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How do people make great missions with the default assets?
martok16
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I guess the only missions that can be created are simple space/ground combat with dialog stories, using the default maps, how other people have done stuff like creating a green looking holodeck with just a console in the middle, and when activated, the console fades out, and all the objects fade in without waiting to load maps, these people must have access to assets that other people don't.
I've watched the foundry tutorials on the sto wiki, but they relate to foundry v0.5, but the current version is 0.8, so, which means assets that were available then, are not available now.
Soo, basically, using the provided maps, and default assets, I've come to the conclusion that the only missions that can be made are those of space/ground combat with a storyline, such as the one I made called "Stop Klingon Invasion", it has a basic storyline, but lots of space and ground combat, and that's about all that can be made using what's available.
I hear about all these "work-a-rounds" but no-one wants to give it up an how they do it.
I've looked everywhere on the net and nothing.
What's needed is to actually see the map in a 3D virtual world and using mouse drag and drop, just place, size, and rotate the objects so that they can be seen exactly as they are placed, instead if just guessing how far up/down, left/right, and playing the map each time an object is moved or rotated. EG, one of the Klingon table consoles show the icon on the map with an arrow, supposedly, that arrow represents looking forward, but in fact, for the console, it's pointing to the back of the console.
By using a Virtual world system much as you would see ESD, or a ground mission, then dragging and dropping and object, then allows one to see exactly where it's located and not guess if it's in a wall or if the object is the right way round or not.
Imagine this, loading up the ESD map, enter the map as you would normally, but ESD would be completely empty of npc's, a sidebar would show selections in categories of what object or npc you want to place, then just drag it from the bar to the 3D world, then it can be moved on it's x,y,z axis, and rotated, then you would see precisely where it would be and what it would look like, then when satisfied of all object/npc placement, one can return to the story creation.
To get an idea of what I mean, have a look at the user created 3D world of "Secondlife", objects can be moved around by just grabbing the object(s) and dragging them around the virtual world.
I've watched the foundry tutorials on the sto wiki, but they relate to foundry v0.5, but the current version is 0.8, so, which means assets that were available then, are not available now.
Soo, basically, using the provided maps, and default assets, I've come to the conclusion that the only missions that can be made are those of space/ground combat with a storyline, such as the one I made called "Stop Klingon Invasion", it has a basic storyline, but lots of space and ground combat, and that's about all that can be made using what's available.
I hear about all these "work-a-rounds" but no-one wants to give it up an how they do it.
I've looked everywhere on the net and nothing.
What's needed is to actually see the map in a 3D virtual world and using mouse drag and drop, just place, size, and rotate the objects so that they can be seen exactly as they are placed, instead if just guessing how far up/down, left/right, and playing the map each time an object is moved or rotated. EG, one of the Klingon table consoles show the icon on the map with an arrow, supposedly, that arrow represents looking forward, but in fact, for the console, it's pointing to the back of the console.
By using a Virtual world system much as you would see ESD, or a ground mission, then dragging and dropping and object, then allows one to see exactly where it's located and not guess if it's in a wall or if the object is the right way round or not.
Imagine this, loading up the ESD map, enter the map as you would normally, but ESD would be completely empty of npc's, a sidebar would show selections in categories of what object or npc you want to place, then just drag it from the bar to the 3D world, then it can be moved on it's x,y,z axis, and rotated, then you would see precisely where it would be and what it would look like, then when satisfied of all object/npc placement, one can return to the story creation.
To get an idea of what I mean, have a look at the user created 3D world of "Secondlife", objects can be moved around by just grabbing the object(s) and dragging them around the virtual world.
Post edited by martok16 on
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My character Tsin'xing
the fading in and out is a simple trigger. if you click on an object, down the bottom there is a tab for states. you can have them appear and disappear based on certain events in the mission such as part of the storyline, hitting reach markers, clicking on the objects themselves etc.
One is the way a green holodeck is created with a console in the middle, then when that console is activated, the console fades out, and the scenery fades in.
the console could have a list of holodeck simulation based scenes, and when one is finished, the scenery chosen would fade out to the green holodeck, and ready to select another scenery, all without loading extra maps.
I've just looked and there is nothing in buildings, or maps for a green holodeck.
My character Tsin'xing
Ok, I found it, but I had to adjust the Y axis to 4m.
I got the console to fade out and an npc to fade in when the console fades out, when activated, but I still can't figure out how to get a scenery to fade in, and replace the holodeck, then when that selection is complete, the scenery would fade out, and the holodeck fade back in, along with the console, ready for the next selection.
I've seen this on a mission I did last week, but I can't remember what it was called, and it only used 1 map, each part of the mission, would fade in and out a different scenery.
Fading the holodeck asset back in is a problem. It tends to shift the player out of the way, rather than spawn around you. What I did when I made my holodeck-style missions is I just didn't bother with fading one back in at the end. I just had a boff say "We've finished the program, are you ready to exit the holodeck, sir?" and had you hit a console and the mission ends and you are back outside the door you started at.
What kind of scenery? You can set plants and buildings and stuff to fade in using the same trigger that causes the holodeck grid to fade out. then you can trigger then to fade out when the second one appears.
