1. A party system

2. The option for turn based combat

3. Greater number of events

4. Greater control over NPCs and animation

Anyone have any other ideas?

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Victory favors neither
the righteous nor the
wicked. It favors the
prepared.

Plugin support? (for coldstone itself) from what I've heard there a lot of programmers here. If you allow it they will build it or some such. Seems like that could solve some of your requests.

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A full party system would be rather unwieldy with Coldstone. I think what is needed is an "Ally" version of each AI type. "Allies" would attack monsters instead of the player, and would be treated the same as the player from the monster's point of view. (i.e. attack and follow) This would allow for:

Summoning spells
Party Members
Hired mercenaries
NPC adventurers
etc...

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The first two were long-ago decided against, for whatever reason.
The third is a good idea, and probably wouldn't be too hard to implement in the first patch, should there be sufficient demand.
The fourth looks good, but would probably be harder to implement.
As for NPC adventurers, it seems to me there might be a way to do that... I'll have to look into it.

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-TheDarkDragon
Lots of luck, we're all here to learn anyway.

I would be happy with just a plain old "Allies" designation for NPCs. It really cuts down on your options when you can't mix friendly and unfriendly elements and have a realistic result.

Other things:

- The ability to put in percentages in fields where only flat numbers are accepted currently, such as the attribute wizard
- The ability to initiate attacks and spells with events and designate both a subject and object of them (ex: when you hit something, it hits back; or, when you take a swing with your Sword of Blinding Speed, you attack twice in a row)
- A way for events to effect and modify existing items, and create added effects/call additional events when they are used, so that the modification is associated with that item alone

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Replicant

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Originally posted by WiseGuy:
1) A party system

Won't happen in Coldstone. Maybe in Coldstone 2, if that ever exists, but not in the current engine.

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**
2) The option for turn based combat**

Actually, you probably could manage a kind of turn based combat, through extremely complicated events scripting. It was something discussed on the boards a couple of months ago, in a thread by Kireck L. Have a look there, it might give you some good ideas.

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**
3) Greater number of events**

Greater than what? If you're talking about the 40 event limit, that only applies to the demo version. Once you register, I believe that maximum number of events is limited only by game size, RAM and disk space requirements.

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**
4) Greater control over NPCs and animation.**

I suppose this one is quite valid, but I don't really think it is necessary. The amount of stuff you can do now with Coldstone is really extraordinary, quite sufficient to make a great game. As I said in reference to your first point, maybe in Coldstone 2, if that is ever developed. The best chance we have of getting a new version of Coldstone is to register the present one, and to show visibly how much we can do with it.... rember that Beenox and Ambrosia are more likely to listen to requests to an established developer who has registered than to people who only have the demo, and have not yet released a game of their own.

-Andiyar

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

It seems to me that 3rd party development could add almost any feature wanted, without waiting for or even needing a Coldstone 2. Remember the "add-ons" folder in the Coldstone file? :rolleyes:

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Victory favors neither
the righteous nor the
wicked. It favors the
prepared.

(quote)Originally posted by WiseGuy:
**It seems to me that 3rd party development could add almost any feature wanted, without waiting for or even needing a Coldstone 2. Remember the "add-ons" folder in the Coldstone file?:p

-Andiyar

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

(This message has been edited by Tarnćlion Andiyarus (edited 01-22-2002).)
**

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To paraphrase marcisiry from an earlier topic, if you want the things you want, feel free to program your own game engine and quitcherbellyachin'.

Actually, if it were a free program (like the editors being developed for the Baldur's Gate system), this might be a relevent argument. But they're charging for it, and they should be thankful for the feedback that customers and potential customers give. It's better than having the stuff go off into the ether, and never hearing back from the people that decided not to buy it.

I was very excited to find Coldstone, but the first two points mentioned in this post (the ability to have a party of characters, and turn based movement and combat) are both things that don't make it quite the wonder I thought it was.

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Quote

Originally posted by bainst roach:
Actually, if it were a free program (like the editors being developed for the Baldur's Gate system), this might be a relevent argument. But they're charging for it, and they should be thankful for the feedback that customers and potential customers give. It's better than having the stuff go off into the ether, and never hearing back from the people that decided not to buy it.

But of course. I was in no way suggesting that all the feedback that Ambrosia and Beenox are receiving is a bad thing, far from it. It gives them a greater idea of where improvements and additions need to be made, and as such they can better satisfy their customers. However, in reference to my statement, I was not replying to the majority of people, but merely to a minority that seems to latch on every omission of what they believe should be in the engine as a personal affront, or injury. Please, rest assured, if it isn't part of Coldstone, there is probably a good reason for it, and endlessly repeating the same complaints won't make anything happen any faster.

