I'm expecting being able to build your interior like you can build your starbase interior. I expect each plant, chair, statue and painting to cost Delithium. The same way Windows, tribbles, tables cost to build in a fleet.
To the contrary, I hope this path doesn't come to pass.
A single chair for 100k? No thanks.
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
Putting some things aside like, people who seem to switch ship types a lot(holds up hand)
The demand on the game for all this content.(Why I fear going in and discovering my e-mails are one day gone)
I do not like the free Oddy bridge. I have stated that it is unfinished and to me it looks like place holders. Rather then coming into here and harping on it I would like to just go in and when I switch back to it be able to "fix" it on my own. Then if it looks bad, well that's just on me.
So editable interiors are a good thing to me.
As we have now seen in the Fleet stations, there are special projects. For other design options. Could this not be expanded to include special ship or Doff missions to add something new. You encounter a new race, Feds go Talk to a, help b, return to a. Klingons get a talk to a, kill b, return to a. They offer to give you something, perhaps a new shuttle then is seen in a shuttle bay. You go to a planet, find an old abandoned settlement and there is a non functioning soda machine. You beam it up and then have it repaired and then in the mess hall you have a new trophy. Perhaps not the greatest examples but you get the idea.
A area that has a barber shop/tailor so you can change outfits without having to warp back to a star base.
Going to the shuttle bay to switch to a shuttle, not the transporter room. Seeing a cargo bay. I could keep rambling on....
Hi this is like my second post so bear with me. I am not Gamer savvy as it were, but I have opinions (most bad about STO) but see some promise. But one thing is really getting on my nerves.
I see images, but there are no reference of an Odyssey Class Bridge. I want that bridge so bad I got 2000 Zen just to own it, but apparently THERE IS NO ODYSSEY BRIDGE! True what can I complain for, I'm F2P anyways, but as stated earlier it would be kind of...you know...NICE if the bridges match the ships. Hell go with the Foundry idea, but how the hell do you come out with a ship, with images, videos, and one fine piece of work bridge, and it doesn't even exist.
If you're going to push a product, and advertise it has something, then I advise you have it complete. Now I see why they gave them out for free, because I'd rather have a Sovereign with the CORRECT bridge (or opportunity to have it), then a ship without it's own class bridge that was made public.
Rating on this issue? :mad: I want my wasted time back.
They're too busy working on Neverwinter and lockboxes.
and new Zstore stuff
even if i can to make the inside look of my ship they will still be as useless as before other then i can switch to shuttle and i dont even do them no more
To the contrary, I hope this path doesn't come to pass.
A single chair for 100k? No thanks.
Actually, buying certain "looks" and aesthetics could actually be nice. Things like extra trophy slots (Baring we get new trophies. :P), things to put on your desk, fill your ready room and personal quarters with. Putting things that you've won/been awarded(/stolen :P) on display. Perhaps a "Weapon Rack" of some kind were you could store/display weapons not in use...
Hi this is like my second post so bear with me. I am not Gamer savvy as it were, but I have opinions (most bad about STO) but see some promise. But one thing is really getting on my nerves.
I see images, but there are no reference of an Odyssey Class Bridge. I want that bridge so bad I got 2000 Zen just to own it, but apparently THERE IS NO ODYSSEY BRIDGE! True what can I complain for, I'm F2P anyways, but as stated earlier it would be kind of...you know...NICE if the bridges match the ships. Hell go with the Foundry idea, but how the hell do you come out with a ship, with images, videos, and one fine piece of work bridge, and it doesn't even exist.
If you're going to push a product, and advertise it has something, then I advise you have it complete. Now I see why they gave them out for free, because I'd rather have a Sovereign with the CORRECT bridge (or opportunity to have it), then a ship without it's own class bridge that was made public.
Rating on this issue? :mad: I want my wasted time back.
What did you buy? The Odessey ship @ 2500 zen should come with a bridge unique to them. The free one has a different worst looking (imo) bridge that cannot equip the paid one.
What did you buy? The Odessey ship @ 2500 zen should come with a bridge unique to them. The free one has a different worst looking (imo) bridge that cannot equip the paid one.
I got the Free one, and I don't have 2500 to get a paid for one. The fact is why bother giving out the Free one if you can NEVER have the proper bridge?
The free one was only a purrmeowtional thingy to let players see the Oddy before it comes out as a Z-store version.
Taco, I'd really like to see your idea in the game: Intrepid-class owners get Intrepid-class style deck layout, bridge etc. same for Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Excelsior, ****stitution etc.
By the way, welcome to the forums, trekkie gurl. *hugs*
"Everything about the Jham'Hadar is lethal!" - Eris
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
The free one was only a purrmeowtional thingy to let players see the Oddy before it comes out as a Z-store version.
Taco, I'd really like to see your idea in the game: Intrepid-class owners get Intrepid-class style deck layout, bridge etc. same for Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Excelsior, ****stitution etc.
By the way, welcome to the forums, trekkie gurl. *hugs*
Thank you, I guess I'll keep my Odyssey anyway. Hell if I'm going to spend 2500 for one just for a bridge. :P
Seeing the way interior maps are currently built in-game and in Foundry, it's very obvious that they're all room boxes connected with hallway boxes. This may be fine if you're digging out an underground cavern facility or dungeon, but it's not the way ships or even most buildings are made. You don't make rooms in ships or buildings by "placing rooms" and connect them with "hallway pieces", you have an outer area in which you place walls. Rooms are created by partitioning the spaces inside the ship or building. To use the naval parlance, compartments are the spaces in the hull separated by the bulkheads. Hallways and corridors aren't separate "pieces", they're the space between the compartments.
