Okay-- has anyone (non-Ambrosia or related parties!) created and finished a real, play-able game yet? Coldstone is a huge opportunity for creative expression... I'd love to see what it can do! Anyone out there getting close? I figure a quick, short, playable game shouldn't take TOO long...

How about a contest?

Or better yet-- a RACE-- The first person to publish a shareware game and actually RECEIVE a shareware fee wins? (honor system judged)
Perhaps Ambrosia should offer a prize...

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--Insert pithy quote
here--

Coldstone does not work miracles.

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The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason ŃWizard's Sixth Rule, Faith of the Fallen.
ŃCafall

Quote

Originally posted by thebeagle:
**
Okay-- has anyone (non-Ambrosia or related parties!) created and finished a real, play-able game yet? Coldstone is a huge opportunity for creative expression... I'd love to see what it can do! Anyone out there getting close? I figure a quick, short, playable game shouldn't take TOO long...

How about a contest?

Or better yet-- a RACE-- The first person to publish a shareware game and actually RECEIVE a shareware fee wins? (honor system judged)
Perhaps Ambrosia should offer a prize...

**

I just did some estimating (I'm currently working on two paid contracts, so it is an academic exercise right now). Out of three outlines I came up with, the best time-to-rough-draft for a simple game was still over two months (I already had research and rough designs for it). A more realistic estimate is six.

I doubt we will see a major game this year, unless a team manages to get together and stay together long enough to break up that work-load. (FYI, the time estimated was some 10% design, 70% graphics resources, 10% sound resources, 10% rough coding.) Testing and tweaking could double the estimated time.

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Hmmm... So far I'm only getting "nay-sayers"!
I'm not expecting 'miracles' gang, I realize that a game takes a LOT of time, and that pretty much NO ONE can make this their full time job.

But from apple basic, to C, to RealBasic my friends and I have written quick, dorky games over the weekend... usually to try some programming trick or another. They weren't polished, they weren't pretty, but they worked, and occaisionally they were actually fun!

Coldstone can produce VERY serious games, and I know we all dream of playable, polished games... but part of the wonder of Coldstone is that dorky people (like myself) will be able to create games without a huge team of proffesionals. Does anyone remember "World Builder", or even "Adventure Creator" on the apple II+! Even hypercard had a halfway decent scripting language that would allow the cheesy users of the world to write a game. I was making silly little Sprite games in RealBasic before Coldstone came out... while Coldstone won't handle sprites as fast or as smooth as RealBasic does, I AM impressed at its object-like system and how easy it can make certain tasks.

So, anyway-- my previous challenge stands... make some games! Share! Let's see the ideas take form into real universes! Even lousy thrown-together games can be beneficial because they'll make all of us say, "Hey-- I can do better than that!"

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--Insert pithy quote
here--

I could make 50 RPGs in one try; but not Coldstone RPGs, text based ones. They'd all be lame and worthless. I doubt anyone would like those when they have Coldstone to give them RPGs.

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luck is beating the odds, bad luck is when they are the odds of having something bad happen to you.

Hmm..... well, I did make a complete game last week to see if I could, but I'm definitely not going to reveal it to the public. I think you'll find that the majority of people would rather construct something good before releasing it, as if they made a terrible game as a 'quickie' then any decent games they released afterwards would be affected by how people received their bad game.

As to myself, in my opinion Epitheisterra won't be released in 2002. It's not exactly a full time project, and as such takes a great deal longer. So I wouldn't expect to see any full games for a couple of months. PoG plugins, yes, but not full games.

-Andiyar

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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"

Good news, people.

I am currently working on my game called Bacteriophage. It is, for me, just a practice at using Coldstone, but i will release it to the public and hope to make a little money off shareware fees. Right now, i'd say it's about 45% done, and I bet i could finish it in 2 months, maybe one.

