A new development to report in the Bardic missions — alterations to an older Fed mission titled Incidental Contact have linked itself and the Klingon mission  Much Ado About NojtIgh into the General Keeg / Escape from General Keeg plotlines, creating a four mission story arc that does not require you play in a specific order to understand each specific mission, but if played in this order:

Incidental Contact
Much Ado About NojtIgh
General Keeg
Escape from General Keeg

The interlinking plots, settings, and character cameos become more obvious.

Thanks to Pendra at the STO forums for teaching me how to do this.  It’s a pretty simple trick, so I’ll just tell you about it, rather than recording a video about it. 

On interior maps, you can use “Building Block Platform #3″ to cover the map screen, thus creating a “fog of war” effect where the enemies and other stuff are hidden from the map screen.  This also affects the minimap, although enemies still show as red dots.

The trick: Put the platforms in the ceiling.  If they are too high, the map will show, and if they are too low, the player might see them poking down through the ceiling. 

To replicate the above screenshot:

Map: Forging

Set Y coordinates of 3 platforms to 40, and use them to cover the map.

Thanks again to Pendra for sharing that with me at the STO forums.  I hope that it is useful to many of you out there.

Hey all.

Originally, I had not intended to put up an ‘advertisement’ for my mission. But the UGC wiki where i placed an entry and the Foundry forums over at STO are not yet very frequented, and I do indeed need more critical feedback to improve the coming missions.

So! Originally published on 22nd Jan, ‘Legacy of a Martyr Ep 1‘ (titled as such in the foundry) is the first episode in a new Romulan/Reman series.

The first episode is supposed to be just the introduction, however, I did try to make it eventful enough to pass as standalone. Episodes will probably not come out often, as I am both waiting for Foundry to port to holodeck so I can remake Ep 1 there, as well as RL obligations interfering.

More info on this mission can be found at the UGC wiki http://starbaseugc.com/wiki/index.php/Legacy_of_a_Martyr_Ep_1

Thanks goes to Kirkfat, Highbone and others here at StarbaseUGC for great tips and help!

In advance, I’m going to apologize to the author. As far as I could tell, he hasn’t really advertised much on the mission. If he wanted to keep it that way, then notify me as soon as possible and I’ll remove this post immediately.

Alright, so as usual, I’ll start out with gameplay.  I got through most of your mission in one piece without needing to bang my head against anything that  so that’s definitely a good start. It’s a bit short though, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I didn’t really have much of a chance to get into your mission.  There’s a few minor things that I wanted to mention that could improve your mission. One thing is to create a character costume for when you hail the USS Mayweather. As you have it currently, when you hail the USS Mayweather, a Constitution class cruiser appears. It definitely couldn’t hurt to have either the captain or a senior officer on board chatting with you. Another thing is the “Alien Cruiser” you have nearby. You do give that ship a name in your story, so it would definitely be beneficial to add a name to that ship.

The last little thing I wanted to note was the last mission objective you have. If I recall, it was simply, “beam back to your ship” as a space objective. I’d rather see a few more objectives out in space if you plan to do this, since it’s a bit of a bland experience. Maybe you could have a few objectives dealing with how you get back or something or another. Also, I believe it’s a waypoint that you used as that last objective marker, you need to make that larger. I was slightly confused when I had beamed back to my ship and I couldn’t figure out what to do next. (Flying closer to the SS Polaris actually completed that objective for me.) It’s a bit of pure luck whether or not people will know what to do. Also, as a side note, the Mayweather and the Polaris I think were actually intersecting with each other. You might want to consider moving them apart slightly to fix that.

As for your story, it started out rather strong. I enjoyed the beginning dialog. But it didn’t really hold up past that. I wish there was more buildup to the main villian in the story. She pretty much popped up and essentially said, “You foiled my evil plan, so I have to kill you now.” I would have preferred seeing her communicate with the player while completing the mission.  Like maybe there’s an objective to rescue some hostages on the Polaris and upon rescuing them she scolds her minions and tells the player they won’t stop her mission to destroy the starbase. Speaking of which, what was her mission? What did she plan to do? Just questions that I felt needed to be asked and hopefully answered at some point.

My last point on the story is I feel it was a bit fuzzy on how I got home as a player. I think I might have liked to see more elaboration on that. Maybe more of the mission going through my ship getting it prepped to go home.

So my rating of your mission? I think I’ll go with a 2.8 stars out of 5 for single players. It was a pretty bland experience. Your mission had a go here and do that feel, and the story kinda caused me to go into autopilot. I definitely think you have some room for improvement though. Your mission is rather short so you could add a few things to bring players a little further into the story of the mission.

And as usual, I’d like to stress that I’m not trying to be mean in any way shape or form. I’m just trying to give you some honest feedback on the mission I know you worked hard on.