My ideal way to have ship interiors made would be to have a set "outline" for each class of ship (no need to distinguish the individual variants of each class, they're all about the same basic shape and volume). This "outline" would represent the interior volume of the ship for a particular deck, and the outer walls would be auto-populated with windows corresponding to the shape of windows selected in the ship tailor. There are three decks, as we currently have: the command deck, the crew/main deck, and the engineering deck.
Within these deck outlines, you place bulkheads (walls) at your discretion, compartmentalizing your decks to your specifications. You populate the compartments you make with appropriate items and label them accordingly. There are key rooms that everyone must have: at least one main engineering, one main transporter, one main sickbay, etc.
However, looking at the Neverwinter Foundry demo at PAX (relevant clip starting at 11m30s in), Cryptic appears to be firmly in the mindset of keeping interior mapmaking as a set of room boxes connected by hallway boxes though. What does this mean when STO gets Neverwinter's Foundry update? Will we be able to configure ship and building interiors that in no way conform to their exterior shapes and volumes? Probably.
But it doesn't have to be that way. There is a way to compromise. Check out this video for Starship Corporation (about 2 minutes in). Here we see prefab rooms (not unlike Neverwinter's Foundry) being arranged within deck outlines. This ensures that the overall volume and shape of the ship interior conforms to what it's supposed to be in order for that deck to be inside the ship. If STO did something like this however, you probably wouldn't see things like windows in crew quarters (which I would argue is a bad design scheme anyway for ships that have a high likelihood of seeing battle), but you could feasibly still have an outer corridor with windows looking out (as is depicted in the blueprints for the NCC-1701-A's saucer section).
I concur that room-by-room building would only make sense for ground structures rather than ship interiors.
The way I see it, there are two ways ship interiors could be implemented:
Tumerboy / Tacofangs' musing of a fixed deck / room layout
Players simply choose their carpet / arches / doors / LCARS. The Foundry tool could be used to position minor decorative objects.
A hybrid of Starship Corporation, Cryptic's Foundry and 0 A.D.'s Atlas 3D real-time editor
Each ship class would have a set number and shape of decks
Rooms can be arranged within the boundaries of each deck, although important places like the Bridge, Ready Room, Engineering, Sickbay, airlocks, docking ports etc will have permanent canon locations that players would simply have to "build around"
Using "Windows anywhere" (a variant of NW Foundry's "Doors anywhere"), the system automatically places interior windows in rooms that are located adjacent to the hull
Player selected choice of carpet / arches / doors / LCARS as usual
Foundry also used to position minor props in realtime 3D
Thoughts?
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
Tumerboy / Tacofangs' musing of a fixed deck / room layout
Players simply choose their carpet / arches / doors / LCARS. The Foundry tool could be used to position minor decorative objects.
I would actually like this better. Architecture is complicated, and I am the kind of person who would spend hours trying to get it to look just right. As you can imagine, I really hate The Sims. :P As cool as it would be, it would just be too time/resource consuming for both the Developers and the Players to implement. I would just be fine with picking textures/colours for carpets/floors/walls/lights/etc. and choosing the type/size of chairs/tables/etc.
Starships are supposed to be standard issue with the same interiors. Sure, let me carve out a home in it, let me hang banners on the walls, place trophies, awards, paintings, decorations that I've been awarded, given (Stolen :P), but building stuff from scratch would just be silly. I have Minecraft for that.
There is a point where it becomes too customisable, so this would be one that should be kept simple, and you don't have to have an engineering degree to use it.
I would prefer it if interior designs are transferrable. There are a ton of people better than me at producing awesome interior designs and it would be nice if I could use other people's designs with a few minor changes to personalize it.
And I could see where the new system could be used to generate canon-ish deck plans as prefabs.
Agreed.
So, going by my original proposal:
Each major ship class (ignoring cosmetic variants) would have a unique number and layout of decks e.g. 15 for Intrepid, 42 for Galaxy.
Where possible, canon locations are used for the important rooms / facilities like the bridge, ready room, sickbay, engineering, transporter room, shuttle bay and so on.
Each class of ship would have at least one additional, unique room with an unique mini-game only found on that class.
The most basic form of customisation would happen at the Ship Tailor / Shipwright, where in addition to choosing the ship hull material, windows and external cosmetic variants, one could choose the carpets, doorways, corridor walls, LCARS panels, enable/disable holographic displays etc.
The next level of customisation would occur in the ship interior itself, where players can set shipwide uniforms for the wandering crew, control gender/species proportions, assign BOffs to bridge stations / rooms, choose what trophies to display and even customise the appearance of DOff contacts.
The most detailed (and final) level of customisation would have players use the Foundry to position individual props.
In addition to the various mini-games I've mentioned in the past, the player customized ship interiors can be used in missions e.g. the observation lounge for First Contact missions.
I think an fictional example case study would be the best way to explain the above points:
FED player @sumghai flies a standard Intrepid-class ship, and decides to check out the new ship interior customisation system.
He first stops by Earth Space Dock's Shipyard, where via the shipwright he chooses the canon Intrepid exterior with Windows 1 and Hull Material 2 (he's a Voyager fanboi, y'see). For the interior, he chooses the canon Voyager carpet, corridor and door, but opts for a 2409 blue LCARS, as well as enabling holographic displays.
Next, he goes into the ship interior, and is pleased that Cryptic has finally scaled the hallways and rooms properly (no more silly auditoriums!).
Looking around the canon Voyager bridge, he notices that the wrong BOffs are at the wrong Station, and decides to remedy this by walking up to each station and choosing a BOff from a list, with the following result:
- First Officer Commander Tom Richardson, Human Male in the First Officer's seat.
- Tac Officer Lt. Commander Christine Barber, Human Female at the helm.
- Ops Officer Lt. Commander Geoff Ong, Human Male at the Ops station
- Security Officer Lt. Commander Mirra Shran, Andorian Female at the Security / Tactical station
- *Junior* Science Officer Ensign Akorem Rolan, Bajoran Male at the Science station
- The Master Systems Display is unoccupied
- The Engineering station is unoccupied
Satisfied, he enters the turbolift, consults the 15-deck ship's directory and heads for Deck 2.
