(I got the idea for this from TomWoozle on the EVN board)

Ok, this is a little competition to see who can come up with the coolest new use using the Coldstone engine. The rules:

1. You have to explain fully and clearly, but concisely, how you would achieve your idea with the Coldstone engine.

2. Your idea has to be significantly different from anyone elses, they can be in the same vein but yours must show original differences, don't steal other people's ideas and just add a bit on the end.

3. You can refer (clearly, please) to another entry and demonstrate a 'better' (i.e less messy, easier to implement, more reliable) way to achieve the same effect - this will count as your own entry - if it abides by the other rules. Note there is a difference between making a neater job of the same idea and just hoping to alter a tiny bit to take the credit.

4. Please post only to add an entry. Do not put irrelevant junk in this thread.

5. You can submit as many entries as you like, but nothing too lame, please!

6. (edit) Since this now has a prize, I should put a deadline on it. February 9th. I think 2 weeks should be long enough for people to get used to CS. If a mod could lock the topic then, that would be nice.

Apparently Gluebubble will provide a prize (see below), if one of the mods wants to judge that's fine, otherwise I guess I'll have to.
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(This message has been edited by Catfish_Man (edited 01-25-2002).)

Can beta testers and moderators enter?

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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...
"Actions have reactions, don't be quick to judge, you may not know the hardships people don't speak of,
It's best to step back, and observe with couth, for we all must meet our moment of truth." - (url="http://"http://www.OHHLA.com/anonymous/gngstarr/moment/moment.gsr.txt")Guru(/url)

Here's an interesting idea... Use Coldstone to create ground missions for EV/O/N.
This would be accomplished in the following, when you land on the planet, you get a password. The password unlocks a encrypted file containing a plug-in for a application made in Coldstone, the application contains all the graphics, the plug-in contains the map and events and NPCs etc.... When you complete the mission... well.... I'm not too sure :D, but it's just an idea. I suppose you don't have to play the ground missions, but it's more fun. It WOULD require a lot of switching apps.

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G4, the faster computer.
(url="http://"http://www.ziggadon.f2s.com")The Ziggadon Plug-in Web Site(/url) is growing, comments needed.

Quote

Originally posted by the Necromicon:
**Can beta testers and moderators enter?:p

**

Sure, basically I'm just trying to get everyone to post all the tricks/ideas they come up with. (Partially so I don't have to think them up on my own, partially so everyone else doesn't)

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After all is said and done, I declare that the winner shall receive three karma points! I'll leave the judging up to Catfish_Man, though.

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quitcherbellyachin.
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Yeah, I was wondering about that. I'd love to see someone do some sort of RPG set in the EV universe.....would be very cool

It would be especially cool if you could find some way to tie it into EV (i.e. share the same pilot file......land on a planet in the EV game, save, then launch the RPG and get to do various things on the planet....and be able to trigger events in both games (i.e. complete some quest in the RPG and get a new ship to use in the regular EV game, or dominate a planet in EV and then have that change how you are treated, etc. on the planet in the game).

Would be very very cool.

-Elektrix

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Okay, here's one sort of thought out one:

I while back I was thinking about things that could be done with an RPG creation tool (I wasn't even thinking that it could do things beyond RPG styles) and I came up with the idea of a RT strategy game.

A real time strategy game would seem to be pretty easy to make. Just have the general be the main character and have less than hostile NPC's be your army/division.

The opposite side could be made by just setting up a bunch of evil characters that are across the map.

You go on to different campaigns by finishing quests, there can be a high command that you report back to after a campaign is finished.

I dunno, is that original? Or has that already been discussed? Whichever, I'm going to try it...

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(url="http://"http://bbspot.com/News/2001/03/perl_test.html")Test Shows 99.99% of High School Seniors Can't Read Perl(/url)

(This message has been edited by diddlysquat (edited 01-25-2002).)

Here is my CrAzY idea (i dunno how it would turn out):

1)Take pictures of a garden from certain angles: grass, the carrot patch,the tree trunk, the fence, the lettuce, the flowers...-->edit them to be suitable patterns for coldstone

2)model a Garden Gnome, a mole, a cat, a bird...

3)import to Coldstone

4)make a GARDEN GNOME RPG! with real picture backgrounds and a fully interactive garden environment. use your shovel, hoe or rake to make your way throught the hell of garden life, through many adventures, and finally escape and see the world!™

P.S. Amélie did NOT influence my idea. i thought it up in math class.

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-DON'T FROGBLAST
THE VENT CORE!!!-

Here's my (albiet badly thought through) idea:

A quiz show, built within an RPG engine. For my example, I'll use Who Wants to be a Millionarre.

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Your character starts at the bottom of the screen. Chris Tarrant (or Regis Philburn if you're an American) is the middle, and you walk up to him. A question appears and four possible answers appear and you can walk around and make contact with one of the answers.

