arrays filled with "switches"(basically if it's on, 1. If it's off, 0) will help you a lot. Also, something dynamic, like chests, could be drawn over tilemap based on the "event switch" is 0 or 1.

Yeah, that's what i was thinking, just a huge list. It just seems like a very inefficient way to keep track of everything and not very flexible.

EDIT: I just saw thepenguin's post, thanks! I'm going to try a simple implementation and see how it works. This way i can give each of my objects that can be "used" (treasure chest, NPC's text, etc.) a flag id and when i open the chest flip the flag. This is pretty cool cause it would be very easy to implement things like changing sprites based on an event, since right now my data is organized like this:
Brushes:
.dw grass
.dw path
.dw door_bookshop
.dw sign_hanging

grass:
.db %00000000
.db 0
path:
.db %00000000
.db 1
door_bookshop:
.db %01000010
.db 24
.db 1 ;action#, 1 = change map
.db 5,7,1 ;starting x/y coords, map#
sign_hanging:
.db %10000110
.db 32
.db 14
.db 12
.db 0
.dw text1...where the first byte is an action bit, the second byte is a sprite id, and the rest depends on what actions are set (passable nonpassable, if the tile has a variable height, actions when you walk into something, actions pressing 2nd, etc.) and i could easily change it to update both the sprite and whatever the action was. The only problem i can think of is that you really only have on/off so i can only assign one action to each object in the entire game. Sign_hanging, for example:
sign_hanging:
.db %10000110 ;action when hit with 2nd, variable height, nonpassable
.db 32 ;sprite id
.db 14 ;how far behind the sprite we can walk
.db 12 ;sprite mask
.db 0 ;action id, 0 = draw text, 1 = change map
.dw text1 ;action data, in this case text labelI could use maybe bit 3 (bits 3-5 are still unused) to change the event associated with it, and bit 4 to change the sprite associated with it:
sign_hanging:
.db %10011110 ;change sprite/event based on event id
.db 0 ;event id
.db 32 ;sprite id
.db 75 ;sprite id if event has run
.db 14 ;how far behind the sprite we can walk
.db 12 ;sprite mask
.db 0 ;action id, 0 = draw text, 1 = change map
.dw text1 ;action data, in this case text label
.db 1 ;action id if event has been run
.db 4,4,1 ;new action dataAnother option would be to give each event 2 bits, allowing me four changes (i could maybe divide them into 1 bit and 2 bit events), i'll play with this a little and see what i can come up with. If it turns out i need more, i could always just change iy to another location (like 127 bytes into savesscreen, or wherever i've still got some free saferam left).

Thank you so much both of you for the ideas, i've got a bit to play with now, thanks

EDIT2: does anyone know of any good tutorials/articles on event programming/RPGs in general? I've been tackling things one by one as i come across them, kinda like hopping stone to stone across a river (and i don't want to get stuck in the middle of the river!).

Mmmh.. There should be more event theory here, could you please help me too? I thinking too about manage events.

Both :-°

Eiyeron, what are you writing your engine in? I would be glad to help/talk about what i've done so far

And in theory, organizing things by number can be quite nice, but i've always found that without a nice tilemap editor to rearrange everything for you, adding new tiles/objects later on can be a pain, cause you have to change all your maps...

EDIT: You can see my source here if you're (or anyone else is) interested:
http://code.google.com/p/juego-rpg/