Hi guys I've recently been invited to be a contributor here at SB UGC, a site which I expect will grow once UGC content can be experienced on holodeck.
I just want to say I really love Star Trek, I like STO, think it could be better but accept all the reasons why it is not.
Also admittedly I am a big critic of Cryptic in that if I feel they deserve harsh criticism, (exploration), you name it, I go at them hard, I also give them credit where credit is due and wouldn't be here making missions if I didn't think they were working hard to improve the game.
That being said in order to learn the Foundry Toolset I published a Mission called 'The Siege' of which so far there are two missions with the same name, mine is the one by Cruis.In :)
This will be a series of missions and will have recurring characters from them. Hopefully alot of people will like the missions and look forward to more from me personally and get to like my characters, sort of like an interactive book.
The current episode amount is not set in stone, it depends on how much life is left in the series as it goes on and whether I am dragging it or it is still fun to play.
With regard to advice and tips etc for the Foundry and making missions for STO, alot has been covered in these blogs so far that I have stated on the STO forums particularly the last blog which deals with a reason to fight enemies.
Immersion is very important, the following piece of advice is important: The player's only reason for playing or having fun in a mission is the dialogue mixed with the map/setting etc. Imagine if you took away all the dialogue from all the current missions in game, what are you left with? Go here, interact with this, shoot this, interact with this person or object, etc until done.
So you see the dialogue is important, it sets the stage. Now you have to be careful not to inject too much personality in bridge your crew dialogue, stick to the facts of what they want to see, maybe give them a 'professional Starfleet' opinion, something a science officer WOULD say given the situation or what he is talking about. Remember it isn't your bridge crew you are writing for, it's perhaps thousands of other persons.
Inject personality in your mission characters and build them up to make them have a 3D personality, but be very careful what you have your players Captain say and their bridge officers, when it is not story related.
Also making the appearance of conversation goes a long way. One example where cryptic missed the ball on this one was the Preserver story. Usually one of your BO's kept popping up telling you everything that was going on, it cried out for a situation where your crew all of your BO were involved in the conversation and added the bits and pieces to give one whole out look, rather than have on BO just automatically all knowing and telling you everything etc etc.
Read the book Preservers by Will Shatner and you will see what I mean, he got dialogue perfect imo in that book, it sucked the reader into the mystery.
Other than that a good healthy dose of alot of knowledge of everything trek from the mundane to the all important canon stuff will serve you well.
Read ST books and watch some series again. Alter some story lines, base some stories off of them, continue a story never before continued in the series.
I myself haven't watched much episodes in a long time and it's something I plan to change as well as re-reading some books.
thanks
-Cruis
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Siege
Well I have just published my first mission by myself.
"The Siege"
The war along the Klingon front lines rages on. You and your crew have been tasked by Starfleet Command to aid an embattled Starfleet Marine Squad. The ultimate goal: to hold a vital system for the Federation.
please comment, rate, appreciate. Please answer the following questions to better help me do future missions.
Did you enjoy the mission?
Was it too short, too long or just right?
What would you like to see more of?
Which aspect of the mission did you like?
Was the dialogue of your crew too personal? Or was it objective enough not to distort your sense of your crew's personality?
What do you like?
What you don't like?
What could be done better? Foundry/technical wise or story wise
OFFICIAL FORUM THREAD
The first mission I wrote called "The Promise" has not yet been completed/published as I did that in conjunction with my friend -ONE-.
This will be the first of maybe a series of five for holodeck once the Foundry is live next year. In the mean time I will write the scripts etc.
These will be the only two I will publish for now. My blog details my main wishes for my missions and where I wish to see others go and some of the innovations I wish to see moving forward with the Foundry and missions in general.
All might not be prevalent in The Siege, and some will be included in The Promise, but The Promise isn't done yet.
The Siege will take about 15 minutes or less if you read dialogue fast. Also, among some things I wanted to stay away from was, objective a-b-c and kill random spawns inbetween. I more want to give the player a reason why he has to engage in combat, even if I have to give a reason for each 'spawn' of enemy you might come across.
Alot of Cryptic missions (yes I know they are getting way better), fill time by putting in mindless spawns inbetween objectives. It's like go here and do this, but nothing is mentioned about why enemy would be there or why you shouldn't possibly avoid them. So groups of 5 or 5/5 is the end result that you have to go through to fill time and make the mission longer.
You won't find such in my mission, and every spawn will have an 'objective' against you, and you will likewise have your own objective against it.
I will post the word file script I worked from later on, basically I wrote an idea out in like pseudo Foundry code, you go here you do this you interact with this guy, help this guy, etc, then I converted it to a script with the characters, the dialogue, the action, the set pieces. Script goes through alot of tweaking.
Also since it is my first creation myself, I had to work around the limitations of the Foundry as compared to how I had it in my script, but it will better enable me to adapt future scripts to the Foundry since I cannot do vice versa.
The script still have to serve as a main guideline and help things flow and be prepared instead of making up a mission as I use Foundry. Even though on the go you see things you have to add once you get into the tool.
The Foundry is still a very limited end user tool, it is not a 'developer tool' as such and we cannot do some things you might expect, so enjoy the missions for what they are and hopefully we the creators are telling compelling stories.