The way that the last bit happened was that there are hundreds of rooms which look identicle, but which have different questions written on the floor as objects which appear on top of the rest of the scenery and which the player creates an event by coming into contact with. When you walk up to Tarrant, you are teleported to a random one of these rooms.

If you come into contact with the correct answer, you rise by one level and are awarded an amount of Gold based on which level you are (ie. the amount of Gold which you would get by answering that question correctly in the show itself). You are then teleported to the next random room, where you must answer another question.

If you make contact with a wrong answer, you lose a set amount of gold depending on which level you are on ie. level one, you'd lose 100, level 2, you'd lose 200, but if you're after level 5 or 10 (the points where, in the real show, your money is safe) then you'd only lose enough to take you down to the safe point). The game is then over, and a Game Over screen tells you how much you left with.

If you reach level 15, then you've won the game, and a splash screen tells you of this and that you've won a Million.

There would also be a "take the money and run" option, which do the same as getting a wrong answer, but without taking away any money.

As for the lifelines... Since the game's designer know the answer when he's designing each room, he can choose two that will disappear if the player chooses the option. Of course, which two disappear wouldn't be random, but predetermined by the room itself. Similarly, a made up answer from the audience and your friend could be done for the other two lifelines (with the designer throwing in a few wrong answers to make it realistic).

The three lifelines would be items that are in your inventory at the start to make sure that you can only use them once each.

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The main problem with this whole idea is that there would have to be a HUGE number of rooms for the question to seem random. I'm not sure if ColdStone can cope with all of these rooms, whether the graphics for the questions would take up too much space, or even whether it's possible to appear in a random room (I've been looking, but I can't find the option).

The other, in some ways bigger, problem is my total lack of ability. I'm still having trouble going through the tutorial to make a NPC appear in PoG (I'm sure I'm following all of the steps, but when I load PoG, he isn't there!), and my artwork leaves so much to be desired that if I did make the game, I'd probably end up using one of the Monks who looks slightly like Chris Tarrant...

Spiffo.

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Ummm...this isnt going anywhere is it?

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-DON'T FROGBLAST
THE VENT CORE!!!-

Okay, here would be my idea:

This basicly a way to implement something simillar to FF7's Materia system in a Coldstone game. What you would do is have a couple of free equipment slots on your character. (I haven't had much time to mess with Coldstone yet-I'm not shure if you can deffine custom equipment slots or not.) Then, you create the Materia as as an equipable item that goes into these slots. Then you have the Materia call an event that would give the player a unique spell/skill. (Cure, Fire, ect.) Then, while the charater has the Materia equiped, and he gains another level, it would cause the Materia to grow and grant the player more skills. After a certain number of these growths, the Materia would be 'Mastered', and would call an event creating another one of these items in the player's inventory.

How does that sound?

Peace.

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Do not aproach a cow from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.
-Mark Twain

Quote

Originally posted by Servack:
**
This basicly a way to implement something simillar to FF7's Materia system in a Coldstone game....

**

For those of us not familiar with Final Fantasy (other than that's generally what FF# stands for), what is the Materia system?

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(url="http://"http://www.alexanderwilson.com")www.alexanderwilson.com(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by alexanderwilson:
**For those of us not familiar with Final Fantasy (other than that's generally what FF# stands for), what is the Materia system?

**

Materia were little orbs made out of magic-stuff. By inserting them into weapons/armor, your characters would gain access to powerful abilities and spells, and would allow the Materia to grow by gaining AP (Abillity Points) after battle. Once a certain amount of AP were acrued, the Materia would level up, giving the wielder even more powerful spells and abillities.

Peace.

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Do not aproach a cow from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.
-Mark Twain

I was also thinking about doing an rpg similiar to EV, but i would create the "universe" myself and just implement it into my game rather than making a plugin. I would probably only create about 10-20 planets, but the game would be more focused on the "on land" stuff. I would basically copy the gameplay of EV into the universe portion, while thinking up my own style for the land part. How does this sound?

If anyone wants to work with me, email me.
speizer15@yahoo.com

Heck, I know what I'd like to do:

Platform games. It seems like it would be entirely possible to do something like a Donkey Kong, Dark Castle or Pitfall type game.

I've already figured out how you could make the backgrounds and stuff with the map, and in order to say where you can and can't move is simply a matter of defining access. Basically, you would have a very small area in which your character can walk, without being able to move north and south, except maybe for pits and ladders. North and South would be replaced with up and down in these areas.

The only thing I can't figure out how to implement is the jumping? How could you make it so your character can jump without having access to that area, and if you've got access to that area, how do you keep your character from just moving up and down instead of only going up when you jump?

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Quote

Originally posted by Servack:
**Materia were little orbs made out of magic-stuff....

**

Interesting. Thanks.

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(url="http://"http://www.alexanderwilson.com")www.alexanderwilson.com(/url)

I'm creating a standard rpg with a party system and turn based combat.

