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.
Well, we know that we're getting more assets. We finally got some recently. But, instead of giving us good and useful stuff, we got random glass panels and banners.
And a custom interior builder would probably be an entirely different way of building with rooms as the props. We could still use the interior legos in so many, many different ways.
If they would just take the standard interior, break it up into tunnels and pieces, and throw it all into the foundry, we'd be happy for months and months. We'll take players through every nook and cranny of their starship.
But no, coming soon is probably a ponn farr statue, a SFA logo with no SFA walls or assets, and a plate of gahg as the only food item to use for Federation settings.
Taco, are you referring to the NW interior builder with that 90 degree comment?
Why couldn't one of the room pieces be a curved corridor with doors on each end? The doors could be a 90 degree angles, but the room could be shaped like an curved L.
Wow, sorry, my "Spouting" comment was not meant in any offensive way, I just meant that it seemed a lot of people had latched onto the NW room layout tool and see that as a way to build ship interiors.
Kirkfat, That was what I was referring to. Yes, we could make huge single, curved hallway pieces with a door at either end. They would essentially qualify as a special type of room probably. I don't know if that would be at all compatible with the room/hallway layout tool we're talking about. I haven't had much of a chance to play with that yet.
Yes, you can take pieces that are meant to meet each other at 90 degrees, and kludge them together to make a rough curve, but that's really tedious and inefficient. We (devs) can't really get away with that on any large scale, as it will cause pretty horrendous performance issues, and make it very difficult to do some other things.
As for adding more assets to the foundry in general, is there a list of specific things that would be useful for you guys somewhere? We tend to just add whatever we've been working on that makes any kind of sense to add. I don't know of any time coming up to do a pass, but if we had a specific list of assets, it would be slightly more likely to get traction.
Wow, sorry, my "Spouting" comment was not meant in any offensive way, I just meant that it seemed a lot of people had latched onto the NW room layout tool and see that as a way to build ship interiors.
Kirkfat, That was what I was referring to. Yes, we could make huge single, curved hallway pieces with a door at either end. They would essentially qualify as a special type of room probably. I don't know if that would be at all compatible with the room/hallway layout tool we're talking about. I haven't had much of a chance to play with that yet.
Yes, you can take pieces that are meant to meet each other at 90 degrees, and kludge them together to make a rough curve, but that's really tedious and inefficient. We (devs) can't really get away with that on any large scale, as it will cause pretty horrendous performance issues, and make it very difficult to do some other things.
As for adding more assets to the foundry in general, is there a list of specific things that would be useful for you guys somewhere? We tend to just add whatever we've been working on that makes any kind of sense to add. I don't know of any time coming up to do a pass, but if we had a specific list of assets, it would be slightly more likely to get traction.
I've got a mission planned that involves turrets, but there are no turret skins in the foundry. Also, I need to put in a *REAL* Galaxy-X NPC, but that's missing, too.
I have a question though, why would an asset not make sense to add to the foundry? I don't want to pretend to be know how it's all done on your side but to me it just looks like you need to add a model and maybe a hit box. As an author I'd like it if everything you guys were releasing as STO content was available in the Foundry at the same time
I've got a mission planned that involves turrets, but there are no turret skins in the foundry. Also, I need to put in a *REAL* Galaxy-X NPC, but that's missing, too.
There are turrets! I know for sure there is an NPC contact costume which is a turret, but I think they added one as a detail object as well.
As for adding more assets to the foundry in general, is there a list of specific things that would be useful for you guys somewhere? We tend to just add whatever we've been working on that makes any kind of sense to add. I don't know of any time coming up to do a pass, but if we had a specific list of assets, it would be slightly more likely to get traction.
Thanks for the response.
This is the third time that a dev has asked for a list. We created list after list in the Foundry discussion area. I have started at least 3 of them during the past year and a half.
Any chance one of them can be stickied, so that when one of you guys want a list or want to look at a master list, there it is, and all of our previous lists don't eventually get buried?
