FAQs, tips and tricks for the Foundry

If you've figured out something that was challenging or difficult, post it here!

It took me a little while to figure out how to make you beam up before mission completion resolves. Set a reach marker on the map you are beaming up to, and on your map transition widget, specify that you leave from "whole map". Make sure you reach point and spawn point overlap, and your mission will resolve the moment you beam up, after you are prompted to do so.

Also, if your mission plot has you visit the same map more than once with different objectives, then you need to make a copy of the map for each time you go there, or else it will mess up the progression of your mission.

I found it helpful to first create the maps I am going to use before writing the story. Like Josh said if you plan to visit the same map twice, create 2, but don't place anything on them until you are writing the story. That way you can place markers on the map as you go along without having to stop and start.

When in the story section, and you need to choose to talk, pop ups etc, I found it helpful to put them all in at first, rather than doing it bit by bit. It then gives you a list of what is still to be placed and done. Giving you almost a little check list, which does help.

Hey, I've come across something that I can't determine if it's a bug or a quirk of the Foundry. Every time I try placing something like an Encounter or a Waypoint in my story, the Foundry keeps adding in this stupid 'Leaving Earth Spacedock' story element and it won't let me delete it. Is this something that has to be filled in, because it seems like the Foundry won't let me do anything without keeping it. However, nothing about this is specified in the Foundry Walkhrough.

UPDATE 1: Alright, so I figured out what was going on. That was the game telling me to add in something to transition the player from one map to the mission map, and I figured out how to get it to move from Sector Space, not from Earth Spacedock. (btw, sector space looks sweet!) However, I have a different question. I have Kill Enemies encounter placed in my objective list and on the map. However, the enemies don't appear on the map. For that matter, none of the NPC's I've placed appear on the map. Additionally, any time I try adding a different encounter, it automatically moves it to the top of the objective list. I can't tell if these are bugs or if this is something I'm just not understanding. Any tips on this?

Okay, I have a few questions I was hoping to figure out today, but I can't get any of my projects to load so I figured I'd just ask them here.

How do you set your missions to begin at X place? For instance, if I want my mission to begin at Risa, how do I set it to start at Risa?

How do you set up map transitions? For example, how can I beam from one map to another map OR how do I do it be maybe a turbo-lift?

How can I set up beam in groups that beam in when a particular event happens? If that's even possible. . .

Thanks!!

So, thanks to Brandon, I figured out what was going on with my stuff. Also Nick, I have an answer to one of your questions.

So first, warning: when you are looking at your map in the Editor, the map is actually WAY BIGGER than it appears. I thought I was placing stuff close to each other, but they were literally ten times as far as I thought. When testing, start with stuff (in space) really close to each other to get a sense.

Second, and this ties in with Nick's question, is that when you first start linking to objects in a map, the game will automatically insert a 'transit widget'. This is a plot object that takes you from one map to another. So Nick, to answer your question, when this transit widget appears, you will want to change the default 'Earth Spacedock' location to 'Risa'. To get the widget to appear, starting adding in plot elements that require a location. I think that should get it to go.

UPDATE: Alright, I have an answer to Nick's second question, which is actually a more general answer to the first. Here's how you set up a map transition:
1. Make sure both maps have been created: the one you're leaving and the one you're entering
2. Create the objective the player must satisfy to trigger the transit. For example, if you want to beam an away team onto a planet, create a Reach Marker on the center of the planet and give it a MASSIVE radius, so that it's halo extends past the planet. Remember, distance is deceptive on the space map.
3. Now, and this bit is a little counter-intuitive, create the first objective on the map you're GOING TO. Once you link it to an object/NPC/mob on the new map, the editor will automatically create a Transit Widget. This is the Story Element that handles transition from one map to another. It takes the form of a dialog box.

So, extending the example above: say that the first thing my away team needed to do was talk to a contact on the planet below. After creating the Reach Marker around the planet in space and linking it to an objective in the Story progression, I would then create an NPC Contact on the map for the planet. I'd then add a Talk to Contact objective to the Story. One that Talk to Contact is linked to the NPC on the second map, the editor will automatically create the Transit Widget above the Talk to Contact objective. This is a dialog box. For example, I might set it so that it's a bridge officer saying that an away team is ready to beam down to the planet.

I hope that helps. It's rather hard to explain with text...

Alright, so now I have a question. Does anyone know how to Interact with a Contact? The editor currently allows us to create 'Talk to Contacts' and 'Interact with Objects' elements. However, I can't find a way to 'Interact with Contacts'. An example of this would be walking up to a Contact and scanning them with a medical tricorder.

What I'd really like to do is have a situation where you have to treat or scan incapacitated crew members, which then trigger dialog. I know this is in the game proper, but I see no way of creating this scenario in the Foundry.

