It seems that I'm almost to the point of being able to accept not being able to have NPCs attack NPCs, or to settle for one of the many fake ways of doing it. My friends and I have asked in the past for this, and have been given replies that would give us 'something close to' our lowest priorities, after 10x the work, and code for the engine to crunch.

Still, I am left without a lot of things that I origionally wished that I had.

First and foremost, the ability to have NPCs that are friendly to the player. I could make a million quicktime movies, I could make a complex event string that would replace the NPC with a new one with a different set of behaviors every two seconds. I could make fifty thousand sprite combinations that would allow for various combinations of characters that would appear to be a party. And then, I could burn the finished prouduct onto a data DVD-RAM and distribute it offline.

But still, this won't give me the flexibility of simply having an NPC fight on the player's side, or other various improvements to the combat system. Origionally, the coldstone beta had a turn-based combat system. My best guess is that they simply switched it to real time, without testing or refining this seldom-used concept. You see, real time combat is very boring unless it is combined with action. PoG was very nice, but the combat system was what I intended to focus on.

While we debate about what should and should not be added, Beenox works on a new game engine that will not be available to the general public (as their site says). If we can't spice up the battle system, could we at least have the option to go turn-based? We're all thinking up ways to make interesting new features. But they are complex, and do not deliver the flexibility of simply having a new option or function built into the program.

Personally, I abandoned my project a long long time ago. But it has since then been taken over by a friend, who is currently losing movtivation. Maybe it's just that I'm obsessed with far-fetched, crackpot ideas like my plan to make a strategy-intensive ares multiplayer plugin that involved more than just fleet-fights, but I really feel a lack of options in making what I want to make.

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

Quote

Originally posted by Madman:
If we can't spice up the battle system, could we at least have the option to go turn-based? We're all thinking up ways to make interesting new features. But they are complex, and do not deliver the flexibility of simply having a new option or function built into the program.

As I see it, you've described two options here:

1. Use workarounds based on the currently available feature set of Coldstone (event scripting, global variables, etc)
2. Wait and hope that Beenox will decide to do a version 2.0 of Coldstone including engine support for exactly the feature set your project requires.

Option 1 is complex and may be less than ideally flexible, but you can do it right now without having to wait on anyone.

Option 2 is at this point purely speculative, as adding full (party|turn-based combat|feature x) support to the engine would not exactly be a trivial task. It might happen (and I'm certainly hoping it will), but why sit around holding your breath?

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I don't know what I'm talking about.
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/glennfield/ColdstoneBugs.html")Coldstone 1.0.1 Bug List(/url) - last update 10/10/2002

I have an idea for multiple characters. First of all, there'd be two kinds of art; regular art for just when you're walking around, and battle art where the tiles and sprites are magnified. You'd have party members with the old "Follow Player" command when you're outside battles. You enter battle when you come in contact with a monster or a whole group of monsters. I'd put groups of monsters in a single sprite with a large collision circle because of this. Anyway, an event would be triggered where you'd be placed in a "battle zone" (change player sprite for magnification). Before battle you would choose which character you'd want to fight as. Different events would change your stats, ect. to reflect the character you've chosen, which would be stored in globals when you're someone else. Idealy a character could only be chosen twice in a row in consecutive battles.

I haven't actually tested this. I was putting off Coldstone until I have some decent graphics.*

*Does anyone know how to make a person/humanoid in Amapi (I have the IDevGame offer)?

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Someone give me a funny signature! PLEASE!

1: As I said, I have given up on using coldstone productively long, long ago.

2: As I implied, I am not satisfied with unknown's idea

3: As usual, you people suggest a complex and ineffective solution that you haven't even tried.

4: I am bored to tears with PoG's battle system. Real-time combat can be very enjoyable and exciting, but not if you just have monsters run at the player and make the same attack, sound, and movement over and over again until they die. I have two games in mind that I would like to model a battle system after, being Seiken Densetsu 3 and Tales of Phantasia.

In seiken densetsu 3, when you hit an enemy, it is driven back a short distance and/or stunned for a brief time. The same thing would hold true to the player. Also, your timing and position in attacking determines how much damage you take and dish out, so this system is very involving.

In Tales of Phantasia, you control a single character, while having allies launch arrows and spells from behind you. In addition to acting on their own, your allies could be given commands.

Coldstone combat has nothing going for it. I draw up intricate and complicated plans of my own to make creative and unique systems or interesting features, only to find out that coldstone lacks the tool or function that I had in mind. I certainly hope that Beenox has future plans for development, as I just can't be happy with clicking on a monster until it dies.

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

(This message has been edited by Madman (edited 10-17-2002).)

The following additions would greatly improve combat Coldstone games, and would sure be a lot easier to code than a compiler that takes a game somebody drew up from menus and turn it into a self-running program.

-Alowing designers to make mutliple animations for the same function, which would be randomly played when that function is excecuted. Such as, instead of swinging your sword in the same way three times, you swing it vertically, stab with it, then slash with it horizontally.

