there are some aspects of perpetuals vision I am glad didn't make it into game.. and others that its a shame cryptic didn't use.
I always wonder what type of game we would have gotten had perpetual not gone belly up...
Um... Perpetual went belly up because they had a bad habit of writing vaporware...
Anyways, while their Urubian idea sounded cool.... flying scrap heaps only really work if they don't all look the same.... As we all know, no two Junktions ever looked the same. Thus ships made out of scrap part should be unique.
Perpetual had some good people and some great ideas. Like Cryptic they had developed a universal style engine they would have used to publish multiple MMOs. There biggest mistake I think was trying to make 2 games at once before they had in fact finished anything.
When they landed the Trek License in what must have been a great sales pitch to CBS... they should have instantly suspended there other project. I don't think there game would have been out any faster then Cryptics, I think they could have bought themselves a bit more time to do it right though. Instead all there investors got damn nervous when they where seemingly trying to get 2 games done with no incoming revenue to speak of. They suspended there Rome game at some point to focus on STO... and I bet that just made there investors even more nervous.
In the end they didn't die because they published Vapor.. they died because the money men behind them got sick of paying to develop tech that I don't believe they felt they would see returns on. (could be a rumor but I heard at the time they had investors for both titles, that where not vested in the other lol) Perpetual got the Trek license to fast... if they hadn't have gotten it... the would have finnished there rome game. It may not have sucked as bad as the finished version did, can't remember the company that put it out, but they finished it 3 or so years after perpetual shelved it. It could have been at least good enough for it to be the game that would have funded there next one. Which like Cryptic would have been much cheaper as they would have developed the tools and server tech already.
They just tried to go to big to fast... Cryptic has had enough ruff patches themselves with licenses and ownership changes... they seem to be a lot more focused though. They did a good job of pumping out STO in the time frame they where given. Frankly I doubt many other Developers even bid on the license when they heard the time frame CBS was talking about for a launch.
there are some aspects of perpetuals vision I am glad didn't make it into game.. and others that its a shame cryptic didn't use.
I always wonder what type of game we would have gotten had perpetual not gone belly up...
Well, there's no point in wishing the past was different, even if it's interesting to think about. It would be much better to see what can be done about getting Cryptic to use the better aspects of Perpetual's designs.
For one, I would love that shuttle design - the Edison class - to be added as a 2409 shuttle or flyer refit.
While it's true perpetual only did artworks, and never really worked on the game, I like their style better.
They tried to make "new" star trek, something closer than what you expect from a future Star trek (compared to the shows). So it's still star trek, but it's also more futuristic.
Unfortunately, the hardcore trekkie want to play their constitution and old ship, no matter when the game is supposed to be. Look what they did for ESD, for the exterior, it used to be some new space station, quite futuristic, and it looked really cool. But lore TRIBBLE started to whine because it was not the canon station from decades ago. So, they made the space mushroom.
Some things might stay the same, like DS9, and you might even add some "old" ships, for fun. But otherwise, I wish this game was more about 2409, and less about 2380 or even 2260.
Flashnews for the lore TRIBBLE : Star Trek evolved a lot between shows. The Picard's enterprise don't look like a Kirk's enterprise. Even the Klingons don't look the same. Almost everything changed, tricorders, LCARS, ships... Mostly because we didn't see the future in 1990 the same way we did in the 1960.
Yeah, there were a few perpetual designs I liked. Most notably they did an Excelsior variant that had a rollbar connecting the nacelles. That was cool.
Yeah, there were a few perpetual designs I liked. Most notably they did an Excelsior variant that had a rollbar connecting the nacelles. That was cool.
Excelsior, huh? I don't remember seeing that one. The version I saw looked more like one of the existing Sovereign variants with an NX-like rollbar/engineering pod. I think Cryptic just cut that thing off when this version of the game was made. Looked pretty neat, though.
"I walked away from the last great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time, no space. Just me!"
These two pictures make me think that we really got the shaft when Cryptic took this game over, especially with how they've handled the game since PWE took over.
Well, after 4 years of Dev time gone - ALL Perpetual had were the concept drawings and a couple of photoshop UI template mock ups, and they had spent ALL their development funds on just that with no actual game to show for it. I don't see how we got the 'shaft' when CBS pulled the rights from a company that wasn't able to produce a finished game, and sell then to a company that did, and in the end made what so far has been a financially successful game. Making promises and concepts is the easy part. Implementing those concepts and ideas into a workable game IS the real work.