I played around with that a lot today Eric. I wanted to place some random crew members that you could scan and heal, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. I got injured crew members by placing a group of them on the field and gave them an Idle Animation of Hurt - On Back 01, but I couldn't figure out how to interact with them. I tried doing the same with NPC contacts, but there's no option to give them an animation and nothing even mentioning a interact animation. It'd be really easy to do if there was like a character object that you could give any style too, but I couldn't see anything like that.

Thank you very much for the answers to my questions.

Does anyone know how to group Contact objectives together so they all happen at once? Like a dialog chain. I have a couple "Talk to Contact" objectives in my mission right now and after completing one you have to recontact the NPC.

I've noticed that if you drag one objective one another, they group together and says "Complete All," but I'm not exactly sure one what the function of that is.

As far as I can tell, Interacting with Contacts is not available in the Foundry. Also, neither is the 'multi-option' dialog trees with an NPC (those times when you can ask an NPC different questions in the same dialog box).

I was playing around with the Complete All function today. Basically, this means that these are objectives which are independent of each other, but need to be completed before you can progress to the objective below them. For example, in the mission I'm working on, you need to locate 3 NPCs in the midst of a Kill Enemies (Hirogen) before talking to a 4th NPC. This means that there is a Complete All block with four blocks in it: Kill Hirogen, Talk to NPC 1, Talk to NPC 2, Talk to NPC 3. The result in the map is that all four need to be completed before you can even talk to NPC 4.

I hope that helps!

Do any of you know how to make the "animations" work for the ships? I was trying, on my mission, to have some of the ships you have to fight warp in.. the animation is there, but when I use it.. the ships warp in.. repeatedly. They run the animation several times, and I think they would continue to do so until you get into range of them.

Is there a way to set it so that they only do the animation once?

Hey guys. I absolutely love the Foundry. I love what it means for STO and its community. However, I'm finding it really difficult to use. I keep trying to create missions and at some point I get confused and feel it is just best to start over. I think perhaps what might help some of us get to know the Foundry better is if we had an event on ventrillo in which we all startup our foundry and someone walks us through creating the same mission en masse. We could ask questions along the way and address the most popular features of the Foundry. Then perhaps we could have more advanced classes as well. I'm wondering if anyone feels comfortable enough with the Foundry yet to bring other fleeties up to speed on it?

Adinarous, I think that is a fantastic idea. Explaining how to do anything in the Foundry is very difficult with only text. Some sort of group learning session over Vent would be way more effective.

While I wouldn't consider myself an advanced user, I did spend pretty much this whole weekend working with the Foundry to make a mission. I feel like I could comfortably lead a group of people in creating a basic mission that would teach all the necessary components of making a STO mission. The problem is a matter of time. Maybe something on the weekend?

In the mean time, I definitely suggest checking out the tutorial videos on starbaseugc.com. While they aren't completely informative (they fail to mention some of the more annoying quirks of the Foundry), they are a great starting place to at least figure out how to begin.

Also, I just realized I never answered one of Nick's questions. Nick, unfortunately, there is no multi-dialog option in the Foundry. I'm hoping this will be integrated soon, as it is pretty necessary to have good exposition dialog without hitting the user with a massive text box. It also makes for better immersion, because it gives the player more a sense that they're having a conversation.

Lee, instead of trying to do that with the Animations, try setting a way-point objective where you want the bad guys to be, then directly after that add a Kill Enimies objective right after it. This should make the bad guys spawn, or warp in, whenever the player reaches the way-point.

I'd definately help out with a meeting, the Foundry Task Force and Starbase Construction Team could probably use it, and I think all of collaborating could learn a lot from one another. Maybe we could set up some sort of screencast that everyone could tune into?

That'd be an interesting idea. I know you can do screen shares on 1-on-1 Skype calls... maybe it can be done with a group call? If so, I don't know what the limit is.

Quote by NicholasJohn16

I'd definately help out with a meeting, the Foundry Task Force and Starbase Construction Team could probably use it, and I think all of collaborating could learn a lot from one another. Maybe we could set up some sort of screencast that everyone could tune into?

I have been interested in joining whatever group there is that uses the foundry ever since I heard there was going to be a foundry in STO.. I just haven't seen anywhere or heard about what I need to do to join the team. I love building things in online worlds.. Love playing the sims.. building bases in command and conquer, building interiors and houses in secondlife.. I just need to learn the foundry tool to be useful, but I would love to join and contribute.

The Foundry Taskforce and all the other member groups are in the Network section of the site. Just hover over the Network menu at the top of the page and choose Groups from the drop down menu, or follow this link:

http://www.stonewallfleet.com/network/groups

(Note: Anyone can create a group, some groups are set up to require the group administrator to approve membership requests and some do not.)