I'm aware of Doors Anywhere, having seen the video. That's fine for non-canon ship interiors.
Canon room and deck layouts would be manually created by devs, though.
Both of these are considered QoL improvements in my proposal.
The autopopulating of props in rooms would be part of the "minor" level customisation where players can custom position small items and knick-knacks (as opposed to the "major" level of swapping out wall and door styles).
I suggested that NPC crew uniforms be accessible via the Operations Officer (as the ship interior's own "tailor").
Or the parts could be created to recreate canon interiors. They have to make the parts anyway.
In the context of my hypothetical world where each ship class type has a specific layout, each of those layouts would be their own map, with each explorable deck laid out next to eachother within that single map.
So, the Intrepid would be one map, The Galaxy another, etc. etc.
Basically like it is now. Except its now the actual ships.
If so, you'll find that my proposal describes map development as involving first identifying which key rooms are on which decks, then trimming/capping corridors and eliminating unneeded decks to keep map size down.
Most of a ship's decks are crew quarters and utilities like water and replicator tanks, M/AM storage and SIF generators, and they don't need to be included.
Not all, it needs to be summarized more.
And even if you eliminate all the unnecessary stuff, that still has a ton of objects to load up during a map load. Which is why Cryptic kept to the basics.
And having all the decks on a ship is not feasable due to ships like the Sovereign has 26, the Galaxy over 40 decks, and the Odyssey even more. If you put that in a map (even architectually accurate with the decks on top of one another) the lag would be horrendous.
They'd have to have an instance size cap of less than one.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Other Neverwinter Foundry tech that is not simply "putting rooms next to each other":
"Doors anywhere": this is really big. Although as seen in the videos, this is used when you connect two rooms to each other, there is no reason you can't just select where along a wall to a room you want to place a door. This can also be extended to windows/portholes.
Autopopulating rooms: Most of the rooms we've seen in Neverwinter foundry videos have an option to come already furnished. You can also just press a button and autopopulate it with random stuff appropriate to the room. All of these items can be moved, adjusted, or removed at the user's preference. Imagine what this could mean for STO when you can have pre-packaged sickbays, or autopopulate a cargo bay with the appropriate stacks of cargo containers.
Not necessarily new Foundry tech, but having ship interiors being made via a Foundry-like interface also means that you can select uniforms for the NPCs wandering around your decks (although some tweaking can be done to streamline the application of your custom uniforms to NPCs).
Would love to see all of this come to STO Foundry. Might actually make me want to make some of my own missions. Building rooms from scratch, 1 wall section at a time is far too tedious. Building a map should be relatively easy to setup, and support advanced features to customize as the player sees fit.
They'd have to have an instance size cap of less than one.
Most likely, but I think even solo you might have problems.
Honestly, that's really the large ships. I think moderate sized ships like the Intrepid could be halfway designed, while small ships like the Sabre could honestly be fully mapped out. Right now the Defiant Set is literally halfway done. Just add in the second half of the ship, like the famous shuttle drop bay.
As for Klingon ships, they may be large, but I believe they can be fully mapped out since they are half the decks of Federation ships. Right now, I literally made the main deck of a D7 in my Foundry mission, while taking tons of objects to accomplish, Cryptic surely could do with less with a legitimate map.
Of course, Cryptic isn't going to do such a thing, unless it is part of a new mission.
Objects on a map aren't all one single piece. When you load a map, you are loading these pieces individually, along with the scripts and special effects. The more stuff, the more memory it takes up. Thats why Cryptic keeps some maps relatively simple.
Objects on a map aren't all one single piece. When you load a map, you are loading these pieces individually, along with the scripts and special effects. The more stuff, the more memory it takes up. Thats why Cryptic keeps some maps relatively simple.
So if I understand you correctly, in order to keep map sizes small, Cryptic would have to make non-interactive props an permanent part of the interior's geometry?
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
So if I understand you correctly, in order to keep map sizes small, Cryptic would have to make non-interactive props an permanent part of the interior's geometry?
That's part of it, else we would have ship interiors like we had with those in Elite Force. There is only so much they can do within the MMO environment.
For instance, given the ammount of stuff on ESD alone, they could definitely make a fairly convincing NX Interior with most of the decks. But not the whole ship. So lets say they wanted to make a fully accurate Consitution, they would have to split the ship up into the seconds, like the Saucer and Engineering sections on seperate maps.
