Coldstone and Murder, need Graphic artist for new RPG.

[Kuso Tatsujin]

I'm currently begining a project called "Watch for Flamingos" in which you investigate the death of someone who was stabbed with a garden flamingo on the lawn. This game will have enemies to fight with aswell, I need help with creating sprites for this. Post if intrested please.

[Kamahawk]

Do coldstone games work under the latest version of OSX yet?

[Elvish_Pillager]

I tried Coldstone. It's really very bad in my opinion.

Take Blades of Avernum, for instance. It's more versatile, runs faster, costs less, is easier to learn, and comes with four scenarios. So what if it's fake time? RPGs are better in fake time anyway, IMO...

[Gafgarion]

I agree with EP and highly recommend ditching Coldstone. In my opinion the only way for it to have full functionality is to do some really nasty coding hacks.

[Kuso Tatsujin]

Well I was going to use it because I planned on focusing on finding clues and fistfights rather than high detailed RPGing. However, if there is a version available for Mac OsX of Blades of Avernum then I'd love to try it out! However, I don't know where to find this program...

[Elvish_Pillager]

Well I was going to use it because I planned on focusing on finding clues and fistfights rather than high detailed RPGing. However, if there is a version available for Mac OsX of Blades of Avernum then I'd love to try it out! However, I don't know where to find this program...

http://www.spidweb.com is the homepage of Spiderweb Software, who produced Blades of Avernum. A demo of it, including the scenario editor (but not the capability to play most custom scenarios) can be found on the 'products' page, accessed from the 'other games' link on the left.

[almondblight]

Two upcoming one's which might be more versatile are RPG Creator (http://aescapia.com/games/rpgcreator/) and Pygmalion (http://pygmalion.desperance.net/wiki/Main_Page). Not sure when either will be coming out though, they're still works in progress.

[Kuso Tatsujin]

^Awesome, thnx!

http://www.spidweb.com is the homepage of Spiderweb Software, who produced Blades of Avernum. A demo of it, including the scenario editor (but not the capability to play most custom scenarios) can be found on the 'products' page, accessed from the 'other games' link on the left.

Ah, and there in lies the problem, I want to try and use a full blown RPG creator, not a scenario editor for this paticular project. But thanks a million for the link, I'll look at it for another project!

[Elvish_Pillager]

Ah, and there in lies the problem, I want to try and use a full blown RPG creator, not a scenario editor for this paticular project. But thanks a million for the link, I'll look at it for another project!

Avernum is functionally completely superior to Coldstone. Coldstone draws no advantage from being a 'full blown RPG creator'. Why do you want to use Coldstone?

[Jetrel]

^Awesome, thnx!

http://www.spidweb.com is the homepage of Spiderweb Software, who produced Blades of Avernum. A demo of it, including the scenario editor (but not the capability to play most custom scenarios) can be found on the 'products' page, accessed from the 'other games' link on the left.

Ah, and there in lies the problem, I want to try and use a full blown RPG creator, not a scenario editor for this paticular project. But thanks a million for the link, I'll look at it for another project!

uh, about the only thing you CAN'T edit in avernum is the list of spells. It's pretty full featured for a "scenario" editor, much more so than many RPG creators.

You can make tons of your own terrains, tons of your own monsters, tons of your own items, you can even program your own special effects.

You can do complex scripting from right within the dialogue, allowing for natural flow of storyline-related special event conversations.

I should note that monster behavior in storyline battles can also be programmed - you can have special characters trigger "spells" that would only make sense there, but for all practical purposes behave like a normal spell in the game. Thus you can program practically any special boss you wanted - Lavos, from Chrono trigger, would work fine in Avernum. Yes, you can have bosses composed of multiple units.

Avernum is VERY, VERY full featured, about the only thing you can't do is patch the code. Which is something most RPG editors won't let you do anyways, so, no big deal.

(Also, the only other concern about it being a scenario editor might be the fact that parties of heros who have played through other scenarios can visit yours, despite the fact that they already have experience and weapons. You can assign a difficulty rating to your scenario - ignoring that is no different from cheating, really, which people can do in a normal RPG anyways. NOT only that, but you can do nasty things like taking away all of a character's items at the start of the scenario.)


Don't use Coldstone. Coldstone blows.

[Elvish_Pillager]

uh, about the only thing you CAN'T edit in avernum is the list of spells.

That's hardly even a disadvantage.
1) You can just not give the party certain spells. You can even take away spells in Blades of Avernum, so there's no limits on what you can do with the spells that are given.

2) I know of no game whose spell list modification works better than BoA's anyway. Coldstone has (IIRC, it's been a while) the unfortunate disadvantage that you can't even design your own spells very well. You just choose a bunch of values for them, which is hardly more useful than just having a set of spells. (I didn't really figure out what most of those values did anyway...) Reminds me of "Sword Dream", where you could make spells like "Long range death ward" that made no sense whatsoever.

Simple value inputing is one of the worst user-interfaces for spell design (and a lot of other design, too).

[Kamahawk]

Um, EP. Coldstone is not an RPG maker, its a game maker. I think you were just playing around with the preset rpg maker mode wich allows you to create games in the PoG stlye. If there is soemthing you dislike about PoG engine you could probebly change it useign coldstone.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Um, EP. Coldstone is not an RPG maker

I want to try and use a full blown RPG creator

[Temuchin Khan]

Kamahawk, doesn't the Coldstone read-me SAY that it is primarily intended as an RPG maker? Isn't the demo game included with it a simple RPG? I never really got the hang of Coldstone, but I do remember that.

[Gafgarion]

Also, Coldstone doesn't work in Panther... A major turn-off for me, personally. A project as ambitious as a full-game editor needs constant support, and can't be left hanging for long periods of time.

As for the types of games you can make, it really depends what you want out of the game you make. I, personally, found that the solutions for limitations in Coldstone were incredibly hacky. However, if you want a Zeldaesque action RPG without many frills, Coldstone will do the trick.
If you're looking for a turn-based RPG format, the Blades of Avernum scenario editor is extremely powerful and offers many options.
If you're willing to delve into code itself, you might want to check out Torque, an engine designed for game creation. Torque, though, is designed as a base for programmers who want a powerful engine which is flexible enough to deal with whatever they need... but don't want to write their own engine. Good for programmers and small development teams (heck, even large professional development teams) that don't have the resources/desire to create their own engine, not good for the average guy that wants a user-friendly game-creation experience that doesn't require extensive knowledge of C.