Best response would probably be for a dev to start a new thread, and we'll respond. I heard through the grapevine that Zero was going to do that, so we'd have yet another list to create for you guys.
Yes, you can take pieces that are meant to meet each other at 90 degrees, and kludge them together to make a rough curve, but that's really tedious and inefficient. We (devs) can't really get away with that on any large scale, as it will cause pretty horrendous performance issues, and make it very difficult to do some other things.
Let me see if I can explain without an illustration.
What I mean is: Cryptic could have a "room" that is a curved hallway, like an L-shape but more curved. It connects to other rooms or hallways at two points.
If it helps, imagine a room that is a square block of bulkhead with an L-shaped hallway carved through it.
If you position it with the bulkhead facing a room it's attached to, you get bulkhead or an error message. If you position it with the curved hallway, you get an opening into a curved hallway. Nothing could branch off from that curved hallway or at least not most of it. But you could place reasonable L-curves and have the hallways straighten out before leading off to doors.
I'm wondering if a curved wall will cause issues with their "Doors Anywhere" tech
I think in one of the NW Foundry videos, it was mentioned that some rooms only could connect in specific places. I think a bigger issue would be bridges which tend not to have doors at right angles.
Kirkfat, That was what I was referring to. Yes, we could make huge single, curved hallway pieces with a door at either end. They would essentially qualify as a special type of room probably. I don't know if that would be at all compatible with the room/hallway layout tool we're talking about. I haven't had much of a chance to play with that yet.
Yes, you can take pieces that are meant to meet each other at 90 degrees, and kludge them together to make a rough curve, but that's really tedious and inefficient. We (devs) can't really get away with that on any large scale, as it will cause pretty horrendous performance issues, and make it very difficult to do some other things.
If you position it with the bulkhead facing a room it's attached to, you get bulkhead or an error message. If you position it with the curved hallway, you get an opening into a curved hallway. Nothing could branch off from that curved hallway or at least not most of it. But you could place reasonable L-curves and have the hallways straighten out before leading off to doors.
While this would be a brilliant (and welcome) addition to the foundry, this is not the solution to the ship interior problem. Not everyone has an architectural engineering degree nor wants one. One thing you have to accept is that if you allow people to customise something, 90% of the time it's going to look really silly.
Since I don't really want that with ship interiors, here's how I would do it,
Treat it like you would on the show. I.e. only build the important stuff:
Bridge
Ready Room
Engineering
Engineering Lab
Medi Bay
Medi Lab
Armoury
Lounge
Holodeck
Captains Quarters
Senior Officer Quarters
Meeting Room
Shuttlebay
And at least one Storage area
Anything else can really be skipped over (Deal with it RPers). Sure there would be hallways and such connecting all the rooms, a lot of these things would share the same deck, but you really don't need much more than this.
It is however quite a bit... so I would suggest making it thus in order to justify it: Make it you're own personal mini-starbase. Have little Dilithium counters that you can drop stuff into just like starbases, that will unlock for you.
Upgrading your Engineering Lab could give you the ability to craft up to a certain Mk on your ship or heal injuries on your ship.
Upgrading your Medibay could let you heal injuries on you and your boffs.
Getting the armoury would give you a special bank you could only store weapons in. (Now that the game has both Borg and Fleet weapons I would LOVE this)
You could always add Projects that allow for extra doff contacts with special missions unavailable by any other means.
This should be account bound. In fact, all of your characters would donate to the same pool. So once you get the Armoury, All ships on all characters get that upgrade, however, you would still have to buy ship interiors. 100,000 Dilithium for each full upgrade sounds like a fair cost. There would be the default of course, but then you would only have to worry about the main ships that we saw in the series. The Galaxy, Intrepid, Excalibur, would all need interiors and the Defiant would simply need to be expanded. The other ships would have to deal with it for a while (Yes Klingon ships would need several interiors, I'm not forgetting about them).
