Like everyone else I am chomping on the bit to try out the foundy on tribble..my only worry is that if we start creating missions and building things, when it goes to holodeck are we going to be able to preserve that work and carry it over?
Unlike a character wipe, potentially the foundry could have a ton of hours of work put into it, it would be a shame to have to re build everything twice.
juat curious is there will be a way to save some of our work and bring it to holodeck or if it's just the way it goes.
I doubt your pre-built missions will carry over, and honestly speaking, you probably won't want most of them to do so. Tribble will be your "learning experience" for the tools, and after making several missions, your mission quality will increase.
Yeah and at the very least there will be wipes when they have to clear out old missions that were made with buggy versions, they might have the wrong "data" in them if they have to change how they're stored.
I would go into ANY beta expecting any work to be "undone" at a whim, because thats the nature of testing, and the main reason it will be labeled as a Beta.
Like everyone else I am chomping on the bit to try out the foundy on tribble..my only worry is that if we start creating missions and building things, when it goes to holodeck are we going to be able to preserve that work and carry it over?
Unlike a character wipe, potentially the foundry could have a ton of hours of work put into it, it would be a shame to have to re build everything twice.
juat curious is there will be a way to save some of our work and bring it to holodeck or if it's just the way it goes.
Really?
*Sigh*
Okay.. the point of testing things isn't to create a 'brilliant' piece of mission-craft. The whole point of the Foundry going on Tribble first is for one last level of QA before it goes live.
Development Process (This is in general, different strokes for different folks, your mileage may vary)
Step 1) Idea - The idea is conceived.
Step 2) Planning - The idea is planned. This is when the idea first becomes a reality.
Step 3) Development (Actually, this is step 3-47845474853, but for simplicity we'll consider it one step.)
Step 4) Developers test it, find bugs, back to step 3 until fixed, then back to 4, repeat 238894 times, goto 5.
Step 5) Software is sent to QA for an Alpha test. QA finds bugs. Back to step 3 and 4. Eventually goto 6.
Step 6) Software is put into Beta. Beta testers find bugs... back to 3 and 4, eventually goto 7.
Step 7) Software goes to Tribble. YAAAAY. Players test, find bugs, 3&4, eventually 8.
Step 8) Holodeck!
When testing things on Tribble, the goal isn't to make sure it works... the goal is to break it. If you break it now, then it goes through steps 3 and 4 enough times that by step 8 it is very unlikely to break at all.
I think the majority of testers fail to grasp this process, and for some reason think that Tribble is just a nifty "sneak peek" of what's to come. It isn't. The reason for Tribble is an environment similar to the Live server where the normal circumstances of play are emulated in a medium that allows the developers to find potentially game-breaking situations before they actually break the game. If software is only tested by a handful of QA folks, there's no telling how many bugs might slip through. When it's tested by thousands of people on Tribble, however, they may find that a new ship spontaneously explodes when hit with a subnucleonic beam; a bug that slipped through because no one in the QA department used that power on it.
The whole reason you will get the chance to play with the Foundry on Tribble has nothing to do with getting an early start on creating awesome storyline missions. It's so you can find and report bugs that slipped past the developers, the QA staff, and the Foundry Beta Testers (Which, I might add, Cryptic needs to make me one. Buggers.) before those bugs that could potentially ruin the entire experience for every player that tried to create a creature with denobulan ears 3 in combination with Green eyes and purple hair because that formula happens to yield a beast that rampages around killing everything in sight with 5,000,000 point critical sonic bursts.
So yeah, sure.. you can craft fun and inventive stories in the Foundry Tribble test... but I wouldn't count on getting to keep them, since the main focus is on stability and bug quashing.
I understand the nature of beta testing, this Isn't my first rodeo.
That having been said the foundry is fairly unique in that instead of trying to break a world were playing in were trying to break a world were creating.
the process is going to HAVE to involve creating more than spawning a few npc's and jumping into walls.
It's going to require the creation of complex missions and push the initial version of the tools till it's bursting at it's seams to really discover potential bugs that will pop up.
all of this is going to require a large investment of time and creativity that would be a shame to see it get wiped.
I understand it getting wiped is a necessary evil of the beta process, but I also know that it was mentioned that some elements of mission creation are template based...having the option to create and retain some of the more complex templates built from scratch rather than re invest the time in rebuilding them might be beneficial in having foundry available for people to play right out of the gate.
Either way I will be building and creating to make sure these tools are the best because quite frankly since NWN no game has offered me those tools on a level like this if we all work on making them better, these tools are going to change the MMO landscape.