Hi Guys

Episode 2 of the ‘Lost in Time Series’ , is now live of Tribble. You will be surprised and asking What… Why.. when… how… by the ending of the episode

The mission appears in the ingame mission search as – The Iconians and Their Demons

This mission is Federation Only and avaliable to players of Any Level.

For Further Information on the ‘The Iconian and Their Demons’, episode please visit the mission episodes UGC wiki page Here

Below is a list of current known issues:

1 – Second NPC ground patrol does not wonder: – Fixed in v1.01

2 – Occasionally NPC warp in effect does not show visually: -  A Foundry issue.

3 – NPC ground camp is lacking objects: – I will be adding additional objects in the Holodeck update of this mission, i see no point doing it now when i’ll only have to do it all again for holodeck.

4 – Warp out effect does not occure when leaving Andoria System – This as suspected does seem to be a Foundry related issue.

NOTE: I will continue to support and update the current two Episode’s on Tribble, but as stated in the official STO Thread and on the Wiki page, Episode 3 and the rest of series is on HOLD, until Foundry is released on to Holodeck. Obviously if Cryptic were to change their mind’s, then i will be willing to lift the Hold on the series and continue releasing episode’s on Tribble. But until they change their minds (which is unlikely) the hold will remain.

So feel free to post your comments about the series/missions below as well as info on any bugs you find that are not already listed.

P.S. Klingons, don’t worry i have plan’s for you guys with your own version of the series, though you may have to wait a few more episodes, before i release the first klingon episode.

The latest update to the Tribble testing server includes a few minor changes to the Foundry. dstahl had the following to say about them:

Foundry

• New Skyfiles have been added to the Foundry sky editor
• Fixed several display names of starships in Foundry
• Fixed some text issues in mission journal UI that was causing Author info to wrap improperly
• Updated ability to search missions by language

(Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3313588&postcount=1)

If anyone knows what the new skymaps are, or has discovered anything else in the latest build, feel free to let us know in the comments.

Additionally, StormShade has elaborated on their previous post about the lack of an Import function:

I understand your feelings, and sadly, sometimes breaking bad news is a part of my job. I’m not saying this won’t change, but right now the plan is not to move over all the missions you guys have created on Holodeck.

The process to copy such a few missions over to Holodeck is long and tedious. It would require a great deal of downtime to move them all to Holodeck. I hope you all can understand why this isn’t something that seems realistic at this time.

Thanks for you understanding,

Stormshade

(Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3312532&postcount=28)

Confirmed bad news is better than uncertainty, one supposes.

Thanks again to Highbone (Bootsy) for teaching me how to do this. I hope that it helps people, and sorry that I screw up geometrical terms, lol. Hopefully, you understand what I’m trying to say, lol.

Please leave comments, if you can think of other uses for this trick. Thanks!

Edit: the distance between the actor and the pushpin is about 300, if that helps to recreate. Also, I couldn’t get this to work on the Y, so you might stick to X and Z, or make sure that your npcs are all level with the pushpin).

Amidst the kerfuffle and fury of the anniversary events hitting Tribble early, recent dev posts have confirmed and denied a few things on the Foundry roadmap. First, the good news. dstahl posted the following as an aside in an unrelated thread: (emphasis mine)

and on that note – we are only a few weeks away from Branching Dialog, Cut and Paste, and Triggers going to Foundry on TRIBBLE. I expect those improvements to make those Foundry missions even better.

(Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3311430&postcount=236)

I may be wrong, but I believe this is the first time ‘cut and paste’ functionality has been confirmed. This will improve the toolkit dramatically, cutting out a lot of the grunt work in setting up repeating elements.

Bad news, however, for those wanting to import their Tribble-created missions into Holodeck. StormShade has revealed this won’t be likely, in the thread that originally revealed the export command:

Hey gang,

Just a quick heads up. This command is in place to help us trouble shoot issues you may experience. It isn’t meant to be used as a back up mechanism, and you won’t be able to import these files back into the shard once you have them.

Thanks,

Stormshade

(Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3311311&postcount=14)

Which means the only way to get missions from Test to Live is to manually recreate them on the Live Foundry. Or hope they get picked by Cryptic for promotion ahead of everyone else.

Is this an acceptable compromise? Please let us know in the comments.

The “Star Trek Online Demo Launcher” is now available for download. It will help you manage your STO demo files with ease.

You may or may not know, that you can record demos from what you play in STO. Type

/demorecord [somefilename]

in the chat window to start recording your in game actions to a buffer. When you type

/demorecordstop

or change to another instance, the buffer will be dumped to [somefilename].demo in the “demos” folder of your STO installation.

