RPG Maker for Beginners part 4: Adding Music and Dialogue Options to your Game

You’ve now experimented with a few functions that RPG Maker VX has to offer. Let’s review some of them as well as introduce a new one.

A: Save your progress

B: Switch to Mapping Mode

C: Switch to Event Mode

D: Different shapes used when mapping

F: Used to launch your game for testing purposes

You might have figured that F will be used to select the music for your map but that’s not exactly the case. F is actually for listening to various tunes and sound effects in order to select the ones you like. We’ll get back to this feature in a little while.

Head over to the section where all the maps available in your project are displayed in the bottom left corner.

You should only have one map available at this point in time. Select the map by left clicking on it. It will be highlighted in blue. Now either press SPACE or right click on it and select “Map properties”.

Once this is done, a new window will show up giving you more information about your map properties.

Since we’re there, let’s seize the opportunity to change the title to something more representative (A). This will be important as more and more maps are created. Let’s title it “First Island”.

Once that is done, head over to “B”. In order to get music for your map, tick that little box. After that, click the three little dots “…”. This will allow you to select which song you would like for this map.

The “A” window shows all of the available tunes. Once you’ve selected one of the tunes available in A (it will become highlighted in blue), look at B. You have two little buttons: play and stop. This will allow you to listen to a certain tune before selecting it. “C” allows you to modify both pitch and volume for the selected song. Remember to play the song again if you change the settings to make sure you like it.

Once you’re done selecting your song and adjusting your settings, click OK.

This will take you back to the “Map properties” window. Notice how there is now a song assigned to your map.

Time to test things a bit and see if everything works so go ahead and launch your game (click the green arrow).

You should now be able to listen to the tune you’ve selected for this map! Awesome!

For the second and last part of this article, I will explain how to choose different dialogue topics. It is a fair bit more complex than what you’ve done so far but with proper instructions, you’ll succeed.

Switch to Event mode (F6) and select your NPC and press ENTER (this will allow you to edit this event).

Head to the LEC (List of Event Commands) window and click on the very first line (this is the dialogue you’ve written in the previous tutorials). As usual, it will be highlighted in blue (you should be used to it by now).

Once you’ve selected it, press SPACE in order to do some editing (or right click and select “edit”). This will bring up the dialogue box again. Change the text to something like this and press OK when you’re done.

Now what you want to do is to left click underneath the first line. The second line should have this at the beginning: @>.

Once the second line is selected, press ENTER. This is how we will add a new Event Command which we’ll allow us to use different dialogue options.

You will be taken back to this window:

This time around, you will choose “show choices”.

You will now write down your dialogue options in each one of the little boxes titled: choice 1, choice 2, choice 3, etc…

Once you’re done, click OK.

You now have your options available for the player. Obviously, you must now write a reply to each one of those options.

Start by selecting the line right underneath the first choice. You will have to write a reply for each choice but we'll focus on the first choice for now.

Once you're done press ENTER and select ''show text''.

Proceed like you did last time and write down what kind of answer you’d like to have and press OK.

Once you’re done, select the line underneath the second choice (in this case “tell me about the island”) and repeat the process.

After you’ve written replies to both dialogue options, Press OK.

Save your progress and launch your game. Move over to the NPC character and press ENTER to interact with it. You should get your dialogue options. Select one or the other and press ENTER and read the NPC’s reply.

And that's it! You might think it's a bit complicated but it'll become really easy with practice.