A few new bits and snipets from the devs here.   Late last night, Dan Stahl told us:

The Foundry is going into a short closed beta this week (crossing fingers)

Stormshade gave a few more details about what to expect:

Hey gang,

I just want to give you a quick heads up about The Foundry’s Closed Beta. We’re going to be keeping this closed beta test very small, and limited. It will also be very short. Our goal is to keep it as short as possible while we work very hard to incorporate the feedback from a very small focus group in order to prep The Foundry for a Tribble release for Open Beta.

So, essentially what I’m saying is, if you don’t get in to the Closed Beta, rest assured that your wait for the Open Beta should be fairly short.

Breaking News, from the new Engineering Report. Dstahl writes:

We are also happy to announce that the Foundry (our mission authoring toolset) will be moving into Beta in the next two weeks. This will be the first step in turning on authoring tools that allow players to create their own missions. At the start we’ll be focused on stability and usability with a few guinea pigs who’ve shown their value as testers on TRIBBLE.

Once we’ve verified the publishing system is functional and stable, we’ll open it up on TRIBBLE for everyone- most likely in the first half of November. We recognize that with a tool such as this, it will take some time of player interaction and feedback to iterate on the functionality of the authoring system. We expect the Foundry to stay in Beta even as we release Season 3. Even though the Foundry will remain in Beta, our goal is that everyone will be able to participate in testing these tools either on on TRIBBLE or HOLODECK as we gather your feedback and play the missions you are creating.

More details about the beta program will be posted as we get closer to opening up the system on TRIBBLE. For now I’m attaching a few screenshots I took today while editing a patrol mission I’m working on. Consider it early alpha sneak peak footage

Screenshots:

Full Engineering Report