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Foundry - Roadmap to Future Updates
Archived Post
Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
State of the Foundry
The team is very excited about the response to the Foundry going into Open Beta. Already we have seen some great missions come in over the weekend and it shows a bright future ahead where the community has a direct impact on the stories being told throughout the galaxy. We are already passing around our favorite fan made missions internally, and I can say that we're impressed! We knew you could make awesome missions and considering the tools will improve over time, this is only going to get more awesome.
In the coming weeks we will be working diligently behind the scenes to address stability and scalability. The Foundry will be offline at times as we make large infrastructure updates to prepare Tribble and Holodeck for full scale production of the missions you'll be creating.
As we continue with this initial testing phase of the product, what follows is a basic Roadmap for where the Foundry is today, and what features and updates you can expect in the near future.
Foundry Launch Beta Feature Goals
The following list of features are supported in the current Open Beta (v.03) release of The Foundry.
Play missions authored by the community
Manage your Foundry Projects
New drag and drop flowchart-based mission editor
Creating your own Custom Maps in the Editor
Mission previewing and personal testing
Custom costume creator
The Foundry for Star Trek Online is not complete. There are additional updates coming to fill out the feature set. Dates and feature sets for these updates are being determined, but the expectation is to provide regular updates in upcoming STO releases in 2011.
The team is very excited about the response to the Foundry going into Open Beta. Already we have seen some great missions come in over the weekend and it shows a bright future ahead where the community has a direct impact on the stories being told throughout the galaxy. We are already passing around our favorite fan made missions internally, and I can say that we're impressed! We knew you could make awesome missions and considering the tools will improve over time, this is only going to get more awesome.
In the coming weeks we will be working diligently behind the scenes to address stability and scalability. The Foundry will be offline at times as we make large infrastructure updates to prepare Tribble and Holodeck for full scale production of the missions you'll be creating.
As we continue with this initial testing phase of the product, what follows is a basic Roadmap for where the Foundry is today, and what features and updates you can expect in the near future.
Foundry Launch Beta Feature Goals
The following list of features are supported in the current Open Beta (v.03) release of The Foundry.
Play missions authored by the community
- Search for missions in the new Remote Contact Tab by author or mission name
- Browse mission ratings and descriptions
- Rate the missions you've just played
- Sign up to be a Reviewer and give early feedback on new missions
- Share links to new missions via a short key code
Manage your Foundry Projects
- All users can create new Foundry projects
- Create test characters for testing missions in the isolated Foundry environment
- Select whether the mission is for the Federation or KDF
- Share the project with other players by publishing it
- Monitor the publishing progress
New drag and drop flowchart-based mission editor
- Customize the NPC that gives you the mission
- Create and arrange mission objectives via drag and drop
- Create objectives to interact with one or more objects on a map
- Create objectives to defeat one or more enemy groups on a map
- Create objectives to reach a location on a map
- Create objectives to talk to one or more NPCs on a map
- Create objectives that can take place on open-world social maps or custom maps
- Combine objectives into a Complete All group of simultaneous mission objectives
- Customize how transition between maps takes place, including prompts and text
- Add custom pop-up prompts before or after objectives and map transitions
Creating your own Custom Maps in the Editor
- Create your own maps based on existing pre-built space, ground, and interior maps
- Create a completely custom space mission map
- Edit these maps using an easy to work with two dimensional map view
- Customize the location where players spawn into the map
- Choose from a set of map backdrops (sky, sound, and lighting)
- Place detail objects from a large library of different types of objects
- Populate space maps with planets, rings, comets, and debris fields
- Populate ground maps with buildings
- Place contacts using pre-built costumes or custom costumes you make yourself
- Place friendly or enemy encounters in your maps
- Customize the positions and costumes for each actor in your encounters
- Place go to markers that can be used to complete objectives
- Place respawn points for players to help with mission flow and player defeat
- Customize some behavior options for friendly and enemy groups
Mission previewing and personal testing
- A method to preview your content while in the editor for testing while creating a project
- Preview a mission from the beginning or from a specified objective
- Preview an existing map to determine if it is one you might want to use
- Kill enemies with one button press to speed up testing
- Enter God Mode to make your test character temporarily invincible
Custom costume creator
- Create ship or ground character costumes based on existing costume pieces
- Edit and save costumes for use as contacts, enemy actors, or friendly actors
The Foundry for Star Trek Online is not complete. There are additional updates coming to fill out the feature set. Dates and feature sets for these updates are being determined, but the expectation is to provide regular updates in upcoming STO releases in 2011.
