Foundry Back Online! :)

simplyshawn · October 2017

Not only is The Foundry "currently unavailable" on the Character Selection Menu, but I personally can't load any Foundry Quests... I get "No Matches" regardless of which Tab/Search.

What's going on? Were the rumors true? Is The Foundry officially gone?

Edited the title so it doesn't scare anyone. Thanks to the Mods and Devs for the replies!

simplyshawn · October 2017

Please tell us we're wrong. The Foundry community is here. we just need reliable tools.

zebular · October 2017

Don't buy into rumors. After every module update, the Foundry goes down for a while as it is updated and projects are resynced. This generally lasts a few days to a couple weeks. There was only one time that it came back within a day of a new module. Once it is back, the available projects will start with a few and gradually grow as each is republished internally. Those that pass and are compatible will become available as they are internally published and those that don't will need to be updated and republished by their authors. Once it is back up, to see if yours needs updated, you just need to load it in the foundry and see if there are any pending errors to fix. If not, then you just need to wait for it to re-appear or republish it manually.

simplyshawn · October 2017

Ok, thank you for the clarification. Sorry I jumped to conclusions.

mattjohnsonva · October 2017

It's down on STO too. We don't know why. Missions began to be republished automatically a few hours after Season 14 released, a few days later and most were back. We then inexplicably got a notification on Facebook that due to unforeseen circumstances the foundry has had to be shut down. Poof, all gone. Was supposed to be back after last week's maintenance, it wasn't, instead patch notes stated it is temporarily unavailable. We are hoping for a return on tomorrow's patch but I don't hold out much hope because Cryptic feed us no information at all. The only snippet we got was from a NW/STO cross over live feed where one of the devs stated they were updating the publishing systems and some assets were being added.

I'm completely sure it will return, however, when is anyone's guess.

mattjohnsonva · October 2017

UPDATE from STO:

Apparently a fix (for something) has been found and will be implemented soon.

ukunaka · October 2017

zebular said:
Don't buy into rumors. After every module update, the Foundry goes down for a while as it is updated and projects are resynced. This generally lasts a few days to a couple weeks. There was only one time that it came back within a day of a new module. Once it is back, the available projects will start with a few and gradually grow as each is republished internally. Those that pass and are compatible will become available as they are internally published and those that don't will need to be updated and republished by their authors. Once it is back up, to see if yours needs updated, you just need to load it in the foundry and see if there are any pending errors to fix. If not, then you just need to wait for it to re-appear or republish it manually.

Thanks for the clarification, i was terrified to see my world map missing waterdeep, went to check catologue thinking they probably were just reset and had to be reaccepted only to be mortified that it was all gone, i thought after finally getting the prelude chapter of waterdhavian nights published for group alpha testing they just yanked it all away, after the frustration i went through with the publisher server not working for half a month after a patch in september.

iandarksword · October 2017

Zeb is right, this is absolutely normal following a module/mid-module release. Dev Patrick mentioned in the Maintenance Stream that they're actually working on getting us some newer maps and assets to place. I'm not sure what or how recent the new assets will be, or any ETA on the new stuff, but progress is progress. A little optimism for you guys to think about while things are down temporarily.

nitocris83 · October 2017

Hi everyone! We are working to get the Foundry back up as quickly as possible (after it gets disabled with module releases). This time our Core team detected an issue that was impacting both Neverwinter and Star Trek Online Foundries so it may take a couple weeks to get it up. Our goal is to make sure it doesn't take as long as it's previously been after some releases.

hustin1 · October 2017

nitocris83 said:
Hi everyone! We are working to get the Foundry back up as quickly as possible (after it gets disabled with module releases). This time our Core team detected an issue that was impacting both Neverwinter and Star Trek Online Foundries so it may take a couple weeks to get it up. Our goal is to make sure it doesn't take as long as it's previously been after some releases.

Excellent! For the past few weeks I've been wondering about the state of the Foundry server: when trying to run a quest (any quest) it would get stuck at loading for up to ten minutes before timing out.

