I just wanted to share this because making a countdown timer in RPGM1 can be very challenging. Wanted to get some thoughts on this.


There is a section in Dorito Dash where Bon must escape a sinking cruiseship. The player has to get off the boat before time runs out. Here's the thing, I created the illusion of a "countdown" in this portion of the game using two things: Events, and an item that more or less acted as a variable.

The item was labeled "time" and the events were placed on every entrance and exit of the ship. Whenever the player moved to a new room 1 "time" item would be removed. Basically, if you spent too much time moving from one room to another you eventually run out of time and an event occurs in which the ship completely sinks.


Not the best way to approach a countdown in RPG Maker 1. But it does work somewhat well.

That sounds innovative. Thumbs up, dude!

I haven't had occasion to do a time limit in RPG Maker 3 yet, but if I ever do I'll consider using that idea.

Actually, there IS a way to legitimately have a timer in RPG Maker 1. The image below is a rough sketch of how it works. If you have an event set to chase the player so that the maze always has the player to the kind of left or right of the player, it'll slowly makes it's way to said player. It will eventually move between the two invisible events which it will not be able to walk over. If you get past it before it makes it to the exit, you have beaten the time limit... If it beats you, just have it say a message about you not doing it in time and send them back to the beginning of the race.

You can easily adjust the time by putting the event closer or father away. But yeah. This system actually makes time a factor. If you stand still, you will run out of "time."





(Actually, I don't quite remember if the red events in the image have to have a graphic or not. Events won't walk over others. So you could just create the event and do nothing else.)

Yes, events have to have a graphic, even if invisible to us. If there is no graphic, they do walk over each other. Same goes for the events moving toward the finish line.

In that case, yeah. Just use the object that looks like a single color tile and set it to the clear color. And you're set.

Check out my time system tech demo. I used it a few times in Josh's Adventure.

Wow, I never thought of that. That's pretty creative, man.