This should not be a sink though, this should be something to net the players who are not, or do not want to be part of a fleet, and still give them a bit of Starbase functionality. It would also add something else for players who are bored with Starbases, RPers, or just simply want something else. If you added the ability to customise your doff contacts (bartender, chef, counsellor, etc) and the ability to set the default shipboard uniform, I would absolutely be all over this.
(P.S. @leviathan99I've played your mission, and have been looking at your siggy for over a week, and just now I realized what the title of that mission is referencing... you clever TRIBBLE you:P)
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.
I didnt mean they should convert interiors from older games. I meant that fans have proven when mapping for those games that they have the skills and will to make cannon interiors if only allowed access to the proper tools. Using the same tools as the devs use to make the interiors we have seen in STO (defiant interior) they could create many of the ship interiors many players are willing to pay for.
There would be no legal fees or charges for this surely as it doesnt involve activision or any other company but CBS approval? And as I mentioned before, a dilitium reward or points to spend in-store would be a low price for cryptic to pay, considering the revenue they could earn from selling the interiors to players.
As for adding more assets to the foundry in general, is there a list of specific things that would be useful for you guys somewhere? We tend to just add whatever we've been working on that makes any kind of sense to add. I don't know of any time coming up to do a pass, but if we had a specific list of assets, it would be slightly more likely to get traction.
Here's a "short" list of additional Foundry assets that would be nice to have:
- More floor options other than building "boxes" side by side
- More walls (all races)
- More doors (all races)
- More consoles (all races)
Would love to see some of the existing "Interior maps" be made available WITHOUT having all the assets visible. Say for instance, if a person wanted to make a "Mirror Universe" Earth Spacedock, one would assume it wouldn't have everything in exactly the same place.
One thing I liked about the old "Supergroup Base" builder in City of Heroes, was you allowed players to choose a specific style for floors, walls and ceilings. Any chance of something similar coming down the pipeline at some point?
Also, i'd like to add my +1 to adding curved rooms (i.e hallways) to the future "room-by-room" feature for STO. Possibly even have different styles of hallways (compare for example Galaxy TNG hallways to Trek 2009 hallways).
I didnt mean they should convert interiors from older games. I meant that fans have proven when mapping for those games that they have the skills and will to make cannon interiors if only allowed access to the proper tools. Using the same tools as the devs use to make the interiors we have seen in STO (defiant interior) they could create many of the ship interiors many players are willing to pay for.
There would be no legal fees or charges for this surely as it doesnt involve activision or any other company but CBS approval? And as I mentioned before, a dilitium reward or points to spend in-store would be a low price for cryptic to pay, considering the revenue they could earn from selling the interiors to players.
Afraid things are much more complicated. Cryptic can't legally accept free work, and if they did, without a contract, they potentially could open themselves to massive lawsuits. That's why they don't accept things like Player Made designs, or why it took a very long time for Cryptic to go through the legal process of getting the Vesta in game.
And being paid with Dilithium or Zen, I believe there are laws that state people have to be paid in real currency for their work or services.
It's a nice idea, but Cryptic just can't take the easy road for this. Only way we could see it if one of the team works on their free time to make accurate interiors. Or the work was subcontracted.
Any chance one of them can be stickied, so that when one of you guys want a list or want to look at a master list, there it is, and all of our previous lists don't eventually get buried?
Open a "forums and website" ticket using the link in my sig, and in that ticket link the thread you feel should be stickied, with a brief explanation as to why.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Afraid things are much more complicated. Cryptic can't legally accept free work, and if they did, without a contract, they potentially could open themselves to massive lawsuits. That's why they don't accept things like Player Made designs, or why it took a very long time for Cryptic to go through the legal process of getting the Vesta in game.
And being paid with Dilithium or Zen, I believe there are laws that state people have to be paid in real currency for their work or services.
It's a nice idea, but Cryptic just can't take the easy road for this. Only way we could see it if one of the team works on their free time to make accurate interiors. Or the work was subcontracted.
