New Foundry

quantumquantonum

This isn't something to do immediately, but I (and probably many others) would like to see a new, updated Foundry, including:

• a new, updated look
• more pre-made maps, especially from new episodes
• scripts (more functionality and replacing current, limited properties and such, more triggered events)
• cutscene creation (might be difficult, so maybe not)
• more costumes
• more Cryptic maps (the ones with interactable objects, like ESD and Bajor)
• more functionality with character types, enemies, and more (i.e. make a single person an enemy instead of using groups)
• away team controls (disable/force reposition)
• mission failure ability
• more tags (maybe like [AwayTeamSci]. Also usable in clickable options)
• class-specific options
• Pretty much, add the tools that Cryptic uses to make their current episodes, but without the entire Cryptic engine

The current Foundry, although easy to use to make fun episodes, has various issues, including:

• testing issues (mostly with ai)
• somewhat difficult to place stuff in map (i.e. difficult to see nebulas or to place something on top of another thing)
• options are confusing (i.e. making idling teams, what are jobs?, using animations like warp-out at the right times)
• limited (missing costumes, making entity into enemy, and other issues)

What would you like to see added/changed/removed in a new Foundry? comment below!!!

rogue6800

As much as I doubt any of this will happen, I would like to add the following Items

- Control of Away Team size
- Warp-in/out triggers that use animation
- Ability to take command of a specified ship (Like when using the Obelisk in "Sphere of influence")
- One way patrol route
- Assign NPC to follow the player

thay8472

All of the above ...

'Hero Mode' - Instead of dying, X npc heals/repairs itself. ( For those times when you don't want a allied npc to die )

'Allied Npcs' - (I.E. Undine, Iconian etc)

'3D map viewer' - Something so we can see what we're making as we're making it, instead of popping in and out. ( A wild shot I know ... I'd kill for this ... @artan42 you have a will, right? )

artan42

I'm working on it as we speak.

markhawkman

ability to assign animations to use when an object changes states. For example, interact with crate, crate despawns... it'd be nice it we could set it to use a transporter effect, or explode.

dragonsbrethren

I still stand by this:

https://twitter.com/Kinanra_STO/status/743101670909829122

I'll second what Mark said, though. While we could request a intricate animation scripting system, just being able to make a contact instantly disappear and another instantly appear would open up so much potential and likely be much easier to implement.

gurluas

The maps part especially. All the maps available are ancient Pre-LoR maps. It'd be so cool if we could get Virinat, Brea, Ancient Iconia, etc.

thay8472

we have 'Ancient Iconia' ... but yeah ... MOAR maps!

rogue6800

That reminds me - the ability to teleport a player. If I recall, the foundry used to have that feature, but was disabled because of spamming or something.

Perhaps if it was just disabled, they could link it up again (although somehow I doubt it would be that simple).

dragonsbrethren

Had another neat idea: A Path Stop Node and corresponding state trigger based on it.

Right now all paths nodes work to create a patrol route. This node would stop the mob(s) at the end of the path. A state option for "group has reached stop node" would let us set up a situation where an NPC follows us (or we follow them) rather than having to beam out/in contacts in all the time.

darakoss

Didn't Dan Stahl say many moons ago that the Foundry was going to come out of Beta? Still hasn't happened yet.

markhawkman

rogue6800 wrote: »

That reminds me - the ability to teleport a player. If I recall, the foundry used to have that feature, but was disabled because of spamming or something.

Perhaps if it was just disabled, they could link it up again (although somehow I doubt it would be that simple).

It was a bug not a feature. It was something that happened if you confused the Foundry as to where the player should be. The Foundry would panic and relocate you to the nearest spawn point.

evilmark444

My biggest wish is combat objectives other than 'Kill X', I'd LOVE to be able to set an objective as 'Disable X', opens so many more story telling options.

markhawkman

that or setting enemies to warp out instead of explode.

johnnysnowball

Lurpa mobs, sword mobs, bat'leth mobs, and hand-to-hand mobs

ktonof1aq

What is your business plan? Is this something that Cryptic can make money on? How?

I would love if suggetions were framed with some sort of suggestion on how they could profit from it. I mean like I'm guessing the player base just loves working for free and getting paid in hugs and kisses. Not trying to troll here except in maybe suggesting a new way of approaching the myriad "I want" threads that seem to plague the forum.

thay8472

Hmmm ... at the top of my head ...

1) Foundry Reputation / New or more rewards / Foundry Competitions

(Get people to notice the foundry.)

2) Foundry Mission > STO Mission

(Maybe Cryptic can take the 'really good' mission ideas to CBS and turn them into more 'official' story content for us to play.)

3) Foundry Race Lockbox

(Continuing from 2, if any new races make it into the game, they could then take new race and lockbox them.)

4) C-Store

(Again, continuing from 2 & 3 )

Playable Species: (Maybe add new race for people to play)
Outfits: (Did new X race have a cool outfit? Now you an too.)
Ships: (Did Y Mission make you want to slap @artan42 ? Get the Tyhpoon Class today!)
Foundry Tribble: ( Bonus marks/xp for completing a foundry mission during the tribble buffs? )
Emote Packs: (You want to do that 'Menacing Pose' infront of Quinn now? Or 'smackdown' that Bajoran nut who tried to convert you?)

duncanidaho11

I've just got one item in the magic wish list bucket (besides a new search UI)

• Bring forward/send to back options for object display order in the foundry editor. (+1 to Kinanra. )

ktonof1aq wrote: »

What is your business plan? Is this something that Cryptic can make money on? How?

I would love if suggetions were framed with some sort of suggestion on how they could profit from it. I mean like I'm guessing the player base just loves working for free and getting paid in hugs and kisses. Not trying to troll here except in maybe suggesting a new way of approaching the myriad "I want" threads that seem to plague the forum.