When he arrives, he swings by the Mess Hall, and sees the generic chef, bartender and counselor DOff contact NPCs:
- The default counselor NPC is changed to have the skin of an otherwise unused BOff, Counselor Lt. Commander Natasha Klay, Female Human
- The bartender NPC is changed using a tailor interface to recreate a Rulian Mazan lookalike. The NPC's name simply uses the name of the custom saved costume "Rulian Mazan"
- Similarly, chef NPC is tailored into a Male Bolian in civilian garb called "Chett Brott"
He then toys around with his trophies and accolades.
On Deck 3, he find his Captain's quarters, which he decides he would deal with later.
On Deck 4, he first heads into the Transporter Room, and changes the Transporter Chief NPC's skin into another unused BOff, Transporter Chief Lt. Michael Andrews, Human Male. He then visits the Security Complex and changes the Security DOff NPC to use the skin of yet another unused BOff Lt. Chavek, Romulan Male.
On Deck 5, he changes the Doctor DOff NPC in Sickbayto Lt. Commander Lelania Tigan, M.D., Trill Female, and the Science Officer DOff NPC in the Science Lab to Chief Science Officer Lt. Commander Corat Remara, Cardassian Male
On Deck 6, he pops into the holodeck and plays a mini-game of Velocity, choosing First Officer Cmdr. Richardson as his AI opponent. He wins a few hundred EC, and decides he will check out the other minigames some other time.
Decks 7 and 9 weren't all that interesting to him, other than nice doorways for Foundry missions, while on Deck 8, he visits the Cargo Bay to dump some inventory.
On Deck 10, he swings by Astrometrics, checks out the Stellar Cartography minigame, before heading into the shuttlebay, which is populated with two Type 8s. He mucks around with the inventory of the shuttles he owns (a Type 8, a Delta Flyer and a Runabout) before moving on.
On Deck 11, he heads into Engineering, and changes the Engineer DOff NPC in to Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Vrin K'vov., Andorian Male, and the Ops DOff NPC to Ensign V'ruk, Reman Male.
The remaining Decks 12~15 were again mostly doors for Foundry missions.
@sumghai then pops back onto the Bridge, where he uses his Ready Room computer to set his ship's standard uniform(s) and decides on a nice mix of various canon and original alien species - only 20% of his crew are humans like himself.
After exploring around the ship interior a bit more, @sumghai then heads on into the Foundry, where he adds a mug to his Ready Room table, some books inside the Captain's quarters, and a damaged panel section to one of the corridors near Engineering.
Before he logs off, he invites stoleviathan99 and centersolace to team up with him and two PUGers and play a 5PvE boarding action scenario using his customised ship interior. The game is a fairly close one, and centersolace suggests to @sumghai that littering crates throughout the corridors might help impede the boarding party in future games.
The following day, @sumghai plays a First Contact mission, which takes place in the Intrepid-class observation lounge next to the bridge. After one playthrough, he decides that the canon Voyager conference table is fugly, so he pops back into the Foundry to have it changed to something from the Enterprise-E.
I would prefer it if interior designs are transferrable. There are a ton of people better than me at producing awesome interior designs and it would be nice if I could use other people's designs with a few minor changes to personalize it.
It has been mentioned that making custom ship interiors tradeable between players would help create a true "crafting" economy in STO.
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
I admire you're enthusiasm, but the amount of manpower it would take to create all that would leave us in a content-less limbo for a very, very long time.
Cryptic has one advantage, is that Star Trek typically used redressed sets. So they can create chunks and mimic parts of the ship and reuse them in other parts. For instance the Sets used in Star Trek 6 was reused for the Prometheus bridge. The hallways of the Enterprise-A and the Engine Room were redressed Galaxy sets.
But unfortunately, Cryptic doesn't have the time, resources, or the skill necessary to completely create a fully archtectually-accurate starship. More or less doing this for every ship in STO. And they can't use outside help since that would also cost money in legal fees for contracts and agreements to do the work.
Right now, the best bet is what they did currently with the ship interiors and just limit them to the necessary parts and do their best to recreate the archetecture as best they can. They got away with the Defiant because it's a tiny ship, and the TOS Consitution set was mainly limited to the canonical set design.
But personally, I know Cryptic with some incentive could make architectually accurate ships. Meaning you look at that map and you know automatically you are on a Prometheus or on a Galaxy-class. I know because right now I'm actually making a good chunk of the D7 Interior for my Foundry Mission and just using the Foundry, I made a fairly accurate ship, complete with sets seen in TOS, TAS, and Star Trek 6. So with time I know Cryptic can throw things together than just more than simple hallways. Cryptic's artists with the tools could do such a thing with the remaining ships.
However, like I said earlier, they just don't have the manpower to do that. And it was mentioned they need a reason to make accurate interiors. So are people willing to pay for them to make your player ship accurate?
Why aren't players given access to create interiors and submit them to Cryptic for use in game? Fans have made canon interiors for several other Star Trek games once the tools to make them became available. (EF1 & EF2, Bridge Commander)
Cryptic could offer rewards in terms of Dilitium or Free points to spend in the store. It would be cheaper in terms of manpower to have players make them instead of having them hire additional staff or spend a significant amount of time building these.
I dont understand why this business model isnt implemented, when so many players on the forum have been asking for better interiors since launch. It would speed up game development and create a greater satisfaction amongst players.
There is a lot of enthusiasm in this thread, and while I appreciate that, my original (hypothetical) proposal was meant as a guideline of something that is feasible. Building 42 fully flushed out decks for one ship, is not feasible.