Perpetual spent four years doing the first part and zero actually MAKING a playable game.
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..."
This thread inspired me to Google one of the ship names (you know how when you're surfing, I forgot which one) and I found This Collection which lead me to This Ship.
BTW, isn't anything canon (as in "Official" on the above link) fair game for Cryptic to use? Hint. Hint.
"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
Hunh... Memory Beta claims that was an early Cryptic design...
And now I have questions that can only be answered by JamJamz...
Well, if it's TOO early, he may not have any answers for you, since he wasn't on the team during the earliest stages of development.
Though the design itself is more or less in the game, and has been since launch: it's the Noble class Assault cruiser. Minus the mission pod, naturally.
Oddly enough, the Noble class was designed as a multi-mission starship, more like a floating laboratory than a full-on combat ship. It was still incredibly well armed, though, so it more than likely could hold its own just as well as a Sovereign.
Hunh... Memory Beta claims that was an early Cryptic design...
And now I have questions that can only be answered by JamJamz...
I'm pretty sure I can anticipate your question and it was answered a long time ago in an interview: CBS said "no" to the ship as it was since they said it made to sense to connect a torpedo launcher do the nacelles.
Throw some cargo containers between those pylons and I'd say we have a 2409 federation cargo ship. And I wouldn't mind seeing that Transwarp Gate (or similar).
There are a few things in that cornucopia that would be nice (the shuttles, Ferengi ship, Vulcan Ships) . On the other hand there were some concepts of weapons that suffer from "Final Fantasy" syndrome (the gun is so large that Worf or Data would have trouble using it.)
I like the armor concepts from Perpetual. They are rugged, but at the same time don't look out of place (most of them, anyway).
The thing i always loved about perpetuals take on it was consistency.
The concept felt like a natural progression to the 25th century from the 24th.
Uniforms were uniform and there were design standards, with a few previous century ships(such as the akira).
What Cryptic ultimately delivered was not a Star Trek experience, but rather "Star Trek, The Exeperience" so to speak, a virtual theme park.
There is zero consistency in this game now with ship design or uniform standards, and don't even get me started on how ridiculous all these "alien" lockbox ships and costumes are.
Perpetual picked a theme and stuck to it.
Also, several of the 3D art assets they produced were far superior in quality to Cryptic's own.
I mean have you seen the renders of their Akira model? The level of detail on that ship...
I would very much have loved to see Perpetuals vision of STO realised, and its a shame they never managed to pull it off.
Looking at their concept art, one thing does come to mind with STO as it is now.
Cryptic really really really really needs to completely revamp their entire exploration/star cluster system.
From the ground up.
There needs to be a season or two exclusively dedicated to what Star Trek is all about, Exploration.
Perpetual picked a theme and stuck to it.
Also, several of the 3D art assets they produced were far superior in quality to Cryptic's own.
I mean have you seen the renders of their Akira model? The level of detail on that ship...
Yes, and I ALSO saw the comment from Perpetual's own developers when asked about those renders that they indeed DID realize thy were too high poly count and detailed to be renderable on a client PC in an MMO setup; so, yeah, again we had Perpetual doing high concept stuff that could never be used in game, and is probably one of the reasons they never were able to get an actual game produced.
Concepts are one thing - being able to translate a concept so that it can be used on a set of available computer hardware in a real world setup; THAT'S the hard part. Perpetual seemed good at the former, but terrible at the latter; which is why their version of STO never made it past the 'concept' stage after 4 years of development time. had they been able to show any real world actual usable content, I might have taken their concepts more seriously. The fact is though, in the end, they did not produce any actual in game usable assets; or if they ever did, they never showed them to the public.
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..."
as we can see in some parts of the game some of the concept ideas did make it into game, wish this was one of them:
and this... looks oddly familiar to me,
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
as we can see in some parts of the game some of the concept ideas did make it into game, wish this was one of them:
and this... looks oddly familiar to me,
I would Pay for that Top Bridge.. Just DON'T put a ship Diagram on any of the displays, it ruins the Ability to RP a Soverign when there is a Giant Graphic of a Prometheus on the Wall.