I'm not sure this is the best approach. There's a lot added to STO which doesn't directly monetize it. Lighting improvements, new facial animations, and story missions for example.

There's two components to the business mindset (only one of which gets generally talked about). Item one: does it make money? Then you have a second thing: does it affect something else which makes money? IE. Direct and indirect effects, they both can have an impact on the bottom line. Any foundry suggestion wouldn't fall under item one (I don't think any of us want authors or players to have to pay into it) but it could strongly affect item two if a given update makes the game more generally desirable to people. Or to put it another way, does it make STO more appreciable to a wider audience? Or to put it another way, does it make the game noticeably better (which has knock-on effects on player retention and willingness to spend money)?


That said, this thread isn't a formal proposal. It's just a wish list. The devs know whether or not any given suggestion would be practically feasible. Why try to second guess that? Some things are certainly more doable than others but we're not really in a good position to judge that accurately. So I say just let the impulses fly. If Cryptic reaches out for practical suggestions then we should definitely vet them critically. But as it is, I think the primary function of this thread is to vent by other means (since a lot of us here know how frequently dev time gets slated to the Foundry).

dragonsbrethren

Great response about profitability. Expecting every new feature to be monetized in some way is a very cynical attitude and is historically inaccurate for STO.

Anyway, back to random ideas:

• Wander/path enabled contacts. I get that combat-enabled contacts would be difficult to implement, but letting them move would be nice. In my Sarita mission, I fake a dialog with a moving mob group by using a reach marker, but it's far from an ideal setup.
  
• New tags for the name of the Tac/Eng/Sci Ship/Away Team boffs.
  
• Tags enabled on buttons and dialog titles--official misisons have this capability already, it'd be nice to have it for Foundry dialogs.

markhawkman

One thing Cryptic has done that authors cannot is to have an NPC follow the player.

wired2thenet

I'd like more interactable hooks on some maps (Utopia Planitia comes to mind ... because I'm working on something there). All those consoles and wall panels, and no way to interact for mission objectives

ktonof1aq

I wasn't trying to be cynical so I apologize if it came across that way. I misunderstood the purpose of the post.

I would love to be able to reuse maps. Some of the player generated maps are just incredible.

duncanidaho11

ktonof1aq wrote: »

I wasn't trying to be cynical so I apologize if it came across that way. I misunderstood the purpose of the post.

I would love to be able to reuse maps. Some of the player generated maps are just incredible.

No worries, I personally didn't think you were being cynical. Injecting a note of pragmatism in this way is a common idea across forums (and by no means is it a bad thing). We just have to take a step back and realize that we're not a planning committee (ie. we don't have to make sense).

Anyway, some easier way of exporting and sharing foundry maps could be a big boon to collaborative projects and shared world building. Presumably it'd also make it a little easier to re-use one's own content (just import what you've exported). As it is we can copy whole projects but we can't [easily] pick and mix between different ones.

dragonsbrethren

Oh yes, map export/import would be wonderful!

wired2thenet

+Fleet Starbase Door, with appropriate interior hooks. Of all the things that should be in the Foundry, a Fleet door (with the hooks for the basic Fleet Starbase) should be a no-brainer. Give us access to that holodeck ... which Foundry authors can use for stuff like holonovels. Even those without a fleet could use it for the holodeck alone, if it was made generic (approach fleet starbase location, foundry mission pops up. Access to basic fleet starbase and/or holodeck).

theyredeadjim

I was playing around with the Neverwinter Foundry a number of months ago, and it had some interesting features that would be nice to see here:

1. Assets could be rotated around all three axes, not just the Y axis.
2. There was an NPC behaviour called "Follow", which was similar to Patrol, but would cause the NPC to follow the player instead of sticking to a pre-determined route.
3. NPC mobs could be set to surrender instead of die when defeated in combat.
4. The Foundry author could also create "Items" that could be picked up by the player and turned in at a later time. As in, take this Sword and deliver it to Kahless. The items had no use other than to advance a plot line, but the feature offers up a lot of potential.

It would also be nice to see some generic mobs, such as energy wpn, psionic, slug thrower, and melee groups, that don't have the skills of a specific faction attached.

markhawkman

1-3 would be great.

4: not so much. It has a reasonable variety of pictures, but... aside from being able to look at the item, you can fudge it with dialog just as easily. Now if you made a puzzle that consumed items to advance the puzzle... hmmm maybe. (like that thing on Mol'Rihan where you use the reeds to lure the baby nanovs)

Other things to steal from NW:
5: some NW props are very specific to NW some aren't.... One in particular is the Bismuth Crystal props.

6: ability to toggle object states, in STO, state changes are always permanent.

7: teleport interacts. NW actually has a feature that lets you teleport the player.

theyredeadjim

markhawkman wrote: »

4: not so much. It has a reasonable variety of pictures, but... aside from being able to look at the item, you can fudge it with dialog just as easily. Now if you made a puzzle that consumed items to advance the puzzle... hmmm maybe. (like that thing on Mol'Rihan where you use the reeds to lure the baby nanovs)

In my experimentation back then, I saw that the items would persist between maps, and that dialogue of the receiver could vary according to whether or not the player actually had the item. There might be some potential for branching between maps offered here.

markhawkman

branching dialog based on whether the item is there sounds useful.

ktonof1aq

The ability to determine how many BOFFS the player can beam down when playing your mission. That would be awesome!!!

The ability to place the player in a particular ship (i.e. their ship or force them into a shuttle).

rogue6800

The little "slide on" dialogs that appear above the BOFF control panel - maybe activated through a dummy object.