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
So basically the KDF ship interior (singular, the one interior used for all KDF ships, not counting bridges, which makes sense to have the same sized Main Engineering on a B'rel and a Vo'quv) was used with the foundry tool?
[SIGPIC]Handle: @kirian_darkstar
Registered: Oct/2009 , LTS : Feb/2011
Fleets: Warriors of the Phoenix, Kirian Industries[/SIGPIC] Three years and still no Captain Klaa hair...
There is a lot of enthusiasm in this thread, and while I appreciate that, my original (hypothetical) proposal was meant as a guideline of something that is feasible. Building 42 fully flushed out decks for one ship, is not feasible.
It's feasible, just not practical.
After all we barely have any reason to go on our ships right now. And just be a waste to fully create a fully architectually-accurate interior with every floor available. Right now, the only real reason is if you made maps for boarding parties or Borg assimilation of the ship like in First Contact.
Come to think of it, that would be a pretty awesome idea to do. Stop the Borg from assimilating a starship and force them back.
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
Exactly, this is a literal sense of "square peg in a round hole". The only parts of the ship that would have straight corridors would be in the Engineering Hull.
Maybe if you took player-made ship interiors from the Foundry and the art team uses that as a template to create the real interiors, thus saving time? Because ship interiors really need a good runthrough, like Klingon Interiors just doesn't feel like you're on a Klingon starship.
Why aren't players given access to create interiors and submit them to Cryptic for use in game? Fans have made canon interiors for several other Star Trek games once the tools to make them became available. (EF1 & EF2, Bridge Commander)
Cryptic could offer rewards in terms of Dilitium or Free points to spend in the store. It would be cheaper in terms of manpower to have players make them instead of having them hire additional staff or spend a significant amount of time building these.
I dont understand why this business model isnt implemented, when so many players on the forum have been asking for better interiors since launch. It would speed up game development and create a greater satisfaction amongst players.
PWE restrictions?
Le sigh...
Using the Foundry they can, but outside of STO it would require legal work in making contracts and agreements. Then the work has to be done with particular tools within certain limits (like polygon counts).
And using interiors used in Bridge Commander and Elite Force, Cryptic would have to pay Activision a lot of money to use them. And like with fan mods, they have to convert those old files to be used in STO. So basically its cheaper and faster to do it themselves.
There is a lot of enthusiasm in this thread, and while I appreciate that, my original (hypothetical) proposal was meant as a guideline of something that is feasible. Building 42 fully flushed out decks for one ship, is not feasible.
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
Fallout 3 + G.E.C.K
Portal 2 + UGC
Mission editor for CnC Generals
Try thoose... might give you guys some ideas.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
It's very square, but that was of my choosing. I could have made it a circular room. We can rotate stuff to any angle that we want to. It would still be a little "boxey" since the props are not curved.
All of my fed interiors are curved hallways and usually non-square rooms. If we had more than 3 federation walls, it would help. All you guys would need to do is break up the standard fed interiors into lego pieces.
We've been asking for that for a year and a half. But, we can't even get a transporter pad.
Anyway, if you want to make a curved interior, then rotate the next set of walls 35 degrees.
It's very square, but that was of my choosing. I could have made it a circular room. We can rotate stuff to any angle that we want to. It would still be a little "boxey" since the props are not curved.
All of my fed interiors are curved hallways and usually non-square rooms. If we had more than 3 federation walls, it would help. All you guys would need to do is break up the standard fed interiors into lego pieces.
We've been asking for that for a year and a half. But, we can't even get a transporter pad.
I think this is one of those areas where it would make little sense to do the work twice by creating wall kits and then re-doing it for interiors, NW style.
From what I can see with the Neverwinter Foundry, they will probably have halls and rooms in a variety of lengths and styles. Curved. Straight. Different layouts and colors. And you will be able to plug them together, auto-creating a door. Then you can select the door and change it.
The only place I'm not sure this would help is with crazy holodeck dissolving maps and maybe maps that change dynamically... and that was always a bit of an exploit on Foundry authors' part. I don't know that they really foresaw or intended us doing that and it's generally bad form for multiplayer without doing some rather tricky stuff as an author.
I'd say that's generally true of most Foundry tricks and one reason I'm very cautious about them. I make a point not to design anything that multiplayer will break.
But if we get 12-15 styles and lenths of Fed hallway and plugging them into eachother or a room can create a door or archway, that's BETTER AND EASIER than what we have now. And it would be shortsighted to focus Foundry efforts on something that will be obsolete in 6-12 months.
I'd rather they focus on NPC pathing, making NPCs disappear, and plugging in more small assets, consoles (like, all of the TOS style consoles), and costumes. If they're going to spend effort on prefab stuff, I'd much rather see empty TOS decks and Defiant decks added, as I can see that having a longer lifespan for authors. Also, both Academy zones and some Klingon Academy brick style walls, fountains, etc.
In fact, I think they should probably focus on anything BUT interior design for the time being unless they're prepping hallways and blank rooms for NW-style construction already.
There is a lot of enthusiasm in this thread, and while I appreciate that, my original (hypothetical) proposal was meant as a guideline of something that is feasible. Building 42 fully flushed out decks for one ship, is not feasible.
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
Couldn't you just have prefab curved hallways that act as "rooms" that can be linked? (Heck, depending on the curve, they could make a giant circle.)
I think this is one of those areas where it would make little sense to do the work twice by creating wall kits and then re-doing it for interiors, NW style.
Do we have any evidence that this interior builder is coming to STO's foundry? I don't remember hearing or seeing anything about it, except in the context of NW.
But, regardless, even with it, those set pieces would still be useful for custom maps, don't you think?
No, we built the super base editor even before CoV (i.e. long before the sell off)
We heard very little praise back then for the editor, and got almost nothing but complaints. Our statistics showed that only about 10% of people used the base for anything other than a quick door to teleport around the rest of the world.
