20 days left to wrap up my game for the RPG Maker 2025 Game Jam.

I started by soaking up a bunch of tutorial videos, and I felt pretty comfortable with the basics of RPG Maker MV. But then, I stumbled upon the world of plugins and decided to peek under the hood at the source code. That's when things really clicked for me.

As someone who's been coding javascript for years, I realized just how much control plugins offer. It felt like THIS was where I could do some cool stuff! Since official scripting documentation is a bit sparse (which makes sense, given the engine's "no-code" focus), I dove headfirst into the js folder in my project. It's all there! To help myself, I even started compiling some reference docs as I went.

Then I saw the F8 key opens the browser's developer tools right inside the engine. Being able to inspect elements just like a webpage is incredibly useful. Even better, you can directly manipulate game elements in the console for testing.

For instance, I have a game variable (ID 1) that changes during battles and affects the screen tint. Testing different tint values meant triggering a battle every single time, which got old fast. But with the console, it's as simple as typing $gameVariables.setValue(1, 50) (or whatever value I need). Instantly updated tint, no battle required!

Next up is getting all the pieces together, and there are some HUD things I want to change... like, my game will only have 1 character. So I think having to select that character in the status and battle screens is kind of annoying. I'm sure there some javascript that will do that.