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The Foundry Roundtable Episode 38: Roguish Charm (Or Lack Thereof)

drogyn1701drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps
Welcome to the Foundry Roundtable, a weekly podcast dedicated to Foundry missions, mission building and other UGC issues starring Foundry authors Drogyn1701, Markhawkman, Hippiejohn and Greendragoon with guest RogueEnterprise.

We're on iTunes! Subscribe to our podcast by going to https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/foundry-roundtable/id666311364?mt=2

Listen to it here, here and here:

Subjects:

News: Tribble Update, Challenge Winners, Geko Interview
Tech Topic: Limitation
Purity

Please submit tech topics! We want to hear from you.

Missions:

Survival Must Be Earned by Malize
Uncharted by kiloace (aka aceman97)
Cold Winds by drogyn1701

Other Notes:

If you have a topic you?d like to see us cover or would like to be a guest-host, e-mail us at FoundryRoundtable@live.com or follow us on Twitter: @FoundryRoundtab
The Foundry Roundtable live Saturdays at 7:30PM EST/4:30PM PST on twitch.tv/thefoundryroundtable
Post edited by drogyn1701 on

Comments

  • donperkdonperk Member Posts: 200 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    One of the contributors mentioned copying his dialogue to a Word doc, screen-by-screen. Please get in touch with me. I can run an export file from your mission through my review tool and you'll have an HTML document that you can bring into Word that is so much easier to read and work with. And no copy/paste!

    At least get an export file before the Foundry goes down if you aren't comfortable sending a mission to me. I should be releasing the tool next week and you'll be able to format the mission yourself during the Foundry down time.
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    donperk wrote: »
    One of the contributors mentioned copying his dialogue to a Word doc, screen-by-screen. Please get in touch with me. I can run an export file from your mission through my review tool and you'll have an HTML document that you can bring into Word that is so much easier to read and work with. And no copy/paste!

    At least get an export file before the Foundry goes down if you aren't comfortable sending a mission to me. I should be releasing the tool next week and you'll be able to format the mission yourself during the Foundry down time.

    That would be me. Sure, I might take you up on that as I still have a lot of dialog and not a lot of time. Stand by. I assume the tool is nearing a ready state?
  • donperkdonperk Member Posts: 200 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    That would be me. Sure, I might take you up on that as I still have a lot of dialog and not a lot of time. Stand by. I assume the tool is nearing a ready state?

    Yes. I'm still doing it as a "service" for folks rather than releasing the tool so that I can get better confidence in the parsing engine. I want to get about four more authors' missions run through before I release the tool itself for beta testing. The reason for this is that we all have different habits when using the Foundry and the resultant export files reflect those habits.

    The good news is that the last few missions I've received from people (most recently from zorbane, pendra, nagorak and erei) have run cleanly, so I think I'm close to having something I can hand off.
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    donperk wrote: »
    Yes. I'm still doing it as a "service" for folks rather than releasing the tool so that I can get better confidence in the parsing engine. I want to get about four more authors' missions run through before I release the tool itself for beta testing. The reason for this is that we all have different habits when using the Foundry and the resultant export files reflect those habits.

    The good news is that the last few missions I've received from people (most recently from zorbane, pendra, nagorak and erei) have run cleanly, so I think I'm close to having something I can hand off.

    PM sent. If anything is going to break your parser, it's probably this. ;)
  • lincolninspacelincolninspace Member Posts: 1,843 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    It's interesting that we are getting the old lcars look. The blue graphics were added in Season 6 or 7 iIrc. It was supposed to be the new user interface for 2409.

    I have recently been working on having a ground mob defeat the player in combat. I use a kill objective on a group of targs in the background and have another group kill the targs. Meanwhile your toon is surrounded by 2 captain level Klingon mobs which disappear when the targ group is defeated. A friendly group skinned like the captain mobs appears and a pop up dialog mocks you for losing. It needs some play testing.

    I wonder when you compare apples to oranges, if you compared the resouces and limitations Roddenberry had creating TOS or even TNG. Does a foundry author have more at their disposal?

    Positive feedback for Purity is positive for the foundry in general. It is a triumph for story based foundry authors. Lets hope Cryptic takes more notice of the foundry.

