The Foundry Roundtable Episode 56: Players, Authors and Reviewers... Oh My!

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• paxfederatica Member Posts: 1,496 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  Re: How do changes/progression in STO's official story affect Foundry missions?
  
  

  1. As I've mentioned in chat, the new year does give me an excuse NOT to rework the scenes aboard ESD in "Ghosts of War, Part V" yet again (having already overhauled that mission recently).
     
     
  2. That said, I do plan to add a note to the descriptions of all my missions that they take place in 2409 - something I would recommend that all Foundry authors do to any missions they don't intend to update per Season 9 changes. Likewise, any missons designed with S9 in mind should be labeled to take place in 2410 - something I intend to do with my upcoming KDF trilogy. (Most of it actually takes place a thousand years in the past, but will use the current Undine conflict as a tablesetter.)
     
     
  3. Last, but definitely not least, now that the Fed-KDF war is over, now more than ever we need the ability to customize the allegiance of NPC mobs, so that we can have Feds fighting alongside Klingons. Or, as an alternative solution, friendly Fed mobs for KDF missions and vice versa.

  
  Re: Mission titles
  
  

  • "Valley of the Shadow" is a Biblical reference, specifically Psalm 23:4. The alternate individual mission titles ("Into the Valley", "The Shadow of Death", "Fear No Evil") are also derived from the 23rd Psalm. There is some precedent for this in canon - DS9's "...Nor The Battle To The Strong" and "Let He Who Is Without Sin..." for two examples.
    
    
  • "Ghosts of War" is a double-entendre, referring to both the main antagonists of the series and the story arc's echoes of the Dominion War (although neither really become apparent until late in Part III). As for the alt-titles: "Dust to Dust" is another Biblical reference, "Extraordinary Rendition" is an all-too-familiar catch phrase from the GW Bush years, "Chasing Ghosts" is a similar double-entendre, "The Portal" refers to the mission's MacGuffin, "Operation Wolverine" (formerly "Battleground 001"; essentially the series's Battle of Hogwarts) is an obligatory Red Dawn reference, and "Time's Hammer" is a play on TNG episode title "Time's Arrow".)
    
    
  • "Twilight of the Gods" is a working title for my KDF trilogy. It has been used as the title of many and sundry works of literature, film, TV and music in the past, most famously in Norse legend. I have considered renaming it "Heghjaj Qunpu'" ("Death to the Gods") or "The Gods Must Die" (Klingon translation TBD) but I keep coming back to "Twilight of the Gods" and may just stick with that. I'll probably just call them Act I, Act II and Act III - no alternate titles.
    
    
  • drogyn1701 should be interested to know that a few DS9 episode titles were derived from song titles. "Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" is a Klingon twist on an old country tune by the late Eddie Rabbitt. "His Way" (the episode that introduces Vic Fontaine) is a play on Sinatra, while "It's Only A Paper Moon" (another Fontaine episode) refers to another lounge-lizard standard (which, yes, Fontaine does perform). A handful of other episodes (DS9 and other Trek series) also have titles resembling song titles but are most likely coincidental. [Voyager's final season alone has two episodes that share titles with R.E.M. songs: "Drive" (also a Cars song) and "Endgame".]

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• starswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  Re: Mission titles: I tend to prefer descriptive titles.
  
  "Bait and Switch": The mission leads you (or at least your character) to expect a boring, routine patrol mission. Things change. I also do a lot of subverting people's expectations WRT racial hats, ref: Ferengi spy, Cardassian Starfleet captain, etc.
  
  "Emendatio Erratarum Veterum": Latin for "Righting Old Wrongs". Major premise of the mission is undoing some of the damage Janeway et al. did to the Federation's reputation in the Delta Quadrant.

  "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
  — Sabaton, "Great War"
  

  

  
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• markhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  Darkness between the Stars; it's about exploring a dark matter nebula in deep space. hehe
  
  B'Vat's Legacy: It takes place after the (fed) story mission where B'Vat dies, and explores a contingency plan he had set in motion before he died.
  
  The Beta Rana Incident: It takes place in a solar system named Beta Rana. This title doesn't really have anything to do with the plot.
  
  Diplomacy in the Gamma Quadrant; well... it's a diplomacy focused mission, and it takes place in the Gamma quadrant

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• markhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  Yes Vulcan has doors. One example is the top of the stair case. Okay that's a bit of a pun, but it's a door that's a Door. :P
  
  Instead of making the sky suddenly brighter, make the base map very bright and add a haze to dim it. Since haze is a weather effect you can turn it off on a trigger.
  