There's also the longstanding bug where a party would be split across multiple instances upon a map transition, but that's a separate issue.

mattjohnsonva · October 2017

nitocris83 said:
Hi everyone! We are working to get the Foundry back up as quickly as possible (after it gets disabled with module releases). This time our Core team detected an issue that was impacting both Neverwinter and Star Trek Online Foundries so it may take a couple weeks to get it up. Our goal is to make sure it doesn't take as long as it's previously been after some releases.

This is good to know, except we were told on last night's live stream for STO that it would be very soon, two weeks does not seem like very soon considering it's been down now for the best part of three weeks already. Would it be possible to get a clearer idea of the time frame? Cheers.

simplyshawn · October 2017

> @iandarksword said:
Zeb is right, this is absolutely normal following a module/mid-module release. Dev Patrick mentioned in the Maintenance Stream that they're actually working on getting us some newer maps and assets to place. I'm not sure what or how recent the new assets will be, or any ETA on the new stuff, but progress is progress. A little optimism for you guys to think about while things are down temporarily.

Woo!!! That’s GREAT news. Some new assets would be worth a bit of a wait. Should also kill the rumors that The Foundry is being removed, since it's actually getting an upgrade.

> @nitocris83 said:
> Hi everyone! We are working to get the Foundry back up as quickly as possible (after it gets disabled with module releases). This time our Core team detected an issue that was impacting both Neverwinter and Star Trek Online Foundries so it may take a couple weeks to get it up. Our goal is to make sure it doesn't take as long as it's previously been after some releases.

Great news as well, I'm so glad to hear The Foundry is getting some improvements.

mattjohnsonva · November 2017

Well, it came back for a few days on STO, then suddenly, without warning or notification went down again. Not a peep from the Devs. It seems the foundry problems are pretty severe. That being said, we had no issues actually running the missions whilst it was up.

tripsofthrymr · November 2017

Update: One of the engineers tried to republish quests yesterday but ran into more issues. They're working on those issues. It's not forgotten.

mattjohnsonva · November 2017

tripsofthrymr said:
Update: One of the engineers tried to republish quests yesterday but ran into more issues. They're working on those issues. It's not forgotten.

Thank you.

simplyshawn · November 2017

tripsofthrymr said:
Update: One of the engineers tried to republish quests yesterday but ran into more issues. They're working on those issues. It's not forgotten.

It's good to hear that the engineers are hard at work getting The Foundry back online - I'm excited to get back to it!

banzaikitten · November 2017

imho.
i am a foundry junky to, and made some ,ehm, nice stuff.
would it be great to notify foundry builders that there creations need a "revamp" with ingame message mail.
just my 2 pennies.

miasmat · November 2017

We tried to get it working before we all went on break, but didn't get through all the tasks in time. We'll try to finish getting Foundry working next week. Sorry this delay had been longer than normal - there's some internal stuff we're changing that had unexpected side effects on Foundry.

simplyshawn · November 2017

miasmat said:
We tried to get it working before we all went on break, but didn't get through all the tasks in time. We'll try to finish getting Foundry working next week. Sorry this delay had been longer than normal - there's some internal stuff we're changing that had unexpected side effects on Foundry.

That's ok, it's been nice that you've all been giving us these updates on how it's going. Hopefully the rest of that task list will go by smoothly for you all

marcomeioh · November 2017

I wish I had seen this thread before... I spent hours re-installing NWN and trying to figure out if I had messed up any setting... LOL.

By the way: it would be great to display a message saying 'coming back soon" in the job board instead of showing a "no quest available" message...

simplyshawn · November 2017

LOL! I did that when the publishing error happened recently.

And I agree, a "The Foundry is under maintenance - check back soon!" message in the Catalogue would be great, and so would a formal "The Foundry is back online! Authors, check to see if your quests need updates etc." in the main "News" page when it comes back up would also be a big plus, because it would remind casual players that this thing called The Foundry exists

Would be nice if rather than "The Foundry is Currently Unavailable" on the Character Select Screen it said "The Foundry is undergoing routine maintenance" as well, at least when it's planned/expected downtime like now.