Soooo.. The reason why they can accept players making missions which are then available for players to play for free is because they don't pay players for making them? They've still made is possible for players to receive a "tip" from other players though which is a form of reward.
Maybe this could be a work around. The fans who made the interiors for previous Star Trek games made them without any payment. It was to make the game a better experience and get feedback for what they were creating, much like players are receiving feedback for what they make in the foundry in STO.
I can't speak for everyone else but I would like to be given the chance to create something on my free time for cryptic to use in game. Even if they give away player made interiors for free, it will still benefit them as it will increase customer satisfaction with the game in general, with players getting access to a long requested feature. The creator could receive dilithium tips, the same way they do now for foundry missions.
Let me see if I can explain without an illustration.
What I mean is: Cryptic could have a "room" that is a curved hallway, like an L-shape but more curved. It connects to other rooms or hallways at two points.
If it helps, imagine a room that is a square block of bulkhead with an L-shaped hallway carved through it.
If you position it with the bulkhead facing a room it's attached to, you get bulkhead or an error message. If you position it with the curved hallway, you get an opening into a curved hallway. Nothing could branch off from that curved hallway or at least not most of it. But you could place reasonable L-curves and have the hallways straighten out before leading off to doors.
Yes, we could make huge single, curved hallway pieces with a door at either end. They would essentially qualify as a special type of room probably. I don't know if that would be at all compatible with the room/hallway layout tool we're talking about.
I'm wondering if a curved wall will cause issues with their "Doors Anywhere" tech
A curved hallway as mentioned above, would have door hook ups at either end, which would be on the grid. You would not be able to hook up anything in the middle of the hallway.
I think in one of the NW Foundry videos, it was mentioned that some rooms only could connect in specific places. I think a bigger issue would be bridges which tend not to have doors at right angles.
Correct, though the bridge, and it's connecting pieces (ready room, conference room) would likely have to be one single unit. You wouldn't be hooking up hallways and other rooms off the back of the bridge. Those would be for other decks.
Afraid things are much more complicated. Cryptic can't legally accept free work, and if they did, without a contract, they potentially could open themselves to massive lawsuits. That's why they don't accept things like Player Made designs, or why it took a very long time for Cryptic to go through the legal process of getting the Vesta in game.
And being paid with Dilithium or Zen, I believe there are laws that state people have to be paid in real currency for their work or services.
It's a nice idea, but Cryptic just can't take the easy road for this. Only way we could see it if one of the team works on their free time to make accurate interiors. Or the work was subcontracted.
Do you know a really good Trek environmental artist? We COULD get the community behind a "hire this guy for the next opening on Tacofangs' team" thing and show off the guy's portfolio.
I think it would be great if we knew some Trekkies with modding background.
Heck, I know a few designers that have applied. I know for a fact that they've interviewed Foundry authors.
Maybe what we need is a "Cryptic! Hire this guy!" thread where an OP maintains a list of Foundry authors, game designers, and mod community folks that would be good for STO.
Could be writers. (They've mentioned looking at getting Kestrel an assistant.) Could be folks like the guy who designed the Century class. Could be fan community voice actors to consider getting for VO, like some of the folks who have done the award winning Pendant audio fan series. Could be fan composers or people like Ron Jones (whose music I think would be the easiest to get of the Trek composers).
We are hiring, but having an extra pair of hands doesn't mean those hands are dedicated to adding foundry assets. S/He would be in the same boat as the rest of us, with a schedule s/he'd have to keep, and deadlines to make.
We are hiring, but having an extra pair of hands doesn't mean those hands are dedicated to adding foundry assets. S/He would be in the same boat as the rest of us, with a schedule s/he'd have to keep, and deadlines to make.
I think the real question is when the guy(s) in charge are going to wake up to how important the foundry is, and actually make it a real development priority. The people developing NW seem to get it, but the one(s) calling the shots on STO dont.
