This week, we’re talking about the potential for Free 2 Play and what that might mean for the Foundry, along with the status of bugs within the Foundry and Star Trek Online in general and how the new Red Alerts may be bogging things down a bit. Additionally, we talk about the new Klingon Academy armor, and things the Foundry really needs to get, pronto, in regards to reviews and informing the reviewing populace of what it actually takes to make a Foundry mission. And of course, KLINGON REVIEWS!

Happy birthday Thomas. You … non-Klingon player you.

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Show Notes

- Red Alert and Foundry Bugs
- Klingon Academy Armor
- Goin Gold – The Foundry and Free 2 Play?
Click Here to View the Picture
- Reviews and the Uninformed Reviewing Populace

Reviews
- Vulture Wheel by Darren_Kitlor
- Shadow of the Warrior by Alecto
- Neutral Zone Infraction by Alexandus5787

Altexist’s Wedding Party Invitation!

Mailbag

Podcast UGC is distributed for free in mp3 format on www.starbaseugc.com and iTunes. Podcast UGC is syndicated on Trek Radio and GFX Radio. It’s aired live on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern on Trek Radio and www.justin.tv/podcastugc. Any other distribution or airings of Podcast UGC is strictly prohibited without permission. Star Trek and Star Trek Online are the rights of their respected owners.

Title: Drone Ships
ID: ST-HFIUET9MM
Allegiance: Starfleet
Level: 31+
Starting Location: Agrama System, Alpha Centauri Sector Block

Description

Starfleet has received unconfirmed reports of attacks on allied vessels in the Regula Badlands, an inhospitable area of space with little strategic value. The U.S.S. Hood, assigned to patrol the area is overdue with her report to Starfleet. Your orders are to investigate what is happening in the region and determine the fate of one of the fleet’s longest serving and most legendary starships.

Features

• Space Combat
• Ground Combat
• Optional Objectives & Dialogues
• Puzzles
• A Little Diplomacy
• Visit a Legendary Ship
• References to Past Trek Episodes & Video Games

continue reading…

A civilization dedicated to peaceful coexistence has found a relic linked to its past.  But when the situation turns dire, what dark secrets will be revealed?

For my second mission published to Holodeck, I wanted to feature more combat than I had in Conjoined.  In Spectre of the Past, you are sent to investigate an ancient asteroid generation ship.  You’ll encounter enemies on the ground and in space, and you can even complete the mission in a shuttlecraft if you wish.  The story focuses on the Fabrini, the same species on the asteroid ship Yonada encountered by Captain Kirk.  Plenty of optional information for the curious explorer.  Enjoy!

With foundry going strong, it time to look for the new content that authors have been putting out there, and this week has been great for content. So here is the list of new mission to play thought at low levels too high levels:

The dark side by Ryondus

Rise of darkness PT I by Jake8lnx

Ghosts of war Part I by NCC-89471

SGM: Nausican by DMC01

Search and Rescue by AdamB82

Mind Games PT II by XerosArmera

SSS-Inquisitor Mission 01 by SkaldRa

History’s lesson by Madowning

The Endangered Species – Part 1 by SirromNave

Spectre of the Past by DenizenV

A’Lenn the Poet by Cassius_Perplexus

Strange New Worlds by Selorkiith

Yesterday is Tomorrow by Leviathan99

The Crossing by AAS0009

Spectre of the Past by DenizenVI

Afterlight by Steel-Hyena

Now if you have a new mission that you what to put in the spotlight leave a comment below or go the the forums and leave it there in promote your foundry mission.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=218902

Name: The Crossing
Project ID: ST-HK24TF2ZY
Author: AAS0009
Allegiance: Terran Empire
Level: 41 +
Starting System: Lateri System, Beta Ursae Sector Block

The Crossing

You are an officer in the reformed Terran Empire in what the Federation called the “Mirror Universe” be part of the invasion against the federation and earn your way up through the ranks through backstabbing, plotting and assassination. Long Live the Empire

Author’s Notes:
This is the first mission of a six part series; if there are any issues I’m happy to correct them. So please enjoy the mission as much as I have had making it.

(=| Please visit this thread to get your KDF mission added to the list |=)

The Klingon Experience Project is dedicated to gathering together unique Klingon content: whether KDF-exclusive missions by the developers or ones created by the fans.

