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July Developer Q&A Thread Answers!
ambassadorkael
Member, Administrator Posts: 2,674 Community Manager
Here are the answers to your questions from July! Thanks, folks! As before, this thread will be locked, but feel free to make discussion threads of your own to discuss these answers.
SYSTEMS DESIGN
Do you have a list of power or trait ideas on interesting effects and anomalies from the canon shows and movies when you design a new ship and its console or power, or does the ability usually develop organically with the ship? Did anyone comb through all the episodes and write down special technobabble terms that could be reused for later? Or is just "nerd" knowledge acquired through countless of rewatches?
Most modern ships are being taken from canon references – typically the most recent Star Trek series like Picard, Lower Decks, and Discovery. As such, the first place we go for inspiration is if the ship was seen doing anything during its appearance, with a closer runner-up being any special maneuvers that were done during the episodes surrounding its appearance even if performed by a different ship. If those wells are dry, we just start from scratch, designing something that we either think is fun, interesting, or encourages a new type of gameplay choice for players that obtain it. Brainstorming for these abilities typically involves the whole Systems team, as well as FX artists and Ship Artists, and occasionally QA or Animators. You never know where a good idea might come from!
The last time I think a ‘catalog’ was attempted to be pulled together was circa launch. It’s not exactly something we keep on top as an ongoing resource. Though I’ll admit that it’s an interesting idea! - Jeremy Randall, Senior Systems Designer
RE: Endeavor Perk Points: Do people who have reached the Endeavor Perk point cap continue to earn "hidden" Endeavor XP in the background that will be applied to future points, when the cap is raised?
There’s a cap in place per Perk Level, which you cannot earn past if there is no level beyond. Once you’ve capped you can only continue to earn until you reach the point where you would have earned your next Perk Point, if there was one. Any additional Endeavor XP earned after that point is not applied, and thus disappears. Looking at the data we have, there's a very small percentage of players who are currently at this cap. - Jeremy Randall, Senior Systems Designer
CONTENT DESIGN
What are the requirements to unlock the missions that were moved to the “available” tab?
Your character must be level 65 and have a factional allegiance (Federation or Klingon Empire). These are older missions and while we didn't want to completely pull them from the game, they don't fit in well with our current material and so they're considered "side content," not part of the main Episode journal. - Jesse Heinig, Senior Content Designer
If there was one STO arc you guys would like to see written into a star trek series plot which would it be?
The Iconian War, of course. While "war stories" in Trek are a bit of a stretch—DS9 liberally interspersed personal-interest stories with the Dominion War to remind viewers that it's more than just military drama—I feel like the whole process of discovering this secretive, meddling enclave of super-powerful aliens, and then gearing up to resist them and losing until you find their weakness, and finally building bridges when it's revealed that you could destroy them but you don't—is a very Trek story, and a medium like TV or movies would allow more in-depth character exploration of what happened during that conflict. - Jesse Heinig, Senior Content Designer
Tough question! I think I’d vote for New Frontiers – there’s a lot going on there. Kuumaarke, exploration, a sinister mystery, the Tzenkethi, a big battle over DS9… on and on. - Paul Reed, Writer
CHARACTER ART
For the June Q&A it was mentioned that not all costume pieces can be mixed due to them not fitting together properly, does that same reasoning apply to badges as well?
Yes, everything including badges must be fitted specifically to work with Upper uniform pieces, jackets, shirts, etc.
We generally make badges for the specific costume it was meant for, and if there is time, we make badges to fit other outfits. - Ian Castaneda, Lead Character Artist
[Is it possible to add more alien body parts and configurations to the tailor?
Alien body parts are a challenge because it requires quite a lot of time from a very small Character Team.
We are usually focused on new NPCs, costumes, and weapons; but we do look forward to making new races whenever the plans allow for it. - Ian Castaneda, Lead Character Artist
TECHNICAL
What are the limitations on control setups for Console? Is it possible to add more functionality?
We can make any button on the controller take any action we want. However there are a ton of actions a player can make and a small number of buttons on a controller. So we have to use a lot of layers of selectable options.
We try to deal with this by having auto-activation on console for a lot of abilities and the giant circle control wheels. It’s a hard problem to solve where we want players to be able to do what they want quickly, but having too much nested UI inception slows down their choice selection.
As far as I know, we already use every button on the controller and also use some press vs press->hold.
We are open to suggestions for better ways to control the game, but we need specifics. Players can also point us to control schemes in other games as an example of what works well.
STO is a very large complex game, that wasn’t originally designed for console so we have to map a lot PC actions meant for keyboard/mouse to a controller.
Additionally, we assume that console players are playing on a screen like a living room TV, at a distance from the screen. So we make all of the UI bigger to ensure that players can see everything from their living room couch. Since all UI takes up a lot of space, we aren’t able to show as much on the screen at one time. Which is why most UIs take up the entire screen.