That's part of it, else we would have ship interiors like we had with those in Elite Force. There is only so much they can do within the MMO environment.
For instance, given the ammount of stuff on ESD alone, they could definitely make a fairly convincing NX Interior with most of the decks. But not the whole ship. So lets say they wanted to make a fully accurate Consitution, they would have to split the ship up into the seconds, like the Saucer and Engineering sections on seperate maps.
I'd be perfectly fine if Interior Ship Layouts, would be on different maps depending on the Deck number. Much like we have now, but make the interiors more properly scaled, and more screen accurate. Ships have turbolifts to travel between decks, and in the case of locations that are on the same deck, most turbolifts also can travel sideways (as indicated by most Starfleet MSDs). The "travel" between maps would be done via the turbolift.
I just wish the travel between interior maps would require less actual LOADING time, and instead show the player's character actually standing in the turbolift, waiting for it to finish traveling, and then open the door. But that would be too much immersion for Cryptics map designers to handle.
One ship could still exist on one map. Yes, there are a lot of objects, but we can split those up into different files. We would likely have to do one file per deck, and each deck would be put into a separate "region" which segregates it from everything else on the map. This is how things like DS9 and other multipart maps are done. There is one region for Ops, one for the Promenade, one for Quarks. While you are within each region, nothing in any of the other regions draws. This would mean that if we could build all 42 decks of the Galaxy, they could likely still all be on one map, with turbolift clicks between decks.
However, the reason building a fully fleshed out deck by deck layout of all of our ships isn't feasible, is just the shear amount of labor involved. The number of hours to build just one would be immense. And if we had a game that was all about one ship, that might be worth it, but it's never going to happen for as many ships as we have. I still think doing certain sections of certain key decks for each ship type is feasible (if time consuming), but doing the full plan for each is not.
Load screens are another matter. You always get a load screen (and some load time) when moving between maps. Moving from one point on a map to another point on the same map depends on how far apart those points are. if they're close, you generally won't see a load screen. If they're far, you'll usually see a load screen, but for much less time than if you were transferring between maps. Load screen tech to make it look like you're on a turbolift is possible, but we wouldn't be able to show YOUR captain on YOUR (potentially aesthetically customizable) Turbolift.
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
TB, how much bacon, chocolate and/or chocolate covered bacon would I have to bribe you with to get you or whoever does set pieces to model the USS North Carolina (BB-55) as a desk trophy? Or maybe the CV-6 Enterprise? >.>
One ship could still exist on one map. Yes, there are a lot of objects, but we can split those up into different files. We would likely have to do one file per deck, and each deck would be put into a separate "region" which segregates it from everything else on the map. This is how things like DS9 and other multipart maps are done. There is one region for Ops, one for the Promenade, one for Quarks. While you are within each region, nothing in any of the other regions draws. This would mean that if we could build all 42 decks of the Galaxy, they could likely still all be on one map, with turbolift clicks between decks.
However, the reason building a fully fleshed out deck by deck layout of all of our ships isn't feasible, is just the shear amount of labor involved. The number of hours to build just one would be immense. And if we had a game that was all about one ship, that might be worth it, but it's never going to happen for as many ships as we have. I still think doing certain sections of certain key decks for each ship type is feasible (if time consuming), but doing the full plan for each is not.
Load screens are another matter. You always get a load screen (and some load time) when moving between maps. Moving from one point on a map to another point on the same map depends on how far apart those points are. if they're close, you generally won't see a load screen. If they're far, you'll usually see a load screen, but for much less time than if you were transferring between maps. Load screen tech to make it look like you're on a turbolift is possible, but we wouldn't be able to show YOUR captain on YOUR (potentially aesthetically customizable) Turbolift.
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
To a degree, I think fluid transitions could be done. People have accomplished it on the Foundry by having entire floors being tied to the visual / hidden system. Of course that is a lot of work to set up and the possiblity of bugs increases.
So like you said, gotta keep it to the essential storytelling area than fully mapping out an entire ship. But fortunately, some maps could easily be reused. Like in ST6, Engineering was just redressed of the TNG set. And map interiors with kitbashed ships could be reused to an extent as well. Which would reduce the time to do it by a large factor.
And finally, you need that reason to put that amount of work into interiors. Well, I'm working on one proposal, but for now maybe it could be good for remastered ship interior maps like that Miranda in the Bassen Rift or the Olympic in the KDF missions? Or maybe the Raptor with the Worvig?
