First off, I wish to thank Beenox and Ambrosia for making this software available, and congradulate them on the ease of use and options it gives.

I recognize the inherent limitations of the engine; it isn't going to do a first-person shooter, or allow parties, without being altered so much it is essentially a different piece of software. I ask only for enhancement to what it does. To wit;

Global conditional access. If there is any way of, say, making the access to a tile have more than two states (yes or no), it would be trivial to create creatures (birds), actions (jumping), that would temporarily provide or be normally given access. The only current work-around is creating events for each and every tile you wish to change the access to...and this still does not allow birds to fly.

A "friendly" AI for the NPCs. I realize this might not be possible to implement; the engine would be dealing with NPCs reacting to and attacking other NPCs.

A "player map icon" action for NPCs. Better yet, adding ability to use the global variables or Current X,Y to set the location within an NPC Control action. Very oddly, it is possible to gather data on current NPC or player location, even within an action linked to an NPC death, but there is no way to use this information in either NPC control or even Stamp control. Allowing NPCs to be sent to the coordinates of the current NPC would allow dynamic changes in behavior, abilities, and animation.

Stamps and layers for Main windows. I admit, this might be asking a lot. Still, if you can't have a layered animation, how can you possibly do a Myst-style game? I am tempted to try doing this with a Map window of a size too small to permit scrolling, and use an invisible player icon, but as a work-around that is ridiculous.

Speaking personally, I find the drop-down menus slow my work process. I guess I've spent too much time in a ResEdit environment; I would love the ability to simply type in the name of the graphic, link, etc. Still, is a minor consideration and would entail much re-design of the interface, so I'm not asking.

Looking forward to 1.0.1, guys!

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Quote

Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
**Stamps and layers for Main windows. I admit, this might be asking a lot. Still, if you can't have a layered animation, how can you possibly do a Myst-style game? I am tempted to try doing this with a Map window of a size too small to permit scrolling, and use an invisible player icon, but as a work-around that is ridiculous.
**

No, this isn't. It's intented to work like this. Cosmic Memory use this technique. You don't have to make your map small, you just have to lock the camera (see the lock camera flag in anims). If you registered Coldstone, you'll get the Coldstone CD and the full sources of Cosmic Memory. You'll see how we did this.

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Dee Brown
Beenox inc. - (url="http://"http://www.beenox.com")www.beenox.com(/url) (check our new web site!)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/coldstone/")Coldstone Game Engine(/url) / (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/pog/")Pillars of Garendall(/url) developers

(This message has been edited by Dee (edited 01-24-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Dee:
**No, this isn't. It's intented to work like this. Cosmic Memory use this technique. You don't have to make your map small, you just have to lock the camera (see the lock camera flag in anims). If you registered Coldstone, you'll get the Coldstone CD and the full sources of Cosmic Memory. You'll see how we did this.

**

Sorry; "ridiculous" was too strong a word. Thanks for the tip on locking the camera (do give me credit for having figured the rest of it on my own ^_^)

Hmm (thinking hard)...is it just barely plausible to render the background as a panorama, unlock the camera and achieve a quasi-QuickTimeVR effect? Say, one could use stamp control to shift stamps relative to background in a consistent manner, giving the same perspective feel used in the old Disney cell animations...(gears spinning, smoke starting to come out)...

I'm just having fun throwing out ideas. I don't expect to be building any games of my own just now. Design for the theater (lights, sound) keeps me plenty busy. It also pays the rent.

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"