The experience of most players will likely be better if they use the options setting to select their screen’s ‘viewable area’ and make at as large as possible. This will give more room for the UI to work with and will likely space things out better. - Travis Stadelman, Staff Software Engineer
SYSTEMS DESIGN
Do you have a list of power or trait ideas on interesting effects and anomalies from the canon shows and movies when you design a new ship and its console or power, or does the ability usually develop organically with the ship? Did anyone comb through all the episodes and write down special technobabble terms that could be reused for later? Or is just "nerd" knowledge acquired through countless of rewatches?
Most modern ships are being taken from canon references – typically the most recent Star Trek series like Picard, Lower Decks, and Discovery. As such, the first place we go for inspiration is if the ship was seen doing anything during its appearance, with a closer runner-up being any special maneuvers that were done during the episodes surrounding its appearance even if performed by a different ship. If those wells are dry, we just start from scratch, designing something that we either think is fun, interesting, or encourages a new type of gameplay choice for players that obtain it. Brainstorming for these abilities typically involves the whole Systems team, as well as FX artists and Ship Artists, and occasionally QA or Animators. You never know where a good idea might come from!
The last time I think a ‘catalog’ was attempted to be pulled together was circa launch. It’s not exactly something we keep on top as an ongoing resource. Though I’ll admit that it’s an interesting idea! - Jeremy Randall, Senior Systems Designer
RE: Endeavor Perk Points: Do people who have reached the Endeavor Perk point cap continue to earn "hidden" Endeavor XP in the background that will be applied to future points, when the cap is raised?
There’s a cap in place per Perk Level, which you cannot earn past if there is no level beyond. Once you’ve capped you can only continue to earn until you reach the point where you would have earned your next Perk Point, if there was one. Any additional Endeavor XP earned after that point is not applied, and thus disappears. Looking at the data we have, there's a very small percentage of players who are currently at this cap. - Jeremy Randall, Senior Systems Designer
CONTENT DESIGN
What are the requirements to unlock the missions that were moved to the “available” tab?
Your character must be level 65 and have a factional allegiance (Federation or Klingon Empire). These are older missions and while we didn't want to completely pull them from the game, they don't fit in well with our current material and so they're considered "side content," not part of the main Episode journal. - Jesse Heinig, Senior Content Designer
If there was one STO arc you guys would like to see written into a star trek series plot which would it be?
The Iconian War, of course. While "war stories" in Trek are a bit of a stretch—DS9 liberally interspersed personal-interest stories with the Dominion War to remind viewers that it's more than just military drama—I feel like the whole process of discovering this secretive, meddling enclave of super-powerful aliens, and then gearing up to resist them and losing until you find their weakness, and finally building bridges when it's revealed that you could destroy them but you don't—is a very Trek story, and a medium like TV or movies would allow more in-depth character exploration of what happened during that conflict. - Jesse Heinig, Senior Content Designer
Tough question! I think I’d vote for New Frontiers – there’s a lot going on there. Kuumaarke, exploration, a sinister mystery, the Tzenkethi, a big battle over DS9… on and on. - Paul Reed, Writer
CHARACTER ART
For the June Q&A it was mentioned that not all costume pieces can be mixed due to them not fitting together properly, does that same reasoning apply to badges as well?
Yes, everything including badges must be fitted specifically to work with Upper uniform pieces, jackets, shirts, etc.
We generally make badges for the specific costume it was meant for, and if there is time, we make badges to fit other outfits. - Ian Castaneda, Lead Character Artist
[Is it possible to add more alien body parts and configurations to the tailor?
Alien body parts are a challenge because it requires quite a lot of time from a very small Character Team.
We are usually focused on new NPCs, costumes, and weapons; but we do look forward to making new races whenever the plans allow for it. - Ian Castaneda, Lead Character Artist
TECHNICAL
What are the limitations on control setups for Console? Is it possible to add more functionality?
We can make any button on the controller take any action we want. However there are a ton of actions a player can make and a small number of buttons on a controller. So we have to use a lot of layers of selectable options.
We try to deal with this by having auto-activation on console for a lot of abilities and the giant circle control wheels. It’s a hard problem to solve where we want players to be able to do what they want quickly, but having too much nested UI inception slows down their choice selection.
As far as I know, we already use every button on the controller and also use some press vs press->hold.
We are open to suggestions for better ways to control the game, but we need specifics. Players can also point us to control schemes in other games as an example of what works well.
STO is a very large complex game, that wasn’t originally designed for console so we have to map a lot PC actions meant for keyboard/mouse to a controller.
Additionally, we assume that console players are playing on a screen like a living room TV, at a distance from the screen. So we make all of the UI bigger to ensure that players can see everything from their living room couch. Since all UI takes up a lot of space, we aren’t able to show as much on the screen at one time. Which is why most UIs take up the entire screen.
The experience of most players will likely be better if they use the options setting to select their screen’s ‘viewable area’ and make at as large as possible. This will give more room for the UI to work with and will likely space things out better. - Travis Stadelman, Staff Software Engineer
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