However, the reason building a fully fleshed out deck by deck layout of all of our ships isn't feasible, is just the shear amount of labor involved. The number of hours to build just one would be immense. And if we had a game that was all about one ship, that might be worth it, but it's never going to happen for as many ships as we have. I still think doing certain sections of certain key decks for each ship type is feasible (if time consuming), but doing the full plan for each is not.
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
Except, you have the Foundry which is "sort-of" Cryptics goto replacement for Cryptic-made mission content. Could it not be expanded to allow players to create their own "deck-by-deck" layouts which they can use on their personal ships (and shared via "Invite to ship interior") ? And since all Foundry-created content is "property of Cryptic" after creation, you could easily take a players built maps, and integrate it into other places. Less leg work for you.
I don't think anyone is suggesting you -need- all 42 Decks of a Galaxy Class. But an expansion of key areas wouldn't hurt, and have said areas be a bit more "screen accurate" and "properly sized".
On the last bit of your post, I don't think anyone really expects that things will -ever- be "smooth running" in STO. If a new game/game engine would be built from the ground up, specifically for Star Trek, that's a whole different matter. But we all know that STO is built on the foundations of CO, and Neverwinter in turn is built on CO/STO tech (thou heavily modified).
One ship could still exist on one map. Yes, there are a lot of objects, but we can split those up into different files. We would likely have to do one file per deck, and each deck would be put into a separate "region" which segregates it from everything else on the map. This is how things like DS9 and other multipart maps are done. There is one region for Ops, one for the Promenade, one for Quarks. While you are within each region, nothing in any of the other regions draws. This would mean that if we could build all 42 decks of the Galaxy, they could likely still all be on one map, with turbolift clicks between decks.
However, the reason building a fully fleshed out deck by deck layout of all of our ships isn't feasible, is just the shear amount of labor involved. The number of hours to build just one would be immense. And if we had a game that was all about one ship, that might be worth it, but it's never going to happen for as many ships as we have. I still think doing certain sections of certain key decks for each ship type is feasible (if time consuming), but doing the full plan for each is not.
Load screens are another matter. You always get a load screen (and some load time) when moving between maps. Moving from one point on a map to another point on the same map depends on how far apart those points are. if they're close, you generally won't see a load screen. If they're far, you'll usually see a load screen, but for much less time than if you were transferring between maps. Load screen tech to make it look like you're on a turbolift is possible, but we wouldn't be able to show YOUR captain on YOUR (potentially aesthetically customizable) Turbolift.
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
Okay. I made this suggestion elsewhere...
But right now bridges are separate from interiors.
I can think of a perk to having all bridges share a map, in that it would allow Kestrel to do pretty fluid "dialogue" missions with cutscenes that move between and two bridges.
It means capping the number of bridges and bridge customizations. There's some space saving that could be done by assigning ready room to a map teleport.
But you could basically turn to Kestrel and say, "Go crazy writing dialogue missions involving ship hails." And she could generate hours of content that's VERY visual with a little template work.
It does puzzle me, that considering how long the community has been begging for ship interior improvements Cryptic hasn't caught on. I bought the TOS bundle mainly for the interior, I bought the DS9 bundle almost exclusively for the Belfast interior!
There is money to be made here Cryptic! Lot's of it!
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
I like this better than what we have now, even if it isnt a fluid transition. I don't think anyone expects perfection as long as we get some nice interiors.
Except, you have the Foundry which is "sort-of" Cryptics goto replacement for Cryptic-made mission content. Could it not be expanded to allow players to create their own "deck-by-deck" layouts which they can use on their personal ships (and shared via "Invite to ship interior") ? And since all Foundry-created content is "property of Cryptic" after creation, you could easily take a players built maps, and integrate it into other places. Less leg work for you.
The Foundry as it stands today, is really a whole separate entity. There is no way (to my knowledge) that I can take what someone has built in the foundry, and convert it into a normal map that I can edit with dev tools. There's also no way currently to replace a map like your ship's interior, with a foundry map. I'm not a programmer, so I can only guess that that is theoretically possible, but it's not something that has ever been done, and I don't know if it's doable where we stand today.