All of that is one reason we've been hesitant in doing it over again. We tried a new method with Hideouts in Champions, which seemed to be met with moderate success, but took a lot of work to build.
I've heard nothing about redoing ship interiors. My personal feeling is that there should be little customization on layout. If you have an Intrepid, you get an Intrepid class layout. If you have a Defiant, you get a Defiant class layout. But I think players should have control over a few different overall styles, textures, colors, and lighting. So all Galaxy Class ships would have the same layout, but you could choose from TNG style (beige, brightly lit) or 2409 style, or random style A, B or C. etc.
However, that is just my personal feelings on the matter, no work is being done on Interiors at the moment, and havent heard of it being added to the schedule at all. Plus, all of that would be a lot of work.
I agree, and some type of crew uniform, a boff placement tool, and the ability to reskin doff contacts as part of our crew
I agree, and some type of crew uniform, a boff placement tool, and the ability to reskin doff contacts as part of our crew
Especially the first; if we could just pick a crew uniform, even if it was nothing but a list "TOS, TNG, TNG Movie, 2409, etc", most of the people unhappy with interiors would be MUCH happier.
That other stuff would be even better, but that one thing would be relatively easy to implement and would be HUGE for the folks who want to hang out in their ships.
It's a low-hanging watermelon.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Do we have any evidence that this interior builder is coming to STO's foundry? I don't remember hearing or seeing anything about it, except in the context of NW.
But, regardless, even with it, those set pieces would still be useful for custom maps, don't you think?
I'm doubtful they would work if they have walls that can magically disappear and be replaced by doors when placed adjacent another wall.
It seems to me like it's a very special kind of project asset... and either way, probably a longterm feature.
I don't disagree with you, depending on what is technically feasible. I just think they could stay busy for weeks or months just focusing on tagging and separating outdoor building kits and items, along with tagging character costumes and creating pathing.
So as a matter of efficiency, I'd rather see Tholian silk robes, Ferengi jackets, expanded TOS and TNG costumes, Ferasans... Heck, if they have time and resources to design new stuff, enemy groups that use different weapon types without using any of the exotic stuff, boss encounters. Maybe alternate or improved contact dialogues that don't break cloak. Background mattes for NPC contacts. Added prefab NPCs like the DOff Hamlet cast. Omega Force, MACO, and Honor Guard costumes for NPCs.
I think interior construction is one of those brilliant things authors have done that really falls outside the scope of what the core use of the Foundry is designed to be... and supporting that OVER other things supports Ziggurat construction by authors which takes longer, resulting in slower player development of Foundry missions.
Overall, I think it's better to focus on allowing players to build good missions more quickly and with less technical know-how than spend time supporting highly technical use.
What you're looking at is NICE but in that realm where you should be going for a job at Cryptic rather than pushing the Foundry towards being a full development tool that is cumbersome to use.
Especially the first; if we could just pick a crew uniform, even if it was nothing but a list "TOS, TNG, TNG Movie, 2409, etc", most of the people unhappy with interiors would be MUCH happier.
That other stuff would be even better, but that one thing would be relatively easy to implement and would be HUGE for the folks who want to hang out in their ships.
It's a low-hanging watermelon.
That's a really interesting idea. Selecting from a list would probably be quite doable because then they'd just need to place full crews on the ship interiors in a variety of uniforms and have us basically just go somewhere on our ship and select a dialogue option that causes the selected type to spawn and the others to be hidden.
It's a bit more intensive on the content guys but probably less prone to breaking.
Comments
A single chair for 100k? No thanks.
The demand on the game for all this content.(Why I fear going in and discovering my e-mails are one day gone)
I do not like the free Oddy bridge. I have stated that it is unfinished and to me it looks like place holders. Rather then coming into here and harping on it I would like to just go in and when I switch back to it be able to "fix" it on my own. Then if it looks bad, well that's just on me.
So editable interiors are a good thing to me.
As we have now seen in the Fleet stations, there are special projects. For other design options. Could this not be expanded to include special ship or Doff missions to add something new. You encounter a new race, Feds go Talk to a, help b, return to a. Klingons get a talk to a, kill b, return to a. They offer to give you something, perhaps a new shuttle then is seen in a shuttle bay. You go to a planet, find an old abandoned settlement and there is a non functioning soda machine. You beam it up and then have it repaired and then in the mess hall you have a new trophy. Perhaps not the greatest examples but you get the idea.
A area that has a barber shop/tailor so you can change outfits without having to warp back to a star base.
Going to the shuttle bay to switch to a shuttle, not the transporter room. Seeing a cargo bay. I could keep rambling on....
I see images, but there are no reference of an Odyssey Class Bridge. I want that bridge so bad I got 2000 Zen just to own it, but apparently THERE IS NO ODYSSEY BRIDGE! True what can I complain for, I'm F2P anyways, but as stated earlier it would be kind of...you know...NICE if the bridges match the ships. Hell go with the Foundry idea, but how the hell do you come out with a ship, with images, videos, and one fine piece of work bridge, and it doesn't even exist.
If you're going to push a product, and advertise it has something, then I advise you have it complete. Now I see why they gave them out for free, because I'd rather have a Sovereign with the CORRECT bridge (or opportunity to have it), then a ship without it's own class bridge that was made public.
Rating on this issue? :mad: I want my wasted time back.
and new Zstore stuff
even if i can to make the inside look of my ship they will still be as useless as before other then i can switch to shuttle and i dont even do them no more
system Lord Baal is dead
Actually, buying certain "looks" and aesthetics could actually be nice. Things like extra trophy slots (Baring we get new trophies. :P), things to put on your desk, fill your ready room and personal quarters with. Putting things that you've won/been awarded(/stolen :P) on display. Perhaps a "Weapon Rack" of some kind were you could store/display weapons not in use...
There's lots of things that could be done.