Example:
1 Start objective A(interact with the console)
2 Complete objective A(whatever you're doing in the first scenario)
3 Finish objective A(walk to the console)
4 Start Objective B(interact with another console)
etc....
Props:
Holodeck1: starts the mission visible and disappears when you complete #1
Console1: starts the misison visible and disappears when you complete #1 (Object interact objectives each have to use a different object so you need to use copies of the console to get it to work)
SceneryA: appears when you complete #1 and disappears when you complete #3
Console2: Appears when you complete #2 and disappears when you complete #3
Holodeck2: appears when you complete #3 and disappears when you complete #4
Console3: appears when you complete #3 and disappears when you complete #4
SceneryB: appears when you complete #4, etc....
Just an example... but it should give you a good idea. In this example, Consoles 2 and 3 need to be in exactly the same spot. But the two holodecks don't. You could set it so that the second holodeck appears near where the first objective completes.
My character Tsin'xing
IMO, the foundry editor is what I call a WYSIWYG editor, what's needed is an 'on-the-fly' editor, a 3D representation of the map, so that objects can be placed and moved around and can be seen how they would look when the mission is actually played.
Yep. Making content with this tool takes a tremendous amount of time. And here's the kicker; this is just a "hardened" version of Cryptic's own tools. It's not all that much different from what they use internally; they can just edit some things directly that we have to do through a GUI. Or that's my understanding, anyway; I'd love to hear a dev confirm/deny that.
I spent over 40 hours on Franklin Drake Must Die before I considered it "done" enough for me to proceed with the next installment in the story. It's barely long enough for the old Daily standards.
That is exactly the process most of us use.
Painfully.
It's all about the story. If you have a good story idea, you craft it into a coherent plot, and then you express that plot in a way that makes the player feel like he's involved, the rest is just item placement.
Unless you're trying to replicate odd functionality using our limited tools, of course; that's where a completely different kind of artistry comes into play. That takes a metric crapload of practice; there's no way around it.
Seriously martok, if you think placing a few props is time consuming, try building the entire set from scratch.... Oy... now THAT is tedious.
My character Tsin'xing
These are two separate ideas - which one is your main point?
For the first idea, it's all a clever process of setting objects to become non-visible when a mission objective or object is completed. I suggest playing around with the options of "Visible" and "Nonvisible" in a sandbox map, and getting familiar with how it works.
For the second idea, good luck trying to push that. The Devs, when it comes to the Foundry, don't really change much other than adding new assets or fixing editor glitches. I proposed an idea way back in this forum, to have grouping and layering of objects within the Foundry editor - as with most suggestions, it was probably ignored. Which is a shame, it is a great idea.
Not to pop your bubble, but you will find a lot of great ideas will go unnoticed or ignored by the game's developers.
Oh boy! You should have seen me work on the Enterprise-D interiors in one of my Alpha missions. Took me two months to get everything to look right. TWO MONTHS! ON ONE MAP!
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
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My character Tsin'xing
To sway a little off topic, but indirectly related to the subject. I run a home server using software based on an opensource 3D virtual world system (called "opensim"), which in turn is connected to a central system, to which other people running the same software connects each other to it, and using a client (similar to STO's game client), users are able to connect to those servers.
The "toon" (as people put it), and the visual representation is much like STO's world, but with a difference, the initial world starts as a square piece of land 256x256m, the land can be terraformed, and the content, such as buildings, vehicles, and yes, space ships, are all user created "in-world" using basic prims, such as cubes, spheres, etc etc, which can also be manipulated (edited), moved, combined, and textured to take on the desired form, scripts can be added to these objects to perform various functions, such as opening a door (sliding or swing), flying, forward and backward motion, and using a physics engine, objects, npc's and user characters can interact with each other, now, as you know nothing is perfect and neither is the software I run, but, the devs listen, and if a lot of people see a problem and/or sees an area of improvement, the devs do listen and that why I can safely say "if the "opensim" devs can do it, then Cryptic devs can at least try.
Yes, someone has actually created (on one of these "opensim" servers), an entire Star Trek based theme, including the academy, ESD, and the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701-A, and it flies too, flight is limited to the abilities of the software, but that's changing, and also the Star Trek TOS clothing for the toons is all user created too.
Cryptic has much to learn from software like that, I believe it would make creating foundry missions a lot easier.
I'm not saying to run servers at home, but it can all still be done on the STO servers, but change the editor a little to use a 3D environment, to create/edit the maps, then exit the map when satisfied of all placement, and carry on with the story line.
I'm also not saying to manually create the objects from scratch, lol, just enter the 3D editor, drag and drop assets from the asset repository to the ground, then just move and rotate the object to the position required, and repeat for other objects, then,,,, one can enter a 2D representation, such as what is used now, to select each object and edit it's properties, for triggers, animations, etc etc, but for actually building the map, a 3D representation would be a darn sight easier.
On the other hand, a lot of players have ideas for foundry missions and when they see the foundry they go "Yeah, I can't do that with this foundry version".