Yes, if we can get the NW style room by room building into the Foundry, one could potentially draw out all 42 decks of the Galaxy. But as I've mentioned before, that room by room building draws rooms and hallways out of square pieces. Your layout would have to be done at 90 degree angles, which no ship interior I've ever seen in ST has been. Think about the enterprise interior as built in Minecraft. It's a cute project, but it really doesn't do the whole thing justice. My argument was that what if someone were to build the full layout of the Galaxy, it better damn well look like the Galaxy. And for that to happen, hallways have to be in long gentle curves, and rooms can't be at right angles to each other.
The poor Taco's cheese would fall off before he ever got close to modeling all 42 decks of the Enterprise. This this wasn't called a floating city for fun. And the foundry could never have enough fidelity to replicate it. Not to mention that attempting to replicate even one of the larger decks of the galaxy class would put you well past the resource limits in STO.
Even the Defiant which only has 5 decks (4 full ones) would be a big challenge.
I read it was "Inferior Development." lol
Yeah, but I doubt there's much a chance of custom bridge development, even if I would love all my stations to have someone posted at them. Seriously. Aquarius is running half-full.
The Foundry as it stands today, is really a whole separate entity. There is no way (to my knowledge) that I can take what someone has built in the foundry, and convert it into a normal map that I can edit with dev tools. There's also no way currently to replace a map like your ship's interior, with a foundry map. I'm not a programmer, so I can only guess that that is theoretically possible, but it's not something that has ever been done, and I don't know if it's doable where we stand today.
This caught my eye. I guess specifically because Fleet Interiors are a mission map, aren't they? Joining a fleet gives us an invisible mission which activates that mission map and there's no way to "complete" the mission so it simply stays active?
Isn't that similar?
I mean, if you added Turbolifts as a Foundry hookup point then if I had a way to invisibly grant everyone my Foundry mission, they'd see a map transition dialogue to my Foundry mission from the turblift. Then as long as my Foundry mission is not completable (ie. there's an interactable object required for completion that is walled off from the player), they wouldn't notice that aside from the fact that they'd only see teammates on Foundry decks.
Yes, if we can get the NW style room by room building into the Foundry, one could potentially draw out all 42 decks of the Galaxy. But as I've mentioned before, that room by room building draws rooms and hallways out of square pieces. Your layout would have to be done at 90 degree angles, which no ship interior I've ever seen in ST has been. My argument was that what if someone were to build the full layout of the Galaxy, it better damn well look like the Galaxy. And for that to happen, hallways have to be in long gentle curves, and rooms can't be at right angles to each other.
And you could always make it look right but fake 90 degree angles by making any doors at odd angles either map teleport points or dummy doors.
I have not read this entire thread, but is is possible to install "deco" features into existing ship interiors, even if onlyroom by room, seperated by loading screens? In SWG, the entire interior of a house was basicly a slot where everything and anything could be placed and with no colision, in that game, things could be placed in and on top of other things for players to quasi create their own creations using items placed around and on top of each other. We had gamers that seemed to "specialize" in deco and even "charged" other players in-game currencys to come into your house and deco it.
We had this is SWG and my bunker there represented 8 years of gameplay just by the pixles I had dropped all over the place. It was basicly "memory city" just running thru this thing.
Pure RP was never "my thing" in any MMO, but I have to admit that I always took my character "home" after a night of gameplay. I still do this, to a certain extent in STO, however that "deco" feature has always been a missed feature in all MMOs except for SWG. I do see RIFT is advertising instanced housing with deco to be included in their new expansion.
This would also allow developers to make simple "screenshot" paintings (screenshots with a frame around then) to give as rewards, quest objects, etc. Cryptic's art dept has always been pretty good and there are several areas and visuals in STO that would lend itself to this type of easy development.
I know from boards such as MMORPG.com refuge and still up SWG forums that these features are missed by more than myself.
The poor Taco's cheese would fall off before he ever got close to modeling all 42 decks of the Enterprise. This this wasn't called a floating city for fun. And the foundry could never have enough fidelity to replicate it. Not to mention that attempting to replicate even one of the larger decks of the galaxy class would put you well past the resource limits in STO.
Even the Defiant which only has 5 decks (4 full ones) would be a big challenge.
If you're talking blueprint accuracy? Yes. That's a challenge.
If you're talking screen accuracy? Less so. Because everything was the same ten sets, redressed. The blueprints would routinely be contradicted by what was onscreen because the onscreen stuff was all set redresses, regardless of whether that matched the blueprint.
