With the wait for Coldstone getting me more anxious, aggitated and annoyed (and you should see me before a date! :)), I figure quite a few of you may be in the same position as me, so I decided to make a thread about what kinda stuff you can prepare to make the development time (once we get our sweaty little hands on Coldstone) that little bit easier. Here's a few ideas, you're welcome to add to the list. I've tried to make it sound un-patronizing, so forgive me if I do.
Prepare the Story
From the list of chronicles pilling up, I see quite a few of you have already started writing a story -- an excellent idea. Even if you're not sure what you want to do with Coldstone, draft ideas, draw cool little scenes you think of, even record dialogue onto a tape. Once you've got a few solid ideas, get a plot down, then draft, draft again and then re-draft. Even the world's best writers don't get their Pulitzer material down first time, and re-drafting is a great way of developing ideas and honing them down until they're razor sharp. Idealy, the next step after you've got your story would to be story board some of the scenes in the game. The player has control of the character so your storyboards couldn't take account of their actions, you could draw out some of the in game movies or maps you want to have in the game. Once you've got the structure down, it's a lot easier than making it up as you go along.
Graphics
Yup. The dreaded variable. Most of us on the board don't have commercial level graphical skills, I know I don't, and artists are hard things to come by. However, if you're dead set on unique graphics instead of using the library graphics, now would be the best time to start. Concept art of your characters is a good way to start, sketch out how you invisage them, making it that little bit easier when it comes to actually digitizing them. If you can't do your own graphics, do a search on google for artists, I'm sure there must be thousands of talented people interested in making games out there. However, bare in mind that if you have a good plot written down with descriptions of the locations/characters to show them, it'll show you're serious about it, and make their life easier.
For reference, Coldstone can handle any graphic supported by Quicktime (version 4 I think, although Dee might have upgraded the engine to handle version 5 - but the end user might not have upgraded, will this matter though? Dee?) I recomend using high quality JPEGs for your graphics, the file sizes are small and they can handle high quality bitmaps well. However, if you want a lot of cool transparency's PNG's are the way to go, they can handle alpha transparency's well and are fairly low in size (although not as small as JPEGs).
Sound
Pretty much all I've said for graphics, only swap art for sound. Sound isn't my area of expertise, and there's already a good topic going on, so I guess I don't need to talk about this.
Development Plan
Although I'm not speaking from personal experience, many game developers have told me that there's nothing worse than rushing into development head first without a decent plan. Make a nice purdy bullet list of the things you're gonna do first, I recommend making all the maps first and then adding NPC's afterwards, that way you can test each map for glitches (not that there'll be any of course ;)) without having to worry about townsfolk getting in you're way.
That's if for now, I'm tired, bored and I want to go to sleep (sounds like a good chorus for a song...maybe). Hope it's enough to inspire some people...
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Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know we have something special for you at
Birdland this evening. A recording for Blue Note Records...
Let's take it back to the concrete streets, original beats and real live MC's...
"I don't know how radical you are or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself" - Lenin