Hi all,

Since the Foundry might see some love for Season 6, perhaps this site could help by creating a few master lists of things that need attention, like bugs, etc.

Project 1:  Assets that “don’t make sense.” 

There are not bugs per say, but they are things that seem dumb.  This includes assets that require counterparts that don’t exist.

Example: There is a platform for a Captain’s chair, but no Captain’s chair in the Foundry.  That doesn’t make sense, does it?  Well, maybe if you’re making a mission to find the stolen chair, and never actually find one.

Or, these could include things that seem pointless or difficult to use.

So, here goes.  I’ll start a list.  Please add to it with every example that you can think of.  Hopefully, if the devs devote some attention to this stuff, then they could use our master list.

1. (as mentioned) We have a platform for a captain’s chair but no captains’ chairs.

2.  The rock platform meant to fit in the middle of other rock platforms doesn’t look right.

3.  We have like 9 federation door walls (only 1 opens) and only like 3 fed-style walls.  Plus, no floors or ceilings.

4. We have some rock-like walls, but no way to fit them together to make tunnels. Putting them together results in texture overlap.   Also, no cave floors or ceilings, apart from cave maps, where the rock walls don’t fit to the ceiling.

5.  Tons of ceiling props.  No ceilings.

6.  Sickbay props.  No Sickbays.

7.  Tons of crates.  Interiors are already full of crates that can’t be deleted, moved, or erased.

8.  We have brigs and jails with forcefields in place already.  We should have separate forcefield doors, so that brigs can be opened and closed.

9.  The only usable, horizontal forcefield is “broken.”

10.  Our ESD map is the old ESD.

OK, I’m sure that we can grow this list very quickly, if we all work together to create it.  Please leave a comment with your examples of assets that “don’t make sense,” and I’ll add it to the list.

Thanks!

Over on the official forums, Leirus has suggested an excellent idea for author collaboration:

This is some side project in collaboration with two friends I have been starting to work on.
Since we have RP Fleets on both sides, I thought of a way for them to work together as a team on missions with our own settings. Also, it should involve more than 5 players.

The solution came to me when I watched Return of the Jedi again the other day. Split them into teams, working towards the same goal, but dependant on each other! This requires some RP of course, but I assure you, the first few tests were great fun.

So, basically you do not create one big mission, you create three (or more). They can be done by different authors, obviously, so it might save the individual author a lot of time through collaboration.

(snipped for brevity)

The beauty is: All three missions would be “valid” missions on their own, but this is a way to create events, collaborate and create real dynamic missions, that could even include a kind of “Moderator/Gamesmaster” via the chat or the TS.

(Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=216236 )

What do people think of this idea? It’s certainly a great way to encourage collaboration between different authors, while having a more realistic “Different teams working on different tasks” approach to problem solving.

Hi Guys & Gals:

I’m looking for help to do a massive 5 part Factory Mission.

Series Title: More Than Meets The Eye

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Dissent Part I: Walking in the Air

Part one of a five part series now on Holodeck. Now completely revamped from the ground up. Only one map made it intact from Tribble. So for folks who have played it already, it is a nearly completely new experience.

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Hi All,

Your faithful friend Filbones here. I’d like to thank you, for all the support I’ve gotten recently for these Noob Guides, as well as the reviews I’ve been doing for you all. Hope they haven’t been too critical and help you make constructive changes to your mission. I as always start out my Guide with this.

“I only know what I know and that changes every second of my life. I do not call myself a Vet or Professional towards the Foundry tools. I only share what I think I know and hope that you may find something I know that you can use.”

For those of you just visiting or only hearing of me for the first time, feel free to check out my StarbaseUGC posts here or have a look at Noob Guide One and Two by clicking on the numbers. If you’re interested in my reviews you can check out the STO Forum Thread here.

So this week we will be covering Map Transitions and Social Map Objectives. A big shout out to LordOfPit [LOP] for Helping me use this post and by playing and talking about his mission Project Revava.

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Noob Guide to Foundry Part 2 Video Tutorials

So this week I’ll be covering video tutorials, not necessary because I want to make all the links and info available to you, but because I also want to go back and watch them all to revise stuff to use within my own missions. Please let me know if any of the content within is not as the author had intended. The rating system is based on how informative the tutorial is and how important its contents are to a Beginner Author. Some may be good video’s but as  the foundry has changed I have had to lower the rating for some tutorials with obsolete design techniques.

If this blog isn’t to your pace check out.

http://www.startrekonline.com/foundrywalkthrough For the Official Walkthough.

OR

http://starbaseugc.com/wiki/index.php/Tutorials For the a comprehensive database of tutorials.

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You are the only one who can restore balance to the quadrant and not only save the race and culture of an enemy, but restore power to the organisation and ideals you have believed in your entire life. With all the forces against you, the only option is to prevail. You are forced to disobey orders to save the United Federation Of Planets.