I’ve the updated status report for Update Seven: we’re up to 38 Foundry missions. We only need 13 more missions until we’ve created 1 mission per level (thus completing Milestone One). Remember, once the 51st player mission is added, we start voting for the top missions!

(=| click here to see the missions contributed by players like you! |=)

continue reading…

It’s silly, but our Summer of Love contest is now extended into the Fall.  The last few months have made the previous contest deadlines unworkable since so many of you have been repairing and debugging (when the Foundry is turned on).  So, new deadline: Oct. 1.

Please check out the prizes and details of the contest:

With the Foundry back, we have missions to review! WEE!!

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Show Notes

- Foundry Back
- STO Bug Land!
- The Engineering Report
- Terilynn’s Thoughts on the Girls’ Run and Walk

Reviews
- Slaves and Seductions by Kirkfat
- Come Babel or High Water by Soriedem
- Spawn of Medusa by Duke of Rock

Mailbag

Podcast UGC is distributed for free in mp3 format on www.starbaseugc.com and iTunes. Podcast UGC is syndicated on Trek Radio and GFX Radio. It’s aired live on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern on Trek Radio and www.justin.tv/podcastugc. Any other distribution or airings of Podcast UGC is strictly prohibited without permission. Star Trek and Star Trek Online are the rights of their respected owners.

With foundry fully up now with the help the UGC team, we can finally enjoy the authors creative mind in STO. Here is a list of the missions that came out in the last two weeks when foundry was up.

Borg of the Night by SnakeFist

Wild Goose Chase by thegoog

Hunter and the Hunted by Red-Jedi44

The Corsairs – Part 1 by Vaenn

The New War by superbob50

The Secret of Rojab – Part 1 by CaptainX3

Mind Games: Part II by XerosArmera

Now if you have a mission coming out this week please let us know by leaving a comment below or by going to the forums and post it in the forum post called promote your foundry mission. http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=218902

Hi Everyone,

I’m BACK mwahahahaha *cough cough* and so is Reunion (well it’s on it’s way).

Anywho, Today I’d like to announce the opening of www.startrekreunion.com, the home of all things ST:R related.

So please go and register, also please post in the forums and start the community going.

I’m currently in the middle of moving house but I’ll be around.

See you all soon

Oliver

Cerberusfilms

Dan Stahl has finally release this month engineering report.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=228810. check it out.

Under Investigation
These issues are hot topics in the QA and CS world. It by no means represents all the bugs we’re looking into, but instead new issues that I want you to know we are on top of.

• Foundry crashes

Beyond Season 5

• New Foundry Features

So the Foundry has returned, but there were just too many little bugs and fixes to get ironed out in time. Known issues?

1.) When in a team of people at varying different levels, whether squadded or not, players can be sent to different instances and often alone.
2.) Players will sometimes be beamed into objects upon spawning. The current work around for this is for authors to lower their objects to the lowest possible levels they can.
3.) Sometimes, the Foundry Editor will crash on certain player’s Foundry projects. The temporary solution is to find your Star Trek Online installation folder, go inside the “Live” folder, find the folder called “Data”, and delete the entire Data folder. Do not do this while in game. That would be bad. Don’t believe me? Go ahead. You smart after all. -_-

We’ll keep you abreast as we know more. Which will most likely not be today, because what do you think we are? Cryptic? Pff.

The Foundry’s down AGAIN? Really? Really? Well, we discuss that tonight. We also discuss Terilynn and NemesisChiken’s venture into the land of Star Trek Las Vegas, and wonder why the hell Cryptic didn’t have a booth there. Was Atari being cheap this year? Who knows. One thing is for sure. I was jealous. Very jealous.

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Right click and select “save as” to download the mp3

Show Notes

- Foundry Down. Again.
- Starbase UGC Tribble Test Team. HUAH!
- Star Trek Las Vegas
Thomas’ Meme
The Poster Hav is Really Pissed He Didn’t Get
The Cardassian Hav Thought Was Awesome. And I don’t even LIKE Cardassians!
Gettysburg’s Vampre Vulcan Secret Love
- Perfect World and Atari Suing Eachother?
- Neverwinter Delayed, and What That Means for the Foundry In Star Trek Online?

