Creating a Three Dimensional feel (In the works so help to perfect it)

[clockworkroutine]

I'm interjecting right here with what this tutorial is actually about,
You are gonna learn the secrets to making a game "3d" on Rm2k3.
In the end you will have something that looks more like the first person dungeon crawler system found in Doom.  But you can do so much more with this.  Make a killer New look at how ABS's can be made, and you can also make a never before seen CBS...as far as "3d" goes.

First Tutorial and a iffy tutorial at best.
What you need to know is basic knowledge of switches, key input, and fork conditions.  And you'll need my very very basic looking chipset.

What you need to tell yourself:
This is a very tedious thing your about to attempt.  Alot of clicking and typing in labels, but think about how much time actual programmers have to put in to produce 3d graphics, by using Rm2k3 your cheating the system, cutting the time into a mere hour...or two...possibly 6 if you want to go that far into something like this...

Tileset Configuration:
First go under tilesets in the main menu.  Set it to my chip set.
In the Lower Layer tab mark one of the pure white squares with an "X". Go under the Upper Layer tab.  Mark everything thats a tile with an "X".

Map Setup:
20x 15 (Use this for practice)
Make it so that all the tiles are transparent or teal,
But on the near the outer edge, 1 tile in, make a what I'll call a window frame,  which is where you take the horizontal black lines and set them at the four corners of well a rectangle so that they are pointing inward to the center of the screen, and then place the blank white tiles to connect the four corners.  Four the sides, east and west, use the impassable white tile.  This is your walking plane, what your be able to move on.  Place an event on top of the thin white line on the bottom or top if you want to walk upside down, you can just flip a charaset vertically, but you probably already though of that.
To make this look "3d" your gonna have to make an event for each other square that isn't filled in with a tile.  Get more into that tedious task later, so don't go ahead and do it!  It involves creating a wall in the back, not complicated but I just added this after seeing I had mentioned a wall out of nowhere in the next task.

Event Prep:
Make 5 switches.  These switches represent the different distances of how the back wall will appear.  Name them Distance1, Distance2, and so on till 5.  If you want to go crazy and make the transition of the wall look really smooth, on a map that has a height of 15 you can make 96 different switches. I HIGHLY ADVISE YOU NOT TOO, because your gonna find out that if you were really going towards a wall the wall wouldn't move every single pixel but it the increments would increase every so often.  So don't do it!

Events:
Starting from the very top corner of the map place an event with the white tile on it.  Have 6 pages on it.  The Pages should look like this:
page 2
preconditions Switch: Distance 1
page 3
Preconditions switch:distance 2
Page 4
Preconditions switch:distance 3
Page 5
Preconditions switch:distance 4
page 6
Preconditions switch:distance 5

Now copy that event and make it on every tile that doesn't already have a tile on it, anything thats not the Window Frame, but always start from the left and move right, just because its easier to organize because they are organized by numbers.

Now make a transparent events over your WINDOW FRAME, that have the same preconditions as before and make sure you can walk on them.

When your done with that go back to each corner and delete the event there and keep deleting each tile diagnol of that said corner one by one until they meet in the center.  You should have empty sideways "V"s
Now in there places make an event for the appropriate horizontal line.  In each event there should be again 6 pages with the same preconditions.  This just saves you time. I believe anyways because..well you'll find out in the next section.  But first you'll notice that it looks weird if you place a horizontal line in the meeting section of horizontal lines.  Well thats gonna be where your wall is gonna start and end.  Using the appropiate tile to form this shape,
[_____],  but insert a line on the top of that and you'll get what I mean.  This should connect the two horizontal lines.  Also again make sure they have 6 pages with the same preconditions.

Now you may wanna look at your work of art, right now, and possibly take a rest.  Mmmmmmm feels like your in a wire matrix where you can only move left and right.  You notice that when you push up you the wall stays where it is.  Come wall COME.  you call out in a panic of screams.  It hurts i've been there.

Event Commands:
Go under a tile above the walking plane that your heros on.
Set it to when hero touches.
Put In this:
Key Input Process; place in variable "Move up" check up, uncheck wait until key is pressed.
Fork Conditions; if variable "Move Up" equals 4.  turn on Switch Distance 1.

Copy that tile and erase all the other tiles JUST above the walking plane and replace it with this one.

Now for the tiles under the walking plane.  Make it so when hero touches:
Key Input process; "Move Down", uncheck wait for key press, check down.
Fork conditions; if "move down" equals 1, turn off Switch distance 1

Okay so you may have notice I didn't mention switches distance 2-5
well thats because I haven't exactly have made a smooth transition with those yet, but you may already know, how to program that part, by putting under the move down/up fork, other fork conditions for if switch distance...was on then switch on...or switch off...if you wanted to move down.

Okay Now to create the illusion of you moving closer.
Under page two for the the variables around the wall in the back change the graphics to make it look like the walls gotten bigger, by replacing the horizontal lines with a corner of the wall and where there is a white tile for with the other sides of the wall.  Now for the events with the original wall, for there pages twos set them to blank white tiles.
You can see where this is going.  When you push the up.  The switch to all page 2's will turn on and the wall will come up closer.

You can create more depth to the room and less of a square movement like feel by creating more to my chipset with tiles with lines that scan across them, same with corners that appear bigger and smaller.  You probably don't know what I mean yet but if you persue a game like this, you'll figure it.  
Also you can make tile sites of vary objects increasing in the distance starting as specks and working there way up to the walking ground.
To interact things and make them appear on your walking plane make sure that you set it the page that holds the appropriate distance you want to encounter the object and change the graphic to thus object and set the appropriate state of this object whether it be below you, the same level as you, or above you.  You can do this with the events that appear above the walking plane too so that there looks like theres stuff hanging in the air.