Bacteriophage is hardly an rpg, rather an adventure game. The idea behind it is this:
You are a T-Even Bacteriophage virus, trying to infect a political leader whom is trying to take over the world (i can't decide on who this should be). You must enter his body through a cut by his shin, and work your way up to the brain. Now, before you can move up through the body, you must kill a certain number of red blood cells in that stage. But, there are vicious white blood cells that will stop at nothing to destroy you. (They attack you with antibodies, of course). Once you reach the brain, you will have a final enemy to destroy (i can't give it away now, can I?).

This is a very simple game that won't be to hard to finish (no missions, experience points, etc. to deal with). As you can see, it is more of a fly around and kill things kind of game than an rpg. But, i hope it will be fun. And as i said, it is really nothing but a practice at using coldstone. Please give me your comments, and if you want, i could upload some of the graphics for everyone to see. When the game is done (1-2 months, hopefully), i will release it as shareware.

Thanks.

Jordo
JBware

I am making a game called The Decider, it has quite a complex storyline and the game will be huge (I am planning 100 hours long) It sounds crazy but I am willing to devote millions of hours making it. I'll need to ship it on about 7 CDs.

I am guessing I will finish making it in about 6 months.

Quote

Originally posted by MangoCheese:
**I am making a game called The Decider, it has quite a complex storyline and the game will be huge (I am planning 100 hours long) It sounds crazy but I am willing to devote millions of hours making it.:) I'll need to ship it on about 7 CDs.

I am guessing I will finish making it in about 6 months.**

You are making a joke, right?

Each of those CD's is going to have maybe 10 megs of code and engine, the rest being resource. That's 690 full-screen images (nominal compression). Or 69 minutes uncompressed music. For reference, the fast CGI people I know at the Bryce Forum take a couple weeks for a simple image. Personally, I just spend three weekends on an overture for a play that runs al of 1 minute, twenty seconds. That's something like 1 hour work per second of music.

Okay, simpler. Assuming you work 10 hours every day, you get twenty minutes each image to find one/make one/steal one, write the code, do the image conversion, test it in-game, file it, review it, check it against the others you are using, burn it to one of the seven CD's.

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Quote

Originally posted by jordo:
**Good news, people.

I am currently working on my game called Bacteriophage. It is, for me, just a practice at using Coldstone, but i will release it to the public and hope to make a little money off shareware fees. Right now, i'd say it's about 45% done, and I bet i could finish it in 2 months, maybe one.

Jordo
JBware**

I talked to you about the version you uploaded -- I'd like to see one, personally, so if you are willing to release the rough copy, that would be cool. I imagine everyone would want to see other's work.

btw, Andiyar -- what was the game you made?

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quitcherbellyachin.
---
New Fortress of Die Nacht released! (12/20) (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net")Download it from here!(/url) | | (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net/downloads/dienachtd5.sit")direct download(/url) | | (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net/fortress/progresslog.html")Progress Log (12/20)(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by theGlueBubble:
**btw, Andiyar -- what was the game you made?

**

It was built using only the graphics in the Medieval set that I downloaded with the demo, and was titled 'When WIld Spiders Attack'. You were a spider. Everyone else was not. Figure the rest out, if you can.

-Andiyar

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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"

(quote)Originally posted by Tarnćlion Andiyarus:
**It was built using only the graphics in the Medieval set that I downloaded with the demo, and was titled 'When WIld Spiders Attack'. You were a spider. Everyone else was not. Figure the rest out, if you can.:D

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quitcherbellyachin.
---
New Fortress of Die Nacht released!** (12/20) (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net")Download it from here!(/url) | | (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net/downloads/dienachtd5.sit")direct download(/url) | | (url="http://"http://aviary.damnsw.net/fortress/progresslog.html")Progress Log (12/20)(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by theGlueBubble:
**I talked to you about the version you uploaded -- I'd like to see one, personally, so if you are willing to release the rough copy, that would be cool. I imagine everyone would want to see other's work.