What did you buy? The Odessey ship @ 2500 zen should come with a bridge unique to them. The free one has a different worst looking (imo) bridge that cannot equip the paid one.
I got the Free one, and I don't have 2500 to get a paid for one. The fact is why bother giving out the Free one if you can NEVER have the proper bridge?
Taco, I'd really like to see your idea in the game: Intrepid-class owners get Intrepid-class style deck layout, bridge etc. same for Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Excelsior, ****stitution etc.
By the way, welcome to the forums, trekkie gurl. *hugs*
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
Thank you, I guess I'll keep my Odyssey anyway. Hell if I'm going to spend 2500 for one just for a bridge. :P
My ideal way to have ship interiors made would be to have a set "outline" for each class of ship (no need to distinguish the individual variants of each class, they're all about the same basic shape and volume). This "outline" would represent the interior volume of the ship for a particular deck, and the outer walls would be auto-populated with windows corresponding to the shape of windows selected in the ship tailor. There are three decks, as we currently have: the command deck, the crew/main deck, and the engineering deck.
Within these deck outlines, you place bulkheads (walls) at your discretion, compartmentalizing your decks to your specifications. You populate the compartments you make with appropriate items and label them accordingly. There are key rooms that everyone must have: at least one main engineering, one main transporter, one main sickbay, etc.
However, looking at the Neverwinter Foundry demo at PAX (relevant clip starting at 11m30s in), Cryptic appears to be firmly in the mindset of keeping interior mapmaking as a set of room boxes connected by hallway boxes though. What does this mean when STO gets Neverwinter's Foundry update? Will we be able to configure ship and building interiors that in no way conform to their exterior shapes and volumes? Probably.
But it doesn't have to be that way. There is a way to compromise. Check out this video for Starship Corporation (about 2 minutes in). Here we see prefab rooms (not unlike Neverwinter's Foundry) being arranged within deck outlines. This ensures that the overall volume and shape of the ship interior conforms to what it's supposed to be in order for that deck to be inside the ship. If STO did something like this however, you probably wouldn't see things like windows in crew quarters (which I would argue is a bad design scheme anyway for ships that have a high likelihood of seeing battle), but you could feasibly still have an outer corridor with windows looking out (as is depicted in the blueprints for the NCC-1701-A's saucer section).
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I concur that room-by-room building would only make sense for ground structures rather than ship interiors.
The way I see it, there are two ways ship interiors could be implemented:
Tumerboy / Tacofangs' musing of a fixed deck / room layout
Players simply choose their carpet / arches / doors / LCARS. The Foundry tool could be used to position minor decorative objects.
A hybrid of Starship Corporation, Cryptic's Foundry and 0 A.D.'s Atlas 3D real-time editor
Thoughts?
I would actually like this better. Architecture is complicated, and I am the kind of person who would spend hours trying to get it to look just right. As you can imagine, I really hate The Sims. :P As cool as it would be, it would just be too time/resource consuming for both the Developers and the Players to implement. I would just be fine with picking textures/colours for carpets/floors/walls/lights/etc. and choosing the type/size of chairs/tables/etc.
Starships are supposed to be standard issue with the same interiors. Sure, let me carve out a home in it, let me hang banners on the walls, place trophies, awards, paintings, decorations that I've been awarded, given (Stolen :P), but building stuff from scratch would just be silly. I have Minecraft for that.
There is a point where it becomes too customisable, so this would be one that should be kept simple, and you don't have to have an engineering degree to use it.
However, a map underlay of the various ship types would be helpful for authors.
And I could see where the new system could be used to generate canon-ish deck plans as prefabs.
Agreed.
So, going by my original proposal:
Each major ship class (ignoring cosmetic variants) would have a unique number and layout of decks e.g. 15 for Intrepid, 42 for Galaxy.
Where possible, canon locations are used for the important rooms / facilities like the bridge, ready room, sickbay, engineering, transporter room, shuttle bay and so on.
Each class of ship would have at least one additional, unique room with an unique mini-game only found on that class.
The most basic form of customisation would happen at the Ship Tailor / Shipwright, where in addition to choosing the ship hull material, windows and external cosmetic variants, one could choose the carpets, doorways, corridor walls, LCARS panels, enable/disable holographic displays etc.
The next level of customisation would occur in the ship interior itself, where players can set shipwide uniforms for the wandering crew, control gender/species proportions, assign BOffs to bridge stations / rooms, choose what trophies to display and even customise the appearance of DOff contacts.
The most detailed (and final) level of customisation would have players use the Foundry to position individual props.
In addition to the various mini-games I've mentioned in the past, the player customized ship interiors can be used in missions e.g. the observation lounge for First Contact missions.
I think an fictional example case study would be the best way to explain the above points:
FED player @sumghai flies a standard Intrepid-class ship, and decides to check out the new ship interior customisation system.
He first stops by Earth Space Dock's Shipyard, where via the shipwright he chooses the canon Intrepid exterior with Windows 1 and Hull Material 2 (he's a Voyager fanboi, y'see). For the interior, he chooses the canon Voyager carpet, corridor and door, but opts for a 2409 blue LCARS, as well as enabling holographic displays.
Next, he goes into the ship interior, and is pleased that Cryptic has finally scaled the hallways and rooms properly (no more silly auditoriums!).
Looking around the canon Voyager bridge, he notices that the wrong BOffs are at the wrong Station, and decides to remedy this by walking up to each station and choosing a BOff from a list, with the following result:
- First Officer Commander Tom Richardson, Human Male in the First Officer's seat.
- Tac Officer Lt. Commander Christine Barber, Human Female at the helm.
- Ops Officer Lt. Commander Geoff Ong, Human Male at the Ops station
- Security Officer Lt. Commander Mirra Shran, Andorian Female at the Security / Tactical station
- *Junior* Science Officer Ensign Akorem Rolan, Bajoran Male at the Science station
- The Master Systems Display is unoccupied
- The Engineering station is unoccupied
Satisfied, he enters the turbolift, consults the 15-deck ship's directory and heads for Deck 2.