My preference, for example, with a TNG map interior pack is NOT necessarily to replicate the ship blueprints but to replicate all the major set locations, down to Mott's barbershop and the theater, and then find social gameplay mechanics (or at least gameplay mechanics) to justify them existing. (Mott's acting as a tailor for instance.)
(By the same token, I'd be all about a Connie add-on that tosses in extra crew quarters and the chapel, even if it's just redresses of existing decks. Because that's what they were on TOS.)
It's also kinda like how I'd like Nor's as a fleet holding with a fleet-selected custom promenade (ie. you pick what goes in the spaces, what banner goes up in the bar, etc.) and using that to give Taco the resources to re-do DS9 from the ground up since it would be something he could reverse engineer as a permutation of the Fleet Holding Nors.
My preference, for example, with a TNG map interior pack is NOT necessarily to replicate the ship blueprints but to replicate all the major set locations, down to Mott's barbershop and the theater, and then find social gameplay mechanics (or at least gameplay mechanics) to justify them existing. (Mott's acting as a tailor for instance.)
I don't remember seeing any barbershop in TNG and I thought the theater was just Ten Forward partitioned off with a stage.
I don't remember seeing any barbershop in TNG and I thought the theater was just Ten Forward partitioned off with a stage.
Can't remember the episode, but Mott's barbershop was definitely shown at least once. I remember something about him talking politics or ship operation with Picard, who was pretty much just humoring him and trying to get out of there.
I think you are correct though about the theater. At the very least it was a redress of the 10-Forward set, though the shows producers might have intended that it be a separate room.
And the stage was theoretically its own room. It just looked like 10 forward partitioned off because that's probably how they built the set.
Kinda like how the Relativity bridge is the Enterprise-E bridge with a bunch of platforms in place and stuff swiped from Voyager's sickbay or the Enterprise-A sets are all repainted Galaxy class sets with different props.
Like the Enterprise-A banquet hall is the Enterprise-D observation lounge and they share a main engineering set.
My preference, for example, with a TNG map interior pack is NOT necessarily to replicate the ship blueprints but to replicate all the major set locations, down to Mott's barbershop and the theater, and then find social gameplay mechanics (or at least gameplay mechanics) to justify them existing. (Mott's acting as a tailor for instance.)
Mott's barbershop and the theatre are "major set locations?" I don't know about that...
To me, the most important locations would be the "standing sets," most of which are in-game already: bridge, ready room, engineering, sickbay, the lounge, the transporter room and the captain's quarters are the places where most of the action takes place. And we've already got some science labs, which suits me just fine.
I suppose it couldn't hurt to add another, empty crew quarters, and a few of the more notable ship-specific sets - the Intrepid's mess hall and Astrometrics, the Galaxy Astrometrics as seen in Generations, and (most importantly to me), a shuttle bay. Maybe a cargo bay as well, for good measure.
Even that's a pretty big list, and I think that on the whole, anything else would be a waste of time and resources.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
For those of you new to this discussion, please start off by viewing http://bit.ly/STOShipInteriorProposal, as it contains many of the features you may be looking for (canon locations, mini-games, BOff seating).
Interesting note regarding the incompatibility between Foundry maps and dev authoring tools, taco. I'm also not keen on relying on the Foundry itself exclusively for ship interior development, in part due to the obvious corridor curve issue.
With regards turbolifts, I'm fine with loading screens whilst jumping between maps - perhaps, when accessing ship interiors, the default random background loading screens could be replaced with an animated 2D background image of the turbolift - something like what was used in the beta? (img)
Finally, just to clarify, I never ever said I wanted to model each and every single deck of every single ship class down to every last crewman's quarters (like on the 42-deck Galaxy-class) - the only explorable areas would be near the key rooms.
I managed to find some Galaxy class deck plans the other day, as well as ones for the Intrepid class (in addition to the Miranda plans I emailed centersolace the other night) - perhaps I can draw up some 2D layouts to prove once and for all I'm only asking for small, explorable subsections of ships (and not the whole hog as people keep labelling me)?
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
Finally, just to clarify, I never ever said I wanted to model each and every single deck of every single ship class down to every last crewman's quarters (like on the 42-deck Galaxy-class) - the only explorable areas would be near the key rooms.
I managed to find some Galaxy class deck plans the other day, as well as ones for the Intrepid class (in addition to the Miranda plans I emailed centersolace the other night) - perhaps I can draw up some 2D layouts to prove once and for all I'm only asking for small, explorable subsections of ships (and not the whole hog as people keep labelling me)?
