I am sure that many of you have seen this sort of request before, so I will apologise before
starting.

I am a complete newbie to game development. I was surfing the net to find out what I could.
I really like the idea of coldstone, something that allows me to build an rpg game without
any programming.

So I have some questions:
1. What do people commonly use to create their characters and maps? Is there any recommended
software to do this?
2. Is it possible to donwload map or character templates to help spped up the process? Or is
there some software to help with this also?
3. How do people find coldstone? Does it work well? Are there any limitations? Or are there
better products on the market?

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Tony.

Hi, Tony. Welcome to the boards.

1. There are character and map graphics in the program, which I guess most people use. Depending on what sort of game you want to make, you could use either a drawing program (like photoshop) or a 3d program (you may still want a drawing program to "spice up" your renders and make textures, though).

2. Well, there are a few hundred "console style" character graphics on the addons page you could use as templates to make your own (or simply use them). There are no map templates that I know of, since people use different graphics for their maps.

3. I believe coldstone is the only decent (and simple) rpg making program there is for mac. It works well, but there are a few bugs and games made with it don't work at all with newer systems. Ambrosia's apparently working on an update but it's been a while since they gave us any news. If you're serious about this you might want to consider using a more advanced program (but those tend to require programming or at least scripting, so they take longer to learn if you're new).

Hope you find this helpful.

Thanks Ledorax, your comments are very helpful.

I read the coldstone docs and played with the program but could not find any character or
map graphics. Am I missing something?

I missed the addon files. I will try out a few. Are they easy to import into coldstone?

Thanks,

Tony.

@ledorax, on Jun 12 2006, 04:30 PM, said in First timer advice:

Hi, Tony. Welcome to the boards.

1. There are character and map graphics in the program, which I guess most people use. Depending on what sort of game you want to make, you could use either a drawing program (like photoshop) or a 3d program (you may still want a drawing program to "spice up" your renders and make textures, though).

2. Well, there are a few hundred "console style" character graphics on the addons page you could use as templates to make your own (or simply use them). There are no map templates that I know of, since people use different graphics for their maps.

3. I believe coldstone is the only decent (and simple) rpg making program there is for mac. It works well, but there are a few bugs and games made with it don't work at all with newer systems. Ambrosia's apparently working on an update but it's been a while since they gave us any news. If you're serious about this you might want to consider using a more advanced program (but those tend to require programming or at least scripting, so they take longer to learn if you're new).

Hope you find this helpful.

No graphics? You must have chosen "empty" when you started making your game. Try "medieval" instead. It has some graphics, a couple of maps, items etc. And it's playable!

The "medieval" game is good for messing around. Try changing a few things and see what happens.

And about importing graphics, it depends on which ones you download (from addons). I guess most of them could simply be dropped in your "pictures" folder (within your game folder). If you want to use the "console" sprites I mentioned, you'll have to cut them out of the files and save them as different pictures (pct is probably best). Then you can use the animator to make them into working sprites...

Hi Tony Warner, again, as Ledorax said, welcome to the boards.

Pillars of Garendall is the best known and largest game made with Coldstone to date. I think it would be worth your while to download the demo from here and see some of what Coldstone can do. While only the demo is available now until the bugs associated with OS X are worked out, if you can access OS 9 or "Classic" you should be able to see what it's all about. If you can't access those systems, Coldstone won't be much good to you now either.

As mentioned, Coldstone (CS) has folders filled with pre-done artwork. Doing your own graphics is not difficult if you are enough of an artist to know your way around any good art software. The trick is in being the artist. <_< CS likes PCT format best and also works well with PNG graphics. Stick with these and read the manual.

We wish you success. ~RD