When he arrives, he swings by the Mess Hall, and sees the generic chef, bartender and counselor DOff contact NPCs:
- The default counselor NPC is changed to have the skin of an otherwise unused BOff, Counselor Lt. Commander Natasha Klay, Female Human
- The bartender NPC is changed using a tailor interface to recreate a Rulian Mazan lookalike. The NPC's name simply uses the name of the custom saved costume "Rulian Mazan"
- Similarly, chef NPC is tailored into a Male Bolian in civilian garb called "Chett Brott"
He then toys around with his trophies and accolades.
On Deck 3, he find his Captain's quarters, which he decides he would deal with later.
On Deck 4, he first heads into the Transporter Room, and changes the Transporter Chief NPC's skin into another unused BOff, Transporter Chief Lt. Michael Andrews, Human Male. He then visits the Security Complex and changes the Security DOff NPC to use the skin of yet another unused BOff Lt. Chavek, Romulan Male.
On Deck 5, he changes the Doctor DOff NPC in Sickbayto Lt. Commander Lelania Tigan, M.D., Trill Female, and the Science Officer DOff NPC in the Science Lab to Chief Science Officer Lt. Commander Corat Remara, Cardassian Male
On Deck 6, he pops into the holodeck and plays a mini-game of Velocity, choosing First Officer Cmdr. Richardson as his AI opponent. He wins a few hundred EC, and decides he will check out the other minigames some other time.
Decks 7 and 9 weren't all that interesting to him, other than nice doorways for Foundry missions, while on Deck 8, he visits the Cargo Bay to dump some inventory.
On Deck 10, he swings by Astrometrics, checks out the Stellar Cartography minigame, before heading into the shuttlebay, which is populated with two Type 8s. He mucks around with the inventory of the shuttles he owns (a Type 8, a Delta Flyer and a Runabout) before moving on.
On Deck 11, he heads into Engineering, and changes the Engineer DOff NPC in to Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Vrin K'vov., Andorian Male, and the Ops DOff NPC to Ensign V'ruk, Reman Male.
The remaining Decks 12~15 were again mostly doors for Foundry missions.
@sumghai then pops back onto the Bridge, where he uses his Ready Room computer to set his ship's standard uniform(s) and decides on a nice mix of various canon and original alien species - only 20% of his crew are humans like himself.
After exploring around the ship interior a bit more, @sumghai then heads on into the Foundry, where he adds a mug to his Ready Room table, some books inside the Captain's quarters, and a damaged panel section to one of the corridors near Engineering.
Before he logs off, he invites stoleviathan99 and centersolace to team up with him and two PUGers and play a 5PvE boarding action scenario using his customised ship interior. The game is a fairly close one, and centersolace suggests to @sumghai that littering crates throughout the corridors might help impede the boarding party in future games.
The following day, @sumghai plays a First Contact mission, which takes place in the Intrepid-class observation lounge next to the bridge. After one playthrough, he decides that the canon Voyager conference table is fugly, so he pops back into the Foundry to have it changed to something from the Enterprise-E.
Howzat?
It has been mentioned that making custom ship interiors tradeable between players would help create a true "crafting" economy in STO.
Cryptic has one advantage, is that Star Trek typically used redressed sets. So they can create chunks and mimic parts of the ship and reuse them in other parts. For instance the Sets used in Star Trek 6 was reused for the Prometheus bridge. The hallways of the Enterprise-A and the Engine Room were redressed Galaxy sets.
But unfortunately, Cryptic doesn't have the time, resources, or the skill necessary to completely create a fully archtectually-accurate starship. More or less doing this for every ship in STO. And they can't use outside help since that would also cost money in legal fees for contracts and agreements to do the work.
Right now, the best bet is what they did currently with the ship interiors and just limit them to the necessary parts and do their best to recreate the archetecture as best they can. They got away with the Defiant because it's a tiny ship, and the TOS Consitution set was mainly limited to the canonical set design.
But personally, I know Cryptic with some incentive could make architectually accurate ships. Meaning you look at that map and you know automatically you are on a Prometheus or on a Galaxy-class. I know because right now I'm actually making a good chunk of the D7 Interior for my Foundry Mission and just using the Foundry, I made a fairly accurate ship, complete with sets seen in TOS, TAS, and Star Trek 6. So with time I know Cryptic can throw things together than just more than simple hallways. Cryptic's artists with the tools could do such a thing with the remaining ships.
However, like I said earlier, they just don't have the manpower to do that. And it was mentioned they need a reason to make accurate interiors. So are people willing to pay for them to make your player ship accurate?
Cryptic could offer rewards in terms of Dilitium or Free points to spend in the store. It would be cheaper in terms of manpower to have players make them instead of having them hire additional staff or spend a significant amount of time building these.
I dont understand why this business model isnt implemented, when so many players on the forum have been asking for better interiors since launch. It would speed up game development and create a greater satisfaction amongst players.
PWE restrictions?
Le sigh...
For those spouting that the Foundry room layout tool is the answer, remember that the foundry's room layout tools only work on a grid. You could make a "starship" interior with it, but it would all be square rooms, with square hallways, all lined up at 90 degree increments from each other. My memory isn't so good anymore, but I seem to remember a fair number of curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms from my ST watching.
"Spouting"? Really? Just because you may not agree with what someone is saying does not mean you have to refer to it like that.
So basically the KDF ship interior (singular, the one interior used for all KDF ships, not counting bridges, which makes sense to have the same sized Main Engineering on a B'rel and a Vo'quv) was used with the foundry tool?