I would also love if the Second one was what the Captains Table should be... Get rid of the Other map and make this Accessible from the Turbolift by Quinn's Office.
Just make it a Social Map where people can Talk and include all the Past and Future Captains Since Taco said he would rather have that be a Map included in ESD instead of the Stupid Portal
Not included IN ESD, so much as accessible FROM ESD.
Can Admiral Quinn hurry up and die so we can have Admiral Tacofangs? But you can see where you guys got the idea for the ship area. Truly though ESD needs an interior revamp.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
Comments
I always wonder what type of game we would have gotten had perpetual not gone belly up...
Anyways, while their Urubian idea sounded cool.... flying scrap heaps only really work if they don't all look the same.... As we all know, no two Junktions ever looked the same. Thus ships made out of scrap part should be unique.
My character Tsin'xing
When they landed the Trek License in what must have been a great sales pitch to CBS... they should have instantly suspended there other project. I don't think there game would have been out any faster then Cryptics, I think they could have bought themselves a bit more time to do it right though. Instead all there investors got damn nervous when they where seemingly trying to get 2 games done with no incoming revenue to speak of. They suspended there Rome game at some point to focus on STO... and I bet that just made there investors even more nervous.
In the end they didn't die because they published Vapor.. they died because the money men behind them got sick of paying to develop tech that I don't believe they felt they would see returns on. (could be a rumor but I heard at the time they had investors for both titles, that where not vested in the other lol) Perpetual got the Trek license to fast... if they hadn't have gotten it... the would have finnished there rome game. It may not have sucked as bad as the finished version did, can't remember the company that put it out, but they finished it 3 or so years after perpetual shelved it. It could have been at least good enough for it to be the game that would have funded there next one. Which like Cryptic would have been much cheaper as they would have developed the tools and server tech already.
They just tried to go to big to fast... Cryptic has had enough ruff patches themselves with licenses and ownership changes... they seem to be a lot more focused though. They did a good job of pumping out STO in the time frame they where given. Frankly I doubt many other Developers even bid on the license when they heard the time frame CBS was talking about for a launch.
Well, there's no point in wishing the past was different, even if it's interesting to think about. It would be much better to see what can be done about getting Cryptic to use the better aspects of Perpetual's designs.
For one, I would love that shuttle design - the Edison class - to be added as a 2409 shuttle or flyer refit.
They tried to make "new" star trek, something closer than what you expect from a future Star trek (compared to the shows). So it's still star trek, but it's also more futuristic.
Unfortunately, the hardcore trekkie want to play their constitution and old ship, no matter when the game is supposed to be. Look what they did for ESD, for the exterior, it used to be some new space station, quite futuristic, and it looked really cool. But lore TRIBBLE started to whine because it was not the canon station from decades ago. So, they made the space mushroom.
Some things might stay the same, like DS9, and you might even add some "old" ships, for fun. But otherwise, I wish this game was more about 2409, and less about 2380 or even 2260.
Flashnews for the lore TRIBBLE : Star Trek evolved a lot between shows. The Picard's enterprise don't look like a Kirk's enterprise. Even the Klingons don't look the same. Almost everything changed, tricorders, LCARS, ships... Mostly because we didn't see the future in 1990 the same way we did in the 1960.
My character Tsin'xing
Excelsior, huh? I don't remember seeing that one. The version I saw looked more like one of the existing Sovereign variants with an NX-like rollbar/engineering pod. I think Cryptic just cut that thing off when this version of the game was made. Looked pretty neat, though.
My character Tsin'xing
it was the "flagship" of STO for a while before launch, it was a sovvy looking hsip, the NX-91001. http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/NX-91001
that the ship you thinking of?
i think i would have liked to see these ships in STO.
http://gaming.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/startrekonline/conceptart/scienceship.jpg
http://gaming.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/startrekonline/conceptart/trekkkk1.jpg
http://suricatasblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/star-trek-online-20091130020800446.jpg
Oh wait that was one of Cryptic's
"I walked away from the last great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time, no space. Just me!"
Well, after 4 years of Dev time gone - ALL Perpetual had were the concept drawings and a couple of photoshop UI template mock ups, and they had spent ALL their development funds on just that with no actual game to show for it. I don't see how we got the 'shaft' when CBS pulled the rights from a company that wasn't able to produce a finished game, and sell then to a company that did, and in the end made what so far has been a financially successful game. Making promises and concepts is the easy part. Implementing those concepts and ideas into a workable game IS the real work.