If something as small as minecraft can capture the creativity of players, imagine a robust set of tools that allow you to populate a universe, it is happening right here, while in it's infancy it's really going to alter the playfield from here forward for players and developers.
This is why you should treat the Beta on Tribble like a learning experience. this is a great time to learn the tools and experiment, but you should hold off on your epic story ideas until it goes live.
Since you KNOW that the info won't carry over, there is no reason to spend endless hours on Tribble perfecting the mission. Just use all those hours to build your skills so that you can work on your missions on Holodeck quicker, and possibly with a few newly learned tricks.
but that is prob a good thing...then we can learn how to use the thing...test out ideas.
When it goes live....then we will be ready to put our immagination to work
It's going to require the creation of complex missions and push the initial version of the tools till it's bursting at it's seams to really discover potential bugs that will pop up.
all of this is going to require a large investment of time and creativity that would be a shame to see it get wiped.
It will require more complex missions, but that doesn't mean well written missions. Actually, writing would be a hindrance to what you're talking about.
Randomly stringing three of every possible option together end to end up to the limits of the system and trying to break something doesn't require creating a believable scenario to string it all together. The mission can have you scan anomalies, shoot six different random race ships in unusual combinations, beam down to a planet, shoot more random mixes all of whom are inexplicably wearing tuxedos, play dabo, shoot hook spiders, beam back up to aid the planet, beam back down, defend a flower from borg, then board a Romulan ship where you have the following conversation with a bat'leth wielding Breen:
"This is dialog."
"These are text options. This one will start a fight."
"This one is right and will end the mission."
"This one just gives you more dialog."
"This is more dialog with a back button."
That sort of thing pushes the system (for the sake of argument - it'll probably take far more than that to actually start finding the limits), and not only does it require no creative effort, no plausible creative effort could possibly make any of it make sense.
If you want to put your creative muscle to full use on tribble, ok, well... As every game with a content creation tool has shown, the difference between a good scenario and a bad one isn't that the good one spent longer in the editor (they could well have spent even less time creating it than the bad ones just from familiarity and experience with the tool), but that they spent a lot of time with their notebook planning and writing the scenario. That planning work is the bulk of any good creative effort, and it's reusable. Keep your notes and after that it's simply a matter of reassembling the set pieces in the editor.
It will require more complex missions, but that doesn't mean well written missions. Actually, writing would be a hindrance to what you're talking about.
Randomly stringing three of every possible option together end to end up to the limits of the system and trying to break something doesn't require creating a believable scenario to string it all together. The mission can have you scan anomalies, shoot six different random race ships in unusual combinations, beam down to a planet, shoot more random mixes all of whom are inexplicably wearing tuxedos, play dabo, shoot hook spiders, beam back up to aid the planet, beam back down, defend a flower from borg, then board a Romulan ship where you have the following conversation with a bat'leth wielding Breen:
"This is dialog."
"These are text options. This one will start a fight."
"This one is right and will end the mission."
"This one just gives you more dialog."
"This is more dialog with a back button."
That sort of thing pushes the system (for the sake of argument - it'll probably take far more than that to actually start finding the limits), and not only does it require no creative effort, no plausible creative effort could possibly make any of it make sense.
If you want to put your creative muscle to full use on tribble, ok, well... As every game with a content creation tool has shown, the difference between a good scenario and a bad one isn't that the good one spent longer in the editor (they could well have spent even less time creating it than the bad ones just from familiarity and experience with the tool), but that they spent a lot of time with their notebook planning and writing the scenario. That planning work is the bulk of any good creative effort, and it's reusable. Keep your notes and after that it's simply a matter of reassembling the set pieces in the editor.
Thank you. That is exactly what I was trying to say.
Comments
You never show people your first work.
I would go into ANY beta expecting any work to be "undone" at a whim, because thats the nature of testing, and the main reason it will be labeled as a Beta.
Really?
*Sigh*
Okay.. the point of testing things isn't to create a 'brilliant' piece of mission-craft. The whole point of the Foundry going on Tribble first is for one last level of QA before it goes live.
Development Process (This is in general, different strokes for different folks, your mileage may vary)
Step 1) Idea - The idea is conceived.
Step 2) Planning - The idea is planned. This is when the idea first becomes a reality.
Step 3) Development (Actually, this is step 3-47845474853, but for simplicity we'll consider it one step.)
Step 4) Developers test it, find bugs, back to step 3 until fixed, then back to 4, repeat 238894 times, goto 5.
Step 5) Software is sent to QA for an Alpha test. QA finds bugs. Back to step 3 and 4. Eventually goto 6.
Step 6) Software is put into Beta. Beta testers find bugs... back to 3 and 4, eventually goto 7.