    I have been a deviantart user since 2007 and sadly I have to say that site tends to be buggy. You cannot count on it working properly when you need it most.
    A TIME TO SEARCH: ENTER MY FOUNDRY MISSION at the RISA SYSTEM
    Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    It's interesting that we are getting the old lcars look. The blue graphics were added in Season 6 or 7 iIrc. It was supposed to be the new user interface for 2409.

    The blue LCARS has dated back to the beginning of STO. For a while in development it didn't even look like LCARS. Later, the blue LCARS came in.
    I have recently been working on having a ground mob defeat the player in combat. I use a kill objective on a group of targs in the background and have another group kill the targs. Meanwhile your toon is surrounded by 2 captain level Klingon mobs which disappear when the targ group is defeated. A friendly group skinned like the captain mobs appears and a pop up dialog mocks you for losing. It needs some play testing.

    I have a similar scenario where the player looses after being ambushed. What I did was set it up so the player moves into range of a new spawn point just before the attack. When the player respawns, he/she triggers a reach marker which progresses the story.
    I wonder when you compare apples to oranges, if you compared the resouces and limitations Roddenberry had creating TOS or even TNG. Does a foundry author have more at their disposal?

    Creativity isn't about what you can come up with without limitations, it's about what you can do despite limitations. Just ask McGyver. ;)
    Positive feedback for Purity is positive for the foundry in general. It is a triumph for story based foundry authors. Lets hope Cryptic takes more notice of the foundry.

    I don't think the devs that need to notice the Foundry, they're already well aware of it. It's the silent majority that is the player base that is unaware. Where the player base goes, the devs will follow.
  • lincolninspacelincolninspace Member Posts: 1,843 Arc User
    edited November 2013


    I don't think the devs that need to notice the Foundry, they're already well aware of it. It's the silent majority that is the player base that is unaware. Where the player base goes, the devs will follow.


    I think the problem is the clunky interface. Before I got into the foundry I was turned off by it.
    A TIME TO SEARCH: ENTER MY FOUNDRY MISSION at the RISA SYSTEM
    Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    I think the mission journal as a whole may be due for an overhaul. There are lot of antiquated aspects (including the Foundry tab) which don't work well or make sense. I would also like to see a discovery method outside of the mission journal.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    I think the mission journal as a whole may be due for an overhaul. There are lot of antiquated aspects (including the Foundry tab) which don't work well or make sense. I would also like to see a discovery method outside of the mission journal.
    Agreed.

    Oh and Divide ut Regnus is awesome.

    I did notice an anomaly that seems to be part of the base map. there's a "door" in the other side of the wall leading to the transporter room.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • captainhunter1captainhunter1 Member Posts: 1,630 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Agreed.

    Oh and Divide ut Regnes is awesome.

    I did notice an anomaly that seems to be part of the base map. there's a "door" in the other side of the wall leading to the transporter room.

    Thanks! And thanks guys for doing the Roundtable - it always has great information!

    As for that door - - I'm assuming it's the one on the ramp headed up to the second level on SB39 - that's the dimensional door to the Captain's Table. :P

    (Honestly, I just overlooked it since the SB39 map in the Foundry is the old version of the starbase - hence the 'Transporter Room 2' reference in the story since there is no signage on the wall and no door to T'nae's office on the map making it not fit with the current 'official' in-game layout. I did however fix the 'floating' lamp boxes on the upper level when I originally worked on it. :D)
  • adverberoadverbero Member Posts: 2,045 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    I think at one point the limitation of not being able to disable ships is mentioned

    One suggestion i offer if you want to disable a Starfeet Vessel, is the Photonic Displacer Module Since its Game Canon i think its a good dialogue technobable excuse
    solar_approach_by_chaos_sandwhich-d74kjft.png


    These are the Voyages on the STO forum, the final frontier. Our continuing mission: to explore Pretentious Posts, to seek out new Overreactions and Misinformation , to boldly experience Cynicism like no man has before.......
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Thanks! And thanks guys for doing the Roundtable - it always has great information!

    As for that door - - I'm assuming it's the one on the ramp headed up to the second level on SB39 - that's the dimensional door to the Captain's Table. :P

    (Honestly, I just overlooked it since the SB39 map in the Foundry is the old version of the starbase - hence the 'Transporter Room 2' reference in the story since there is no signage on the wall and no door to T'nae's office on the map making it not fit with the current 'official' in-game layout. I did however fix the 'floating' lamp boxes on the upper level when I originally worked on it. :D)
    hunh, I guess the new SB39 is not available in Foundry?