It's probably not worth adding things like that to the current task list for this particular maintenance though, but maybe for when The Foundry goes down after the next mod? They're little things, but it would make casual players more aware of The Foundry and save players like you time when these things happen lol.

mattjohnsonva · November 2017

On STO we don't even have that, the Create content button is just greyed out and if you click the foundry tab in game it's just a blank screen. We have patch notes today and still no update, it just says "The Foundry is temporarily unavailable". Just wondering when temporary becomes permanent in Cryptic's book? A few hours, maybe a few days is temporary for me, weeks less so, months is not temporary, months is a serious issue, and one that seems to be unfixable. At least here you guys get feedback, on STO we get nothing, not a single comment from any Dev about the problems.

fergazo91 · December 2017

Im waiting to prove this Quest maker, it would be very funny to play and create some adventures. Someone know when its going to be playeable? Thanks! (PD: im new in the game, i download a week ago)

simplyshawn · December 2017

@mattjohnsonva I started this thread over the same fears you have: that The Foundry was getting side-lined. A lot of us have been worried about that. I think the Mod and Dev replies above though should make it clear that it is very much coming back for both our games. I do just want to point out that, while the devs may not have commented on the STO, they did explain above in this thread that the bug they're fixing affects both the NWO and STO Foundries. So once it's fixed, they should both come back online. At least, that's my understanding.

@Feragzo91 Should be back soon! And it is really fun! Once it does come back online, I'm thinking of creating some tutorials based on the things I had to figure out working on my first quest. I'm also a new foundry creator, just started over this past summer, but I hope I can save some others a bit of the learning curve

@miasmat said they were working on it this past week, so maybe in one of the next couple maintenance updates? It sounds like they're working out a rather difficult bug that affects both NWO and STO, so we've gotta be patient lol, but it should come back better than before.

mspretya · December 2017

Well, I think the fear of getting side-lined as a foundry author is eligible. I remember that the foundry was once not available for over half a year and when we got it back... well nothing really changed. Even a preset map that was destroyed (with pre-set trees suddenly flying) was not repaired, so that one couldn't use it anymore. I hope that this time, it won't be that long until we get our foundry back

simplyshawn · December 2017

mspretya said:
Well, I think the fear of getting side-lined as a foundry author is eligible. I remember that the foundry was once not available for over half a year and when we got it back... well nothing really changed. Even a preset map that was destroyed (with pre-set trees suddenly flying) was not repaired, so that one couldn't use it anymore. I hope that this time, it won't be that long until we get our foundry back

Fair enough... I wasn't around back then so maybe I'm a bit less "burnt out" in regards to how long The Foundry has been under-prioritized...

That said, I myself still felt like it was being thrown out after only a few months of waiting for it... then getting it "back" for a few months, only for it to go down again... And since it's the reason I started playing NWO, that really upset me (you can see my previous threads and posts, in addition to this very one; I've been pretty outspoken about how much the lack of foundry quality has disappointed me.)

However! I'm gonna believe the mods and devs in this thread until/unless proven wrong. I don't think it's their fault, and I do think Cryptic and PWE are hearing us... Maybe I'm just a dreamer, but, they've literally replied to this thread saying they're working on The Foundry... if they didn't care, they wouldn't do that. So, I see reason for hope.

I think the best thing we can all do is show our interest in The Foundry as players and creators, and be supportive of the devs working on it. I'm sure all us content-creators (or anyone who has worked with code) can relate to a bug that just won't stay squashed no matter how you stomp on it. It sounds like that's what they're dealing with right now, and yes, I completely agree that the current "reason" The Foundry is down doesn't excuse any of the previous reasons it has been down, but the current reason is the reason we (and they) are at.

Aaaaall that said, I have a question for you @mspretya:
You've been around for a while I take it, and I've only been reading about issues with The Foundry over the years as a bystander. I've read that there where a lot of issues with "gaming the system" and such... Do you think that's why PWE and/or Cryptic kinda put it on the backburner for so long? And when it comes back, what do you think us authors can do to show PWE and Cryptic that there is a genuine interest in The Foundry? An interest that isn't trying to create "supermegafastreviewfivestar" type quests and, moreover, can help push those types of quests out of the catalogue?

This is just my opinion, but, I see it as the devs create a tool, and how it gets "used" is up to "users"... meaning, if we want it to get prioritized, we have a responsibility to make good content and do our best to discourage poor content... I've played that balancing act in other game's engines, but I honestly don't know the NWO modding community well enough to know... well, to know how to do that here haha.

