/* Note: Reposted with correct date in the header. Sorry for the earlier mistake! */

Dee surprised a few of us who were hanging out on the #coldstone channel yesterday by dropping in to prepare for todays meeting, and he answered some of our questions. I've edited out all the emotes and small talk and re-arranged some of the responses to match the questions(you will notice some of the time stamps don't match; this is to provide a better flow of information). I'll post a similar log either this afternoon or tomorrow morning for the chat session today.

== Log of #Coldstone from Wednesday 06 March 2002 ==
08:10 Channel topic: Welcome to #coldstone! € Gnarly Gnews: VolumeControl 1.1 by Cafall available. € Upcoming: Dark Rage - chronostorm.net € Last updated 03/03/2002 by Cafall.

15:52 <celchu> Is it possible to link an event to a monster's death?
15:52 <Dee> yes
15:53 <celchu> Okay. Just makin' sure.
15:53 <celchu> We've been contemplating game ideas outside of the actual program, so we have little knowledge of how the innards work.
15:53 <Dee> I don't remember exactly where
15:53 <Dee> I see.
15:53 <celchu> I'll have to check that out.
15:54 <Dee> We used the monster death event to create the random item drop for monsters in PoG
15:54 <Dee> I think it's in the very last panel of the NPC editor
15:54 <Dee> (unfortunately, I'm on my PC now and I dont' have the Coldstone doc)
15:57 <Stark> Celchu - Yes, monster death event is in the NPC editor, last screen as Dee thought

15:55 <celchu> Also, can an event check a player's character class?
15:58 <Dee> Yes, you can. Just put the player class in a global using the &&Job; tag values and test it using a conditional action

15:57 <stray> dee any word on global timer/counter?
15:58 <Dee> As for timer
15:58 <Dee> There is two ways of doing this:
15:59 <Dee> the first one is to cast a dumb spell that does absolutely nothing but you can link what you want in its cast/remove effect event
15:59 <Dee> the second is:
16:00 <Dee> use a dumb animation (consisting of white frames) and link an event to each frame (or one frame and make it loop)
16:00 <Dee> however, this last method only work if you stay in the same map
16:01 <Dee> well, by working with both method, you can achieve some sort of timer but that's the best for now
16:01 <Stark> Hmm.. On that subject, is there anyway to make a global load call?
16:01 <Dee> I'm affraid I don't understand
16:01 <Stark> Ie, when a new map loads take the count, load it into a global, then add that number to the fresh start animation and begin the count again
16:02 <Stark> Did that make any sense? heh
16:02 <Dee> absolutely
16:02 <Stark> Absolutely that made sense, or absolutely thats possible(or absolutely to both)?
16:02 <Dee> both
16:03 <Stark> Great. So a universal counter should be possible between maps by doing that
16:03 <Dee> yes
16:04 <stray> but than the player can just reload the map again and again to advance the time
16:05 <Stark> stray: no, because you would save the count in a global, erase the count to start over, and add the global back in.

16:03 <Stark> Alrighty.. Is a players "standard" animation/pic stored on the player?
16:04 <Stark> I'm referring mostly to the POG bug of switching a characters animation using an event, the game being saved and upon reload the event is gone, so he isn't switched back
16:04 <Dee> ...? what do you mean by stored on the player?
16:04 <Stark> Is there anyway to look at the character and locate the "standard" animation and put it back?
16:05 <Dee> No, you need to know what the standard animation is and keep track of which is currently displayed by setting a global when you change it
16:06 <Stark> Ahh. hrm. ok. I was thinking about doing that for some player-change animations. Was wondering if the trinity spells do that or that is a "in hindsight, we shoulda kept track of that with a global"

16:06 <Dee> BTW, I'm actually writting in my free time an article on how to create a complete custom map interface (such as a graphical health bar and other neat animated interface elements).