Step 7) Software goes to Tribble. YAAAAY. Players test, find bugs, 3&4, eventually 8.
Step 8) Holodeck!
When testing things on Tribble, the goal isn't to make sure it works... the goal is to break it. If you break it now, then it goes through steps 3 and 4 enough times that by step 8 it is very unlikely to break at all.
I think the majority of testers fail to grasp this process, and for some reason think that Tribble is just a nifty "sneak peek" of what's to come. It isn't. The reason for Tribble is an environment similar to the Live server where the normal circumstances of play are emulated in a medium that allows the developers to find potentially game-breaking situations before they actually break the game. If software is only tested by a handful of QA folks, there's no telling how many bugs might slip through. When it's tested by thousands of people on Tribble, however, they may find that a new ship spontaneously explodes when hit with a subnucleonic beam; a bug that slipped through because no one in the QA department used that power on it.
The whole reason you will get the chance to play with the Foundry on Tribble has nothing to do with getting an early start on creating awesome storyline missions. It's so you can find and report bugs that slipped past the developers, the QA staff, and the Foundry Beta Testers (Which, I might add, Cryptic needs to make me one. Buggers.) before those bugs that could potentially ruin the entire experience for every player that tried to create a creature with denobulan ears 3 in combination with Green eyes and purple hair because that formula happens to yield a beast that rampages around killing everything in sight with 5,000,000 point critical sonic bursts.
So yeah, sure.. you can craft fun and inventive stories in the Foundry Tribble test... but I wouldn't count on getting to keep them, since the main focus is on stability and bug quashing.
But you could have made a TL;DR version that simply says "Tribble is for testing, not a head-start".
That having been said the foundry is fairly unique in that instead of trying to break a world were playing in were trying to break a world were creating.
the process is going to HAVE to involve creating more than spawning a few npc's and jumping into walls.
It's going to require the creation of complex missions and push the initial version of the tools till it's bursting at it's seams to really discover potential bugs that will pop up.
all of this is going to require a large investment of time and creativity that would be a shame to see it get wiped.
I understand it getting wiped is a necessary evil of the beta process, but I also know that it was mentioned that some elements of mission creation are template based...having the option to create and retain some of the more complex templates built from scratch rather than re invest the time in rebuilding them might be beneficial in having foundry available for people to play right out of the gate.
Either way I will be building and creating to make sure these tools are the best because quite frankly since NWN no game has offered me those tools on a level like this if we all work on making them better, these tools are going to change the MMO landscape.
If something as small as minecraft can capture the creativity of players, imagine a robust set of tools that allow you to populate a universe, it is happening right here, while in it's infancy it's really going to alter the playfield from here forward for players and developers.
So when it hits, am just going to play with it to learn how to use it.
Not sure how steep the learning curve will be.
Now if the mission is stored on an account instead of the server...you might get your wish
but I would not get your hopes up.
Since you KNOW that the info won't carry over, there is no reason to spend endless hours on Tribble perfecting the mission. Just use all those hours to build your skills so that you can work on your missions on Holodeck quicker, and possibly with a few newly learned tricks.
but that is prob a good thing...then we can learn how to use the thing...test out ideas.
When it goes live....then we will be ready to put our immagination to work
It will require more complex missions, but that doesn't mean well written missions. Actually, writing would be a hindrance to what you're talking about.
Randomly stringing three of every possible option together end to end up to the limits of the system and trying to break something doesn't require creating a believable scenario to string it all together. The mission can have you scan anomalies, shoot six different random race ships in unusual combinations, beam down to a planet, shoot more random mixes all of whom are inexplicably wearing tuxedos, play dabo, shoot hook spiders, beam back up to aid the planet, beam back down, defend a flower from borg, then board a Romulan ship where you have the following conversation with a bat'leth wielding Breen:
"This is dialog."
"These are text options. This one will start a fight."
"This one is right and will end the mission."
"This one just gives you more dialog."
"This is more dialog with a back button."
That sort of thing pushes the system (for the sake of argument - it'll probably take far more than that to actually start finding the limits), and not only does it require no creative effort, no plausible creative effort could possibly make any of it make sense.
If you want to put your creative muscle to full use on tribble, ok, well... As every game with a content creation tool has shown, the difference between a good scenario and a bad one isn't that the good one spent longer in the editor (they could well have spent even less time creating it than the bad ones just from familiarity and experience with the tool), but that they spent a lot of time with their notebook planning and writing the scenario. That planning work is the bulk of any good creative effort, and it's reusable. Keep your notes and after that it's simply a matter of reassembling the set pieces in the editor.
They mentoined it will be quite user friendly, nothing too complicated
Thank you. That is exactly what I was trying to say.