First off, I used global variables for everything because I didn't like the side effects of the stats and I erased everything that happens on a level up because I didn't like that either. Plus this way, when the main char reaches 0 hp the game won't end.

All the allies will be attempting to reach the char at the heros speed so it looks like theyre following him. Depending on how aggressive the enemy is, when they reach the char it teleports them to another map. I then turn the character into a dust cloud and make it so theyre is no direction he can move. I set all the chars out on the map beforehand in theyre spots facing the right directions. Through use of dialogs and global variables, I'm letting them do the standard rpg fighting.

A way to do this is to ask what they want to do, and scroll through the enemies (i can only see 3 enemies at a time or have one of the choices be a next person, and the other choice being previous person. If they choose attack, I'll see if they hit (haven't decided exact calculations) and if they do, the enemies hp will go down.

For the enemies AI, I'm gonna have some problems with that actually. It would be pretty easy to do if there was an npc "ally" option because then they could realize that your party were enemies. Since thats not possible right now, I'll just have to do scenarios like, do random attacks. If another monster has less then 25% of his hp heal. If party member has less then 25% hp try and kill. Maybe some more scenarios for different individual skills. (Any advice on that would be real nice..... actually any advice would be real nice) I know I'm going to make melee combat weapons have a "range" so that the enemies can attack from their spot on the ground.

To get the party back to the same spot after the battle, u can take the x and y values of the char right before the battle, and send them back there afterwards.

(This message has been edited by Demiscus (edited 01-26-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by XxtraLarGe:
**Heck, I know what I'd like to do:

Platform games. It seems like it would be entirely possible to do something like a Donkey Kong, Dark Castle or Pitfall type game.

I've already figured out how you could make the backgrounds and stuff with the map, and in order to say where you can and can't move is simply a matter of defining access. Basically, you would have a very small area in which your character can walk, without being able to move north and south, except maybe for pits and ladders. North and South would be replaced with up and down in these areas.

The only thing I can't figure out how to implement is the jumping? How could you make it so your character can jump without having access to that area, and if you've got access to that area, how do you keep your character from just moving up and down instead of only going up when you jump?
**

Not sure if this idea would work for you or not but how about something like this:

Since each tile in the map can have an event assigned to it, couldn't you set it so that when the player steps on a tile where you want them to have to jump, this opens up an event with conditionals that will let the player select a jump up or a jump down function key. in the same event you add map position actions and teleports to move them to the new locations for jump up or jump down. I suppose you can also add in a short animation or movie that displays the character crouching and jumping or something like that. If you make the animations or movies templates, you could then use them over and over whenever you need to have the player jump.

The same type of thing could also work if you want to have a player climb up or down a ladder, just have the event play an animation or movie showing the character climbing up or down a ladder and at the end they are at their new location.

Not sure how sound my idea is but it seems like it should be possible. If my idea is nuts, impossible or impractical, just ignore this post. Same thing if you are talking about something totally different and I misunderstood your question.

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CRH

This topic was dropping down a bit far. I don't want to have to search through a bunch of pages to find it when I have to judge it.

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And the winner is...hoodystarpilot28. I didn't get quite the number of responses I was hoping for, but there were some good ones. Here's what I thought of them:

Sean2000: Good idea, but the app switching would get annoying. Also, it would require having both EVN and the Coldstone plugins, so it's not strictly a Coldstone game.

Elektrix: An extension of Sean2000's idea.

Diddlysquat: Great idea, it would have one except for one thing. As far as I can tell it requires NPCs on your side which can't be done practically with the current Coldstone engine. If a later version supports this, I want a copy.

hoodystarpilot28: This one wins. Original, probably fun, and could have some pretty amazing graphics (especially if the gnomes were small. A shrubbery would loom like an oak tree, it would awesome.)

Spiffo: Good idea, a bit tricky to implement, but it's cool in the way it twists Coldstone to new purposes. If it weren't for the gnomes either this one or Demiscus's would have won.

Servack: Not sure if this is possible. Sounds fun, but it's copying FF7 so even if it works, it doesn't get the prize.

Jordan: Good idea, not very original, but very fun (as anyone who's played EV knows )

XxtraLarGe: If you can figure out how to do it, post how. I've been having a lot of trouble figuring out how to get jumping to work myself.

Demiscus: Probably the most ambitious idea posted. It would have won except for three things: the gnomes, the difficulty of implementing it, and the probable speed hit from all the stuff it's doing. If you can do it, go for it.

Interestingly enough, my little brother came up with what is probably the coolest and least practical idea of all. He worked out how to emulate a Turing machine with Coldstone which would allow it to emulate any other computer that could emulate a Turing machine (for example, you could theoretically make Mac OSX in Coldstone. The I/O stuff wouldn't work, but the system navigation would. You'd have to make each pixel an individual object that could change color). Aside from the difficulty of making this (impossibile, basically) it would run VERY slowly. Also, he forgot to post the idea, so it wan't in the running.

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(This message has been edited by Catfish_Man (edited 02-14-2002).)