Rpg Maker 2003 is not as simple as it first appears, If you want to master it then you need to Master some of its more advanced features. In this tutorial we will look at one of these.

Switches are an essential part of Rpg Maker, and you need knowledge of them if you want anything to work properly.

There are many ways to imagine a switch, but personally I just think of it as it actually is. A command that when triggered - activates a certain event. To master the understanding of switches you will need to go through the stages of getting them wrong and learning from the mistakes you make, but hopefully this tutorial will speed up the process somewhat.

Right so lets think of an example of when a switch would be needed.

There is a man infront of a door which the main character needs to get into, and when you speak to him he says, "you cant come in here"

So this is what the event editor window should look like so far:

So now, we need to develop a way for the player to get rid of this goon.

So how do we do this. Well first we need to create a new page for the event, which can be achieved by pressing this button.

This new page needs something special, because we don't want it to start automatically, we want the player to do something that switches it on.

So what you need to do is tick the first box labeled switch under preconditions.

Then you need to click the box with the - in it, and name the switch "goondie".

Now in the event window you simply place the "erase event" command, so that when this switch is triggered, the event is erased. (the goon dies).

But what do we use to trigger the switch

Well.... yes that should do!

So simply go into the lever's event editing window, and select the <> to add a command. You are wanting switch operations on the first page.your settings are Single switch and you want it turned on, make sure the event you want is in the box.

So now when your character presses enter next to the lever, the goon will die.

Now you should try making similar events then moving on to more complicated things.

Good luck.