Ah yes, thank you for those.
And I could help with drawing up some of those Ship Decks too. Send them to me and I'll see what I can do.
Comments
Or the parts could be created to recreate canon interiors. They have to make the parts anyway.
Basically like it is now. Except its now the actual ships.
Luckily, some ships can share similar maps.
Not all, it needs to be summarized more.
And even if you eliminate all the unnecessary stuff, that still has a ton of objects to load up during a map load. Which is why Cryptic kept to the basics.
LOLz.
You can simply start by reading the conclusions section. Everything else is implementation details.
I'm an engineer, not a door-to-door salesperson :P
What is this "ton of objects" you speak of?
They'd have to have an instance size cap of less than one.
Would love to see all of this come to STO Foundry. Might actually make me want to make some of my own missions. Building rooms from scratch, 1 wall section at a time is far too tedious. Building a map should be relatively easy to setup, and support advanced features to customize as the player sees fit.
Most likely, but I think even solo you might have problems.
Honestly, that's really the large ships. I think moderate sized ships like the Intrepid could be halfway designed, while small ships like the Sabre could honestly be fully mapped out. Right now the Defiant Set is literally halfway done. Just add in the second half of the ship, like the famous shuttle drop bay.
As for Klingon ships, they may be large, but I believe they can be fully mapped out since they are half the decks of Federation ships. Right now, I literally made the main deck of a D7 in my Foundry mission, while taking tons of objects to accomplish, Cryptic surely could do with less with a legitimate map.
Of course, Cryptic isn't going to do such a thing, unless it is part of a new mission.
I'm an Engineer too, trained in Aerospace Engineering and Design.
But you can't always tell people "read my book", sometimes you got to explain things there and then to pitch your idea.
Objects on a map aren't all one single piece. When you load a map, you are loading these pieces individually, along with the scripts and special effects. The more stuff, the more memory it takes up. Thats why Cryptic keeps some maps relatively simple.
So if I understand you correctly, in order to keep map sizes small, Cryptic would have to make non-interactive props an permanent part of the interior's geometry?
That's part of it, else we would have ship interiors like we had with those in Elite Force. There is only so much they can do within the MMO environment.
For instance, given the ammount of stuff on ESD alone, they could definitely make a fairly convincing NX Interior with most of the decks. But not the whole ship. So lets say they wanted to make a fully accurate Consitution, they would have to split the ship up into the seconds, like the Saucer and Engineering sections on seperate maps.
I'd be perfectly fine if Interior Ship Layouts, would be on different maps depending on the Deck number. Much like we have now, but make the interiors more properly scaled, and more screen accurate. Ships have turbolifts to travel between decks, and in the case of locations that are on the same deck, most turbolifts also can travel sideways (as indicated by most Starfleet MSDs). The "travel" between maps would be done via the turbolift.
I just wish the travel between interior maps would require less actual LOADING time, and instead show the player's character actually standing in the turbolift, waiting for it to finish traveling, and then open the door. But that would be too much immersion for Cryptics map designers to handle.
However, the reason building a fully fleshed out deck by deck layout of all of our ships isn't feasible, is just the shear amount of labor involved. The number of hours to build just one would be immense. And if we had a game that was all about one ship, that might be worth it, but it's never going to happen for as many ships as we have. I still think doing certain sections of certain key decks for each ship type is feasible (if time consuming), but doing the full plan for each is not.
Load screens are another matter. You always get a load screen (and some load time) when moving between maps. Moving from one point on a map to another point on the same map depends on how far apart those points are. if they're close, you generally won't see a load screen. If they're far, you'll usually see a load screen, but for much less time than if you were transferring between maps. Load screen tech to make it look like you're on a turbolift is possible, but we wouldn't be able to show YOUR captain on YOUR (potentially aesthetically customizable) Turbolift.
Hypothetically, we could make it so you walk into the turbolift, click something, the doors close, it plays some lights moving, then we pop you over to the next deck's spawn point, but those moves are generally obvious and awkward. It wouldn't be the fluid transition you'd want it to be.
To a degree, I think fluid transitions could be done. People have accomplished it on the Foundry by having entire floors being tied to the visual / hidden system. Of course that is a lot of work to set up and the possiblity of bugs increases.
