This week on Foundry Files, we cover the week’s foundry news, and then we sit down with Community Manager BranFlakes to discuss his involvement in all things Foundry!

This episode of PrimetimeUGC is a stripped down version with Foundry News and an extensive

interview with Star Trek Online’s ZeroniusRex.

The team at PrimetimeUGC has released their interview with Producer ZeroniusRex. Check out the interview, made completely with the Foundry, here.

Show notes: News Cast and Interview

Link to the interview

Link to the forum post

This is our 20th episode, and to make it more special, we have a Neverwinter exclusive.

We spoke with Zeke Sparks, Lead Designer, and Rob Overmeyer, Executive Producer.

There are also, not 1, but 2 mission reviews this time around.

Hello my Fellow Founders.. Foundry Types.. Foundrians?

This is your chance to get your questions answered by the Neverwinter Developers, specifically to do with the Foundry.

Please post your questions in the comments here or on  http://tavernugc.com/foundryqa and late on Sunday the 27th, we’ll pick the best and send them directly to the team.

This is a really exciting opportunity for us all to find out more about the Toolset in Neverwinter.

We eagerly await your questions!

Cerb

(P.S. sorry for the late posting, I thought someone else was posting it here)

This is the first Primetime of 2013 and of its 3rd season. We host HippieJohn, as well as review

his mission Spectres:Episode 6 which won him first place in STO’s Foundry Challenge #5.

Kirkfat also teaches triggers in his latest edition of the Back to Basics series. Plus….Chalaskie invades.

A few quotes from Dstahl’s latest Q and A:

As far as Reputations go, we are planning to introduce several new Reputations over the next two years. Some of the reputations being considered include PvP, FED/KDF Warfront, Tholian Task Force, Foundry Play, and Crafting, to name a few…

We’ve poured significant resources into creating procedurally generated random space encounters and, unfortunately, they never quite feel like the Trek you are talking about. This is why we created the Foundry, so that players could author missions that are much more genuine and offer something new. The next step will be to marry the Foundry to a solid Exploration concept where you can be rewarded for exploring new sectors of randomly (but player created) strange new worlds. That is the basis of what we want to do with Exploration in the future…

Q: (nyxadrill) Would it be possible to add a “My favorites” tab to the foundry list UI? There are several excellent foundry stories that I like to go back to from time to time but they are fairly well spread through the list. I know we can custom search which is fine but it would be nice to be able to add them to a favorites list for quick reference.

Dstahl: This is one of the features that we hope to port over from Neverwinter after they launch in addition to the ability to subscribe to a Foundry author. Look for this feature late in 2013…

By the way! Foundry authors will have access to the Tholian space critters and Tholian EV suits as antagonists in next week’s Holodeck update. This will also let our players begin to tell their own Tholian stories.

Its a holiday extravaganza! Crazy Chalaskie stops in to join in the fun, We interview STO EP Dan Stahl, we have a review of Slaves and Seduction by our own Kirkfat, as well as his Foundry Essentials. ENJOY!

Hey Everyone,

Next Friday, Dec. 7th, PrimetimeUGC will be interviewing Executive Producer Dan Stahl.

We’re looking for your questions too!

Make sure to leave them in the comments below, we’ll select the best and present them to him, and probably roll those that didn’t make the first cut into more generalised larger questions… you know what I mean I’m sure.

So make sure you get all your questions in no later than 3PM PST on Dec. 7th.

This is a great opportunity to get all your foundry questions answered,

Primetime interviews Logitech007 by proxy and Kirkfat delivers his fourth in a series of Foundry Essentials Back to Basics. Chalaskie drops by.

Better late than never, we aired PrimetimeUGC 2 hours late, and as a result could not present The Great Link tonight.

Be that as it may, we bring you guest author XR-377, plus a review of his newest creation, The Computer’s Children.

We also introduce a new cast member. Tune in to see who it is…..

In case you missed it, this month’s “State of the Game” includes a nice shout-out to Foundry authors.

Dan Stahl writes:

The Foundry

The Foundry is awesome and the people who make Foundry missions are even more awesome! There are so many amazing missions being made on a weekly basis that it is a downright shame that we haven’t found a better way to integrate these missions into the standard flow of the game. Right now they are on a filtered tab, but we can do so much more. Foundry missions should also offer better rewards and fill content voids where they exist. If we could adopt the missions and ensure they are integrated with the overall arch of the game, it would show the power of crowdsourcing.

Watch the new episode of PrimetimeUGC featuring Guest Author, Zorbane. Then become one

with the Great Link with Gingie and GreenDragoon. The Founders are wise.

Follow us on Twitter @Primetime_UGC and @GreatestLink

Presenting The Great Link, recorded live on Monday 9/10/12 with guest Wilv.

As most STO Foundry authors know, Cryptic has been hard at work on a new MMO based on the Neverwinter setting. As part of it’s development Cryptic has greatly enhanced the Foundry and has been aggressively pushing it as part of its media campaign. Perfect World was at PAX Prime and Lead Producer Andy Velasquez gave us a quick demo of the Foundry and its integration into the game world. Over the course of the interview, Andy went over three main concepts for the Foundry; how to access UGC content, how to create it and Cryptic’s intentions to spotlight author’s work.