I think the real question is when the guy(s) in charge are going to wake up to how important the foundry is, and actually make it a real development priority. The people developing NW seem to get it, but the one(s) calling the shots on STO dont.
You know, I like, have authored two missions, and use the Foundry a lot. That said, in the most recent Forum poll after DStahl's September Q&A; Foundry improvement is running dead last. Just saying.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
We are hiring, but having an extra pair of hands doesn't mean those hands are dedicated to adding foundry assets. S/He would be in the same boat as the rest of us, with a schedule s/he'd have to keep, and deadlines to make.
Dstahl told us that more assets are coming. He said so in the Ask Cryptic thread. He should probably know if nobody actually has it on their schedule or if it's not in someone's job description.
Assets have been prioritized. But, judging from your comments, there is nobody actually doing anything and it's not really a priority. I'll also assume from your earlier remarks that absolutely nothing has been done asset-wise to bring the NW interior building into STO's foundry.
Meanwhile we have walls and no ceiling or floors. Is it just too much to ask for a couple of primitives with a seamless carpet texture? Really? A Bajoran orb to go with the orb effects? Really?
You guys have this stuff built. We need it. Just put in it.
One might suspect that the dev team is trying to guard their own creations, handicap foundry authors and guarantee that our sets will be rather ugly compared to official content. It could be seen as passive aggressive hostility to the amateurs.
"Let's see them make an Fed interior with 3 walls that don't fit together and no ceilings and floors! HA! Take that, you rookies!"
Dstahl told us that more assets are coming. He said so in the Ask Cryptic thread. He should probably know if nobody actually has it on their schedule or if it's not in someone's job description.
Assets have been prioritized. But, judging from your comments, there is nobody actually doing anything and it's not really a priority. I'll also assume from your earlier remarks that absolutely nothing has been done asset-wise to bring the NW interior building into STO's foundry.
Meanwhile we have walls and no ceiling or floors. Is it just too much to ask for a couple of primitives with a seamless carpet texture? Really? A Bajoran orb to go with the orb effects? Really.
You guys have this stuff built. We need it. Just put in it.
One might suspect that the dev team is trying to guard their own creations, handicap foundry authors and guarantee that our sets will be rather ugly compared to official content. It could be seen as passive aggressive hostility to the amateurs.
"Let's see them make an Fed interior with 3 walls that don't fit together and no ceilings and floors! HA! Take that, you rookies!"
Unfortunately, all the assets in the world arent really going to get more people playing foundry missions. What is needed to do that is comparable rewards to what they get from playing official missions.
Unfortunately, all the assets in the world arent really going to get more people playing foundry missions. What is needed to do that is comparable rewards to what they get from playing official missions.
That's coming soon (tm). Someone is actually working on that, I think.
You know, I like, have authored two missions, and use the Foundry a lot. That said, in the most recent Forum poll after DStahl's September Q&A; Foundry improvement is running dead last. Just saying.
The people who build missions and voted for it in the poll are probably the smallest subset of the playerbase. Maybe we're larger than the pvpers? Who knows?
70% of the players are asking for new story content. We've been about the only ones making story content for the last year or so. So, if they want story, we're apparently all they got, apart from maybe 5 hours of dev made story content that will be playable in the next 16 months.
Unfortunately, all the assets in the world arent really going to get more people playing foundry missions. What is needed to do that is comparable rewards to what they get from playing official missions.
This is already implemented in the Neverwinter foundry. Hopefully it will get ported to STO very soon.
And Taco, I know you're an environmental artist removed from the Foundry. My frustration isn't directed at you. But you show up in the dev tracker, unlike our mysterious sto foundry dev that we've nicknamed Barclay.
And the foundry team is like section 31. They never communicate.
Still, can I have a flat primitive with a seamless carpet texture?
That doesn't seem like difficult request for the art team of a video game.
Comments
Well, we know that we're getting more assets. We finally got some recently. But, instead of giving us good and useful stuff, we got random glass panels and banners.
