Tutorial 1: Starting a new scenario

In this tutorial, we’ll cover how to get started on the basics of custom scenarios. Firstly, you’ll need to have the 1.1/Monster Laboratory patch installed. You can find the patch and installation instructions on Rogue’s blog, here.

Next, we’ll talk about how to actually get started making a scenario. Each line of the scenario has to be numbered accordingly, starting at 0 and progressing upwards. Also, I’ve noticed that the game tends to cut off the last character at the end of a line, so you should leave a space before every end-line quotation mark. The start of your scenario should look something like this:

[Setting]
title = “Test “

[story]
0 = “bg,bg002,10,1500 “
1 = “name,Luka “

The first section, Setting, contains the title field, which tells the game what your scenario should be called on the in-game menu. Simple stuff.

Next is the story section. Line 0 is a background image; bg,bg002 tells the game to load the background ‘bg002’ – Luka’s house. The other two numbers are location and scaling data, which you can play around with as you like.

Line 1 adds the name ‘Luka’ the the box above the text window. Using this, you can indicate who is speaking. If you wanted to leave the field blank (say, to describe a scene or imply an inner monologue) then you would change that line to 1 = “name, ” and simply not include any extra text.

Next, we’ll make a character appear. In order to do this, we need to know their CG names. Thankfully, these are all listed in the Tools folder. So, next we’ll make Alice appear. The code to do this looks like this:

2 = “sp,sp8,alice_st01,0,0,10,100 “

This looks confusing but is actually very simple. In Monlabo, ‘sp’ essentially stands for ‘sprite’, telling the game we want a picture to appear. ‘sp8’ tells the game we want it to appear on layer 8, similar to layers in photoshop; sprites on lower numbered layers will appear in front of higher ones (so, sp7 appears in front of sp8). Next comes the image name, in this case alice_st01 (Alice, Standing, 01), followed by locational data. The first and second numbers are horizontal and vertical location, respectively. These numbers can also go into minus numbers, at which point you start moving the other direction from the start point.

The last two numbers change how the sprite will appear; the penultimate one is the style, and can go as high as 14, with each number being a different way for the sprite to appear: Fading in, sliding in from offscreen, etc. The last number is how long this appearance takes.

So now Alice will appear. Next, lets try adding an h-scene. These work in exactly the same way, only with different CG names – Instead of alice_st01, we would put alice_h01_1. This difference is because Alice has multiple h-scenes, so we are going to see image 1 of CG scene 1. There are other kinds of sprite for each character too, but we won’t cover them yet.

3 = “sp,sp8,alice_h01_1,0,0,10,100 “

As h-scene CG generally take up the whole screen, it is normally best to leave their location data alone. Next, lets include some dialogue.

4 = “name,Alice “
5 = “Such a lewd hero.. “

Finally, although not strictly necessary, it is still a good idea to tell the game that it is now okay to return the player to the scene select page. To do that, simply insert a line like this:

6 = “end”

Note that this final line does NOT require a space before the final quotation mark, for whatever reason.

Congratulations! You now know everything you need to make the most basic kinds of scenarios. I’m hardly an expert, but I hope this helps. I’ll also be posting how to add background music, sound and visual effects, the other sprite categories and choices later on, but this should be enough to get you started.

Remember – Its perfectly normal if you get confused or find your game is crashing a lot, and you can always leave a comment or check the story files of other people for ideas on how to make things work!