test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Finally, it's out--my first mission, Falling Star! (Update 1/20/17)
minababe
Member Posts: 182 Arc User
Hi, everyone! After a year or so tinkering around with the Foundry on and off, I finally published my first mission:
Title: Falling Star
Mission ID: HQIH36HAW
Author: minababe
This is a Starfleet mission that involves some role playing. In it, you'll be a former graduate of The Academy who is asked to check in on a ship called The Exodus, being helmed by a former classmate, Captain Chloe Baxton. There are rumors that something has gone terribly wrong on her ship and you are asked to find out if the rumors are true or not. Although you were on friendly terms with her back in the day, a part of you is secretly wishing that the rumors are true, as you've always been envious of her successful career in Starfleet.
If you play it, please let me know what you think!
Title: Falling Star
Mission ID: HQIH36HAW
Author: minababe
This is a Starfleet mission that involves some role playing. In it, you'll be a former graduate of The Academy who is asked to check in on a ship called The Exodus, being helmed by a former classmate, Captain Chloe Baxton. There are rumors that something has gone terribly wrong on her ship and you are asked to find out if the rumors are true or not. Although you were on friendly terms with her back in the day, a part of you is secretly wishing that the rumors are true, as you've always been envious of her successful career in Starfleet.
If you play it, please let me know what you think!
My Foundry Mission--Name: Falling Star | Mission ID: HQIH36HAW | Faction: FED
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Bold Expeditions S1E1
There's a really big glitch in the beginning that I'm still trying to fix, you''ll see what I mean so I'd appreciate any tips on hot to solve it.
The thing I loved the most about your mission is it had a lot of heart. There was a deep emotional core to the story and yet you sprinkled it and balanced it well with humor and action and here's the weird thing - I normally don't read everything in a foundry mission when it has this much dialogue but your's had a sort of quirkiness and charm to it. It was really smart without coming off as pretentious.
All the characters were defined really well. Normally when there's a side character that's established in a story and they get brought up again later in the story I forget who they were, but I remembered all of your's. I felt attached to every single one.
The only flaws that I noticed was some very minor things.
The bench outside of sick bay when you first meet the doctor is kind of in the way of the sickbay. If you're looking at the sickbay door from the outside, it would be the bench on the left that I think needs to be moved over just a tad.
The reach marker by the window when the player types up the report was a bit difficult to trigger.
There was a part where your running through the hall, you defeat some hirogen and then you have to answer a hail (the objective is even called "answer hail"). I was long past the reach marker after the battle so I had to turn around and run back. Very minor, but I felt it should have just been a popup without having a reach marker.
This last one isn't a flaw as much as it is as a suggestion, but the console used to over ride the force field I thought you could have made a good puzzle out of it. It doesn't take anything away from the mission at all, I just thought it would be a good opportunity to make a puzzle out of trying to get the force field to shut down. Maybe place a reach marker behind the force field and use dialogues attached to hidden items? Basically, you wouldn't be able to hit the reach marker until you completed a specific hidden component. Like I said though, that's just an idea, nothing that bothered me.
But like I said, it had a lot of heart. I really love your style of writing, it's quirky and yet smart and deep. The thing I liked the most about it is that it's a tragic story yet the humor works so great in it. There was a part I had to stop playing for a good minute or two because I couldn't stop laughing, without giving any spoilers away it involved a downed officer - It comes completely out of the blue and works so well.
Thanks! My biggest fear was that everyone would get overwhelmed by all the dialogue, so I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed reading it.
I'm going to take a look at the bench. I have a weird feeling that something may have moved in publish or I goofed in the last edit. I noticed things had changed in the published version of the mission, like animations breaking, etc.
Yeah, I know. I've been going crazy trying to adjust that marker. Maybe I will give up and use an object (like the pool table) to trigger that interaction instead.
Yup. This is another one of those little issues I've been trying to adjust forever. I will fix it.
I would've loved to have had a puzzle here (I was even hoping to have this part where you have to
But here's what I'll do. I try and see if there's some wriggle room in the dialogue tree to add some kind of memory-based puzzle. But unfortunately, I don't know if I can add any more markers/interactions as of yet. Hopefully, at some point, there'll expand the limit just a wee bit more in a future update to give us creators a little bit more leeway.
Thanks, @geoff484! Not only have your comments been incredibly helpful (I'm gonna go back and tweak ASAP!), I am so happy to hear that you resonated with the characters so much. That was my aim. I didn't want this to be a "pewpew-interact-here-fight-there" mission. I wanted this to be like a Star Trek episode, where, yes, you fight a bunch of bad guys and troubleshoot problems, but it's also very character driven. You get a feel for the characters, even if they're just onscreen for a few minutes (or seconds).
