Questions about puzzles and other creative advice.

geoff484

I was just wondering if anybody has any tips, guides, reading material, etc. to being able to come up with original, but fun puzzles for STO.

I've been working on the second episode of my series for over a month now and I'm having more trouble filling gaps in the story with things for the players to do than anything else. I want something more than just killing enemies or simply interacting with things.

I created one puzzle, but it's just basic math solving.

Another obstacle I have is I don't know how to apply puzzles to Star Trek tech, I don't feel like I know enough about engineering, science, etc. to create immersive puzzles that makes sense to the player.

Can anybody help point me in the right direction?

And one more question, how do you write out puzzles, branching dialogues, etc. in your scripts? Do you just let it flow within the foundry?

I just want to be a diverse foundry author and have a good understanding of being able to do a variety of different things from maps to effects, and the one area I find myself lacking in the most that I haven't been able to progress in is creating fun puzzles.

markhawkman

You could read about it on MA.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Technology

duncanidaho11

The three puzzles I've done were (which I created in the editor):

-Basic math
-Adjusting power levels
-Sentience

For writing, your audience is not going to be sufficiently familiar with science and engineering to distinguish real knowledge from plausible sounding...well, lies. If you need inspiration, just draw on the TV show. Watch the technical problems they solved and think about how something like that might be applied to the Foundry.

geoff484

Okay, thanks guys, this was a lot of help!

I'm not sure why, but I was self conscience about trying to dive into more scientific sounding dialogue.

duncanidaho11

geoff484 wrote: »

I'm not sure why, but I was self conscience about trying to dive into more scientific sounding dialogue.

It can definitely be daunting, considering how much the scientific angle of Star Trek has been lauded. But one should always remember that it's a show written by writers, not practicing scientists (as far as I know.) And it's written to entertain a general audience on a weekly basis.

You could say that Star Trek inspires, not informs. Many people pursued a career in Science and Technology thanks to the series, but if you try to learn Evolutionary Biology from it (for example) you will become very, very confused very, very quickly. And that all carries over to the Foundry. Do your best, and remember that the jargon isn't the most important part.

paxfederatica

I wrote a couple of unique puzzles into my missions "Ghosts of War, Part I" and "Ghost's Gambit".

"Ghosts of War, Part I" opens with an object-based puzzle on a space map (something still fairly rare among Foundry missions). It's a communications array with a bunch of nodes, and the player has to find the one that's been tampered with. This is done by looking for the node with a value of 100% of [I forget exactly what]. Each node's value is between 0% and 100%; the higher the value, the closer it is to the bad apple.

"Ghost's Gambit" has a bunch of devices scattered across an interior map, which the player must shut down using one of four options. As you approach each device it offers a clue (as reach-marker text) as to the best option to choose, though there is some uncertainty built in. (You can usually eliminate two of the options right away, but then it becomes a coin flip between the other two.)