Sadly, this does not work (yet?!) with Foundry missions or Exploration content. But if you want to do machinima, demorecord is the way to go.

Now, how do you playback the recorded files? Up to now, this was a bit tedious and I got very tired of it, so today I released a little tool, that should help you to browse through and play back your demo files more easily: The “Star Trek Online Demo Launcher”. It will scan your demo directories for Holodeck and Tribble recordings and offer a simple interface to start them. No installation required, if you have Microsoft .Net 3.5 or higher.

I’ll update this thread in the official forums with new versions and release notes as they emerge.

Have fun and please report any feedback, bugs reports, or feature requests here or on the forums.

Regards,
Rachel.

The First Episode of Season 1 in the Lost in Time Series is now Live on Tribble.

The mission is titled – Lost in Time ‘S.S. Trafford’ – And will appear as such in your ingame UGC mission search (so long as the seach isn’t bugged).

The episode is ment as an introduction to the storyline of the series, so there is some dialog reading to do but it’s not excessive and has no walls of text.  Also, Episode 2 – The Iconians and Their Demons – will pick up exactly from where Episode 1 left off, so yes bit of a cliff-hanger at the end of this Episode.

For more information of the series – Please visit my wiki User page here

For more information on Lost in Time ‘S.S. Trafford’ – Please visit the wiki mission page here

Alternatively, you may visit the Lost in Time Series official STO forum thread here

After reading reports of some of your most recent missions, Vice Admiral Soriedem Leah Cim, invites you to join him on Risa for a little shore leave camping trip. It’s better shared, so invite a friend or two.

Enjoy!

Here is the Trailer:

For those that have Pondered my Strangeness… This “Might” fill in a few Blanks… or Not! This is from Episode #1 of a 6-part Epic Adventure Now Available for Play on the STO Tribble Server as User Generated Content.

Any Reviews of this First Video Attempt will be appreciated…

Enjoy!

Quick Reminder:

Please vote for your fav tribble missions for our tribble spotlight. Voting ends at midnight Tues. Please vote.

So… you were tricked by an Undine disguised as Admiral Zelle into blasting through a Romulan research facility and killing a bunch of innocent Rommies.

What are the consequences? Will this come back to bite you in the aft? In “Rema Donna” by Havraha, you find that it does indeed come back to haunt you!

This mission ties into the STO universe as a sequel to one of the in-game missions you have to go through in the Romulan Front.

continue reading…

In the continuing Shakespeare re-imagined missions series, we have a new Much Ado About Nothing inspired mission for Klingons of any level.

Much Ado About NojtIgh
A Federation incursion leads to an invitation to a celebration ceremony by a band of Klingon warriors. However, their unique way of life is threatened by an act of dishonor which places the inhabitants of their home base against them.

This mission actually shares a common trait with the previous Shakespeare re-imagined Klingon missions…General Keeg and Two Houses of Kapua…in that once again a facet of ancient Greece is incorporated into the story…see if you can be the first on your block to figure out what classical Greek society is referenced in the mission!

Klink reviewers are welcome to do all three missions for a Bardic trifecta!

A lot of people may have been wondering about that pesky jobs button. Well, it’s quite clever. The Foundry has several interactables for your mobs to fiddle around with. Here’s a list of mob interactable objects.
Console Group L 1, 2 – Fed looking
Console Circular 2 – Fed
Klingon Ship Wall L 1, 2
M 1, 2
S 1
Console Ship M 6, 7 – Fed
Console Wall 2, 3 – Fed
Console Klingon Ship L 1-6
M 1-6
And finally, Platform Console XL 2 – Fed
As you can see Klingons get the most toys, but nonetheless. Stick them into your missions, and enable jobs. You’ll see a frenzy of activity come from your mobs.
It’s about time those freeloading NPC mobs did some work and help you attain better immersion.

-Bone Out….

Hitman is one of those bold missions that looks at posts made on the Foundry forums and says “Rules? Ha! Where I come from, there ain’t no rules!”

You can find several posts made in the forums from Cryptic developers and even posts here at Starbase UGC that adamantly oppose the idea of deviating from a certain style of mission construction put forth by Cryptic many moons ago. My opinion on this? Yes, using nothing but “Continue” and highlighting only whole sentences of instructions lends itself well to a feeling of professionalism in your mission creation, but that’s not what the Foundry is about. The Foundry is about being able to tell stories, your stories, and having an audience to rate and enjoy them. Hitman takes this philosophy like a football and runs it 100 yards for a touchdown.