Heres some stuff I plan to include in later editions of this type of new platforming possibility.  Programming jumping and gravity and essentially basic movement, which I may just refer you to a tutorial, because i don't want to deal with pests going hey you stole that.  The types of monsters, if this is a ABS, you can place in your game, and how you  can program it too look like the monster or even people for that matter are coming at you or just walking randomly.

But what you can program right now on your own, by figuring it out is so that when you are at a certain distance, a monster appears and it locks at that distance forcing you too fight that monster in a side duel.

Theres still minor bugs to this like when you push up your character doesn't move his feet or when you push up at the sides of the window plane it looks like you should be walking into a wall.  I'll tell you all about movement in later editions.  I totally have movement completely down.  
Anyways...I also probably figure out how to program intelligent AI into your enemies, such as sight.  Which involves you being a certain distance and your enemy facing switch is facing that direction.

This altogether isn't that realistic to 3D video gaming, but its different!  And different is goooood.  This system may only work for a dungeon crawler or a very limiting over world system.  
To take it to the next level and really have something on your hands as far as having to draw an array of chipsets pertaining to the same objects but with different veiws, by limiting your movement to when you push left and right instead of switching to distances you switch on a perspectives that also have distances to those.  And bam you got yourself a fricken 3d game made in a 2d program, and not only that but you got my respect for being the only one in the world that I Respect for wasting their LIFE!
I can't wait to see someone do something spectacular with this, I myself had planned to keep this to myself before releasing a flawless game, but my interests are lying else where and somewhat with what others can do.  Sharing is caring.

And psst I need someone to tell everyone else how they should go about programming in more then one distance change.  I myself am doing something else at the moment and Don't wanna fiddle my brain with it anymore because theres a bug I get and I don't remember what happens because I deleted that event that changes to other distances.

[neb87]

post a screen of what it looks like when its done.

[clockworkroutine]

Ignore the blue and red lines and thats what it should look like without having the wall move closer to you.
The blue "ARrows" poorly drawn might I add are there to show the wall incrementing in size.  I will try to get something out there, such as a poorly fast built game out there if this doesn't look possible for kiddos to understand.
ITs quite simple.  Its all an illusion of the wall coming towards you and receding away from you as either you walking towards it or walking away from it, thats the idea of the project.

I have to cut it short I have school in 10 minutes
You know this damn rm2k3 program is interfering with my studies!
mwuh I love you


OH I for some reason can't get screenies of the actual game so I just threw this together in IDRaW. duh....

[DragonBlaze]

Well it looks pretty good . Its kinda hard to tell without an actual screenshot though I didn't read through it that extensively because I won't be using rpg maker too much longer, and it won't do me any good because my future games should have actual 3d gfx.

But like I said, it looks like a good tutorial. I think you should share more neat ideas like this with the community So yeah, keep on writing them.

Edit: On second thought, I could integrate something like this into my cbs to make it uber cool.

[Desimodontidae]

I wanna see a screen. So I can accuratly judge this.

[clockworkroutine]

I will if I knew how to take screenshots of my computer.  Is there another way to take screenshots other than pushing "Prt Sc" n "SysRq" because I don't think it works on my laptop or could someone explain to me the process again clearly.
Or is there a program out there that I could use that takes screenshots.

Oh and by the way guys out there I'm kinda working on using Picture sprites and pixel by pixel movement right now, and forming a clear tutorial on what to do to make a game functionable, with events and such because events do not run by pixel by pixel as you may know but by 16x16.  Anyways its coming along real well, I've found some neat-o-riffic spiffy work with it.

[Desimodontidae]

This actually sounds really good, and Id like to experiment around with it.

You can take screens by hitting the "Print Screen" button, and then opening paint or something and going to File, then Paste. Its that easy. If that dosent work, something's wrong.

[Cerebus]

Well... I'll explain as clearly as I can...
You press PrintScrn/SysRq when you find the screen good enough, and then you open Paint or such thing, and you Paste the image. It's the same as Copy and Paste...

EDIT : It seems Desimodontidae beat me to it.

[neb87]

Or download MWSnap thats what I use.

[clockworkroutine]

Yea i've done that Print screen thing a million times and it just pull up my default menu for my game, I guess on a laptop the keys are numbered differently or something like that, laptops sadly don't even have a numpad.  I don't like them especially mine thats some supremely old one,  Compaw Armada 1700, it only has 3 gigs of memory on it thats not good, right.

Anyways I'm gonna download that MWsnap program.
Thank you by the way Neb.

[Meiscool-2]

you can use Fraps too, that lets you take screenshots and movie shots.

[clockworkroutine]

heres whats I gots guys...its not much but I haven't been working on this but i believe you get the idea.
The character stays on the same row of tiles but it looks like its moving towards that wall in the back. now if I were to push back wards and have the hero move towards you it would also pull the wall back.
I'm gonna post a screenie of the code for each event even though that code I know will change in the future.
I haven't been working much on this project because my head is in the clouds right now and this is really all I got so, it would be nice if other people would dive right in and help figure out this system out with me.

Its a community thing I start you off with a rickedy foundation of ideas and you build upon it and correct that RICKEDINESS found in the foundation of ideas.  I said found three times...four times...
I won't be mad guys if you steal that basis of ideas in the future and make your own tutorial.

[Desimodontidae]

Ehh...

Ok, well, it looks like it really needs work. I can see how it'd work... but yeah, it needs some work.

[clockworkroutine]

what can I say?  I threw that together in about an hour, the coming up with the idea, how to program the code, and making the crappy chipset.
Yea, I definately realized it needs work.
Give me a week to figure it out and make it look more appealing.