Someone may have already done this, but I made a checklist for myself to make sure all the elements necessary to run a game were in place, and I figured some other people might benefit from it.

This is the bare minimum structure that has to be in place for an empty game to compile and run properly.

COLDSTONE CHECKLIST

()Put all your pictures in the "Pictures->SomeFolderName" directory. They all must be at this level, you can't drill down into subfolders.

()Create a Map

()Create a Location of type "Map" with the same name as the Map

()Create an Opening Screen Graphic and put it in your "Locations->Location pics" folder

()Create a location of type "Main Location" with the same name as the Opening Screen

()On the "Layouts" tab of the Game Options box:
-Create an Interface and "Select" it in either the "Main Interface" or "Map Interface" (YOU MAY NOT HAVE BOTH)
-"Edit" the interface so that the "Game Area" box covers the entire interface
-Create a "Loading Dialog" graphic and "Select" it on the "Layouts" tab of the Game Options screen

()On the "Misc" tab of the Game Options box:
-give your game a Name
-give your game a Creator Code
-load your "Player's Map Display"
-uncheck any dialogues you don't want to appear at startup

()Create a "StartGame" event (The name must be exact)
-this should include a "User Control" action and a "Teleport" action which calls your "Main Location" (Opening Screen)

()Create a "Main" event (The name must be exact)
-this should include a "Set Map Position" action and a "Teleport" action which calls your "Map"

()Create an "EndGame" event (The name must be exact)
-This should include a "Call Event" action which calls your "StartGame" event

()Create a location of type "Event Link" and call it "New Game" (Any name will do)
-click the "Edit Event" button. This event should include an "Engine Call" action to "New Game"

()Create a Class (any name and stats will do)

With these minimums in place, the game should run. If you don't populate menus in the "Game Options" screen, you'll have to rely on keyboard commands to quit.

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-Fyre
http://www-students.biola.edu/~johns

Great Work! I had started a list like this and hadnt got around to finish it.

can I include this on my CGE_Tips page?

I tryed to email you from your site and got an error.

-stray

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Straytoaster@mac.com
See CGE_Tips at:
http://coldroom.150m...f/CGE_Tips.html

Sure - you're welcome to include it (I'm arrogant enough to ask that you give me credit, tho :< )

Yeah - they decommisioned the old web server so I've been gradually piecing it back together.

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-Fyre
http://www-students.biola.edu/~johns

Great idea! This is the sort of thing that probably should have been either a) in the user manual (if I had been a more dedicated nitpicker in my manual readthrough) or included in a standard "New Game" template that came with the engine. That said:

<nitpick=ON>

Quote

Originally posted by JohnStokes:
**()Put all your pictures in the "Pictures- >SomeFolderName" directory. They all must be at this level, you can't drill down into subfolders.
**

More accurately, "any 'Pictures->SomeFolderName' folder." You can of course have as many such folders as you want, as long as you don't use subfolders. Also, some pictures may be better suited to the "Events->Pics" folder or "Players->Portraits" folder. For a picture to appear in a dialog, it needs to be in the former folder, and only pictures in the latter folder can be chosen as player portraits when creating a new character.

Quote

**()Create an Opening Screen Graphic and put it in your "Locations- >Location pics" folder

()Create a location of type "Main Location" with the same name as the Opening Screen
**

It's not strictly necessary to have a Main location, though any finished game would certainly use one for an opening screen. You could have the StartGame event immediately call an engine call of type "New Game" and send the player to the map. This would mean that launching the game would always begin a new game, which is less than ideal, but it would work for the early development phases of the game.

Quote

()On the "Layouts" tab of the Game Options box:
-Create an Interface and "Select" it in either the "Main Interface" or "Map Interface" (YOU MAY NOT HAVE BOTH)

What exactly do you mean, "You may not have both"? You can't have both a Map Interface and a Main Interface in the same game? That shouldn't be the case, as far as I know. Could you clarify?

Also, again, it's not strictly necessary to have Map and/or Main Interfaces. As long as none of your locations specify the use of one or the other(see the Location Editor), your game will run just fine without them.

Quote

()Create a location of type "Event Link" and call it "New Game" (Any name will do)
-click the "Edit Event" button. This event should include an "Engine Call" action to "New Game"

You'll also need to go into your opening screen location and put a link to this location somewhere, I believe. And again, if you don't mind launching the app sending you directly to a new game, this location would be superfluous.

</nitpick>

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"I hate quotations." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nitpick #1: Right you are: there can be multiple folders in the "Pictures" directory. You can probably tell from the "once over lightly" this checklist gives that it assumes someone is already familiar with how to use ColdStone (e.g. creating animations, for a player, etc.), so I didn't think it would be necessary to specify that.

Nitpick #2: I figured this was the case, but I haven't tried it myself so I wasn't going to include something untested in my personal checklist.

Nitpick #3: If I remember correctly from my CS manual reading, this is true. You can EITHER have a MAIN interface, or a MAP interface, but not both. I set up a game once with both and it failed to run. The main difference between the MAIN interface and the MAP interface is that the MAP interface lets you specify a MASK, thus reducing the playable size of the screen (like in PoG). And yes, you DO have to have one or the other, even if the MAIN interface is only a black background, so you can enlarge the size of the "Game Area" from it's default 4x8 pixel box (okok - but it's still really small) to the full 640x480 size. Note that this is the MAIN interface in the Game Options dialog box, not a location of type "Main Location".

Nitpick #4: Oops. You're right. I meant to include that.

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-Fyre
http://www-students.biola.edu/~johns