• Old Feuds
• History Repeats Itself
• A Mysterious Stranger
• No Starfleet Authorisation

With all the forces against you, the only option is to prevail.

EPISODE ONE : Post Production

Can’t Keep A New Suit Clean

EPISODE TWO : Production

All Warriors Are Cold Warriors

EPISODE THREE : Pre-production

Shall We Not Revenge?

Can’t Keep A New Suit Clean TEASER ONE

Can’t Keep A New Suit Clean TEASER TWO

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MISSION REVIEW : DEFIANCE

MISSION STAGE : FINAL DRAFT

MISSION CODE : ST – TBEE6RWRN

MISSION LEVEL : +41

LENGTH : 15-45min

AUTHOR : CHADDY18

DESCRIPTION :  On routine mission to transport some dilithium crystals to Dr. Bohen at the Warp Engine Research Institue. Your crew recieves an unusual distress call from the Aelas System in the Devron Sector, close to the Romulan Border.

RATINGS OUT OF 5

• Game-play 4.5
• Difficulty 2
• Trek 4.5
• Grind 2
• Design 5

When you hang around the StarbaseUGC chat room long enough you become needed. Had just finished doing a review on a first mission, first draft, test mission, done by a talented new author. It was a 1hour grind, but did show allot of promise.  Just to put you in perspective it was 4am and was ready for bed. When some one asked. “Does anyone have 20min to try out my mission.” This was Chaddy18. My response was “As long as it only takes 20min.” I had had enough of foundry and was ready for bed, but said what the hell I’ll do it. So after a brief discussion of what he wanted feedback for, I was off again. “please make this a good mission, Please make this a good mission.” Over and over again in my head. I did not start this mission willing to like it. I LOVED IT!!!!

If you haven’t played this mission yet, get on Tribble and play it right now. I promise it is worth your time. IF this is not enough to make you want to play it, please read on.

“Grrrrr my puzzles broke!.” Chaddy18

Absolutely awesome design, well thought out story and dialogue,  great cannon references and as good as a weekly from Cryptic. This mission is as good as it can be using Foundry.

• Tip one: Pick up the mission at a space station
• Tip two: Take a fire extinguisher.
• Tip three: Use your STF build.

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MISSION REVIEW : MONOLITH

MISSION STAGE : DRAFT

MISSION CODE : ST – TTZ5L30JK

AUTHOR : HAVRAHA

DESCRIPTION :  A federation archaeologist team has uncovered evidence of a previously undiscovered alien civilisation, but what starts as a scientific expedition, may end in apocalyptic destruction.

RATINGS OUT OF 5

• Game-play 4
• Difficulty 3
• Trek 4
• Grind 2
• Design 4

Found this gem while on Tribble during maintenance. Havraha has a very unique way of making a simple story seem epic in scale. After seeing only one review on this mission, I couldn’t help but wonder why? Surely I could play this mission and see what not to do with my own missions, but as soon as I was engulfed in the story I saw very little wrong with it.

“Its my most overlooked one.” Havraha

Thoroughly engaging story, excellent dialogue and well designed maps, as well as some interesting Foundry techniques you may not have thought of.

It was a privilege.

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When I was still involved with City of Heroes, I made a story mission there and a very nice community member was making posters for us authors. Each writer would then make a thread of their own to publish their mission and track its reviews and the poster was a big part of things, especially since sometimes Paragon Studios mods helped us post the poster itself in our threads and even publish it in the CoH “newspaper”. continue reading…

Taken from Darren_Kitlor’s “PROJECT: Starfleet & KDF Intelligence versus Section 31 and other Fringe Groups”:

1) Urban Environments

Urban landscapes (while not the final frontier) are curiously absent in Star Trek Online. These environments would be remarkably suited for diplomatic and intelligence matters (and such environments exist in Champions Online). A solid question exists – how do you create a city at random?

A temporay solution, until the community finds something better, are developing an array of tilesets for major factions (i.e. Klingon Buildings, Romulan Buildings, Federation Buildings, Cardassian Buildings). Assets already exist in the game for many exterior building structures.

The trick with Urban environments is that they are both horizontal AND vertical spaces.

To add building diversity, structures could have catwalks and stairs, allowing players to move between them (and possibly avoiding detection, i.e. aggro distance).

There are a number of missions that could fall under the umbrella of intelligence/espionage: from sabotage/theft/hacking, to convincing contacts, to personal level intelligence gathering.

How can multiplayer be implemented?

3) Faction Cities

Using art assets already in-game or developed in part 1 (and developing just enough to give the “feel” of iconic cities in Star Trek), the developers could quickly roll-out iconic cities from the series.

Examples of canon Capital City Layouts:

* Old Quarter – Qo’noS – Klingon ( – see here – )
* Administrative District – Romulus – Romulan ( – see here – )
* Capital City – Bajor – Bajor ( – see here – )

Many development concerns exist: in-game performance issues, lengthy development time, and whether it’d actually be useful to gameplay/socialization/etc. Here’s some ideas (whether used already or not – just as background).

