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Some Stuff i really miss in the Foundry
cptviper78
Member Posts: 12 Arc User
I like the Foundry and its a nice idea sure but there are so many things i miss if i compare it to other mmo editors or compare it to tools like the cryengine.
- First its nice i can place entire npc mobs that are friendly but why i cant place only 1 single friendly npc that dont act as contact?
- Also why i need 2 times the same npc to change from as example a typing animation to the lie flat animation, there should be a option to change npc animations so you dont need to place 2 or 3 or 4 of same npc and change them around. And if that cant be changed then there must be a option to set how fast or slow a npc is removed. Makes not much sense to cover as example with a explosion how npc 1 beams out and npc 2 beams in and lie on the ground if the explosion is done faster then the beam in beam out game.
- NPC moving around, nice idea but really the wander option dont work if you dont publish your map first (makes not much sense), the waypoints must be generatet also if you preview your map. the Patrol routes are a nice idea but not if you cant edit the map in a 3D mode so you can see each little dust particle that would block the npc from following the route, always going to preview mode and back iis not really user friendly
- The Assets are uhmmm sometimes strange you can place a entire transporter room, yep thats nice but why it has no texture for the entrance wall, and where is a placable wall asset that match the other walls and is as big as the transporter room entrace wall and has a door hole in the middle? Same for the walls, if i use the grid the walls have openings between each part but then the textures in the upper parts dont flicker (cuase the upper part of the wall is longer then the rest of it, so how someone could use this asset if there is not really a nice looking option to cover the hole between the parts?
- The different effects are nice, but makes not much sense that someone who walk through a plasma fire gets 0 damage , so why its not possible to set a damage value for the different effects? If i play the normal missions this effects have a damage value most of time.
Griefing cant be a reason cause no one can grief someone in a foundry mission cause no one force me to play it.
- The different maps are nice sure, but why its impossible to set a map like DS9 as mission map without loosing all the NPC that are running around ds 9 normally? We can start a mission on the fully populatet ESD , but it seems impossible to have a mission on a populatet DS9 if the person who create the mission dont rebuild all NPC from DS9 from scratch, and that makes not really muhc sense. The assets and the maps are there so why they are not in the foundry?
So yep the foundry is a nice thing but it really need much more work. Currently it offer only basic functions , but this basic functions dont include all game assets, maps , and stuff. And many normally simple task are horrible time consuming 2 hours of work in the foundry.
- First its nice i can place entire npc mobs that are friendly but why i cant place only 1 single friendly npc that dont act as contact?
- Also why i need 2 times the same npc to change from as example a typing animation to the lie flat animation, there should be a option to change npc animations so you dont need to place 2 or 3 or 4 of same npc and change them around. And if that cant be changed then there must be a option to set how fast or slow a npc is removed. Makes not much sense to cover as example with a explosion how npc 1 beams out and npc 2 beams in and lie on the ground if the explosion is done faster then the beam in beam out game.
- NPC moving around, nice idea but really the wander option dont work if you dont publish your map first (makes not much sense), the waypoints must be generatet also if you preview your map. the Patrol routes are a nice idea but not if you cant edit the map in a 3D mode so you can see each little dust particle that would block the npc from following the route, always going to preview mode and back iis not really user friendly
- The Assets are uhmmm sometimes strange you can place a entire transporter room, yep thats nice but why it has no texture for the entrance wall, and where is a placable wall asset that match the other walls and is as big as the transporter room entrace wall and has a door hole in the middle? Same for the walls, if i use the grid the walls have openings between each part but then the textures in the upper parts dont flicker (cuase the upper part of the wall is longer then the rest of it, so how someone could use this asset if there is not really a nice looking option to cover the hole between the parts?
- The different effects are nice, but makes not much sense that someone who walk through a plasma fire gets 0 damage , so why its not possible to set a damage value for the different effects? If i play the normal missions this effects have a damage value most of time.
Griefing cant be a reason cause no one can grief someone in a foundry mission cause no one force me to play it.
- The different maps are nice sure, but why its impossible to set a map like DS9 as mission map without loosing all the NPC that are running around ds 9 normally? We can start a mission on the fully populatet ESD , but it seems impossible to have a mission on a populatet DS9 if the person who create the mission dont rebuild all NPC from DS9 from scratch, and that makes not really muhc sense. The assets and the maps are there so why they are not in the foundry?
So yep the foundry is a nice thing but it really need much more work. Currently it offer only basic functions , but this basic functions dont include all game assets, maps , and stuff. And many normally simple task are horrible time consuming 2 hours of work in the foundry.
Post edited by cptviper78 on
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Comments
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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First off, CryEngine is a single-player, FPS engine, not an MMO. Most MMOs don't allow any editing by players. I can count on one hand the MMOs that do. MMO editing will never be as robust as single player because developers need to maintain control and balance of a persistent world. As a result you'll never have development-level access to like you would for a single player game.
It's more of a case that each and every possible combination of group has to be added manually, and they haven't taken the time to add that particular group combination. That said you do have a couple of options.
First, if you don't need the NPC to fight, you can use the Neutral Targ single and reskin the mob as whatever you want. This mob is friendly to everyone and only has one actor.