Finding UGC missions

On display first, was how the UGC content could be accessed. STO Foundry vets have long desired a better system to advertise their missions to the general population and they’ll be extremely pleased to know that the system has been completely revamped in Neverwinter.

There are three different ways that UGC missions can be accessed:

• The landing page
• Notice boards
• NPCs

The landing page loads every time a player logs on and within the page ‘Upcoming Events’, the guild ‘Message of the Day’ and ‘Auction House Status’ are located. Foundry missions are prominently featured with a short list of missions highlighted by Cryptic. The full catalogue of UGC missions can also be accessed from this location. There are numerous ways to filter missions such as by level, rating, language etc…The mission list is similar to the catalogue in Star Trek Online, but with more detail and has the ability to group missions into Campaigns.

A more “RP” way to access UGC missions will be the job board. From here the list of UGC missions will appear in a similar way as the landing page’s mission catalogue.

Finally UGC missions may be accessed by speaking with barmaids or harper agents who provide a small selection that are appropriate for the area.

Like STO, once the UGC missions are accepted they are seamlessly integrated into the player’s mission list.

The Foundry

After showing us the ways users could find UGC missions, Andy took us through a walkthrough of how to build them. STO and prospective Neverwinter authors will be happy to know that building the mission is now much easier and user friendly. While the overall structure is the same, there are a few differences.

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Check out the new Primetime with guest drogyn1701. We also premiered our new live segment, The Great Link

Show notes:

Exclusive preview of the upcoming Ken Burns documentary: “The Dominion War.”

Primetime UGC’s newscast, with Castmodean.

Exclusive interview with Drogyn1701, along with a mini-review of his mission “Sink the Bismarck.”

Kirk’s Phat Assets highlights the new TOS sets available in the Foundry.

Foundry Essentials: A quick tutorial on precise item placement.

And more….

In the latest “Ask Cryptic,” Dstahl fielded an important question about the Foundry and potential rewards for playing spotlighted missions.  Here is the info:

Q: (th3gr4ndnagu5) You mentioned that Foundry Spotlight missions will be getting official rewards. Will these missions also get full Skillpoint rewards as well?

Dstahl: The rewards that will be offered will be done via a secondary mission, which Cryptic controls, rewarding players upon successful completion of a specific Foundry mission. The reward will be similar to the types of rewards that you receive from Episodes in that they will potentially grant numerics as well as items appropriately scaled to the Foundry mission.

This episode of Primetime features two interviews. The first is with our own Havraha and the second is with Zeronius Rex from Cryptic.

PrimetimeUGC opens its second season after a month long hiatus with an Author Interview with AdmiralMurphy of Foundry Filesfame, as well as his many Foundry mission series.
Priimetime also unveils its first Foundry Mission Contest.

Contact us at mailbag@PrimetimeUGC.com

Contest Rules:
Just author a Foundry mission centered around a “rogue computer system” i.e. technology gone awry.
It must be published, playable, and submitted to our mailbag by midnight June 30th EST with the mission title and project ID.
Length of mission is not an issue, but keep it reasonably close to the 30-60 minute mark.
It can be either faction.
Most importantly, have fun.
You could walk away with a brand new D’Kora Class Cruiser, donated for this contest
by the gentlemen of the Gates of Stovokor podcast.
Many thanks to Soriedem in particular.

For this week’s “Founder Spotlight,” we sat down with Woghd.  Enjoy!

Q:  You are the author of Grazorak City, which was one of the winners of the second Foundry challenge. Can you tell us more about this mission, what inspired it, and what you hope players will get from it?

The last thing I ever expected to happen was for Grazorak City to win that competition. I only entered it as a lark. The competition entry period just happened to line up with when I was about to publish. And just happened to be on the same subject as my mission. (time loops), and on top of all that everyone was begging me to enter it. So I held off for a few days and entered it into the contest. I never expected it to win.  After all, this was my first effort at creating a foundry mission!

Grazorak City has it’s roots in tabletop roleplay. Back in the early 80′s, I was a gamemaster for a Star-Trek based table-top RPG. Grazorak City was sort of a central point around where a lot of the adventures were based, much in the same way that DS9 is the central hub of the adventures of that series. I still have all of the maps I drew out, and all of the NPC sheets I used. As a result Grazorak City had an advantage in the competition because all of the characters were fleshed out with complete backstories, etc. Many of the comments on that mission state that the characters seem alive, or “come to life”. I believe this is why. I GM’d those characters and that environment for 20 years, and I’m sure it shows.

The reason that I created Grazorak City in the first place was just so I could have a place for my character to hang out. I had a lot of preconceptions in my mind about the foundry at that time, being a beginner. For example, I assumed that I could move back and forth between maps. I really thought I’d be able to recreate Grazorak City from my maps and be able to walk around in it. It soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. I don’t like to waste work, so I took what I had and fashioned it into an adventure starring Duft Grazorak and a host of other characters from the old days. I hope that players get a sense of true-life from it. I love the comments where players say that for a few moments they forgot they were playing a game. That kind of immersion is what I am shooting for. It’s good to know that people can play out the scenario and forget their troubles for a while.

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