And a custom interior builder would probably be an entirely different way of building with rooms as the props. We could still use the interior legos in so many, many different ways.
If they would just take the standard interior, break it up into tunnels and pieces, and throw it all into the foundry, we'd be happy for months and months. We'll take players through every nook and cranny of their starship.
But no, coming soon is probably a ponn farr statue, a SFA logo with no SFA walls or assets, and a plate of gahg as the only food item to use for Federation settings.
Why couldn't one of the room pieces be a curved corridor with doors on each end? The doors could be a 90 degree angles, but the room could be shaped like an curved L.
Kirkfat, That was what I was referring to. Yes, we could make huge single, curved hallway pieces with a door at either end. They would essentially qualify as a special type of room probably. I don't know if that would be at all compatible with the room/hallway layout tool we're talking about. I haven't had much of a chance to play with that yet.
Yes, you can take pieces that are meant to meet each other at 90 degrees, and kludge them together to make a rough curve, but that's really tedious and inefficient. We (devs) can't really get away with that on any large scale, as it will cause pretty horrendous performance issues, and make it very difficult to do some other things.
As for adding more assets to the foundry in general, is there a list of specific things that would be useful for you guys somewhere? We tend to just add whatever we've been working on that makes any kind of sense to add. I don't know of any time coming up to do a pass, but if we had a specific list of assets, it would be slightly more likely to get traction.
I've got a mission planned that involves turrets, but there are no turret skins in the foundry. Also, I need to put in a *REAL* Galaxy-X NPC, but that's missing, too.
There's a couple threads listing what assets people want in the Foundry.
Here's one of them: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=330721
I have a question though, why would an asset not make sense to add to the foundry? I don't want to pretend to be know how it's all done on your side but to me it just looks like you need to add a model and maybe a hit box. As an author I'd like it if everything you guys were releasing as STO content was available in the Foundry at the same time
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
There are turrets! I know for sure there is an NPC contact costume which is a turret, but I think they added one as a detail object as well.
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
Thanks for the response.
This is the third time that a dev has asked for a list. We created list after list in the Foundry discussion area. I have started at least 3 of them during the past year and a half.
Any chance one of them can be stickied, so that when one of you guys want a list or want to look at a master list, there it is, and all of our previous lists don't eventually get buried?
Best response would probably be for a dev to start a new thread, and we'll respond. I heard through the grapevine that Zero was going to do that, so we'd have yet another list to create for you guys.
Let me see if I can explain without an illustration.
What I mean is: Cryptic could have a "room" that is a curved hallway, like an L-shape but more curved. It connects to other rooms or hallways at two points.
If it helps, imagine a room that is a square block of bulkhead with an L-shaped hallway carved through it.
If you position it with the bulkhead facing a room it's attached to, you get bulkhead or an error message. If you position it with the curved hallway, you get an opening into a curved hallway. Nothing could branch off from that curved hallway or at least not most of it. But you could place reasonable L-curves and have the hallways straighten out before leading off to doors.
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
All the officers had clipping issues, one was even more down inside the floor than sitting in her chair
Then I looked at the still photo that was supposed to be the view screen
Meh, never looked back
In for a penny in for a pound, either do it right or don't do it at all
I think in one of the NW Foundry videos, it was mentioned that some rooms only could connect in specific places. I think a bigger issue would be bridges which tend not to have doors at right angles.
While this would be a brilliant (and welcome) addition to the foundry, this is not the solution to the ship interior problem. Not everyone has an architectural engineering degree nor wants one. One thing you have to accept is that if you allow people to customise something, 90% of the time it's going to look really silly.
Since I don't really want that with ship interiors, here's how I would do it,
Treat it like you would on the show. I.e. only build the important stuff:
Bridge
Ready Room
Engineering
Engineering Lab
Medi Bay
Medi Lab
Armoury
Lounge
Holodeck
Captains Quarters
Senior Officer Quarters
Meeting Room
Shuttlebay
And at least one Storage area
Anything else can really be skipped over (Deal with it RPers). Sure there would be hallways and such connecting all the rooms, a lot of these things would share the same deck, but you really don't need much more than this.
