steps between each battle.
A frequency of 20 means about 5 steps between each battle.
A frequency of 99 means a battle almost every step.

I reccomend 9, but pick whatever you want.

Now, change three of the "Empty" slots to read "Formation 0" "Formation 1"
and "Formation 2". Now, when a battle occurs, it will randomly pick from
the three enemy formations that you set up earlyer.

Okay. Final Step. Now you have to make the Foe-mapping

Go back to the main menu, and pick "Edit Map Data"

Pick "Map 00"

and pick "Edit Foemap"

You will see a simple map that I have already created.

See the word "Set: 0" in the top left of the screen? Press "." to change it
to "Set: 1"

Now you can choose which maptiles you must walk over to fight the enemies
you made from the enemy formations you made in formation set one 
(that you just made)

Move the cursor over the sand, and press SPACE. a "1" appears. Now,
whenever you step on that tile, there is a chance of having a battle.

Do the same for each tile of the sand.

If you made a mistake, you can correct it. Press "," and the "Set 1" in the
upper left will become "Set 0" again. Now you can press SPACE to make a
tile safe to walk across again.

Now exit to DOS, and run GAME.EXE

Pick "SAMPLE", and try out what you have done. You should be able to walk
around safely in the grass, but fight enemies when you walk on the sand.

If you used the stats I reccomended for the hero and the enemies, then
you may want to adjust them. I had a hard time beating the enemies.

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How to use NPCs and Tags.

In case you dont know, NPC stands for Non-Playing-Character. In other words,
geniric townspeople. in the O.H.R.RPG.C.E, NPCs are also used as treasure
chests, pushable scenery, etc.

Okay. Start CUSTOM.EXE, and load up NPC_TAG. It is another pre-made
tutorial.

Pick "Edit NPCs"

Pick "Map 00 NPCs"

You will see a list of happyfaces. The first one is green. He is pre-made.
Pick the second happyface on the list. (the first yellow one)

Change his "Palette" to 2 (light blue) so that you will be able to tell him
apart from the other happyfaces.

Change his move type. It determines how he will move around on the map.
The meanings of each move type are as follows.

 Stand Still...Stand there like an idiot
 Wander........Wander aimlessly and randomly
 Pace..........Walk strait until it runs into something, and then it turns
               around and walks back the other way
 Right Turns...Walk strait until it runs into something, and then turn right
 Left Turns....Walk strait until it runs into something, and then turn left
 Random Turns..Walk strait until it runs into something, and then pick a new
               direction at random.
 Chase you.....Always walk towards the player
 Avoid you.....Always walk away from the player

After choosing a move type, give the NPC a "Move Speed"
The move speed determines how many pixels the NPC moves each step. 
The player moves 4 pixels each step.

Now set "Display Text" to "2" 
At the bottom of the screen you should see the words 
 
 "Talking to me will make the green guy"

This is the first line of a text box that I pre-made using "Edit Dialogue"
on the main menu.

Now, when you use this NPC, text box 2 will be activated.

"Pushability" may be set if you want the player to be able to push the
NPC around the map.

"Autoactivation" can be turned "On" if you want the NPC to be used 
automaticly when you stand next to it, rather than waiting for the player
to press SPACE or ENTER

Now Press ESC to go back to the list of happyfaces.

Pick the next NPC on the list.

Set its "palette" to "3" (red)
and set its "Display text" to 3 ("With proper use of...")

Set any other stats as you wish, and
press ESC.

Now pick the next NPC on the list of happyfaces.

make his "palette" 4 (purple)
and his "display text" 6 (I am an Inn...)

Now go back to the list of happyfaces.

You should see the Green pre-made NPC, and the three NPCs that you just made.
blue, red, and purple.

Now you are going to place these NPCs on the map.

Go back to the main menu, and pick "Edit Map data"

pick "Map 00"

and pick "Place NPCs"

Now you should se a pre-made map. Your cursor is the spinning Green-happy.
A green happy has already been placed on the map.

By pressing "." and "," you can change which NPC the cursor is. Press
"." once, and it will become your blue-happy.

The controls in NPC mode are as follows:
  * Arrow keys move the cursor
  * SPACE places a copy of the current NPC. SPACE again will remove it
  * Hold ALT and press arrow keys to scroll the whole screen around. 
  * Hold CTRL and press arrow keys to place an NPC facing in a particular
    direction.
    CTRL Up places a copy of the current NPC facing north
    CTRL Down places a copy of the current NPC facing south
    CTRL Left places a copy of the current NPC facing west
    CTRL Right places a copy of the current NPC facing east
    (If you want to place two different NPCs in exactly the same place,
     you cannot do so with SPACE. You must use CTRL+arrowkey)
  * Press TAB to turn on and off a box that will show you what portion
    of the map you are looking at.
  * Press Function keys to change editing modes.
  * ESC returns to the menu

Place a copy of your blue-happy somewhere on the green part of the map.

press "." again to select your red-happy. Place it, and repeat the process
 again for the purple-happy.