Do you? Does anyone wanna try to band together and figure it out? Has the community tried this before? What worked, what didn't?

miasmat · December 2017

We tried to get the Foundry running for this week's maintenance, but it didn't work out. We have a few critical people struck with the office plague, so it's been rough getting all the pieces in place for an update this week. We have a really strong suspicion that we fixed the last problem with Foundry internally, with the goal of pushing that to Preview this weekend and live next week's maintenance.

Sorry this has been dragging on so long - but there really are a lot of moving pieces that affect this.

joenettles · December 2017

Any chance we can get an offline editor?? Then at least we could get things ready for when it comes back up on live. I have quest I never finished from years ago, but when I start again the system goes down. If it's possible we just need an editor that can be copied over to live then verified before publishing,

rancidmojo · December 2017

joenettles said:
Any chance we can get an offline editor?? Then at least we could get things ready for when it comes back up on live. I have quest I never finished from years ago, but when I start again the system goes down. If it's possible we just need an editor that can be copied over to live then verified before publishing,

You're talking about something like the campaign editor in Neverwinter Nights only for an MMO....That would be nice, but would probably require a lot of work to create. I don't even know how feasible it is for this game, though it would be nice.

Heck, at this point I wish they'd make the STO foundry 3D like NW. But I don't see that happening any time soon, realistically.

simplyshawn · December 2017

Any update on how things are going?

joenettles said:
Any chance we can get an offline editor?? Then at least we could get things ready for when it comes back up on live. I have quest I never finished from years ago, but when I start again the system goes down. If it's possible we just need an editor that can be copied over to live then verified before publishing,

An offline editor sounds great, but I don't think it could happen for NWO. The more stuff stored locally, the more files that have to be checked at runtime, and since in order to run it/use the 3D Editor it has to be online, it would be really limited anytime we did use it in the offline mode.

Unless I'm wrong, but, I haven't even gotten into the idea of people uploading "hacked" quests if there is a local file they can modify.

rancidmojo#7824 said:

You're talking about something like the campaign editor in Neverwinter Nights only for an MMO....That would be nice, but would probably require a lot of work to create. I don't even know how feasible it is for this game, though it would be nice.

Heck, at this point I wish they'd make the STO foundry 3D like NW. But I don't see that happening any time soon, realistically.

NWN1's Toolset was, IMHO, one of the best for any game ever. Being that it had a primary single-player campaign, with multiplayer available, BioWare was pretty safe in giving full access to items, NPCs, scripting, etc. Nobody was going to ruin the game for other players if they created something ungodly powerful or exploitative.

However, if you remember, "hacking" did become such a part NWN1's Multiplayer that there were tons of "Hacking Servers."

Anyway, the NWN1 Toolset is what gave that game so much life. All the custom content and persistent worlds made the multiplayer worth logging into everyday like it was an MMO - the thing was though, it wasn't an MMO, so all those different types of gameplay where cleaning organized into different categories of servers. There was a custom-gameplay niche for everyone. I think when NWN2 was in development they kinda missed the mark on what made NWN1 so great. They should have had a multiplayer/custom module focus.

All that said though, while NWN and NWO share a name, they're very different kinds of games, and an editor like NWN's Toolset just wouldn't and couldn't work for an MMO with only two servers like NWO. People exploited The Foundry it has enough - imagine if people could actually create their own stats for items?

hustin1 · December 2017

Theoretically you could have an ability to upload a quest in text form (e.g. in XML or some structured language), but it would mean that the server would need to run anything submitted through a validation process to keep exploits out. Right now, there is no provision to set the stats for any objects, and limiting what the language allows would be a simple way of enforcing it. The server would have to validate things like asset counts in each category, proximity of traps to one another, etc. Theoretically, if the language was open the community could create its own editor and all that would be needed of the client would be to do the actual upload, but integrating it into the client would be the preferable solution. If the community created an editor, even a simple top-down one with abstract representations for rooms and assets (e.g. the editor in Legend of Grimrock) would let authors accomplish a great deal.

Of course, if the devs were to allow us to apply a vertical skew to rooms and/or corridors, then even simple isometric plan views are possible, for example:

Foundry Back Online! :)

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