Questions for ZeroniousRex, PrimetimeUGC Interview

cerberusfilms

Hi there Foundry-Types and such

PrimetimeUGC will be interviewing Associate Producer ZeroniousRex ( Zero ) A week Tomorrow (28th June) about the latest exciting Foundry updates hitting Tribble and where they are leading us.

If you have any Questions for her please drop them below.

The interview should air the following Monday and be available for YouTube viewing by Tuesday.

( Zero is also the Dev responsible for the Foundry in STO)

Cerberusfilms

drogyn1701

Most important: In what shape will existing Foundry missions be once these Tribble changes get pushed to Holodeck and how much work will it take before we can republish. Can we test this first!?!

Others:

Is what is live on Tribble now the sum total of what we're getting for season 6 or is there more to come?

Many of us feel that the current review system favors the 10 or so missions at the very top, and punishes missions with fewer plays, where one low rating can drag a mission way down the listing and prevent it being seen by most players. Can we expect to see a better review system, or a better search system or both?

What is Cryptics stance on offering some kind of reward for Foundry missions (beyond the spotlight)?

What has Cryptic learned from the Season 4 Blackout, and can we expect a smoother launch this time.

Can we expect bug fixes for the things we have reported on Tribble? For example, the absence of the Utopia Planitia backdrop, the odd costume creator behavior, the publishing bug, etc.

Would it be possible to keep the Thundercougarfalconbird by not republishing a mission even after Season 6 goes live?

What did dstahl mean when he said (paraphrasing) that Foundry missions might be used to replace existing content?

dstahl said last week that there was a dev who is solely responsible for going through and hooking up new maps to the Foundry. Can you elaborate on what maps this dev is putting in and when we might expect to see them?

Tumorboy said the fleet starbases will be in the Foundry. How will this work? Can we use interior and exterior maps within our missions, or will they just have doors we can set as entry points? Or both?

zorbane

Will there be a way to make NPCs disappear?

psycoticvulcan

There 25 Terran Empire ship designs in the game, and only three can be placed in the Foundry as assets. Will this be fixed?

Will we be able to despawn NPCs?

Will we be able to customize mobs in terms of weapons and abilities?

Will we be able to place Dreadnought mobs? (just say in the description that they can't be beaten by a single player on his/her own)

designationxr377

Will there ever be an option to show player skin in a Dialog Box; for mirror/clones or anything else? It's been asked for a lot and I wonder if it is below the radar or beyond the programming.

What is the best way to get bugs in the foundry to the right people? Bug reports feels unresponsive and history (Contact Death in specific; where it was asked for over a year and didn't change until a dev made a mission) shows that posting them on the forums doesn't guarantee getting a healthy response either. Is that just perspective because we can not see behind the curtain? What is the best way to get you the bugs we find and make sure you know they are there?

nagorak

Does Cryptic even listen to feedback posted about the Foundry? Time and again things are discovered in testing, and I'd say 3/4ths of the time they are not fixed, despite being well documented.

Already people have brought up concerns about how things work with the Foundry on Tribble, such as the fact that invisible objects are completely invisible in the editor, and there has been no acknowledgement of the issue, nor any indication that it will be fixed. Should we even bother posting feedback?

woghd

Sorry...

Can't really tell who's saying what!
...and I don't have the time to analize every little post. No offense, but could you PLEASE post this on StarbaseUGC???

ajstoner

I can think of only three really burning issues:

1) Exactly what affect will the changes coming to the foundry have on published missions?

2) Is ANY functionality being removed from the foundry with the trigger changes?

3) What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

designationxr377

ajstoner wrote: »

...
3) What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I suggest you specify the genus.

galactrix

Now that we can specify the names of NPCs to appear above their faces in dialogue popups, can you put in some tag there so we can make the player's Bridge Officer names appear there?

For example, you can specify a player's bridge officer to appear in the dialogue window, but there's no way for us to specify the names of those Bridge officers like we can for player captains using the [Firstname] [Nickname] and [Lastname] tags in dialogue boxes.

ajstoner

Okay, one other item has occurred to me. It has been brought up by myself and others several times but it has gone seemingly unnoticed: Can a costume option be added to represent the current player's character so it can be used in the dialogue boxes. This is a very simply little change that would open vast possibilities for mission creation.

designationxr377

ajstoner wrote: »

Okay, one other item has occurred to me. It has been brought up by myself and others several times but it has gone seemingly unnoticed: Can a costume option be added to represent the current player's character so it can be used in the dialogue boxes. This is a very simply little change that would open vast possibilities for mission creation.

Between the two of us we got it in there twice, hopefully we get an answer.