They don’t have to. Following is an example of customizing a Pong minigame via plugin commands instead:
…one of these plugin commands I have, is to grab the score when the minigame ends, and put it into a specific variable inside my main RPG Maker MV game. (Or a conditional to check to give on finishing the game, to see if player won or lost).
To what extent can minigames configure, read, write and access the data of the main RPG game?
However much you want it to. By default, it doesn’t. But since it’s still built within (or alongside) the RPG Maker MV framework, whatever you wish can cross through. Variables, switches, database entries, Gold, e.t.c
The default item menu, the equipment menu, the skills menu, even the battle system, all of those are created via Scenes. And you can see their data, is stored in separate json files inside the data folder. (Items.json, Skills.json, Actors.json, e.t.c) And just as you can see those menus in-game, be able to influence and change the data or make effects happen in other scenes and the main game. You can do the same via the new ones you create. (The bridge has to be intentionally made.)
(Though I haven’t delved into this to the extent like with the default item & skill menu does. And kept it simple to passing data into a variable & checking win-lose.)
Perhaps I can also have the minigames feature pre existing RPGmaker features like having the same style of textboxes. But to be honest, I think that may just be a simple case of finding the code rpgmaker uses t create textboxes the way that it does and just pasting it into the minigame
Correct.
Lastly, how might this effect my games ability to support non PC platforms? (I will likely need to bake touch screen support into the minigames)
With your minigames (and the rest of your game), you ought to stick to the controls that RPG Maker MV allows by default. That you can see in conditional check for which ‘button’ is being pressed:
…these keys are by default mapped to any gamepad/controller, should someone play your game on the SteamDeck, or should you be able to port your game on Switch, or if someone plays it through an emulator on a non-PC platform. (Making using other keyboard keys as necessary, can make your game unplayable on Non-PC platforms where users mainly have gamepad/controller.)
And RPG Maker MV by default does have mouse/touch support. So you want to add that to your minigames as well, to have consistent accessibility.