So like you said, gotta keep it to the essential storytelling area than fully mapping out an entire ship. But fortunately, some maps could easily be reused. Like in ST6, Engineering was just redressed of the TNG set. And map interiors with kitbashed ships could be reused to an extent as well. Which would reduce the time to do it by a large factor.
And finally, you need that reason to put that amount of work into interiors. Well, I'm working on one proposal, but for now maybe it could be good for remastered ship interior maps like that Miranda in the Bassen Rift or the Olympic in the KDF missions? Or maybe the Raptor with the Worvig?
Except, you have the Foundry which is "sort-of" Cryptics goto replacement for Cryptic-made mission content. Could it not be expanded to allow players to create their own "deck-by-deck" layouts which they can use on their personal ships (and shared via "Invite to ship interior") ? And since all Foundry-created content is "property of Cryptic" after creation, you could easily take a players built maps, and integrate it into other places. Less leg work for you.
I don't think anyone is suggesting you -need- all 42 Decks of a Galaxy Class. But an expansion of key areas wouldn't hurt, and have said areas be a bit more "screen accurate" and "properly sized".
On the last bit of your post, I don't think anyone really expects that things will -ever- be "smooth running" in STO. If a new game/game engine would be built from the ground up, specifically for Star Trek, that's a whole different matter. But we all know that STO is built on the foundations of CO, and Neverwinter in turn is built on CO/STO tech (thou heavily modified).
Okay. I made this suggestion elsewhere...
But right now bridges are separate from interiors.
I can think of a perk to having all bridges share a map, in that it would allow Kestrel to do pretty fluid "dialogue" missions with cutscenes that move between and two bridges.
It means capping the number of bridges and bridge customizations. There's some space saving that could be done by assigning ready room to a map teleport.
But you could basically turn to Kestrel and say, "Go crazy writing dialogue missions involving ship hails." And she could generate hours of content that's VERY visual with a little template work.
There is money to be made here Cryptic! Lot's of it!
Needed interiors:
TMP era Constitution
Excelsior (ST VI)
TNG Galaxy
Intrepid
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I like this better than what we have now, even if it isnt a fluid transition. I don't think anyone expects perfection as long as we get some nice interiors.
The Foundry as it stands today, is really a whole separate entity. There is no way (to my knowledge) that I can take what someone has built in the foundry, and convert it into a normal map that I can edit with dev tools. There's also no way currently to replace a map like your ship's interior, with a foundry map. I'm not a programmer, so I can only guess that that is theoretically possible, but it's not something that has ever been done, and I don't know if it's doable where we stand today.
Yes, if we can get the NW style room by room building into the Foundry, one could potentially draw out all 42 decks of the Galaxy. But as I've mentioned before, that room by room building draws rooms and hallways out of square pieces. Your layout would have to be done at 90 degree angles, which no ship interior I've ever seen in ST has been. Think about the enterprise interior as built in Minecraft. It's a cute project, but it really doesn't do the whole thing justice. My argument was that what if someone were to build the full layout of the Galaxy, it better damn well look like the Galaxy. And for that to happen, hallways have to be in long gentle curves, and rooms can't be at right angles to each other.
Even the Defiant which only has 5 decks (4 full ones) would be a big challenge.
Yeah, but I doubt there's much a chance of custom bridge development, even if I would love all my stations to have someone posted at them. Seriously. Aquarius is running half-full.
This caught my eye. I guess specifically because Fleet Interiors are a mission map, aren't they? Joining a fleet gives us an invisible mission which activates that mission map and there's no way to "complete" the mission so it simply stays active?
Isn't that similar?
I mean, if you added Turbolifts as a Foundry hookup point then if I had a way to invisibly grant everyone my Foundry mission, they'd see a map transition dialogue to my Foundry mission from the turblift. Then as long as my Foundry mission is not completable (ie. there's an interactable object required for completion that is walled off from the player), they wouldn't notice that aside from the fact that they'd only see teammates on Foundry decks.
And you could always make it look right but fake 90 degree angles by making any doors at odd angles either map teleport points or dummy doors.
I have not read this entire thread, but is is possible to install "deco" features into existing ship interiors, even if onlyroom by room, seperated by loading screens? In SWG, the entire interior of a house was basicly a slot where everything and anything could be placed and with no colision, in that game, things could be placed in and on top of other things for players to quasi create their own creations using items placed around and on top of each other. We had gamers that seemed to "specialize" in deco and even "charged" other players in-game currencys to come into your house and deco it.
