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How elaborate can you make dialogue and decision trees with the UGC engine?
I ask because this is probably the biggest thing I find lacking in Cryptic's missions so far. There are failure conditions. And in one mission there are different failure conditions depending on your faction. There are not, however, by and large, complex dialogue and decision trees where based on a dialogue choice or a command choice a mission can play out in two or three or four different ways.
Does the current UGC engine, at this beta state, support creating, for example, battle scenarios that will happen if option x is picked, or diplomatic content if option y is picked? Can you make a truly complex labyrinthine episode or set of episodes that can be played a dozen times because based on your choices, the story will evolve differently each time?
I ask because this is probably the biggest thing I find lacking in Cryptic's missions so far. There are failure conditions. And in one mission there are different failure conditions depending on your faction. There are not, however, by and large, complex dialogue and decision trees where based on a dialogue choice or a command choice a mission can play out in two or three or four different ways.
Does the current UGC engine, at this beta state, support creating, for example, battle scenarios that will happen if option x is picked, or diplomatic content if option y is picked? Can you make a truly complex labyrinthine episode or set of episodes that can be played a dozen times because based on your choices, the story will evolve differently each time?
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Good question.
It'd have to come eventually, if not at release.
It does pose a problem, however... for a mission to be sufficiently checked off as being acceptable per the approval rules, the reviewer would have to play through every possible dialogue tree. I'm almost wondering if reviewers will have to have an editor-like view of the mission where they can see all the dialogue text outside playing the mission normally.
While I can't say when all this will happen, I would not expect to be able to replicate the coolest missions from the game using the Foundry when it first launches. We hope to launch with something stable and simple for storytelling and to get people thinking about what kinds of features they'd really like to see, and add branching missions and dialogue in future updates.
I'd highly, highly, HIGHLY suggest we be given the capacity to filter out missions made with older versions of the UGC tools. People who have a story they want told will likely make the same story over and over as new versions are released, incorporating the latest and greatest capabilities. This will lead to heavy story duplication.
If we can filter out missions made with older versions it'll help us find the most recent.
Why? If people want to change an existing mission with the updated tools; they are more than fee to do so and republuish. Not EVERY good story needs the latest bells and whistles per say. Also, just because a mission is newer will have zero baring on whether it's good or bad.
You assume I realized you could update already-published missions.
If you can't get multiple lines from one NPC, you might simulate that by using
more than 1 NPC
example
Start story - your in map 1, the situation is disclosed.
3 different NPCs have thier own way of completing the mission
when you choose one, they send you to a DIFFERENT part of map 2 that allows you
to advance the story in the choosen way
If map 2 is space, make it as big as you can, the NW corner pops up the enemy
you have to kill to advance...the enemy in the NE never get met
and the enemy in the SE also never get met.
if you choose a differnt option, you end up in the NE, if you diplo them,
they have you follow them to the NW corner and help you kill the traitors. mission advances
if you decide to trick them, you go to SE corner..you trick them into going to the NW corner
to kill the enemy for you
in all 3 instances, the mob in NW dies to advance the story.
Yes, it would be easier if the engine allow a more straight forward way, but still is possible
to do it with a work around
Big maps, different starting points..or different instructions that send you to different
places on the map as long as all solutions trigger the same one thing needed to advance the story.
As a side note, I hope we can edit and update published missions as new tech
come down the pipe so that older missions can be updated.
Hmm. Well, even at launch there were missions with looping dialogue in them such as the Labor Day mission where you had to successfully complete a quiz to advance the mission. Which means that their were some basic checks in-game then to direct conversation dialogue based on the choices you answered with.
Curious to see just how much that differs from the code to branch missions since if you can loop dialogue it shouldn't be that much of a step from 'answer wrong, go to start' to 'answer a, go to a1 or answer b, go to b1'.
Still I have to guess it'll be a wait and see kind of thing as to what the tools allow.
So basically we're only going to be able to create Kill X/Scan Y then?
physically
so you can do many things
I'd be hesitant to assume that.
The tutorial has many, many parts; multiple space environments, multiple ship/station interiors, and the ground portion. I've so far been thinking we'd effectively be limited to a max of one space environment and one ground environment at first. I think I've heard mention that interior environments won't be supported at release, either.
size is.
How big can we make the adventure ?
How many maps ?
How many NPCs ?
How many dialoges ?
and to some extent, how big can the maps be ?
and how many objects can we put in them ?
When the Star Trek TV shows were filmed (not the movies) they had a limited amount of
space and sets they could create and use per episode...yet they told great stories.
So if we are allowed lots of room....even with simple tools, we should be able to do
some really fun things.
Speaking as someone who has been thinking long and hard about making UGC missions, I have to question your assumption here. Knowing myself, it's likely I'll create a mission using the tool set available at the time and just move on to the next story I want to tell. Maybe I'll be singing a very different tune in a year, but that's how I see things right now.
EB
Will it be reset and have to be approved again?
Made it, here it is.........ok next
and the folks that want to keep it updated...maybe they wanted to do something they couldn't
do earlier..but now can...so they come out with Ver. 2 and such
also depends on the replayability of an adventures...is it a one race pony ? or is it something
different like a star trek resort - event area ? Might want to keep the event area up to date.
Problem is, there's nothing preventing someone else from effectively stealing your old stories and remaking them with the latest and greatest supported mechanics. People would very likely begin to ignore your version for the new one that includes more tools in the storytelling.
But of course... that's one of the problems with the system in general.... none of us have any legal rights to the content we author. Anyone and everyone is free to plagiarize us at any time. I'm sure that'll eventually irk the people who take pride in adding a "unique" story to the game, when someone else just copies it and takes credit for the idea.
http://starbaseugc.com/index.php/polls/poll-how-important-is-branching-dialogue-for-the-foundry/
How big it is. <is there a file size limit?>
How long does it take to play ? <is it more than an average player is willing to invest playing it>
There might be some technical limits
only X number of objects per map
space maps only ..this big...
but having the tools themselves limit the generator ?
I would prefer to say the tools determine how easy or hard it is to
write an adventure.
Time will tell though.