Quote

**
I was very excited to find Coldstone, but the first two points mentioned in this post (the ability to have a party of characters, and turn based movement and combat) are both things that don't make it quite the wonder I thought it was.**

See my first post. It is technically possible to do a kind of turn based combat using locations and events, for instance, when you encounter a monster, you are teleported to a new 'battle' arena where you can use events scripting and animations to form a kind of turn based combat.

-Andiyar

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

(Edit) Damn UBB! (/Edit)

(This message has been edited by Tarnćlion Andiyarus (edited 01-23-2002).)

If anyone can figure out how to do jumping you can even make a side scroller of sorts in CS. it would go something like this (x's are accessible tiles or floor, o's are blocked or wall)

ooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooo
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The player's animation would only have left and right sprites so when you moved up and down (closer to and further away from the screen) it would look like you were sidestepping. This is based off the SNES game Dragon View. Currently the only problems with it are how to rig jumping, and how the AI would deal with it (I'm not actually sure if that's a problem, I'll test it when I know how to use CS properly)

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How about a greater number of (and more diverse) actions to use in events?

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Originally posted by The Amazing Fish:
How about a greater number of (and more diverse) actions to use in events?:)

Do you have specific needs that the engine doesn't seem to allow? The actions given are remarkably powerful already. One has to think in generic terms to see this. Want to have a door you can hack down? Don't think in terms of "a door is part of the terrain, therefore it is a stamp," but in terms of behavior; "a door is something a character can attack; therefore it is actually an NPC with no attack and no gold, restricted to a wander of zero tiles."

I learned this trick back in the glory days of "Champions."

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

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Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
**Do you have specific needs that the engine doesn't seem to allow? The actions given are remarkably powerful already. One has to think in generic terms to see this. Want to have a door you can hack down? Don't think in terms of "a door is part of the terrain, therefore it is a stamp," but in terms of behavior; "a door is something a character can attack; therefore it is actually an NPC with no attack and no gold, restricted to a wander of zero tiles."

I learned this trick back in the glory days of "Champions."

**

Wow! That gave me an idea. I've been trying to figure out how to make bombs, like in Zelda, which damage opponents and also destroy weak sections of walls. I'm thinking you make the bomb as an animation that takes a certain amount of time to detonate; then, when you reach the detonation frame it launches an event with a "cast spell" action that affects everything within a certain radius. You could give the door an extremely high armor rating that protects it from being hacked, but make it susceptible to a magic attack. The bomb could even launch two spells, one that does physical damage (to surrounding enemies), another that does magical damage.

This sound practical?

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--
Mark

Yes! That's a RAD idea, Mark! Cool!

->Day<-

Good idea, but does Coldstone allow range targeting? So far I haven't found a way to make a spell target everyone within a certain radius.

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Hey All,
Universal event triggers. It would be great if you could define universal event triggers that could be applied to all characters and/or items. For example, it would be nice if you could define a trigger that would occur whenever a person leveled regardless of their class. Yes, one could go thru each class and put in the associated events, but this would only apply to the classes you created for your game/plugins and would not apply to classes created by other people's plugins.

Gallandro

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"(Even though you just obliterated a fleet of Galaxy Destroyers) Prepare to die!" says the confederate gunboat pilot.

I love Coldstone!

Okay. There are a few things that we do not have control over that we should:

We should be able to set the exact value for every player statistic BEFORE race and class decisions, if supported, are made by the player. I don't see why, if we're supposed to be the developers, we have to guess what the engine is going to "roll".

We should have exact control over how many stamina points the character gets per level, without using events to overide the automatic allocation done by the engine.

We should be able to create as many interface screens as we want and assemble whatever buttons and fields on them using a universally inclusive button and field pallet.

I am very annoyed at the fact that both hitting and being hit rely on the same statistic. This makes it difficult to make a monster that is easy to hit but also very accurate with its own attacks.

We have found work arounds for many gripes through event scripting, but things are starting to look messy. Finally, I would like to end with...

I really do love Coldstone! Thanks guys!

myshkyn

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"I'll give the fans just what they want, and nothing else at all."

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Originally posted by Kelsan:
**Good idea, but does Coldstone allow range targeting? So far I haven't found a way to make a spell target everyone within a certain radius.

**

I think the "target" options in the "general" pane of the spell editor do just that. You can select minimum and maximum radius and whether the spell affects allies, enemies, the caster or a single character. I guess if you wanted it to affect everyone, you would create a separate spell for each target type.

The question is, if it's a spell cast by an item, does it work within a range of tiles around the item, or around the player character? If I'm making a bomb item, I want it to injure everything around the bomb, including the palyer if he's dumb enough to stick around next to the bomb while it goes off.

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Mark

Another thing... this has been done to death ever since Zork, but every adventure game has some dark areas where the player needs a light to see. It almost seems obligatory. Some way of making a spot of light that illuminates the area immediately surrounding the player character while leaving the rest of the map in darkness seems like it would be in order. I wouldn't place a high priority on this, though. It's kind of annoying and there are more important improvements to be made.

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Mark