This is a technical review from the point of view of a Foundry Author and not necessarily a player. Also unless it is a blatant error (typos, bugs) what I say is my opinion and you don’t have to follow it. Everyone has their own style of writing and they don’t always intersect with mine.
General
A great mission, with a great story. I also enjoyed the humourous aspects. In the end my only real complaint is that at some times I felt like the game was telling me what to do instead of the story. There is an example later on in my detailed notes. Anyways once again great mission 5/5!
Where is the U.S.S. Exodus?
Invisible object with name “.” which is used for “Hail Ship” objective. Is there a reason why you did this instead of “Hail Ship”? I noticed it was used in a few places.
Arrive at location - not a very inspiring objective. For instance “Arrive at last known location of the Exodus” would be more interesting.
Note: When I was attacked by the Hirogen only 1 of the groups was in range, I had to fly to them and fight them one at a time. Personally I find that boring and unrealistic
Getting a handle on the situation[/u]
Scan and treat a patient 1 - animation uses a klingon tricorder
Curious why you didn’t combine the treat patients as a complete all objective so they can be done in any order
I feel a bit too “guided” on this map. The game is explicitly telling me what I should be doing instead of the story. I’m writing this after talking to Alixx and I’m told via the “game” to check out various things. An example of the story telling me what to do would be for Alixx to say “If I were you I’d take a look around the mess hall, see how bad things are!”
Only Trying to Help
Short map
They Brought It On
How are they beaming people around with shields up
Head towards area exit - same issue as “Arrive at location”.
Again with “leave area”. Could be something like - Go to Deck 5
Getting Out Alive
A couple actors you forgot to name
When disabling the forcefield the forcefield disappeared right when I used the console
Moving between locations to get beamed up was frustrating. The third one took a while for me to find.
Safe at Last
Noo Braxton
Default named object
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
Just wanted to address certain things:
I don't understand why you had to fly out to the Hirogen squads to fight them. That sounds like a bug, because they should be right there. But I'll take a look at what's going on, because someone else in reviews complained about a bug in that exact part of the mission, saying that the Exodus completely disappeared when he cleared the Hirogen out. He couldn't complete the mission because of it.
The "Scan and Treat" patient thing is easy to explain. Had I done it the other way ("Complete All") what would've happened was that all the prompts for "scan and treat patient" would've showed up at the same time because of how close together the NPCs are in that room. So players going up to a particular NPC and clicking a prompt would not necessarily get the right prompt for the right NPC.
I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but I'm fairly certain that this would've led to a lot of confusion or people assuming that the prompts weren't set up correctly, like, "Hey, what's the deal? I walked up to the Bolian female, clicked on 'Scan Patient' and I was shown the dialogue for the Vulcan instead!" Or "I went to the guy in the corner, and instead was shown the dialogue for the Liberated Borg female." So it wasn't my intention to make gameplay so linear.
The "Arrive at Location" was placeholder text that I had always meant to change but kept forgetting to over and over again for some reason, so thanks for pointing that out.
Some of the other stuff you discovered ("hail ship") is a holdover from when I was first learning the Foundry a year ago and didn't know a better way of doing things. I want to fix them, but I'm too paranoid that I might introduce even more mistakes. I'll try and stomach up the courage to go over them finally.
Everything else you mentioned has been duly noted and will be fixed in due time. I wish I could say more but I'm literally bogged down in a whole other side project right now for a different game, so I'm practically speed typing this. In any event, I'm so grateful for your feedback, as well as everyone else who posted in this thread!
I don't understand what you meant by the game ranks? Maybe you misunderstood something I said? To answer your question though in general I use [Rank].
The Hirogen space battle thing
I recall specifically that one frigate group was out of range of me during the fight. The Exodus disappearing might happen if NPC ship gets destroyed but I think this would be very unlikely.
Good luck with your other projects and I hope to see more foundry missions by you in the future!!!
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
I kind of dropped off the face of the earth for awhile after I published this mission in 2016 and literally hadn't logged in in over a year. I only just returned this week, only to find that the last act was completely bugged and the story unpublished since God knows how long.
In any event, I had to create a new map for the last act. I'm also in the process of fixing as many issues as possible, including the name rank issue (someone complained about this in the user ratings), forgotten NPC names, etc. Some of the other issues, unfortunately, I haven't been able to fix (like scanning patients) or just haven't figured out how.
In any event, if anyone's been wondering what happened to this mission and why they couldn't find it, I was gone for a long time and it was unpublished in my absence. It's back up now, and I'll still be combing through it based on all of your feedback.