    Hmm.... maybe make the map a different level of SB39 than the social zone? It felt a bit off evacuating the Starbase just so you could have a conversation.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • rogueeenterpriserogueeenterprise Member Posts: 299 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Hey guys, thanks again a ton for having me on. Let me know if I can answer any follow up questions anyone might have about Purity or anything else!
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Hey guys, thanks again a ton for having me on. Let me know if I can answer any follow up questions anyone might have about Purity or anything else!
    When do we do a KDF version? :D
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • paxfederaticapaxfederatica Member Posts: 1,496 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Re: Dealing with Foundry limitations
    As I've mentioned several times before, I'm having to deal with a doozy of a limitation in developing "Valley of the Shadow II". The final three maps of the mission - including probably the single most crucial conversation in the entire trilogy - are supposed to take place in New Romulus space and inside the Romulan Command Center. There's just a tiny little problem: We don't have those maps yet.

    So, just to be able to finish the mission I had to do some temporary workarounds, which I will call out in the Author's Notes with a heads-up that I intend to remake those sequences once we get the proper maps in the Foundry. First, I made a crude custom mock-up of the New Romulus space map for use in my mission (I actually use it twice, and will need it a third time in Part III unless/until the real map becomes available first). Then, I temporarily moved the Command Center scene to an Odyssey bridge (there is an Odyssey in orbit of New Romulus when you arrive).

    Re: Purity
    As I mentioned in my recent campaign support thread, if/when the STO Foundry ever gets campaign support, there should be a monthly Featured Campaign in addition to the weekly Featured Episode, and Purity would be the obvious choice for the inaugural one.

    Re: Style guide
    This is something I'm considering writing for myself. Part of my remastering efforts for GoW has been reformatting the dialogue and other text into a uniform style that's the same across all missions. (For the most part it already is quite similar, but while writing VotS2 I've come up with a few formatting improvements which I want to incorporate into my other missions.)

    Re: Cross-faction collaborative series
    This is one of the new ideas I've been kicking around, but if a team wants to take it and run with it, be my guest. :) One reason I was testing Voth mobs on Tribble last week was to look at their suitability for a series concept I'm calling Delta Wars - a sort of three-way war between the three major in-game Delta Quadrant powers (the Voth, Undine and Borg) that not only threatens the Dyson sphere but has even begun to spill over through the Jouret gateway into Romulan Republic space. The mission would be six parts in total - two each for the Feds, KDF and Republic.

    Re: Tech topic suggestion
    Making the most of 3-dimensional space - particularly the Y-axis - on space maps.
    For the most part, space gameplay in STO (Cryptic and Foundry missions alike) is like Spock's assessment of Khan's thinking in TWOK: It tends to be fairly two-dimensional, not only because of the 2D Foundry editor, but because of a limitation of the game mechanics themselves: namely, that Y-axis steering in STO isn't what it should be.

    It's very difficult and awkward to try to turn your ship straight "up" or "down" toward an objective location at different Y-coordinates. For this reason, it's not a good idea to place mission objectives close together, or even one on top of the other, in terms of X and Z coordinates, but far apart in Y coordinates. (In other words, it's necessary to leave a gradual "slope" between the two, so the player can navigate between them with a minimal amount of fuss.) What are some good ways to compensate for this, and to otherwise make good use of the Y-axis on space maps?
  • pendra8080pendra8080 Member Posts: 30 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    The hostage situation scenario is fully doable.
    In my old mission Hijacked! (ST 25th Anniv remaster) you had the following possibilities:
    - Abort the mission
    - Take down the guards and
    ++leave the hostages,
    ++blow up the hostages,
    ++free the hostages
    - Transport to the captured bridge
    - Transport a bomb to the captured bridge
    - Take down the forcefield and enter via door.
    - Kill the pirates
    - Presuade the pirates to give up

    Some or all hostages could be killed if you pick bad dialog options.
    If you jump the pirates without taking down the guards
    If you damaged the ship beyond repair during the mission.

    And at the end, the admiral's dialog went through the mission checkpoints and gave you the proper evaluation.