**

GlueBubble,
I was having some more difficulties with trying to stuff it correctly. I figured it out though, and i should probably be able to upload it by the end of the weekend.

Also, i want to hear from other people who are creating games right now. How far are you guys? I'd like to hear this stuff, so post a reply.

Jordo

My game is Dark Rage RPG. Some of you may remember the initial public release that made MacAddict Millenium as the featured demo, but they had grabbed the wrong build which had a few "problems"

Since than, I've started it as a 3D game using a custom engine which was going good (you could move around fully deformable terrain, etc..) but making a 3D RPG is a LOT of work. Events, story, etc.. Shooters are much easier

So I switched focus (time to finish this project to Coldstone. I am impressed and I have lots done. Story is done, I will mostly be using the art shipped on the CD (don't want to extend the project dev time even more by making custom art), all the music is done (more will be made though :), and you can already play the first bit of the game.

The story and a few screenshots are on my company's page at (url="http://"http://www.chronostorm.net")http://www.chronostorm.net(/url)

Direct link is (url="http://"http://www.chronostorm.net/Modules/Projects/DarkRage/")http://www.chronosto...jects/DarkRage/(/url)

I still haven't gotten many comments on the story, I'd appreciate if some people could post their thoughts on it?

Just keeping this thread alive!

Thanks,

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--
Graham Wihlidal
Software Engineer
Chronostorm

Quote

Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
**You are making a joke, right?

Each of those CD's is going to have maybe 10 megs of code and engine, the rest being resource. That's 690 full-screen images (nominal compression). Or 69 minutes uncompressed music. For reference, the fast CGI people I know at the Bryce Forum take a couple weeks for a simple image. Personally, I just spend three weekends on an overture for a play that runs al of 1 minute, twenty seconds. That's something like 1 hour work per second of music.

Okay, simpler. Assuming you work 10 hours every day, you get twenty minutes each image to find one/make one/steal one, write the code, do the image conversion, test it in-game, file it, review it, check it against the others you are using, burn it to one of the seven CD's.

**

Yeah, it was a joke. I was exaggerating it, my game so far is about 31 megs, I doubt it will fill up even one CD. But I do plan for it to be a rather large game.

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Quote

Originally posted by MangoCheese:
**Yeah, it was a joke. I was exaggerating it, my game so far is about 31 megs, I doubt it will fill up even one CD. But I do plan for it to be a rather large game.

**

Sorry. But it did give some game designer friends of mine a good laugh to think of it! (Seven CD's in six months. Whew!)

More seriously, perhaps we should follow EVO but in a more thorough way; make a point of displaying our works in progress in the hopes of causing teams to slowly agglutinate around the more promising ones.

Ah...that is.... Oh, now that work is over with for the day I'm going to get some sleep!

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Well, I'm finally back from my sabbatical, and I'd like to say that yes, I am working on a kind of quickie game, somewhat like Andiyar's When Wild Spiders Attack, except I use the Dragon graphic. Yes, Epitheisterra is not full time, that's for school and jobs.

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"I believe in the sun, even when it is night. I believe in love, even when I do not feel it. And I believe in God, even when he does not reveal his prescence."
-A survivor of the Holocaust

Quote

but they had grabbed the wrong build which had a few "problems"

Is that the "virus" on the millenium disc that they keep referring to ?

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The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason ŃWizard's Sixth Rule, Faith of the Fallen.
ŃCafall

It wasn't a virus. It was a corrupted resource in the fork. And they got an expiring build that lasted a week, then it wouldn't load unless you set the system date back to around Oct 3 1999.

Oh well, I intend to not have this happen in the future.

~Graham

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--
Graham Wihlidal
Software Engineer
Chronostorm

I know it wasn't a virus, but MacAddict said that there was a virus on that disc. I wanted to know if the problem with your game was what they were talking about.

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The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason ŃWizard's Sixth Rule, Faith of the Fallen.
ŃCafall