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Ten Forward weekly 7/18/23
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Member Posts: 3,169 Arc User
From: https://reddit.com/r/sto/comments/153jfyk/ten_forward_weekly_71823/ Credit to: https://reddit.com/user/TheSajuukKhar/
- Stream interview with Gianna was supposed to happen right after the latest release, but because they moved to every other week, and stuff like ships kept coming up it kept being pushed back.
- Kael technically wasn't even supposed to be at work for this stream, but felt bad about pushing Gianna's stream back so many times.
- Nick originally built the Enterprise J as an environment piece before it was playable.
- The original plan for the recent mission was to just take the old Tholian kit and built on top of that as needed, but the more they looked at it the more they wanted to update it. Stuff like hallway kits only existed for TOS aesthetics, nothing for more current day stuff
- Gianna got to do a lot of sketching/concepting on what they would do for the update. Sketches cover things like what would Tholian sit on/where would they eat. Taking into account Tholians walk on all parts of the ship for everything is a floor to them, how that would factor into design. etc.(sketches shown on stream)
- Idea for how the Tholian door opened came from a dwarven door in Lord of the Rings not just moving to the side or up but coming apart in different directions.
- Tholian kit has a "smaller" room, and the larger room used at the end of the mission. Can't really make the rooms smaller due to how the Tholian kit is made. Gianna wanted to represent the triangular aspects of Tholian biology into the rooms.
- The rooms where NPCs spawn that players can't normally access are called monster closets like in most other companies
- The long line of wall lighting used in the Tholian kit came from the old Tholian textures having a similar feature, and Tholians being able to use both the "floor" and "ceiling" as walkways made putting lights on the "ceiling" not make sense. Putting them on the walls works better with both floor and ceiling being used as walkways.
- Scott was the one who suggested the doors players can go through have glowy bits to make them stand out from the other doors without having to put a big flashy light indicator UI element
- The boss of the new mission is in a monster closet that has a "Death fade plane" which make it looks like the room continues on by having it fade to black even though there's nothing back there
- No current plans to make Threads accounts for Cryptic games. They're waiting to see how things go before making a decision.
- Map took about 3-4 months to complete from concepting to finish/polishing because they were making something new and iteration takes a long time.
- Map was made by Gianna by herself. Her first original map done by herself, she updated several of the older patrols, and did Operation Wolf's map on her own. Also helped update Azure NEbla and The Vault TFOs.
- The honeycomb textures used on the floor/ceiling were taken from the V'ger map, scaled down, and new texture added.
- The doors only enemies can use have a simple sliding animation, whereas the doors used by players have the more complex pulling apart animation.
- The context of the mission is what determines how much longer/shorter it takes to build a missions, not really if they're using an existing kit or not. Even if they are using an already existing kit you may need to make new kinds of rooms etc for missions.
- The most difficult part of making the missions was the early design/concept phase. Gianna had a lot of crazy ideas for the mission she couldn't do due to time.
- Gianna uses Maya to 3d model the missions before importing into the game engine. Nick uses 3DS max, as do several other people on the team.
- Kael has kept pushing for the new Fed bridges to be made playable.
- Gianna prefers working on maps like the Tholian interior, where we really didn't see what it looked like back in the shows, and having to make up something new. Compared to working on things like Fed/KDF interiors.
- Gianna watched The Tholian Web and In a Mirror Darkly, Pt. I & II for inspiration when making this mission. Took a lot of screenshot of Tholians.
- After the Summer Event ends there is another event, and possible a Red Alert event, before the next mission drops.
- Flagship celebration coming to consoles in a few weeks.
- Playable non humanoids like Tholians is something Cryptic wants to do, but is likely impossible because they would have to develop a whole new suite of animations just for them to make them work with various powers/abilities. Tholian/non-humanoid BOFFs have the same issue. Though something like a Tholian BOFF could happen if they are only allowed to use a pre-set selection of abilities, and couldn't learn most other BOFF abilities. Cryptic has talked about it a few times, but it hasn't gotten beyond talks.
- Gianna has been at Cryptic since the start of 2021.
- The old dance instructor voice was Maria, a former producer at STO
- There could be more limited time vanity shields in the future. They had plans to bring back the pink vanity shield but those were tabled because reasons.
- Kael didn't want to answer any questions about the Maelstrom on stream. While he has talked to Jonathan about it a few times he doesn't have Jonathan's brain for it and doesn't want to say anything that would be taken as anything, a promise, denial, etc
- Gianna's favorite ship right now is the Mars class.
- Older maps(Defera/Dyson Sphere ground specifically asked by chat) will be updated if/when they need to use those assets for a newer mission.
- Sometimes assets can be ported from Neverwinter to STO, but its complicated. Only time Gianna knows of that happening was for the Halloween TFO.
- Kael doesn't know the current situation on the SAG strike and how that affects STO. According to the most recent material put out the strike shouldn't affect STO since its a video game, which the strike doesn't cover, but he doesn't know for certain.
- Getting the Protostar is still on the table even with Prodigy being cancelled.
- No word on SNW uniforms, its something Kael requests a lot.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
I hope they keep doing this. The fewer big floating icons, the better - especially since they were originally Solanae and Iconian icons, so it makes even less sense to have them show up everywhere.
Most of the time they're not really needed either, but they do tend to break immersion when they are present, as they make the environment feel less natural.
Personally I would be fine with this.
Animations aren't all that important to me. Basic things like running, jumping and so on are important of course. But I don't necessarily need to see my character talking, performing emotes or making the right movements when activating one or the other obscure kit module.
If less perfect animations of those types are the price for getting more playable species or Boffs, I certainly wouldn't mind paying it (and more - hell, I'd be fine with unique playable species being put in promo packs at this point).
In a lot of the newer missions we do see that doors that are accessable have some kind of indicator. Fed style ones (Both actual Fed and Terran) seem to have some kind of indicator over the door. Red indicators mean door is locked. Green indicators mean door is unlocked.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
IIRC in older fed based missions if the door was grey it was scenery that has the way in the Foundry at least.