Race to said place.

Is there any way of starting a timer, and at the end of the timer, if the player has not gone into a certain map then [insert whatever here] happens?

I don't know, would you just add a variable into the place he goes through to get there and make the timer global somehow?

And are Self-Switches local to said object?

You haven't even said what kind of Game Maker you're using. For all we know, you could be using something that's never even been mentioned on these forums before, lol.

If it's RPG Maker, I suggest you look through the list of choices when eventing. I'm not sure about RM2k/2k3, though.

Sorry, my fault.

It's VX. Shall I just try experimenting until I find it?

Self-switches apply only to the event they are used in; you can use regular switches if you want them to apply to other events.

As for timer, use the Control Timer event command on the first page of event commands right below Control Self Switch.

You can use conditional branches to check where the timer is at; it's one of the options.

Thanks modern I'll use that, I will probably use it for quite a few things.

(Wow the name change was fast, I only requested it 20 minutes ago, I expected it to take a bit longer)

It's an automated system. Roph wrote this really neat program that is able to decipher which posts are asking for a name change by recognizing key terms and doing it automatically. It doesn't always work, and once it accidentally changed the name of someone who was complaining about something entirely unrelated, but it's actually pretty good.