Item Lists

Today's work is something I've been putting off for far too long: Items.

This is a perfect example of the sort of work I do that you will never, ever see (if I'm doing my job right), but which takes up most of my time.

Long story short, my item list was disorganized. I took the default items in RPG Maker VX and kept them, initially editing them to suit my needs and serve as placeholders. This is quite useful, since it meant that I didn't have to really think about the items and could focus on mapping and eventing and such. This isn't going to work as the game continues to expand, though. They don't categorize items or leave spaces between them, meaning that the items you start with are a disorganized mess. If you want to add items, you have to tack them on the end of the list or spend time sorting around items, which for reasons I'll get into in a moment, are a huge damn pain. It basically leaves you with a disorganized mess that you have to spend forever sorting through and peck through when creating characters. Because Overwhored has a lot of characters, this is beyond the point of acceptable.

So today's work is all about sorting those suckers out. Making categories, sorting them, arranging them, and putting them into organized lists so I could add items to any category easily without difficulty. Spears, swords, claws, and mage items were all sorted, spaces put in so I could add to each list as need be. Hats and shields were no longer right next to each other, accessories got put aside, etc.

But this leaves a new problem. Namely, the system is not designed to go by names, but by the numerical designation of an item on a list. This effectively means I have to completely redo... well, EVERYTHING that involves items.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. The smithy went from selling maces and helmets to two of the strongest weapons in the game. Yeaaah. Anything like that I don't catch is potentially game breaking.

And that's the least of it. I basically have to go through and redo every character class, every character, every treasure chest with an item in it... and so on.

I'll eventually have to do the same thing with skills. That list is even more of a mess. But not for a while yet. One dragon to slay at a time, I say.

That said, it's worth it. The rough work is tedious but only takes about a day, and will save me innumerable headaches in the future. The more you know.