Second, if you need a character to fight, I use a full friendly group and isolate the rest of the group out of sight behind invisible walls. You'll want to use double invisible walls to prevent the unused actors from pooping through walls to get to their comrade under fire.
It's just a level of detail and control that tool isn't designed for. I would certainlt love more control of the spawn/despawn animations. If you want to workaround the beam in problem of swapping NPC groups, try the Targ Captain 01 group. For some reason (probably a bug) it doesn't have a beam in animation. Also, despite the description, it's friendly to players. This makes it possible fro a more seemless transition between one group sand another.
This actually is a limitation of the Foundry and the engine. NPC pathing, because of the time it takes to calculate, isn't calculated until publish. In fact, we've been told that pathing calculation takes up the bulk of mission publish time. It simply takes too long for pathing to be calculated at preview. As a result, things like wander don't work in preview and NPCs (both placed and bridge officers) get stuck on many obstacles. Literally the data they use to navigate around obstacles won't be added until publish.
Mostly the assets were built for the game, not the Foundry. So things aren't going to line up to the grid. Some assets were added by Zero (who isn't an artist) who took the time to learn how to add assets for us and pulled a few from existing maps because we asked her for them. These assets especially tend to not be formatted for the Foundry.
Honestly, if plasma fires caused damage, what would prevent someone from putting a bunch on the spawn point and causing the player to die repeatedly?
And what if you wanted to have DS9 evacuated. Maps ideally should plan for the leas common denominator. Besides, Foundry base maps don't contain any sort of data such as NPCs, and even animated geometry hasn't translated properly to Foundry base maps in the past.
The Foundry is what it is. No matter what features they add, there will always be limitations. My philosophy is to not dwell on what the Foundry can't do and look to how I can pull it off anyway. Don't treat the limitations as road blocks but as a foundation to build something great. Art isn't creating something with no restrictions, it's about creating something great despite the restrictions.
I know that the cryengine is a FPS Engine and not a MMO engine, point is this is a game using a cryptic engine peopel who played as example city of heroes know how many options a editor could have , also look at the neverwinter editor as example.
And sure a editor for a MMO will never give people a full dev access , this would not make sense cuase most players would not be able to use such tools.
2 point:
you see this work wiht some workarounds (thanks for the tips), but such things would be also possible without workarounds if the foundry get a little bit more "love"
3. thanks will try that ;-)
4. Pathing hmm ok sounds like a real limitation of th engine, but at same time its hard for me to believe that pathing on a small map like the sto maps are, would take so much time to calculate. Point i dont get is this, if i believe the stuff i could read about the wander option, the waypoints are calculatet during the npc moves around. If this is true , then there should be no reason that this waypoints cant be calculatet during preview mode. If the waypoints are only calculatet one time during publish its somethign else sure.
But then this limitation should really be removed cause for me i hate to have a npc set to wander then publish everythign to see if he wander as he should or not.
5. Ah good to know, was wondering that asseets dont really work as they should, thought someone forgot to add a wall to a room and such things
6. So what would be the problem wiht plasma fires doing player damage?
If someone did what you say and placing 50 plasma fires on the spawn, sure the player will die but how often? 1 or 2 times? then leaves the map and ignores the author. This would others do too so no one will play any mission from this person at same time the foundry access for this user could be removed permanently.
At same time this would allow all other normal foundry authors to make more challening maps.
cause if i place a plasma fire just for design reasons its one thing but if i wanna place a plasma fire that cause damage and can kill the player if he is not careful this would allow me to do that.
So i dont think its a good idea to prevent some few people to make some sort of grief map to remove things people would need for some misison types.
7: Hav in DS9 evacuatet? Wont be such a problem normally.
The maps like DS9, ESD, Bajor and also all other maps are stored on the server wihth all NPC data for this maps. On the foundry we have most of this maps without any stored npc data, so normally it should be no problem to have both versions the empty map and at same time a option to add all standard npc to a map. Such data should be stored in the normal database so it wont be a problem to have a map read this data (not write data only read it). Would make things little bit easier and more usable i think.
8. Sure i try to work with and around the limitations , i have no other choice ;-) . Problem for me is i know how to work with cryengine, hero engine and others so if i hit one of this "road blocks" i ask myself why there must be this road block if this could also be a full working pathing system or a full working animation system for npc or somethign like that.
And at same time i hope that foundry become better and more cause i rememebr the time the foundry was released there where many many things what should be added and many of this things are still not there ;-)
That said, I don't want to discourage you. My personal experience is that art blossoms in adversity, and I've seen STO missions rival anything built in the Neverwinter Foundry.
My character Tsin'xing
Yeah, but it's a good comparison. The official editor* for the original StarCraft has comparable capabilities to the Foundry editor. The SC2 editor is more like the Cryengine editor the OP talks about, with more scripting power (one group tried to use it to make a WC III sequel, and another ported the whole SC1 campaign to SC2).
* There are fan-made editors out there with a lot more power.
EDIT: For Pete's sake, PWE, quit censoring every possible mention of your competition.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/