It is however quite a bit... so I would suggest making it thus in order to justify it: Make it you're own personal mini-starbase. Have little Dilithium counters that you can drop stuff into just like starbases, that will unlock for you.
Upgrading your Engineering Lab could give you the ability to craft up to a certain Mk on your ship or heal injuries on your ship.
Upgrading your Medibay could let you heal injuries on you and your boffs.
Getting the armoury would give you a special bank you could only store weapons in. (Now that the game has both Borg and Fleet weapons I would LOVE this)
You could always add Projects that allow for extra doff contacts with special missions unavailable by any other means.
This should be account bound. In fact, all of your characters would donate to the same pool. So once you get the Armoury, All ships on all characters get that upgrade, however, you would still have to buy ship interiors. 100,000 Dilithium for each full upgrade sounds like a fair cost. There would be the default of course, but then you would only have to worry about the main ships that we saw in the series. The Galaxy, Intrepid, Excalibur, would all need interiors and the Defiant would simply need to be expanded. The other ships would have to deal with it for a while (Yes Klingon ships would need several interiors, I'm not forgetting about them).
This should not be a sink though, this should be something to net the players who are not, or do not want to be part of a fleet, and still give them a bit of Starbase functionality. It would also add something else for players who are bored with Starbases, RPers, or just simply want something else. If you added the ability to customise your doff contacts (bartender, chef, counsellor, etc) and the ability to set the default shipboard uniform, I would absolutely be all over this.
(P.S. @leviathan99 I've played your mission, and have been looking at your siggy for over a week, and just now I realized what the title of that mission is referencing... you clever TRIBBLE you
I didnt mean they should convert interiors from older games. I meant that fans have proven when mapping for those games that they have the skills and will to make cannon interiors if only allowed access to the proper tools. Using the same tools as the devs use to make the interiors we have seen in STO (defiant interior) they could create many of the ship interiors many players are willing to pay for.
There would be no legal fees or charges for this surely as it doesnt involve activision or any other company but CBS approval? And as I mentioned before, a dilitium reward or points to spend in-store would be a low price for cryptic to pay, considering the revenue they could earn from selling the interiors to players.
Here's a "short" list of additional Foundry assets that would be nice to have:
- More floor options other than building "boxes" side by side
- More walls (all races)
- More doors (all races)
- More consoles (all races)
Would love to see some of the existing "Interior maps" be made available WITHOUT having all the assets visible. Say for instance, if a person wanted to make a "Mirror Universe" Earth Spacedock, one would assume it wouldn't have everything in exactly the same place.
One thing I liked about the old "Supergroup Base" builder in City of Heroes, was you allowed players to choose a specific style for floors, walls and ceilings. Any chance of something similar coming down the pipeline at some point?
Also, i'd like to add my +1 to adding curved rooms (i.e hallways) to the future "room-by-room" feature for STO. Possibly even have different styles of hallways (compare for example Galaxy TNG hallways to Trek 2009 hallways).
Afraid things are much more complicated. Cryptic can't legally accept free work, and if they did, without a contract, they potentially could open themselves to massive lawsuits. That's why they don't accept things like Player Made designs, or why it took a very long time for Cryptic to go through the legal process of getting the Vesta in game.
And being paid with Dilithium or Zen, I believe there are laws that state people have to be paid in real currency for their work or services.
It's a nice idea, but Cryptic just can't take the easy road for this. Only way we could see it if one of the team works on their free time to make accurate interiors. Or the work was subcontracted.
Open a "forums and website" ticket using the link in my sig, and in that ticket link the thread you feel should be stickied, with a brief explanation as to why.
Soooo.. The reason why they can accept players making missions which are then available for players to play for free is because they don't pay players for making them? They've still made is possible for players to receive a "tip" from other players though which is a form of reward.