-Adding some manner of scripting language for NPC movement in combat. If you look at all of the great RPGs that used real-time combat, you'll probably find either a pattern or a random variety of different movements they make.

-Increasing the number of things that happen when fighting. You run at them and bash. How about area-of-effect weapons? Or perhaps forced movement when hit?

I admit that I haven't used coldstone in about 6 months, but I am pretty sure that the combat system is still utterly bland. Maybe I'm just some perfectionist designer, but I won't work on something when I know that this is the best that I can make.

Again, I'd like to restate the fact that I am completely basing all of my ideas on two things. Combat, and extensive options for character creation and development. As of yet, I THINK I am able to get the latter of the two, if I make only one class that has a single template for gaining levels, and events tied to levels would be instead tied to things that occour in predefined places.

This may be off-topic, but how hard could it possibly be to add a change class event?

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

I see your point in regards to the many flaws in the combat system. Thankfully I have the answer.

(url="http://"http://metroworks.com/MW/Develop/Desktop/Macintosh/Default.htm")The road to a perfect real-time combat solution! (even fixes the party system problem)(/url)

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(url="http://"http://jankostar.net/sanko")my Page of Garbage(/url)

(This message has been edited by sanko (edited 10-18-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Madman:
-Alowing designers to make mutliple animations for the same function, which would be randomly played when that function is excecuted. Such as, instead of swinging your sword in the same way three times, you swing it vertically, stab with it, then slash with it horizontally.

I think that this feature, at least, is already present. I haven't tried, but I think this could be accomplished fairly easily through use of the "Switch animation" and "Switch to random animation" frame flags. (I hope so, as it's something I'd definitely include when and if I make a Coldstone game!)

Quote

This may be off-topic, but how hard could it possibly be to add a change class event?

Stark and I had a bit of a discussion about this (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum48/HTML/001492.html")here(/url). I think we agreed that depending on how idiot-proof Beenox wanted to make it, it could range from "fairly difficult" to "trivially easy". Of course, the real question is whether Dee and company can be convinced that it's worth the time and trouble of adding.

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I don't know what I'm talking about.
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/glennfield/ColdstoneBugs.html")Coldstone 1.0.1 Bug List(/url) - last update 10/10/2002

Quote

Originally posted by sanko:
**I see your point in regards to the many flaws in the combat system. Thankfully I have the answer.

The road to a perfect real-time combat solution! (even fixes the party system problem)

**

/me hits his stopwatch
Wow. You've held out far longer than usual. This is what I hate about mac forums.

In the shadowbane forum (mostly PC but some mac) the developers posted a screenshot of a minotaur. For the next week, dozens of people dedicated their lives to expressing how gay that screenshot was, forming clans and guilds and making sig pics to get their point across. They made jokes about it mooing and giving people milk, they posted hundreds of flame replies to anybody who liked it, and they flooded the whole damn board with threads about a few screenshots. But on the next news update on that site a week later, they showed a similar minotaur picture with a different skin, and it was standing next to a human which happened to be much shorter in comparison. Later, the company decided to stop putting out weekly news updates on the game because they were getting nothing but flames about it.

Here, a single person expresses dissatisfaction with the second public release of a product, and forumgoers politely suggest that he GTFO. Somewhat reminds me of how in other forums there are people who post nothing but images with messages on them or post a message that simply reads "1st!" as the first reply to some important message from a moderator, then people in mac only forums regard me as a compulsive spammer because I post a lot.

Once again, I'd like to remind you that while we discuss this and you people act as if the current features are set in stone, Beenox works on a whole new game engine. I swear, I'm close to switching to windows. I've avoided doing that for eight years, since I first figured that most people are happier with windows. My friends and co-workers use windows. Now, even the teachers at the graphics department of the college where I learned quark and photoshop at now use windows. I can certainly see why.

Personally, I would probably be very happy if Dee simply stopped by to mention that they haven't forgotten about coldstone. But I won't make any guarantees. I'm happier with big companies that charge less and continue to work on the product after release. Sorry about being so rude, but I've had a bad day and I resent the fact that macintosh forums have been reduced to hordes of fanboyish hermits who know nothing of true spam or flaming. If it weren't for the fact that one of my friends got my favorite computer out of the mess he got it into and that I can now post to this forum without resorting to IP spoofing or switching computers, I'd probably be ripping my hair out or looking for a good price on a 2.5Ghz Dell.

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

(This message has been edited by Madman (edited 10-18-2002).)

Quote

Glenn:
I think that this feature, at least, is already present. I haven't tried, but I think this could be accomplished fairly easily through use of the "Switch animation" and "Switch to random animation" frame flags. (I hope so, as it's something I'd definitely include when and if I make a Coldstone game!)

Thank you for a productive and meaningful post.

I haven't explored this event, and I haven't used coldstone in a good long while, but this sounds like it is close to working. However, I don't think that coldstone has an option to excecute events when you attack (I'll check), and I remember asking for an option to have events and graphics that are not dependant on action or location, so I'm not very optimistic.

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

Quote

Originally posted by Madman:
Once again, I'd like to remind you that while we discuss this and you people act as if the current features are set in stone, Beenox works on a whole new game engine.