  Stabbity death is FUN! Most of the time. Needing to kill an army as part of a kill objective is overkill IMO.
  
  I've made several foundry missions that are hinged on a specific STO mission. Diplomacy in the Gamma Quadrant directly references the Dominion FE series. (You talk to Loriss, and she specifically states that she is THAT Loriss) B'Vat's Legacy is set after the end of the Klingon war storyline in STO. (it talks about how the main villain is one of B'Vat's lackeys)
  
  I didn't make Quinn. I acquired him from Lincoln.
  
  For me, learning programming and modding changed the way I looked at computer games forever. When I see glitches I instinctively attempt to diagnose the cause of the glitch. When I say something is a minor glitch it means I think the cause is superficial.
  
  Like Drogyn, I started writing in Foundry almost before I started playing. Thus I only ever have that sort of wonder when I see the author do something I don't know how to do.... or something I know is a lot of work.

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• drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  What do people think about Dragoon's question: What is the number 1 bug in the Foundry?

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• markhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  Hmmm..... Hard to say. 0/0/0 is a tempting one, though I think the search issue is a bigger problem overall.

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• zorbane Member Posts: 1,617 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  tbh the Foundry isn't that buggy anymore. There's annoying preview bugs but they're "only" annoying. They need to start expanding on features, for example what markhawkman says about searching
  
  edit: another feature i would like to see is the return of the import. It already exists and "just" neesd to be fixed

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• starswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  What do people think about Dragoon's question: What is the number 1 bug in the Foundry?

  
  Lack of search functionality.

  "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
  — Sabaton, "Great War"
  

  

  
  Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/

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• stoutes Member Posts: 4,219 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  What do people think about Dragoon's question: What is the number 1 bug in the Foundry?

  - Lack of inspiration
  - Lack of basic possibilities
  - Waiting times
  - Lack of new features/possibilities

  maxvitor wrote: »

  Nerf is OP, plz nerf

  That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
  
  I call it, the Stoutes paradox.

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• drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  See part of the issue is that most of what you guys just said aren't what I would call "bugs". To me bugs are something in an implemented feature that isn't working correctly, or prevents the feature from working at all.
  
  So the 0/0/0, this would be a bug. The lack of a "next" button, is not. It is a design decision that I think is wrong. The tag feature doesn't seem to be working properly (I exclude combat tags and it gives me loot grinders), this is a bug. That we can't have one-way patrols is not a bug, it is a missing feature.
  
  We all have wish lists of features we want in, or want re-designed. But what we're looking for here is actual bugs. Things that are implemented, but not working correctly because of software issues or at all.

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• starswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  All right, well, guess I have to go with A) the (0,0,0) bug and cases of emotes not working. Like I've got an NPC right now who's supposed to be doing the "toast" emote and she's just standing there looking stupid.

  "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
  — Sabaton, "Great War"
  

  

  
  Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/

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• paxfederatica Member Posts: 1,496 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  As others have said, the Foundry as it stands now isn't that buggy anymore - it's just missing a $#|t-ton of assets and features that should have been incorporated a long time ago. No doubt, once they finally start adding these new features it will introduce new bugs, but we don't have that problem yet, which is both a good thing (i.e. the lack of bugs) and a bad thing (i.e. the lack of features).

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• jauhn82 Member Posts: 52 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  What do people think about Dragoon's question: What is the number 1 bug in the Foundry?

  
  well this is not a number 1 bug; but i do find it annoying... costums that you have used the costume import before it was removed gives options for costumes that are not in the foundry, but times when you change one thing about the toon; alot of the character features resets to default

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• markhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  just remembered another one: you can't do a custom search in the review tab.

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• lincolninspace Member Posts: 1,843 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  starswordc wrote: »

  Lack of search functionality.

  
  Yes and the removal of costume import. Cryptic giveth and they taketh away.

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• azurianstar Member Posts: 6,985 Arc User

  May 2014 edited May 2014

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  How do changes/progression in STO's official story affect Foundry missions?

  
  Outside of timeline issues or storyline recons, changes / progression likely isn't a major issue.
  

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  How does being a author/reviewer change your perspective on missions?

  
  Gives you insight of not only how to tell your story, but how to sell your story.
  

  drogyn1701 wrote: »

  [Community Question] What do you think is the highest priority bugs?

  
  Highest Priority is Core Foundry bugs. Like problems with the Editor, the Editor UI, and Test character UI.

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