Also do you guys really believe that the devs have to build maps in a 2d-minimap?? That would be ridiculous. I bet devs can navigate in the 3d world and place assets, so they instantly see, how it looks. If the foundry could do this too, I bet custom maps would increase in awesomeness by the factor of 10 or 100.
Two issues with this:
1) I have seen someone say that Cryptic uses almost the same Foundry editor as we do, it's just that they enter in coordinates directly instead of using a user interface as simple as ours.
2) Even if Cryptic used such a 3-d system, trust me when I say it would be a pain in the neck to use on any regular home computer. I used to mod Battlefront II, and it took a good three minutes to load a complicated map. So try loading ten maps... You'd be waiting more than anything.
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Also this is not rocket science, every normal computer can do this. I did it in Age of Empires 10 years ago.
My character Tsin'xing
You are making a ton of assumptions.
I just stated that someone (was it a forum mod, dev, or Branflakes, I can't remember) stated that Cryptic uses the same map editor that we do, except the UI doesn't look as nice. Why are you disputing fact?
And I never said you computer couldn't do it. I said it would take an inordinately long amount of time to load each map. Then, once you make changes (this is where my knowledge is vague), I'm guessing when you publish the mission, it would take some time for the mission to complete munging.
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Precisely, more modern computers, not just high-end gaming systems, have excellent GFX systems, and are more than capable of handling 3D environments, mine, is just a store bought HP with a quad core APU (not to be confused with a CPU), with inbuilt 1GB GFX, on the processor, and 8GB RAM, and along with Direct-X, it can handle even the most GFX intensive 3D environment, sooo, yes, Cryptic would be wise to use a 3D drag and drop editor in preview mode, and thinking about that,,,, how many people would sign up to STO, if that was made possible?, IMO plenty. A 3D editor would make it a lot more simpler for players to create foundry missions, and would open the door to many possibilities, and Cryptic would also get a bigger user base too.
Last night a friend of mine came over, (a real star trek boffin, he's even gone as far to learn to speak, read and write Klingon, and his house is all voice controlled with functioning wall consoles everywhere, but current technology can only do so much), I showed him STO, and the foundry editor, he was over the moon when he saw the STO world, but when he saw the foundry editor, and how missions were created, that put him off, to quote his words:-
"The editor is to simple, and far too time consuming, everyone I know at my work (as a games designer) uses 3D editing. STO in itself is great, but a lot has to be said about the mission editor, if Cryptic want people to create good, engrossing missions, then they need to incorporate a 3D editing environment".
And those were exactly his words.
This is false. The devs use 3D editor, however the resource requirements are tremendous and the reliability is not so good.
My ISA bus 512kb Trident card was more than capable to handle 3D environments. I have fond memories playing Alone In the Dark and Doom with it. That is not the question. The question is performance and minimum system specs. If you needed a dual 680 with 16 gigs of RAM to run the editor with good speed then the 3D thing just doesn't worth it.
IMO none.
Such as?
Why exactly?
Sorry, there is no instant "5 stars all the way mission!" button. I think the editor is cumbersome.
I would hate to code C++ or make background music in 3D.
Good and creative designers don't need 3D editor. Actually good and creative designers can perfectly get around using notepad. I know I can.
So you're saying you can create games such as WoW, Doom 3D, Need for Speed etc etc , with just notepad? No disrespect, but, whatever pills you're taking, I'd like some lol.
That's why developers/designers use programs like Wings 3D, Blender, and other 3D object creation tools, if STO was written using notepad, I hate to think what it would look like, perhaps an ancient DOS text based game lol.
My character Tsin'xing
You know that everything boils down to raw data, code and scripts?
Coding? Notepad, with language related extension of course.
A 3D mesh is nothing more than a big file with coordinates and texture data. Open for edit, modify some numbers and you have a different model. I do agree that it is generally easier to create 3D models in a 3D editor, but if you want to make something precise or special, you will need to get down to the source.
A shaders are good old scripts, too. Open for edit, change the script and you have a new visual effect.
I made procedurally generated maps for HL1 and HL2 using Pascal, Delphi and Notepad.
I actually made script generated custom interior creator for this very game using Delphi and mission extracts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz5F1zNr7Z8
As a little fun side project, I added an extension that could populate an area with random junk.
BTW this is a foundry mission. If only they allowed me to simply change the values and upload it to the server. That would cut down the time needed for mission editing CONSIDERABLY!!!!
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1) That "hardening" includes removing the ability to import things created in other tools. They do a lot of their work in other tools and import it.
2) I'm working on applying logic to things I vaguely remember being said over a long period of time in many places. It's possible that things were poorly expressed, poorly transcribed, poorly remembered, or that there's a flaw in the logic chain. I have no inside information that's not gleaned from public sources, so take it with a grain of salt.
Remember, I don't work for Cryptic or PWE, I'm just another forum user who has been given some "janitor" powers to keep the place clean. If anything, I have less inside view these days than in the past, since Cryptic pulled out of IRC and doesn't do as many "stream of consciousness" talks as they did early on.
My character Tsin'xing
The Foundry does have some issues, but you actually can do a lot with it. In some ways it's very limited, but in other ways you can argue it's quite powerful.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.