Yes - that's why I, for one, am assuming that (pending announcement of a CGE 2.0), the Coldstone feature set more or less is set in stone. I really don't expect more than bug-fixes in the forseeable future, regardless of how much we beg for new or different features.

Quote

Personally, I would probably be very happy if Dee simply stopped by to mention that they haven't forgotten about coldstone.

Me too - we need the long-awaited v1.0.2, at the very least...

Quote

However, I don't think that coldstone has an option to excecute events when you attack (I'll check)

Check the item editor - you can link events to a weapon's hitting or missing an enemy (though it doesn't work entirely right yet where ranged weapons are concerned).

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I don't know what I'm talking about.
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/glennfield/ColdstoneBugs.html")Coldstone 1.0.1 Bug List(/url) - last update 10/10/2002

Quote

Originally posted by Madman:
**
/me hits his stopwatch
Wow. You've held out far longer than usual.
**

Yep, I deserved that. My bad.

On a positive note however, I don't believe that Dee and company have forgotten about CS. Even though updates may be slow in coming, it appears that another one is on it's way. It is also my guess that the update will be mostly bug fixes, no or very few new features. (although I'd love to see more features - much like the ones you listed)

As far as new features go, the best way I can see of getting what we want is by making some quality games (and especially ones that employ workarounds for features we wish we had). The more people we can show that even though it has it's share of limitations, it can still make good games the more people will buy it. The more people that buy it, the more motivation Beenox has for making some major upgrades.

Anyway, I looked around in Coldstone and I think you are right, it doesn't look as though there is a way to link an event to an attack. You can, however, link different events to a "hit" and a "miss" in the item editor. It may be worth looking into seeing if you could assign a different animation to each, although I don't know if Coldstone would run the standard attack animation first and then check to see what events are linked to a "hit" and "miss."

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(url="http://"http://jankostar.net/sanko")my Page of Garbage(/url)

Ah, yes. This does seem to work in theory. I hadn't noticed that. Also, I don't really think that what we use it for has so much to do with this issue as their market success, but I'll agree with you on the point that we should probably help out ourselves by actually making stuff. I can't really free up much time or gather much motivation for my now abandoned projects, but I'll see what I can do.

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"This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."
—Assaf Oron, IDF

I have had an idea for a spell caster that would tecnically be hostle but his spells would be cast instead of you at his allies and have the spell do damage although you would have a hard time getting the other NPC's to attack him. This is only thoeredical so I haven't tried it.

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Thanks,
GrahamVH

(This message has been edited by GrahamVH (edited 10-27-2002).)

If anything has ever needed a major feature update, it's Coldstone.

Some things that would make my life a whole lot easier include NPC team settings, customizeable interface layouts (I mean like adding new custom fields and buttons and animations and whole new interfaces if necessary), events to actually change an NPC's characteristics (like so it will run away or something) in a spell, totally rescriptable statistic system, totally rescriptable character creation system that doesn't have to dodge built-in provisions for this sort of thing, vastly more detailed combat system in general (how much fun is click the baddy?), generally much more control over everything going on in the game via events, an OS X editor that's actually as good as the Classic one, the list goes on.

Mainly I just wish everything in Coldstone was a lot more customizeable without any feature being forced on the developer. I might learn programming myself, but I don't have any money with which to get started.

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" Turn towards the trees! "
"What trees? There's ******* trees EVERYWHERE!!!"
- A friend and I sailing one lazy afternoon. I was out of my mind with exasperation at my friend's steering ability.

(This message has been edited by LoneIgadzra (edited 10-28-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by GrahamVH:
I have had an idea for a spell caster that would tecnically be hostle but his spells would be cast instead of you at his allies and have the spell do damage although you would have a hard time getting the other NPC's to attack him. This is only thoeredical so I haven't tried it.

GrahamVH,

I've done the above, and I think there is a thread somewhere with commentary on this started by Celchu I believe(we discussed this waaaaay back on the IRC channel).

In a nutshell, it works but not real well.

First, in your situation, the NPCs would not attack the "ally" NPC. The ally system in place has 3 definitions: Neutral(NPCs with 0 stamina and are completely passive. They will not attack nor cast spells), Player(the character), and Hostile(NPCs with positive stamina). A hostile NPC set to cast a spell that is damaging in effect and set to affect allies will work; the NPC will cast the spell and it will damage the other hostile NPCs. This NPC is still on the other hostile NPC's team though, so they will not retaliate.

Next, the NPC will cast repeatedly, regardless of whether there are "allies" nearby. So if you get the NPC alone then it will stand there and repeatedly cast the spell over and over again until it runs out of magic points or it dies...

Third, ally effect spells effect the caster. So if you give an NPC a spell that is damaging and targets allies, it will also damage that NPC. And if the NPC dies through the casting of his own spell then Coldstone freaks out and crashes. A very uneloquent handling of the situation.

I believe there are a few others, but that is all I remember at the moment, heh. If you do a search on this you might find some other cons to this system. But if it works well enough for your endeavors, then more power to ya!

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