Perpetual spent four years doing the first part and zero actually MAKING a playable game.
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..."
BTW, isn't anything canon (as in "Official" on the above link) fair game for Cryptic to use? Hint. Hint.
And now I have questions that can only be answered by JamJamz...
My character Tsin'xing
And this http://gaming.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/startrekonline/conceptart/starship-a-color.jpg
Well, if it's TOO early, he may not have any answers for you, since he wasn't on the team during the earliest stages of development.
Though the design itself is more or less in the game, and has been since launch: it's the Noble class Assault cruiser. Minus the mission pod, naturally.
Oddly enough, the Noble class was designed as a multi-mission starship, more like a floating laboratory than a full-on combat ship. It was still incredibly well armed, though, so it more than likely could hold its own just as well as a Sovereign.
I'm pretty sure I can anticipate your question and it was answered a long time ago in an interview: CBS said "no" to the ship as it was since they said it made to sense to connect a torpedo launcher do the nacelles.
Yeah I also like the look of the Excalibur. It's a fresh new look but maintains the trek feel. :cool:
Throw some cargo containers between those pylons and I'd say we have a 2409 federation cargo ship. And I wouldn't mind seeing that Transwarp Gate (or similar).
There are a few things in that cornucopia that would be nice (the shuttles, Ferengi ship, Vulcan Ships) . On the other hand there were some concepts of weapons that suffer from "Final Fantasy" syndrome (the gun is so large that Worf or Data would have trouble using it.)
I like the armor concepts from Perpetual. They are rugged, but at the same time don't look out of place (most of them, anyway).
The concept felt like a natural progression to the 25th century from the 24th.
Uniforms were uniform and there were design standards, with a few previous century ships(such as the akira).
What Cryptic ultimately delivered was not a Star Trek experience, but rather "Star Trek, The Exeperience" so to speak, a virtual theme park.
There is zero consistency in this game now with ship design or uniform standards, and don't even get me started on how ridiculous all these "alien" lockbox ships and costumes are.
Perpetual picked a theme and stuck to it.
Also, several of the 3D art assets they produced were far superior in quality to Cryptic's own.
I mean have you seen the renders of their Akira model? The level of detail on that ship...
I would very much have loved to see Perpetuals vision of STO realised, and its a shame they never managed to pull it off.
Looking at their concept art, one thing does come to mind with STO as it is now.
Cryptic really really really really needs to completely revamp their entire exploration/star cluster system.
From the ground up.
There needs to be a season or two exclusively dedicated to what Star Trek is all about, Exploration.
Yes, and I ALSO saw the comment from Perpetual's own developers when asked about those renders that they indeed DID realize thy were too high poly count and detailed to be renderable on a client PC in an MMO setup; so, yeah, again we had Perpetual doing high concept stuff that could never be used in game, and is probably one of the reasons they never were able to get an actual game produced.
Concepts are one thing - being able to translate a concept so that it can be used on a set of available computer hardware in a real world setup; THAT'S the hard part. Perpetual seemed good at the former, but terrible at the latter; which is why their version of STO never made it past the 'concept' stage after 4 years of development time. had they been able to show any real world actual usable content, I might have taken their concepts more seriously. The fact is though, in the end, they did not produce any actual in game usable assets; or if they ever did, they never showed them to the public.
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..."
and this... looks oddly familiar to me,
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
I would Pay for that Top Bridge.. Just DON'T put a ship Diagram on any of the displays, it ruins the Ability to RP a Soverign when there is a Giant Graphic of a Prometheus on the Wall.
I would also love if the Second one was what the Captains Table should be... Get rid of the Other map and make this Accessible from the Turbolift by Quinn's Office.
Just make it a Social Map where people can Talk and include all the Past and Future Captains Since Taco said he would rather have that be a Map included in ESD instead of the Stupid Portal
Can Admiral Quinn hurry up and die so we can have Admiral Tacofangs? But you can see where you guys got the idea for the ship area. Truly though ESD needs an interior revamp.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
Of course, I'd still love it if we were able to fly around in some of those Vulcan ships too.
And for the record, I think the Excalibur design is hideous.
Cryptic pls
My character Tsin'xing