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The following features are high on the priority list for upcoming updates (most likely Q1 2011)
Improved features for playing Foundry missions
Project Management improvements
Map editor improvements
Mission Triggers (new)
Branching dialogue (new)
Costume creator improvements
Timeline editor (new)
Plus general improvements to usability and more choices throughout the environment
The following features are also being tracked for future updates, but will take some time before they will be completed.
Map Editor Future Goals
Mission Editor Future Goals
Other Uses of Foundry Content
As you can see - there are a lot of great features coming for the Foundry. We are already seeing great missions with the features we have now and the power of the tools will grow over time while (hopefully) still retaining the simple learning curve.
We look forward to seeing what you can create in the Star Trek Online universe!
This weekend has been fun and exciting for me. This is my fourth day on the foundry. Lately, I have really been getting into the set production. I have also been developing creative strategies for working around limitations of the current tools. I cannot wait to test out the triggers. That sounds really cool.
Thank you.
My GF, sitting beside me here as I read this aloud, was a well-respected and well paid interior designer in SWG... she just about fell out of her chair when I mentioned the custom ship interiors.
Please please please PLEASE make this something we can "hire" a talented layout designer to do for us, either through the collaboration tools, or, more specifically, through the ability to sell/trade some kind of interior plan for these bridges and interior rooms...
If you do, I guarantee she'll grab an LTS.
BTW, I think you copy/pasted the text in the second post twice.
SInce they are friendly mobs it will eliminate exploitation with that feature. Lack of friendly
actors will make no fight easier...maybe harder though
Meow
P.S.
3D foundry item placement for the win.
no leave em. most of them die within 30 seconds as it is.
Please, please, please add:
Add in the ability to save and load costumes
It really sucks trying to use the same set of NPCs across multiple missions right now
I spent about 4 hour Saturday morning tweaking walls on a Romulan interior and trying to get one NPC to sit down near a chair. I am mostly pleased with the results, but it took a massive amount of time (I grew up using CAD from elementary school and have been at it for 20 years now). I am hoping for better snap features and geometry that matches better. I had to do an obscene amount of guess and check.
Will the new custom interiors allow for custom hall width and ceiling heights? Without that, the feature won't quite do what I am looking for. Just two hallway sections (the more or less square ones) in the existing interiors are larger than my entire apartment. I always joke that the Undine have so thoroughly infiltrated Starfleet, that all the new ships are built to Undine ceiling and hall codes.
Will this include the face/head adjustment sliders as well? It's be really nice to be able to create truly alien aliens.
Let's generalize this down to a single, bright shining concept for all to see:
Please, please, please give us an asset library that we can add to. Costumes for NPCs, 'units' of NPC Groups with specific costumes applied to specific actors, maps we developed (I know they're coming, but still), stuff like that.
It would make life so gloriously bright.
If you just now add a copy & paste function for maps and a way to save our costumes for later use, I'd marry the Foundry
Kepp up the great work, Cryptic. The Foundry is a good tool already and will be even greater when finished.
We need a tool box full of tools , instead of just a TRIBBLE driver and a hammer!
THIS
(is a big deal)
another request would be to be able to have some control over character animations. not full control, but maybe a drop down menu that you select move arm up then move arm left... and the game knows how to meld those two animations into one motion. (obviously there should be restrictions to prevent people from doing silly things)
not only contacts, but maybe even objects. there is enormous potential in all of these
Any word on how long these will take?
I think that branching mission arcs should be one of the highest priorities (aside from polish and bugs of course), along with better actor control and more intuitive map editing options and assistance.
Also, when will I be able to simply place a dreadnought and make it an actual enemy dreadnought and not have to dress a warbird up as a scimitar?
Dstahl, I want to have your adopted babies!
Er..you can do that now. I edited every squad and loaded a premade custom costume. The entire npc random crew of a npc ship wore the AGT uniforms.
Love the Foundry, the potential is enormous AND what's really cool? I am 40 yrs old in animation/gamemaking/modeling Digital media degree course, and my teacher has followed STO foundry, he uses NeverwinterNIghts 2 as a reverse engineer game for projects in game making, i showed him stuff in a vid i did in Foundry, and he said if i make a narrated recording (i use fraps) of making a mission to publish, he will take it for extra credit :)Because it follows everything we learn on troubleshooting Flowcharts, assets etc.
You can make costumes and use them in your current project. You cannot then save them, start up a different project, and use them again.
Something you'd want, if, for example, you were to use that same NPC ship in the follow up mission. You wouldn't want to have to recreate the uniforms and the notable NPCs like the captain.
Challenge and reward are not tied in The Foundry. It's a time based reward. You can slaughter fifty million enemies but you don't get the loot drops or XP if you don't do the damage and completing a mission in five minutes just means you get no reward for it.
I thought we had this with the custom costume?