Maybe this could be a work around. The fans who made the interiors for previous Star Trek games made them without any payment. It was to make the game a better experience and get feedback for what they were creating, much like players are receiving feedback for what they make in the foundry in STO.
I can't speak for everyone else but I would like to be given the chance to create something on my free time for cryptic to use in game. Even if they give away player made interiors for free, it will still benefit them as it will increase customer satisfaction with the game in general, with players getting access to a long requested feature. The creator could receive dilithium tips, the same way they do now for foundry missions.
???
A curved hallway as mentioned above, would have door hook ups at either end, which would be on the grid. You would not be able to hook up anything in the middle of the hallway.
Correct, though the bridge, and it's connecting pieces (ready room, conference room) would likely have to be one single unit. You wouldn't be hooking up hallways and other rooms off the back of the bridge. Those would be for other decks.
Make lots of small wall segments, and doors...
Small... Tiny compared to the current ones.
And then simply let people place loads of them, but at slight angles.
SOLVED... Really... it's not harder, and unnecessary to make it harder, than that.
Do you know a really good Trek environmental artist? We COULD get the community behind a "hire this guy for the next opening on Tacofangs' team" thing and show off the guy's portfolio.
I think it would be great if we knew some Trekkies with modding background.
Heck, I know a few designers that have applied. I know for a fact that they've interviewed Foundry authors.
Maybe what we need is a "Cryptic! Hire this guy!" thread where an OP maintains a list of Foundry authors, game designers, and mod community folks that would be good for STO.
Could be writers. (They've mentioned looking at getting Kestrel an assistant.) Could be folks like the guy who designed the Century class. Could be fan community voice actors to consider getting for VO, like some of the folks who have done the award winning Pendant audio fan series. Could be fan composers or people like Ron Jones (whose music I think would be the easiest to get of the Trek composers).
I think the real question is when the guy(s) in charge are going to wake up to how important the foundry is, and actually make it a real development priority. The people developing NW seem to get it, but the one(s) calling the shots on STO dont.
You know, I like, have authored two missions, and use the Foundry a lot. That said, in the most recent Forum poll after DStahl's September Q&A; Foundry improvement is running dead last. Just saying.
Edited to add:
Link to said poll
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Dstahl told us that more assets are coming. He said so in the Ask Cryptic thread. He should probably know if nobody actually has it on their schedule or if it's not in someone's job description.
Assets have been prioritized. But, judging from your comments, there is nobody actually doing anything and it's not really a priority. I'll also assume from your earlier remarks that absolutely nothing has been done asset-wise to bring the NW interior building into STO's foundry.
Meanwhile we have walls and no ceiling or floors. Is it just too much to ask for a couple of primitives with a seamless carpet texture? Really? A Bajoran orb to go with the orb effects? Really?
You guys have this stuff built. We need it. Just put in it.
One might suspect that the dev team is trying to guard their own creations, handicap foundry authors and guarantee that our sets will be rather ugly compared to official content. It could be seen as passive aggressive hostility to the amateurs.
"Let's see them make an Fed interior with 3 walls that don't fit together and no ceilings and floors! HA! Take that, you rookies!"
Unfortunately, all the assets in the world arent really going to get more people playing foundry missions. What is needed to do that is comparable rewards to what they get from playing official missions.
That's coming soon (tm). Someone is actually working on that, I think.
The people who build missions and voted for it in the poll are probably the smallest subset of the playerbase. Maybe we're larger than the pvpers? Who knows?
70% of the players are asking for new story content. We've been about the only ones making story content for the last year or so. So, if they want story, we're apparently all they got, apart from maybe 5 hours of dev made story content that will be playable in the next 16 months.
This is already implemented in the Neverwinter foundry. Hopefully it will get ported to STO very soon.
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
And the foundry team is like section 31. They never communicate.
Still, can I have a flat primitive with a seamless carpet texture?
That doesn't seem like difficult request for the art team of a video game.