"The Siege"
The war along the Klingon front lines rages on. You and your crew have been tasked by Starfleet Command to aid an embattled Starfleet Marine Squad. The ultimate goal: to hold a vital system for the Federation.
please comment, rate, appreciate. Please answer the following questions to better help me do future missions.
Did you enjoy the mission?
Was it too short, too long or just right?
What would you like to see more of?
Which aspect of the mission did you like?
Was the dialogue of your crew too personal? Or was it objective enough not to distort your sense of your crew's personality?
What do you like?
What you don't like?
What could be done better? Foundry/technical wise or story wise
OFFICIAL FORUM THREAD
The first mission I wrote called "The Promise" has not yet been completed/published as I did that in conjunction with my friend -ONE-.
This will be the first of maybe a series of five for holodeck once the Foundry is live next year. In the mean time I will write the scripts etc.
These will be the only two I will publish for now. My blog details my main wishes for my missions and where I wish to see others go and some of the innovations I wish to see moving forward with the Foundry and missions in general.
All might not be prevalent in The Siege, and some will be included in The Promise, but The Promise isn't done yet.
The Siege will take about 15 minutes or less if you read dialogue fast. Also, among some things I wanted to stay away from was, objective a-b-c and kill random spawns inbetween. I more want to give the player a reason why he has to engage in combat, even if I have to give a reason for each 'spawn' of enemy you might come across.
Alot of Cryptic missions (yes I know they are getting way better), fill time by putting in mindless spawns inbetween objectives. It's like go here and do this, but nothing is mentioned about why enemy would be there or why you shouldn't possibly avoid them. So groups of 5 or 5/5 is the end result that you have to go through to fill time and make the mission longer.
You won't find such in my mission, and every spawn will have an 'objective' against you, and you will likewise have your own objective against it.
I will post the word file script I worked from later on, basically I wrote an idea out in like pseudo Foundry code, you go here you do this you interact with this guy, help this guy, etc, then I converted it to a script with the characters, the dialogue, the action, the set pieces. Script goes through alot of tweaking.
Also since it is my first creation myself, I had to work around the limitations of the Foundry as compared to how I had it in my script, but it will better enable me to adapt future scripts to the Foundry since I cannot do vice versa.
The script still have to serve as a main guideline and help things flow and be prepared instead of making up a mission as I use Foundry. Even though on the go you see things you have to add once you get into the tool.
The Foundry is still a very limited end user tool, it is not a 'developer tool' as such and we cannot do some things you might expect, so enjoy the missions for what they are and hopefully we the creators are telling compelling stories.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Foundry
I have teamed up with a cool guy who calls himself -ONE- to create missions for Star Trek Online using the beta release of Foundry.
Basically for joint missions created by us, I will write the script, and -ONE- will create it, and tweak it for release as a playable mission.
Our aim is to move STO missions to the next level, hopefully when you get to play these missions on holodeck or tribble before FOUNDRY is released to holodeck, that the majority of players will see and agree that we've set the bar high for others to live up to.
Our aim is to
1) Increase the perception of interactivity.
2) The perception of a more dynamic mission
3) The perceived immersion the player experiences
4) the Star Trek episode feel
Currently, just for example, you'll have all missions progress just by one of your bridge officers explaining something you need to do and then telling you that you did it, and giving you something else to do.
In keeping with the spirit of how star trek episodes progressed, we will seek to add a different spin on the established cryptic way, to make it flow more like an episode would, in terms of dialogue and who speaks it and when, and what they say and how it is said. Small things like this will help achieve our stated goals above.
Our first mission to be created together will be released on tribble before the Foundry goes live to holodeck, the mission is but a basic example of how we intend our future missions to be and the creativity we will be emphasizing. However, we may decide not to publish anymore until they can be played on Holodeck. Preliminary feedback to this mission will be very important, and we'll seek to have it given to us in a forum thread at the official sto website, the thread will link to our blog and our blog to the feedback thread.
The first mission is tentatively titled. "The Promise" It is currently being built and will be released soon.
Basically for joint missions created by us, I will write the script, and -ONE- will create it, and tweak it for release as a playable mission.
Our aim is to move STO missions to the next level, hopefully when you get to play these missions on holodeck or tribble before FOUNDRY is released to holodeck, that the majority of players will see and agree that we've set the bar high for others to live up to.
Our aim is to
1) Increase the perception of interactivity.
2) The perception of a more dynamic mission
3) The perceived immersion the player experiences
4) the Star Trek episode feel
Currently, just for example, you'll have all missions progress just by one of your bridge officers explaining something you need to do and then telling you that you did it, and giving you something else to do.
In keeping with the spirit of how star trek episodes progressed, we will seek to add a different spin on the established cryptic way, to make it flow more like an episode would, in terms of dialogue and who speaks it and when, and what they say and how it is said. Small things like this will help achieve our stated goals above.
Our first mission to be created together will be released on tribble before the Foundry goes live to holodeck, the mission is but a basic example of how we intend our future missions to be and the creativity we will be emphasizing. However, we may decide not to publish anymore until they can be played on Holodeck. Preliminary feedback to this mission will be very important, and we'll seek to have it given to us in a forum thread at the official sto website, the thread will link to our blog and our blog to the feedback thread.
The first mission is tentatively titled. "The Promise" It is currently being built and will be released soon.
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