Mailbag

Podcast UGC is distributed for free in mp3 format on www.starbaseugc.com and iTunes. Podcast UGC is syndicated on Trek Radio and GFX Radio. It’s aired live on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern on Trek Radio and www.justin.tv/podcastugc. Any other distribution or airings of Podcast UGC is strictly prohibited without permission. Star Trek and Star Trek Online are the rights of their respected owners.

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Includes:
Free Retail STO Game
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Enterprise Era Bundle
A Tribble
An 8 Hour XP Boost

I have not stop this feature, I just waiting for foundry to reopen. I use the mission data base to help me out on what new mission are playable, but with foundry down, I can not use the data base. I hope that you will not take my head and understand this.

Hello everyone. DStahl seems optimistic that a Tribble build will be going out tonight with a Foundry fix. If all goes well, he says, we could have a patch to Holodeck as early as Wednesday.

However, we must remember that as good as patches are, they can also be very, very bad! Afterall, patches are what introduced bugs to Holodeck in the first place.

What is the solution? Super-test! Test thoroughly! The better we test, the more we can identify potential problems before they’re pushed to Holodeck. Hence, I suggest all StarbaseUGC goers to sign on this evening and tomorrow to Tribble and make some testing missions. What is our gameplan?

Ground Map Stability

The current problem is that certain bugs are baked into some ground maps. I imagine a good way to test this would be to make mission that require us to spawn into and run around on as many ground maps as we can. As we all know, there is a max of 10 maps per mission, so it may take us a couple of slots to thoroughly run through each ground map, but this thoroughness should be worth it.

Optional Testing

Preview Mode Minimizing

This is a weird one that many of us have noticed. No clue if they’re related, but it might be a wise idea to run pop in and out of the editor to see if anything here has changed. If you crash, well, at least you know its still a problem, right?

Remember, if you find any bugs, make a ticket about the bug using the In-Game Bug Reporting Tools, copy the Ticket Number, and then go to The Foundry Testing forums and post your ticket number along with a description of the problem. I will be making a Tribble Test Team forum thread this evening when the patch goes live (if it goes live, that is), so maybe that will be the best place to post any problems you find, so QA can have one thread to focus their attention.

Happy testing!

• Battle Bridge, Created by Rejak

• This is a recreation of a generic Battle Bridge for use as an asset on custom map builds.

• The installation was done on a ground map centering around the install point of the base platform at coordinates 300,300,300. This places the object high enough in the air to get the sky backdrop.

• The build you see below was done on the ground map “Alpine Forest Clearing 01″ with a backdrop of “Exterior Sky Night 05″.

• The “viewscreen” is actually a window looking outside. You will see the backdrop of the map you use.

In addition, it is possible to place objects out there and “see” them in the viewscreen.

• I have placed a console outside the room that you can use as a “component complete” to deactivate the forcefield.

continue reading…

In this thread, Executive Producer Dan Stahl gave us an informative update on what is happening with the Foundry:

If you are like me, you are frustrated that the Foundry is off again.

I’m here to give you an update on where we are at and let you know what to expect in terms of bringing the Foundry back online.

The issue was identified a week ago and is related to a change that was made in the way template maps (the maps you copy and use for UGC missions) work.

At the time, this issue was not reported as random and was not impacting all maps, only a subset of template maps, with the result that if you were teamed and transfering on these missions, it could crash your client.

The fix requires an entirely new “build” (a build is a packaging up of all the assets related to the game into specific zip files) and was not something that we could easily fix in a hotfix patch.

We tried to do this anyway by manually fixing one of the template maps and pushing it out in this morning’s build. The effect was that it cause more problems that it solved, and thus the only solution we now have is to make that new build. Due to the constant crashes from the issue being more widespread than reported, I asked for the Foundry to be shut off to avoid further issues.

The good news is that the new build has been made and is sitting on the QA internal shard where they confirm the issue is resolved. We are working on getting this build prepped for Tribble on Monday. Then if everything tests out and the QA and UGC team gives us the ok, we will get it to HOLODECK asap and turn the Foundry back up.

Rest assured that the Foundry downtime has hit the radar of the executive board and we are taking steps to ensure we don’t run into situations like this in the future.

So for now, the Foundry is off, but you can expect it back up and running as soon as we can get this new build to HOLODECK next week.

Seems like I’m the bearer of bad news this week… but I’m doing what I can to keep you informed.

-dstahl