Granted, I would by lying if I told you I understood everything that was happening during Hitman. It’s certainly a story that involves a bit of backstory, and the mission description features a URL that will fill you in if you’re curious, but if you’re not you can still enjoy the mission for the most part. Boldness comes into the mission immediately when the description informs you that you are no longer the persona you’ve been building up all this time, but you are now, in fact, “Pel”, and you have your own crew of mercenaries that’s completely different from the ones you’ve been considering as your crew all this time. In fact, the “author” of the mission appears in a pop up and introduces you to your new crew before the mission starts, which is something I haven’t seen in a mission before. You’re contacted by an awesome spider that wants you to kill somebody, it seems, and the mission continues from there.

There is a LOT of dialogue in Hitman, and I’m iffy on that purely because I at least attempt to use use Continue for responses when what I need to say isn’t that important, but Hitman doesn’t make this distinction. Pel will always have something very particular to say, and this works strictly because Hitman puts you in someone else’s shoes.

Grammatically it drove me a little bonkers because the ellipsis, which are these things: “…”, seem to be spaced out like “. . .” very often throughout the mission, which meant that the dialogue often separated in the window by starting with a period on one line. This can be fixed fairly easily, though, and besides a few lines that seemed like run on sentences, or could benefit from a comma or two, there weren’t many glaring typos.

Additionally, some instructions are vague. Like so many other missions in the Foundry, Hitman fails to add the system name and the sectorblock to first part of the mission’s title, meaning that if you weren’t paying special attention to the contact screen or if you had to abandon the mission mid way through (like myself), you might not remember that the mission takes place in the Chapel System in the Beta Ursae Sectorblock. Additionally, one objective is to “sweep the asteroid” for a bio sign. This isn’t clear where to go, and pressing V to check didn’t help, so I spent several minutes spiraling around this asteroid until a popup window randomly appeared. That is a frustrating mechanic.

But by and large, Hitman is a reminder of what kinds of fascinating things can be done using the Foundry with a little bit of imagination and less rules. 5 Stars.

This is a short mission and as such this will be a short review. This mission has your Captain attending a peace-negotiation-gone-wrong scenario, so right off the bat it’s very Star Trek indeed. After playing one unfinishable and two unstartable missions, the clear directions were a sight to behold. You’re told exactly where to go, the highlighted text is used for the destination names and I didn’t find myself ambling around sector space going from system to system trying to find the entry door.

The story takes place in the Sol System orbiting Jupiter, though the entry door is Wolf 359. Clearly something the author had to work around due to the limitations of the Foundry, but it’s written into the story so at least you don’t feel like there’s anything unexplained. The spelling overall is good, but there were a few instances of weird grammar and punctuation. The Klingon ship told me it had “unwantingly” agreed to the negotiations, for example, and some of the dialog from my Bridge Officers lacked necessary commas.

The maps are basic but they work. The Sol system just has Jupiter and the Federation/Klingon ships, laid out in a fairly nice standoff sort of fashion. You could tell it was a meeting and not just an amalgamation of various ships from the two factions. The bridge of the Federation ship where the negotiation takes place is unmodified. I didn’t look too closely at character placement, it was a little cramped in there with all my BOffs but that wasn’t the fault of the author. The Federation and Klingon representatives are on either side of the railing-things present on the bridge. The Klingons levitated slightly off the ground – I’m not sure if the author had accidentally modified the height co-ordinates or if it’s the fault of the map – I’ve had similar issues trying to place a character in a chair – but it’s quite noticeable. If I had the same problem I’d likely have picked a different place for them to stand or tried to move them down a little.

You’re then invited to beam down to Jupiter (which for some reason has a terrestrial surface, but whatever) by the Klingon Captain, which is revealed to be a trap. The combat is against three groups, who are all nicely separated and each challenging enough in their own right. The ground map is extremely basic – though I can’t imagine there being much on Jupiter anyway – but I get an oddly TOS feel from it, sort of like what the battle with the Gorn would have been like if they had weapons and wasn’t one-on-one. The plain setting gives an unusual but enjoyable combat scenario – with no cover, I found myself rolling and using my BOffs as distractions more than I might do in a Cryptic mission. The third group (well, the intended third group) includes a Dahar Master and the Klingon Captain. The difficulty of this group is significantly higher than the other two, namely because of the Dahar Master. The main threat of the final group should have been the Captain, the Dahar Master really steals the show as he kept kicking my ass while I was trying to take his buddies down.

Overall, in the sea of mediocre Foundry missions I’ve been playing today, this one stood out. It’s no contest winner, but it’s a solid mission, directions are clear, it’s well made and the story isn’t bad either. I really like the way it deals with the war context. I rated it four stars. With dialog tweaks and a few additions to the settings I think it would contend well.

I forgot to mention that the cool interior map is called “Forcas.” It’s a ship interior, although I call it a space station a few times, lol. I know that it’s not very technical, but hopefully it helps some people. Thanks, and please leave feedback.