Now exit to DOS, and run GAME.EXE

load NPC_TAG

As you walk around and talk to the happyfaces, you will notice that they 
make a variety of claims which simply are not true.

The blue-happy claims to make the green-happy dissapear,
the purple-happy claims to be an Inn,
and the red-happy keeps repeating that he can say other things

Next, I will show you how to make the happyfaces actually do these things.

Exit back to DOS, and run CUSTOM.EXE

First, to make the blue-happy remove the green-happy. this is done with
tags. Pick "Edit NPCs"

pick "Map 00 NPCs"

and pick the green-happy.

see the two lines that say "Appear if Tag 0 [N/A]" ?
See at the bottom of the screen where it says "Appears all the time"
that is what "Appear if Tag 0 [N/A]" means

Change one of the two lines to "Appear if tag 2 = OFF"

The game keeps track of 1000 little tags,
each of them can be OFF or ON.
All tags start out OFF
That means that tag 2 should start out OFF, and As long as tag 2 stays OFF
then the green-happy will exist, but the moment tag 2 becomes ON then
the green-happy will dissapear.

Now go back to the main menu.

pick "Edit Dialogue"

Now press right until you get to "text set 2"
You will see the text where the blue-happy is claiming to make the 
green-happy dissapear.

Pick "Edit conditionals"

look where it says:

 If tag 0 = ON [never]
  then tag 0 = ON [never]

Tag 0 is always OFF, and it is the only tag that can never be set ON.
This means that the if-then statement does nothing because tag 0 is never ON

pressing left and right will change the numbers.

Change the numbers to read:

 If tag 1 = OFF [always]
  then tag 2 = ON

Now, when you talk to the blue-happy, the game will check to see
if tag 1 = OFF which it does, because all tags start out OFF.
Since the "If" part is true, the "Then" part will be executed. Tag 2 will be
set ON

Now, since tag 2 = ON, the green-happy can no longer exist. Poof! he is gone.

Now to make the Red-Happy say different things.

In "Edit Dialogue" press right untill you reach "text set 3"

pick "edit conditionals"

look where it says:

 If tag 0 = ON [never]
  then jump to text box 0 immediately

Since tag 0 is never ON the jump never takes place.

Change it to read:

 If tag 3 = ON
  then jump to text box 4 immediately
  
Now, remember that tags start OFF, so the jump still isnt taking place.

Just like with the blue-happy, change the second "If-Then" to:

 If tag 1 = OFF [always]
  then tag 3 = ON

Now, the first time you talk to the red-happy, the jump will be ignored,
and tag 3 will be set to ON

The second time you speak to the red-happy, the first "If" will be true
because tag 3 is now ON. Text box 4 will be displayed instead of text box 3

Now pres ESC, and move right to text box 4.

Change the first to "If-Then"'s to:

 If tag 4 = ON
  then jump to text box 5 immediately
 If tag 1 = OFF [always]
  then tag 4 = ON

Voila! Now the red-happy can say three different things in a row!

Now to make the Purple-happy an Inn.

In "Edit dialogue" move right to "text box 6"

Pick "Edit Conditionals"

The sixth If-then says:

 If tag 0 = ON [never]
  then restore the party's HP and MP

Change it to:

 If tag 1 = OFF [always]
  then goto an in that costs 5$

Now, when you speak to the purple-happy, he will be an inn that costs
five bucks!

Now exit out to DOS, and test it all!

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Adding, Removing, Swapping-In, Swapping-Out, Locking and Unlocking Heros

Many people ask how to add heros to your party, well, let me tell ya.

If you went thru the previous section of this HOWTO, you should know how to
use dialogue conditionals. You use them the same way to manipulate your
party.

Pick "Edit Dialogue"

Locate the text box you want to use to add/remove/whatever heros

Pick "Edit Conditionals"

Down near the bottom of the list, you will see:

 If tag 0 = ON[never]
  then do not add/remove heros
  then do not swap in/out heros
  then do not unlock/lock heros

So, change the first tag so it can be true. (1 = OFF if you want [always])

Now, you can modify each of the three lines to make changes to your party.
here is what each change means.

 Add Hero-      The specified hero is added to your party at the first
                available space. If no spaces are available, the hero is
                placed in your reserves.

 Remove Hero-   The specified hero, and all of his/her equipment is deleted,
                never to be seen again. If you add the hero back again,
                he/she will start over with beginning stats.

 Swap-In-       If you have an empty space, the specified hero will be
                moved from your reserves into your active party.

 Swap Out-      If the specified hero is in your active party, he/she will
                be moved into your reserves.

