Easier way to find and edit events in RPG Maker XP and VX?

Mar 4, 2021
18
33
There's 2 games I'd like to try my hand at modding, one game based on RPGM XP, and another on RPGM VX Ace. I have everything set up but I find the RPGM UI really awful for this. I could use some advice on how to make the experience bearable.

1) How do I find out which events a variable or text is used in?
For example let's say the game has 200 maps, and I want to edit the questline for one specific character. How would I know where to do the edits? Right now I don't see any other way but opening all 200 maps one by one, going over every single event tile, right-clicking, click Edit, and scrolling through the text to see if the character is involved. Surely this isn't how people work in these engines? What I want is to search for "PersonX" or "VariableX" and know they are used in the map SomeMap-002, and better yet the exact event.

2) The event creation/editing UI is awful. Is there a way to do the editing in an external text editor?

3) How do multiple people collaborate on creating events in RPGM? Like if I'm writing EventX, and a friend is writing EventY, each on their own PC, how do we merge these together into a single Scripts.rxdata (or wherever events are stored) a few days later?

TIA.