Registered: Oct/2009 , LTS : Feb/2011
Fleets: Warriors of the Phoenix, Kirian Industries[/SIGPIC]
Three years and still no Captain Klaa hair...
It's feasible, just not practical.
After all we barely have any reason to go on our ships right now. And just be a waste to fully create a fully architectually-accurate interior with every floor available. Right now, the only real reason is if you made maps for boarding parties or Borg assimilation of the ship like in First Contact.
Come to think of it, that would be a pretty awesome idea to do. Stop the Borg from assimilating a starship and force them back.
Exactly, this is a literal sense of "square peg in a round hole". The only parts of the ship that would have straight corridors would be in the Engineering Hull.
Maybe if you took player-made ship interiors from the Foundry and the art team uses that as a template to create the real interiors, thus saving time? Because ship interiors really need a good runthrough, like Klingon Interiors just doesn't feel like you're on a Klingon starship.
Using the Foundry they can, but outside of STO it would require legal work in making contracts and agreements. Then the work has to be done with particular tools within certain limits (like polygon counts).
And using interiors used in Bridge Commander and Elite Force, Cryptic would have to pay Activision a lot of money to use them. And like with fan mods, they have to convert those old files to be used in STO. So basically its cheaper and faster to do it themselves.
Fallout 3 + G.E.C.K
Portal 2 + UGC
Mission editor for CnC Generals
Try thoose... might give you guys some ideas.
Er, no. I make lots of interiors.
I made this one in 4 hours: http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cubey009.jpg
It's very square, but that was of my choosing. I could have made it a circular room. We can rotate stuff to any angle that we want to. It would still be a little "boxey" since the props are not curved.
All of my fed interiors are curved hallways and usually non-square rooms. If we had more than 3 federation walls, it would help. All you guys would need to do is break up the standard fed interiors into lego pieces.
We've been asking for that for a year and a half. But, we can't even get a transporter pad.
Anyway, if you want to make a curved interior, then rotate the next set of walls 35 degrees.
I think this is one of those areas where it would make little sense to do the work twice by creating wall kits and then re-doing it for interiors, NW style.
From what I can see with the Neverwinter Foundry, they will probably have halls and rooms in a variety of lengths and styles. Curved. Straight. Different layouts and colors. And you will be able to plug them together, auto-creating a door. Then you can select the door and change it.
The only place I'm not sure this would help is with crazy holodeck dissolving maps and maybe maps that change dynamically... and that was always a bit of an exploit on Foundry authors' part. I don't know that they really foresaw or intended us doing that and it's generally bad form for multiplayer without doing some rather tricky stuff as an author.
I'd say that's generally true of most Foundry tricks and one reason I'm very cautious about them. I make a point not to design anything that multiplayer will break.
But if we get 12-15 styles and lenths of Fed hallway and plugging them into eachother or a room can create a door or archway, that's BETTER AND EASIER than what we have now. And it would be shortsighted to focus Foundry efforts on something that will be obsolete in 6-12 months.
I'd rather they focus on NPC pathing, making NPCs disappear, and plugging in more small assets, consoles (like, all of the TOS style consoles), and costumes. If they're going to spend effort on prefab stuff, I'd much rather see empty TOS decks and Defiant decks added, as I can see that having a longer lifespan for authors. Also, both Academy zones and some Klingon Academy brick style walls, fountains, etc.
In fact, I think they should probably focus on anything BUT interior design for the time being unless they're prepping hallways and blank rooms for NW-style construction already.
Couldn't you just have prefab curved hallways that act as "rooms" that can be linked? (Heck, depending on the curve, they could make a giant circle.)
Do we have any evidence that this interior builder is coming to STO's foundry? I don't remember hearing or seeing anything about it, except in the context of NW.
But, regardless, even with it, those set pieces would still be useful for custom maps, don't you think?
I agree, and some type of crew uniform, a boff placement tool, and the ability to reskin doff contacts as part of our crew
Especially the first; if we could just pick a crew uniform, even if it was nothing but a list "TOS, TNG, TNG Movie, 2409, etc", most of the people unhappy with interiors would be MUCH happier.
That other stuff would be even better, but that one thing would be relatively easy to implement and would be HUGE for the folks who want to hang out in their ships.
It's a low-hanging watermelon.
I'm doubtful they would work if they have walls that can magically disappear and be replaced by doors when placed adjacent another wall.
It seems to me like it's a very special kind of project asset... and either way, probably a longterm feature.
I don't disagree with you, depending on what is technically feasible. I just think they could stay busy for weeks or months just focusing on tagging and separating outdoor building kits and items, along with tagging character costumes and creating pathing.
So as a matter of efficiency, I'd rather see Tholian silk robes, Ferengi jackets, expanded TOS and TNG costumes, Ferasans... Heck, if they have time and resources to design new stuff, enemy groups that use different weapon types without using any of the exotic stuff, boss encounters. Maybe alternate or improved contact dialogues that don't break cloak. Background mattes for NPC contacts. Added prefab NPCs like the DOff Hamlet cast. Omega Force, MACO, and Honor Guard costumes for NPCs.
I think interior construction is one of those brilliant things authors have done that really falls outside the scope of what the core use of the Foundry is designed to be... and supporting that OVER other things supports Ziggurat construction by authors which takes longer, resulting in slower player development of Foundry missions.
Overall, I think it's better to focus on allowing players to build good missions more quickly and with less technical know-how than spend time supporting highly technical use.
What you're looking at is NICE but in that realm where you should be going for a job at Cryptic rather than pushing the Foundry towards being a full development tool that is cumbersome to use.
That's a really interesting idea. Selecting from a list would probably be quite doable because then they'd just need to place full crews on the ship interiors in a variety of uniforms and have us basically just go somewhere on our ship and select a dialogue option that causes the selected type to spawn and the others to be hidden.
It's a bit more intensive on the content guys but probably less prone to breaking.