 Lock Hero-     If the specified hero is in your active party, he/she will
                be locked there, and cannot be swapped on the "Team" menu
                If the specified hero is in your reserves, then he/she will
                be hidden and unavailable on the "Team" menu.

 Unlock Hero-   Releases a specified hero that has already been locked, so
                that he/she can be moved on the "Team" menu again. 


Sooo... How do you make a character leave your party, but still have the
same experience and equipment when he/she returns? Simple. Dont remove the
hero at all. Just "Swap-out" the hero, and then "Lock" the hero. When you
want the hero back, you can just "Swap-in" and "Unlock" him/her

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Animating Maptiles

In previous versions, the last two tiles in a tileset have magically
toggled, creating simple animation. This is no longer true. The new
system for animating maptiles is much more complicated, but the results
are far spiffyer.

It is now possible to animate many different tiles, in two possible
patterns for each tileset.

Pick "Edit Maptiles" from the main menu, and choose a tileset.

Pick "Define Tile Animation"

You have your choice of animation set 0 and animation set 1.
Each can be applied to a different range of tiles, and each can have it's
own pattern. For example, I like to use the first animation set for a rapid
toggle between two tiles to get that "flicker" or "twitch" effect. I usually
use the second animation set to cycle through three or more tiles to get
a "pulsing" or "waving" look.

Start by picking "Set Animation Range"

You will now see your whole tile set, with all except the bottom three rows
greyed out. The greyed tiles are unavailable for animation. The clear tiles
can be animated. Using the arrow keys, you can change the range of animatable
tiles. Try it.

Next pick "Set Animation Pattern"

The Animation pattern is a sort of a simple script that shows how your
animating tiles should move.

Right now, what you should see in the animation pattern is:

     wait 3
     right 1
     wait 3
     left 1
     end of animation 

With this pattern, your tile waits three ticks, becomes the tile to its
right, waits three more ticks, becomes the original tile again, and repeats.
This way, your tile changes between two pictures every three ticks in an
A, B, A, B, A, B... pattern

By pressing enter on any of the steps, you can change its "Action" and
"Value". The meaning of each possible action is as follows:

 Action=end of animation             -The animation will start over from the
                                      beginning
 Action=Up                           -The tile will look like the tile
                                      above it. The value=# determines
                                      how far. normally you will only use 1
 Action=Down                         -The tile will look like the tile
                                      "value" spaces below it
 Action=Right                        -The tile will look like the tile
                                      "value" spaces to its right
 Action=Left                         -The tile will look like the tile
                                      "value" spaces to its left
 Action=Wait                         -The tile will hold its current picture
                                      for "value" ticks. (I would estimate
                                      that there are about 12 ticks in a
                                      second)
 Action=If tag do rest               -the tag specified by "value" is
                                      checked, and if it is not true, the
                                      animation jumps back to the beginning

You might want to try something fancyer:

     wait 2
     right 1
     wait 2
     right 1
     wait 2
     left 1
     wait 2
     left 1
     end of animation 

causing the animating tile to go in an A, B, C, B, A, B, C, B, A... pattern

There is a limit to how complex your animation can be. Only eight steps
(not counting the "end of animation")

Back up to the previous menu, and pick "Test Animation"

Here you will see three rows of maptiles. these are the same tiles that
you selected under "Set Animation Range"

Move the cursor around to see a preview of how each tile would look when
animating.

The last step is to make tiles on your map animate.

Go back to the main menu, and pick "Edit Map Data". Choose your map,
and go into "Edit TileMap" mode. Place your cursor over a tile that you want
to animate and press "1"

The tile should start using the animation pattern you just defined. If you
want to make a tile stop annimating, press 1 again. Press 2 if you want 
a tile to start or stop using the second animation set.

If your tile isnt doing anything, there are several things that could be
wrong:

 A) Your animation pattern is blank
 B) You didnt put any "Wait" actions in your pattern. Without waits, the
    animation happens so fast that it doesnt get displayed on the screen.
 C) The tile that you are trying to animate isnt in the "Animation Range"
    Only the tiles in the range that you chose can animate. Go back, and
    move your range.

So what if you have a whole bunch of tile to animate? Do you have to press
"1" on each and every one of them? Nope. Just put your cursor over one of
them, hold CTRL and press "1". Every single tile on the map that looks
exactly the same as the one under your cursor will start to animate. This
is very usefull if you are like me, and enjoy making entire oceans animate.

What if this all sounds too complicated?
What if you just want to make all of your tiles work like they used to?
no problem. When you load an old RPG file, it will be automatically updated
so that any animating tiles you had before wills till work.

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---
More later. Sorry this HOWTO is so incomplete. I am what they call
"Documentation-Impaired"

James `SPAM Man' Paige