We had this is SWG and my bunker there represented 8 years of gameplay just by the pixles I had dropped all over the place. It was basicly "memory city" just running thru this thing.
Pure RP was never "my thing" in any MMO, but I have to admit that I always took my character "home" after a night of gameplay. I still do this, to a certain extent in STO, however that "deco" feature has always been a missed feature in all MMOs except for SWG. I do see RIFT is advertising instanced housing with deco to be included in their new expansion.
This would also allow developers to make simple "screenshot" paintings (screenshots with a frame around then) to give as rewards, quest objects, etc. Cryptic's art dept has always been pretty good and there are several areas and visuals in STO that would lend itself to this type of easy development.
I know from boards such as MMORPG.com refuge and still up SWG forums that these features are missed by more than myself.
If you're talking blueprint accuracy? Yes. That's a challenge.
If you're talking screen accuracy? Less so. Because everything was the same ten sets, redressed. The blueprints would routinely be contradicted by what was onscreen because the onscreen stuff was all set redresses, regardless of whether that matched the blueprint.
My preference, for example, with a TNG map interior pack is NOT necessarily to replicate the ship blueprints but to replicate all the major set locations, down to Mott's barbershop and the theater, and then find social gameplay mechanics (or at least gameplay mechanics) to justify them existing. (Mott's acting as a tailor for instance.)
(By the same token, I'd be all about a Connie add-on that tosses in extra crew quarters and the chapel, even if it's just redresses of existing decks. Because that's what they were on TOS.)
It's also kinda like how I'd like Nor's as a fleet holding with a fleet-selected custom promenade (ie. you pick what goes in the spaces, what banner goes up in the bar, etc.) and using that to give Taco the resources to re-do DS9 from the ground up since it would be something he could reverse engineer as a permutation of the Fleet Holding Nors.
I don't remember seeing any barbershop in TNG and I thought the theater was just Ten Forward partitioned off with a stage.
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Can't remember the episode, but Mott's barbershop was definitely shown at least once. I remember something about him talking politics or ship operation with Picard, who was pretty much just humoring him and trying to get out of there.
I think you are correct though about the theater. At the very least it was a redress of the 10-Forward set, though the shows producers might have intended that it be a separate room.
Here ya go:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Barbershop
And the stage was theoretically its own room. It just looked like 10 forward partitioned off because that's probably how they built the set.
Kinda like how the Relativity bridge is the Enterprise-E bridge with a bunch of platforms in place and stuff swiped from Voyager's sickbay or the Enterprise-A sets are all repainted Galaxy class sets with different props.
Like the Enterprise-A banquet hall is the Enterprise-D observation lounge and they share a main engineering set.
What about Mot? The barber.
Mott's barbershop and the theatre are "major set locations?" I don't know about that...
To me, the most important locations would be the "standing sets," most of which are in-game already: bridge, ready room, engineering, sickbay, the lounge, the transporter room and the captain's quarters are the places where most of the action takes place. And we've already got some science labs, which suits me just fine.
I suppose it couldn't hurt to add another, empty crew quarters, and a few of the more notable ship-specific sets - the Intrepid's mess hall and Astrometrics, the Galaxy Astrometrics as seen in Generations, and (most importantly to me), a shuttle bay. Maybe a cargo bay as well, for good measure.
Even that's a pretty big list, and I think that on the whole, anything else would be a waste of time and resources.
Interesting note regarding the incompatibility between Foundry maps and dev authoring tools, taco. I'm also not keen on relying on the Foundry itself exclusively for ship interior development, in part due to the obvious corridor curve issue.
With regards turbolifts, I'm fine with loading screens whilst jumping between maps - perhaps, when accessing ship interiors, the default random background loading screens could be replaced with an animated 2D background image of the turbolift - something like what was used in the beta? (img)
Finally, just to clarify, I never ever said I wanted to model each and every single deck of every single ship class down to every last crewman's quarters (like on the 42-deck Galaxy-class) - the only explorable areas would be near the key rooms.
I managed to find some Galaxy class deck plans the other day, as well as ones for the Intrepid class (in addition to the Miranda plans I emailed centersolace the other night) - perhaps I can draw up some 2D layouts to prove once and for all I'm only asking for small, explorable subsections of ships (and not the whole hog as people keep labelling me)?
Ah yes, thank you for those.
And I could help with drawing up some of those Ship Decks too. Send them to me and I'll see what I can do.