16:07 <stray> Dee what were the animations im Pog Created with?
16:07 <Dee> 3D Studio Max
16:07 <Dee> On Windows

16:08 <Stark> alrighty. I may be mistaken because I haven't tried this, but as I understand items to work:
16:08 <Stark> if I create an object in my plugin titled "Longsword" and someone else creates an object with the name "Longsword" they will conflict, no?
16:08 <Dee> yes
16:08 <Stark> ie, they are referenced by their actual name, and not referenced by plugin->name
16:09 <Stark> Ok. Is there any way to get a global identifier set up for objects?
16:09 <Dee> I think that Coldstone will take the last loaded but it may be the other way around
16:09 <Stark> Ie, I create a longsword that I want the player to see referred to as "longsword" but to make it identifiable I'll call it "STARKS_LONGSWORD"
16:15 <Dee> There is unfortunately no way to disconnect the name of an object (NPC, item, whatever) in the engine and on the screen. This is a pain and that's one of the first things I want to fix if I were to do a Coldstone 2.0.

16:09 <celchu> Dee, in dialogue where you type in the respone in a field
16:09 <celchu> Is it possible to link an event up to a specific keyword?
16:10 <Dee> What do you mean by linking to a keyword?
16:10 <celchu> Like if i want the player to type in Sheep
16:10 <celchu> And they type multiple sheep.
16:11 <celchu> Can I identify any phrase with the word sheep?
16:11 <Dee> ah, in a Dialog entry action?
16:11 <celchu> I think so.
16:11 <Dee> unfortunately, no
16:11 <Dee> but any string comparison in Coldstone is NOT case sensitive if that can help you
16:11 <celchu> Drat. I guess I'll have to tell them to only type one word.

16:17 <PCheese> I have a question: in the tutorial it says something about using animation tiles in the map editor so that they make connecting tiles just by clicking and dragging, but I haven't been able to use that yet
16:18 <PCheese> those animation tiles
16:18 <Dee> PCheese: Are you using the OSX or OS9 version of Coldstone?
16:18 <PCheese> OS 9
16:19 <Dee> OK, the tools appears in the "Tools" folder of the medieval template. Tools only affect a ground that has already been drawn.
16:19 <Dee> That means that
16:20 <Dee> You must first fill the whole map (or the region you want) with,let say, grass and then, use the "Water over grass" tool in ground mode and draw your river, lake or whatever
16:20 <PCheese> ah I see
16:21 <PCheese> I thought you could do it from scratch
16:21 <Dee> unfortunately, no.

16:17 <stray> when the update come out?
16:21 <Dee> The update is coming soon, that's all I can say about the timeframe.
16:21 <stray> Necro implyed the beta testers had it.
16:21 <Dee> Not yet.
16:22 <Dee> They should have it this week.
16:22 <Dee> I still have to wrestle with RB, however
16:22 <Dee> it still has issue on OSX (the map preview pictures)

16:23 <Stark> Oh, how come the sea giant and guardian were left off the coldstone cd?
16:23 <Dee> it was on purpose
16:24 <Dee> We wanted PoG to have some unique elements that would make it a game on its own even if there was 100 games made with this template available.

16:25 <stray> Dee how are the static images called? ie learningtree
16:26 <Dee> what do you mean by static images? The big rendered backgrounds?
16:26 <Dee> It's nothing more than one big picture that we put straight on the background layer.
16:27 <Dee> and the ground is empty under it.
16:27 <stray> yes the learning tree
16:27 <Stark> Excellent. Big stamps are the way to go.
16:28 <Dee> not too big though, that might affect performance
16:28 <Dee> you can separate them in several smaller pictures and tile them in the editor

Dee departs, log ends.

------------------
"Good...Bad...I'm the one with the gun. Kaboom!"
-- Ash, Army of Darkness

Good work Stark! I see you edited out the filler...

------------------
"I believe in the sun, even when it is night. I believe in love, even when I do not feel it. And I believe in God, even when he does not reveal his prescence."
-A survivor of the Holocaust