With Coldstone, could I...?

Never used it. Have some questions.

Okay. This is my mission.

To create a top-view 2d role-playing game that features a battle system that works like Final Fantasy's (like as opposed to Diablo). The game is 2d, but the battles are in 3d. Real-time battle system, entirely customized weapons, characters, maps, enemies, spells, (emphasis on the WEAPONS and SPELLS), and so on. Could I do this??

Tell me--what are the limits when using Coldstone?

You can do "fake" 3D, (i.e. 3D animations), but true 3D = not possible. The FF battle system is possible (albeit, with LOTS of tweaking and work). Everything else shouldn't be a problem, though some complicated spells take a lot of work to get right.

Sure, you could script your own battle system if you wanted. And in pre-rendered 3D, if you can be bothered. Or well, that depends on what you want it to look like.

Okay. Here are a few more specific questions, then. First of all, when you said

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CI-Ia0s

The FF battle system is possible (albeit, with LOTS of tweaking and work).

did you mean just the bare concept of entering a special battle "arena" with party members lined up for battling? Gee, if that's what you meant, you'd think it'd be a little easier... Oh well. Another question. Supposing I built that sort of battle system, could I set it so that sometimes (at random) there comes a battle where the characters have monsters on each side of them, to prevent escape (like FF8! Or is it 7?)? And if that works, could I build a spell that moves one of your characters behind the monsters to enable backstabbing (I know, these questions are rather specific, but hey, I warned you)?? Last of all, what do you mean by "faking 3d"? Did you mean like a 3d rendered scene as a 2d environment or what? I meant 3d like a 3d stage with 3d characters and a 3d enemy and the character running toward the monster across the stage (indicating 3d-dom) and swiping through three dimensions to attack it. But everything has limitations, so even if I couldn't do 3d battles, I'm still considering Coldstone. Oh, also, can one have cinematics inserted (like if I made an animation or something, could I easily insert that as an event or something? Like a animated cutscene?)?

A lot of questions, a lot of answers. Bear with me here.

Being "sucked" into the battle and having the monsters apearing on all sides would be the easiest part. Very simple, just a few events. You could probably create a spell that would allow backstabbing, I would use an animation of the backstaber attacking though. As for 3d, totaly imposible. The only way to make something look 3d would be to have pre-rendered 3d environments with pre-rendered 3d characters. So it would be 2d, but sort of look like 3d. The cutscene is actually the easiest part. Once you create your animation, make it a quicktime movie and then use the movie option of the "dialogue" event to play it. As for a real-time combat system, you might want to improve on the one already with coldstone, if that's posible. It's very simple, attacking, blocking, and damage delt from that. If you want to work out alternate moves, you could asign casting a spell to a key that has the animation of the attack as the spell animation.