Just curious, but is anyone developing a game that has no combat at all, but rather uses the combat values for another purpose? I am developing a game that largely rewards the player for the scope of their travels and artifacts collected, but it seems a waste to let the combat system built into CS go unused. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

As an aside, I am new to this board and wanted to know if my use of new topics rather than an addendum to another topic is bothing anyone.

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"As an aside, I am new to this board and wanted to know if my use of new topics rather than an addendum to another topic is bothing anyone."

not unless my doing the same is too.
it does help keep the board active, keep it up.

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Humanity will crumble under tides of blood.
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ive put some minor thought into making a game later with no combat, more like a sim commander type game where you politically move and groove not doing any of the dirty work yourself. it probably wont be made in coldstone although i have no clue, but i was thinking of things along the lines of stats somewhat like fallout. like having barter skills, influence, the ability to lie well, having physical charisma that would be your appearance to people etc. then i was thinking you could play it against your "enemies" or other politicos in the game and thier stats and that way you can try and BS people or gain allies or make deals etc. i havnt thought about it enough really or if id even use the political concept but you can put some of these stats in your game like bartering or maybe trying to get certain items from people and maybe you can run the stats against each other in a battle to see if you get items, help etc. maybe you could gain or put points into these stats as you adventure along and depending on where you put them certain people will react one way or another. i dont know what your game is exactly but say it was indiana jones minus the violence you could have knowledge skills that help you ID artifacts, barter/trade, charisma/looks.........ramble ramble.........

(This message has been edited by DJ (edited 04-24-2003).)

One thing to keep in mind is the combat system basically just makes sprites run around and perform various animations, cast spells, and use items. As long as you insure these sprites won't do your PC any harm (give them a zero dexterity, or, to be sure, give them a weapon with a "hit condition" that is impossible to satisfy, like "if player gold is greater than player gold"), then these spells, items, and animations can be used for anything. An example:

Give an NPC the "ranged fighter" behavior. Make his ranged attack animation a friendly wave, attach a sound ("Hi neighbor!") and give him a low LOS. The NPC will say hello when your PC nears, and return to his business when the PC leaves his LOS.

If you were looking more along the lines for an alternative to attacking and defending for the attack and defend functions, how about dancing? The defend button can create a looping animation, and the attack button can switch up the dance by changing the player map icon. Heh. That's a good idea.

myshkyn

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

I thought I just chime in. Have not much to say about an alternative use for the battle system - although I like the ideas mentioned by myshkyn - but I am also working on a game without use of fighting. I would prefere the title 'ambient exploration game'. Just wanted to create a weird landscape and add some of the soundscapes a freind of mine makes. I am working with a story though, dunno how it will evolve.

Next to that, I am exploring other possibilities for the engine (education, etc)

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At work I have the library club starting research for a multimedia CD that will be build in Coldstone.

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Quote

Originally posted by the48thronin:
As an aside, I am new to this board and wanted to know if my use of new topics rather than an addendum to another topic is bothing anyone.

This is fine unless your question resides in a currently active topic. Ie, I'd rather not have 3 topics all having to do with, say, how to use globals. If there is an open and active topic(posts within say, 5 days for a purely arbitrary number), then go ahead and post in it. Otherwise post a new topic.

I don't mind multiple threads for different questions, as long as they are reasonable. I'd rather not have to load up 15 topics when I can answer your questions in a single topic. So if you have a whole slug of questions then I would recommend asking a big question thread and asking them within that thread. If a major question is ignored in favor of your other questions, then I'll leave it to your discretion to post a new thread or ask for answers to that question in the original thread.

We'll see how things go and see if any alterations to this need to be made.

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Quote

Originally posted by the48thronin:
**Just curious, but is anyone developing a game that has no combat at all,
**

Yes, I am. And I use the charatcer stats to set values of friendship, barter, cost+ for each store, and things like that. All the globals are stored externally in the GLOBALS.

If you use the char stats, remeber, you must RE-set them in 'Main.cet' before you call the map position and transport. ('after' causes the game to slow and sometimes it will 'burp' and not fix them correctly. The Stats can go up to about 255, so be careful what you want to put in. And NO divide-by on any of these, because it could crash the game. (I havn't tried greater than 255, but I know they wil work)

Use the GLOBALS to track the game progress (like normal) but remember, the player has to finish them in order to get the credit (unless you make it a 'if less than or equla to xx then SET to zzz) that way you will have an open game that the people can explore on their own.

That's my two cents.

Really, stats only go up to 255? What's going on here?

If you reset them in main.cet, then a person can't save a game and then have the same stats he left with, I don't think.

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-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions

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Originally posted by Debra:
Really, stats only go up to 255? What's going on here?

Stats go up much higher than 255.

I believe stats are a short integer. They may be a long integer, I don't recall off hand. But they will go into the thousands.

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Quote

Originally posted by Stark Bledfast:
**Stats go up much higher than 255.

I believe stats are a short integer. They may be a long integer, I don't recall off hand. But they will go into the thousands.

**

I only checked up to 255 (that's all I needed to get the values to work for my game. And it does store them as a part of the character file that gets reloaded when you restart the game. (I have checked this!)
Wow, will it really go up to a few thousand (32,565)? I didn't think it would so I didn't try.

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Originally posted by Albadar:
Wow, will it really go up to a few thousand (32,565)? I didn't think it would so I didn't try.

Just checked the number it can go to, and it's 32656 for each statistic. But you still have to be careful not to divide these so you never get an error.

Albadar