Game Timer Glitch

[daoman89]

All right, so I've read the game timer tutorial and made it into my game, but I noticed one problem that I feel is important to me and to address.  The timer doesn't seem to continue to run during battle sequences and I think possibly certain events.  I've failed to find a solution to the problem on the internet so I decided to post this.  Can somebody please help me out?  I don't care if you call me stupid for not figuring it out lol, I just want to know. 

P.S.  This relates to RM2K3

[Prpl_Mage]

Doesn't it work inside combat? Like can't you make it start during combat or doesn't it count during combat?
Try to show that timer on the screen to get a greater view of what's going on. I'm pretty sure I've done combats during a timer event so I'm not quite sure what your issue might be. Do feel free to add more information or post a screen or two.

[Moosetroop11]

I think there's actually a tick box for 'continue timer during battle' or something like that.

[daoman89]

I will try that thank you!  I appreciate all your help and I'll let you know the results lol. 

[daoman89]

All right, so here's what I've done so far...

Went into the monster groups and tried to make event in battle active with turn 0, calling the timer. 
Verdict:  Didn't work.

Monster groups, tried activating with switch, if (GametimerStart), which it already is turned on.
Verdict:  That did not work.

Same thing except I didn't have any trigger switch, just called the event.
Verdict:  Didn't work.

Same thing as number 3, but I set my battle from "Wait" to "Active".
Verdict:  Still didn't work. 

Darn it...

[Prpl_Mage]

Can't you start the timer the second before the battle starts?

[daoman89]

The timer is in a common event (parallel process).  I think the parallel process doesn't work during battle, so it halts until the fight is over.  I think you may be thinking of a different thing.  I'm not talking about the time that you set and it decreases, I'm talking about the one you create that measures your gameplay time.  Or maybe not lol.

Anyways, maybe if I have a separate clock that counts during battles and when it's over, it adds that time to the other timer in the common event and the gameplay timer in the battle would reset back to 0:00.00.  If this is confusing, which most likely is lol, just lemme know. 

[daoman89]

I'm going to explain the problem in more detail for a better understanding to the people who care to read about it haha...

If you all know about the common coding to create the RPGmaker 2003 game clock then this explanation will make more sense.  You create that event in the common events tab with a parallel process.  The problem with it is that the event doesn't continue during battle so the amount to time spent during battle is not added to the time in the event.  I've tried multiple ways of fixing it, but no dice.  Maybe nobody else has noticed it but I have and if somebody found a solution to it then that would be awesome and I'd put you in the credits (doubt you'd care though haha )

I appreciate people looking into it or even just reading this post

[A Forgotten Legend]

Well, you could use a battle event to add on the time in the timer, that is if you create a timer based on variables instead of using the program's default timer.  With one based on variables and pictures, you can easily control the timer.  If you want, I can give a detailed tut on it, but I can imagine you can find it here on the forums or elsewhere.

[daoman89]

If you really want to share a tutorial with me, that'd be greatly appreciated.

So what you were saying is during the battle have a separate timer event with variables (Like the common event one) and somehow make the amount of time spent in battle to be added onto the current time in the common event? 

Haha I'm sure some people are thinking, "is this really a big deal?", but to me it is.  It irks me lol. 

[DragonBlaze]

Does the timer actually display the time? If not, it will probably just be easier to make your own timer.

It's been years since I used rm2k3, but I think you could do something like this.

Make a parallel process common event and have it be triggered by a switch (for when you want to turn it on).
In the common event put the following two commands:

Wait 1.0 seconds
Increment a variable "Timer" by 1.

In another event (or even that one), simply have a conditional branch that checks to see if "Timer" is greater than or equal to how many seconds you want to check for. When you want to reuse the timer, turn the switch off that triggers the common event and set "Timer" back to 0.

From what I remember common events "should" run during battle, especially if your just doing variable operations.

Likewise, if you want the timer to count down, you can set "Timer" to the amount of seconds you want to start with, and instead of adding 1 to "Timer" every second, you could subtract 1. Then you would have to check to see if timer was less than or equal to 0.

[Prpl_Mage]

I'm thinking.

Couldn't you just  - in each battle group. Have a battle event that is a "Call common event" and have it call your timer-common-event-thingmajing?

[daoman89]

Towards Prpl Mage...

I have tried calling the event for the battle groups, but that did not work.  I will try Dragon's idea when I have the time and if that does not work I'll try some other things and I'll let everyone know how that goes.  And the timer is not the 2 timers that you manually set, fyi, that count down and appear on screen.

[A Forgotten Legend]

I was basically suggesting something very similar to what DragonBlaze described.

[Meiscool]

I am slightly confused here. Are you trying to make a total game timer, one that counts all the time you have spent playing the game?

Or, are you trying to make a countdown timer, for self-destruct events or what not?

If the first is what you are going for, I would tell you to (respectfully) abandon the idea. The DBS is terrible to work around, and for something so small that really contributes nothing to the game itself, it probably is not worth it.

If the second, then I'm sure we can help you.