    Some planning was required, but if you do the whole thing on one map, it is quite simple after you get a hang of the method. The whole thing was based on map dialogs and dialog prompt reached with the usual type conversion. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=545001


    The Long Sleep was the challenge entry mission with the alternate map possibility. And the transporter trick. And completely branched ending. It didn't even get a honorary mention :D.
  • drogyn1701drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps
    edited November 2013

    Re: Tech topic suggestion
    Making the most of 3-dimensional space - particularly the Y-axis - on space maps.
    For the most part, space gameplay in STO (Cryptic and Foundry missions alike) is like Spock's assessment of Khan's thinking in TWOK: It tends to be fairly two-dimensional, not only because of the 2D Foundry editor, but because of a limitation of the game mechanics themselves: namely, that Y-axis steering in STO isn't what it should be.

    It's very difficult and awkward to try to turn your ship straight "up" or "down" toward an objective location at different Y-coordinates. For this reason, it's not a good idea to place mission objectives close together, or even one on top of the other, in terms of X and Z coordinates, but far apart in Y coordinates. (In other words, it's necessary to leave a gradual "slope" between the two, so the player can navigate between them with a minimal amount of fuss.) What are some good ways to compensate for this, and to otherwise make good use of the Y-axis on space maps?

    That's a very good topic. Should have CaptPFDennis on for that as I recall he made a very good space map that you did a lot of things on that required you to go up and down. My own philosophy is to vary the Y coordinates of objects (makes it look more natural), but have any objectives all on one flat plane.

    I'll definitely give your mission a play Pendra. I'm always looking to learn how other authors solve things that I'm facing in my own missions.
    The Foundry Roundtable live Saturdays at 7:30PM EST/4:30PM PST on twitch.tv/thefoundryroundtable
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    For the most part, space gameplay in STO (Cryptic and Foundry missions alike) is like Spock's assessment of Khan's thinking in TWOK: It tends to be fairly two-dimensional, not only because of the 2D Foundry editor, but because of a limitation of the game mechanics themselves: namely, that Y-axis steering in STO isn't what it should be.

    I suddenly have a great idea for a PVP map. ;)
  • realmalizerealmalize Member Posts: 192 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    The one caveat to Y-axis is don't use reach markers...in my experience the casual player will have problems locating them.

    So if you make Y-axis changes that are going to be beyond the radius of a reach, better plop a flasher.
    foundry_banner1.png
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    realmalize wrote: »
    The one caveat to Y-axis is don't use reach markers...in my experience the casual player will have problems locating them.

    So if you make Y-axis changes that are going to be beyond the radius of a reach, better plop a flasher.

    My caveat to you caveat would be, if you're goint to use space reach markers, you need some kind of a visual indicator to the player, viewable at a distance, of where they should go (planet, nav beacon, station, etc.)
  • lincolninspacelincolninspace Member Posts: 1,843 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    realmalize wrote: »
    better plop a flasher.

    That`s just good advice in general.:o

    Seriously though I think it is easier on the player when you make objectives in space maps have only one reach objective instead of having the player scan 7 asteroids as one objective for example make each asteroid its own objective so they show up on the map individually.
    A TIME TO SEARCH: ENTER MY FOUNDRY MISSION at the RISA SYSTEM
    Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    My caveat to you caveat would be, if you're goint to use space reach markers, you need some kind of a visual indicator to the player, viewable at a distance, of where they should go (planet, nav beacon, station, etc.)
    I like to use objectives that you can scan for. that way if you don't know if you're high enough for the goal you can just push v.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • wombat140wombat140 Member Posts: 971 Arc User
    edited November 2013
    Seems to be a mighty controversial one, this. There's a Foundry mission called "Transwarp Trouble" where nearly all the space maps are laid out in fully 3d style, so that you can't just rely on the minimap, you have to find the gateway or whatever on your screen and darn well FLY at it, or use the scanner.

    I thought it was great. Makes it feel like flying a spaceship instead of trundling a car around a track, and also makes the whole thing into so much more of a game of skill, instead of everything being automatic except the fighting. Yet there were about a dozen reviews lambasting the author about that very thing! (Speaking entirely from self-interest, I'd say ignore those people and build your space maps in 3d if you want to, so long as there is something visible to aim at, because I like to play them!)
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