Performance &/or Development Time Tricks:

* Occlusion – hiding objects behind other ones (fencing/siderails as in Qo’noS).
* Skybox – using a pre-rendered texture box to give the illusion of depth.
* “Invisible” walls – used to prevent access to unfinished areas.
* LoD buildings – used in conjunction with 3, LoD can give the appearance

Note: Using existing assets will help speed up city development.

Suggested wards, burroughs, or cantons to each city:

* Trade Ward: (culture specific and faction-common items, exchange)
* Bars/Clubs: (social hubs)
* Embassy Row: diplomatic missions from your faction (also where intelligence assignments can be given by factions).
* Starport: (ship items, courier/dignitary transport from faction official)
* Instanced housing: players could have a private (on planet) meeting place, perhaps with a pre-rendered skybox of the city out the window, assuming the faction has property laws.

With the ability to eventually create our own custom environments, I think it’s about time to propose a project for UGC creators to build a few cities. Darren’s thread has a few ideas in creating urban (environments) but I thought I’d open it up to suggestions on cities that should be made first. Obvious choice for Earth are:

• San Francisco, US
• Paris, France
• Any suggestion that wins the most votes on Earth (New York City, Las Vegas, etc)

Unfortunately, we should only pick one Federation allied city and work on that until completion (unless we have the manpower to have multiple Federation cities being worked on). Having one city complete and ready to be used for mission making would prove to be a useful benchmark in the creation of other popular locales. It would be rather embarrassing on our part to use cities that are half-baked or mostly incomplete for the variety of missions that will be created for them.

But I also propose we not forget our Klingon counterparts/colleagues. We should also begin a Klingon city proposal. Since there is hardly mention of Klingon cities and even fewer actual pictures of Klingon cities, collaborators will have to get a little creative.  I have included a list of cities named in Star Trek lore from Memory Alpha so we can vote on the particular city we should work on first.

Cities of Qo’noS

• First City (capital)
• Qam-Chee
• Quin’lat
• Tong Vey
  

Anyone interested?

I went through and read the entire timeline to 2409 last night.  A part of me is almost sad I did.  I now feel that Cryptic dropped the ball even worse than I initially felt like with their initial leveling content.  I was thinking this morning that maybe we could pick up the slack?  There is so much content that simply begs to be written!  I was wondering what people would think about making a “grand unified” project to bring the missing content that never made it into the game?

What the game should have had:

Federation Klingon Front should have been 45 levels focused heavily on combat and PvP with live open PvP centered around the Archanis Sector.

*The J’mpok/Martok struggle and the federation involvement along with the territorial advances in the Hromi Cluster

*The defense of the Federation and attempted diplomatic attempts to stop the war

*The focus on rooting out the Undine infiltrators.

Federation Romulan Front should have had 45 levels focused heavily on intrigue and diplomacy with a twisted path leading to an attempted alliance against the Klingons.

*Discovering the secrets behind Sela’s disappearance a few years ago.

*Solving the clues to discover what happened to Taris.

*Repulsing further attempts at Klingon incursions into Romulan territory.

*All of this under the Romulan mistrust, political tensions, and backroom politics.

Federation Cardassian Front should have focused heavily on crafting and rebuilding a devastated but slowly emerging Cardassian democratic society and it’s defense against the Alpha Jem’Hadarr and rogue True Way faction.

*Crafting a variety of items using crafting minigames to help rebuild Cardassia Prime

*hunting clues as to the werabouts and resources of the True Way faction

*performing tactical strikes or using crafted resources to hamper or mitigate the True Way/Jem’Hadar threat

*Neutralizing the Gul Madred threat to the Cardassian democracy.

Klingon Empire should have focused heavily on faction wars (KvK) and PvP (FvK)

*Two houses and their allies, J’mpok and Martok fight for internal control over the Klingon Empire.

*Agressive war in the open PvP Archanis Sector

*Small forays into the Romulan Empire for supplies

*Facing the Orionis crisis with the Borg and Undine

Little of this seemed to make it into the game, certainly not an extensive full content for each one.  Instead we’re left with a small story arc for each area before we quickly move on to another front, and each one outside of the story basically fights the same way and has the same lack of non combat development.

My question is. . .could a combined StarbaseUGC effort be made into delivering these missing components (obviously we can’t create open PvP)?  Would a core group of dedicated and talented UGC artists be able to catch the eye of Cryptic in order to bring this content into the mainstream leveling field.  Is it even feasible that we and Cryptic could deliver 4 separate level 1-45 fronts?

Maybe I’m just hallucinating and getting too excited about UGC, but I felt that if everyone worked together and we took things in small chunks we might eventually reach a lofty goal such as this.  What about the rest of you, what are your thoughts?

~D