Foundry "How-To" resources

I'm working on a generic/cross-faction storyline that I'd like to translate into a Foundry mission, but the thing itself isn't very intuitive and I'm just not sure where to start. Of course, I won't even try mission creation until I have the story more filled out, because without that why even bother?

My question is this: what are some good learning links for Foundry mission creation? Stuff that covers the basics of the UI, triggers, usable elements and so forth. What I'm looking for is basically a series of links that could be used as a sort of "Foundry for Dummies" (as was mentioned in an old thread here). Does anyone have any good resources like that for the Foundry in its current state?

It would take a dig, but someone here once posted a step-by-step list that looked promising. I find most of the videos out there are just cursors flying around screens with no explanation of what they're doing.

YouTube has a good set of video tutorials by Kirkfat. Just search STO Foundry Tutorials and his should come up. Once you click on one, his entire library should be accessible through his channel. Watched his myself when I was learning :)

+1 for kirkfat. those were the ones i kept coming across during my searches too...when i made the Bacon Wars saga foundry missions. :-)

Thanks guys. I took a look at the kirkfat videos, and they've been reasonably helpful (if a bit outdated). I honestly think there should be better and/or more official resources for the Foundry just in general, though.

Here's a big issue I have...a sector map showing which maps are available for space or ground use and/or which are not would be incredibly handy. I may be an old-school trekkie, but I don't know by heart the names and locations of every single star system in the game. I know roughly where on the star map I want stuff to happen, but I don't know all of the systems/planets/stations by name, and it seems like a lot of them are just plain N/A. If you want A to happen in Klingon space, B to happen in Fed space, C to happen in Romulan space, D to happen in a border area etc., there's not really an easy way to filter that sort of thing from what I can see.

After following along with setting up a basic mission (go to the place, do the thing), I'm kind of disappointed. Looking through the toolkit, a lot of what I wanted to do appears to be impossible in the Foundry context, at least in the way I wanted to do it. Looks like the devs keep all the real goodies for themselves, so that we mere mortals can't use everything the game engine is actually capable of presenting in a mission context. Even some of the locations and options I would have liked to use seem unavailable, because reasons. This is forcing me to rework the story itself to make it fit, which is just plain bad design -- story should always drive process, not the reverse.
:angry:

Hi Teknomancer,

A long time ago I started creating single-page, written tutorials for the Foundry. I didn't do many, and rather like me they're a bit old and out of date now - the Foundry toolset has certainly been updated since I wrote the tutorials. But there may be something useful there.

foundry101.wordpress.com

I hear what you're saying about the limitations of the Foundry toolset dashing your story-telling hopes. I've been there many times, but I like to be an optimist and believe that limitation fosters innovation.

Keep at it!

Ali

I've spent all weekend working on a scenario, and at least a third of that time has been spent watching the software crash, reloading the game client and force-verifying, watching the Foundry server sit at the loading prompt, or finally getting into the thing and trying a playtest -- and being either unable to move my character at all, or inexplicably (and helplessly) plummeting to my doom in what should be a zero-gravity environment. WTF?

:angry: If I had known the damn thing was this buggy when I started out, I would have never bothered. But I've got too much effort in it to stop now, so I'll finish the scenario -- if it will let me.

Yeah, the foundry tool is a bit neglected. If you have a chance to play some of the spotlighted or other missions in the library, it might give you an idea of the limitations/possibilities of the editor. Although I'm not new to the foundry, I often learn about new things that it's capable of by playing other people's missions.

If you're trying to build a level that's elevated above the surface of the map, be sure to use the foundation block asset as your ground level rather than the platform asset. This should address the falling through the floor issue, if that's what you're attempting.

I haven't experienced the crashes that you're experiencing, however. It can definitely be a challenging and sometimes frustrating tool to use. Good luck with it! If you have any specific questions that aren't answered in tutorials, feel free to ask them here. There are a few of us like Ali, Midnighttlc, myself and others who have foundry experience and might be able to answer your questions!

Since I've already published it (please go try it out and rate me!), this might be kind of a moot point, but there are a couple of minor details nagging at me:

• Is there some variable to make the dialogs swap in your actual boffs' names? "Tactical Officer," "Engineer" etc. works I guess, but if a variable for boff names is available, I'd like to use it (for clarity if nothing else).
• Is there a "red alert" environmental effect somewhere for interior use? Or even just one of those alarm pillars like you see in the Romulan base on Nimbus?

Like I said, they're just minor details, but if those options exist I'd like to use them. Do they?

If anyone is coming to this topic looking for instructions or what-have-you, I'll just add my two cents' worth of tips/caveats about some of the more crazy-making bugs, er, "features" of the Foundry UI:

• If playtesting starts acting flaky (your toon/ship won't move, your starship starts "falling" in zero gravity, interact dialogs taking way too long etc,), SAVE, then go to the FILE menu and CLOSE PROJECT, then EXIT THE FOUNDRY. You will dump back out to your test toon screen, and he/she will probably load for a few extra seconds. Go back in and it should behave normally. This usually starts happening when you've either made a major edit, or a bunch of minor ones. This is probably caused by a memory leak somewhere in the programming.
• If it locks up or crashes on you, don't panic. The Foundry autosaves your progress pretty regularly, and gives you the option to recover once you restart the program.
• The "Hidden" and "Visible" fields under the "State" tab WILL MAKE YOU NUTS. From what I can tell, their labels are completely reversed (but not always!). If making an item/NPC appear or disappear isn't behaving the way it should, try using Hide when you think you should use Show and vice versa.
• You can only use an item/NPC/Reach Marker/etc as an object in a Story Library interaction ONCE. If you need the thing more than once, then make more than one of them and give them unique names.
• Do your map-building first. Build the set, put in your actors and make sure they're performing the way they're supposed to, and ONLY THEN should you worry about writing their dialogue. Just stick some placeholder text in the message boxes. I use LOLspeak for this purpose, personally. :P

There's more, but those are the ones that will piss you off and make you tear your hair out the most. And again I cannot stress this enough: when in doubt, SAVE, CLOSE, EXIT AND RETRY! Rebooting the software fixes a lot of stupidity.