I think the hardest thing for reviewers to appreciate is that there are different tastes.

I might not be particularly fond of WoW's larger instance raids but I do know that they have an audience and that audience adores such massive logistics nightmares for the intrinsic challenge they present.

Personal tastes are harder to quantify, so I find myself taking a play from Roger Ebert's alleged criterion for reviewing a film: "Does this [mission] succeed in what it is attempting to be?"

If someone creates an all dialogue mission, it's a bit strange to be judging it down because it lacked combat. You really need to try and see what the author intended and make a judgment as to whether it succeeded at that.

For example, do I condemn Unreal Tournment due to a distaste for shooters or do I judge Unreal Tournament relative to what others in the same genre are trying to do?

There was nothing wrong with the story or the storytelling, but I meant that the execution should flow more like the rest of the game. I'm all for personal touches for each author.

But strangely adding in third person style narrative into the text dialogue box for Captain Ford for example - I didn't like that. It seemed strange and the first paragraph was in first person style.

e.g. instead of putting in "He shakes your hand". You could have stuck with one style - the first person mode where you address the player direct like every other Cryptic mission does and can try "I'd like to shake you by the hand!" and the player can imagine it, rather than be told it.

Also it broke out of the storytelling whenever you put in a technical note or a comment from yourself e.g. the green text that said "I couldn't find a canon medication for X so I made up the name of the medicine". I didn't really need to know that. You could have just used your made up name and made it sound real and I would have believed you.

Also I was talking about the Cryptic style "quality level". I know what people were talking about in your transitions. Some of them were just not touched at all, you just left the default "Go to next map". If you were really making it a story, couldn't you have made that "transition" into a story by adding some real dialogue there? Like "We've reached the turbolift. Let's go!" Instead of "Go to next map".

I also saw another critique from someone else that I agreed with and that was the level of Interact with Object stuff. You can streamline a lot of that away without sacrificing your style and method - e.g. I had to click to talk to each of the NPCs in the briefing room multiple times. But if you just put in one Talk to objective and then had the subsequent windows appear as automatic pop-ups, I wouldn't have had to click "Continue" and then Click on the NPC again.

Same kind of thing with the Warp away from Earth Spacedock. You can keep that in there, but instead of me having to interact with each beacon as I flew away from earth (which I didn't understand I had to do at first - I just flew past them) you could have changed those to automatic Reach Placemarker objectives, so that when I flew past them they automatically triggered.

One more thing I encountered was that beam up to the ship and then walking though an empty corridor to a turbolift and then having to transition again to Deck 23. I get what you're trying to do with the walking around your ship feel - but that particular bit maybe could be cut out because you have to balance the realism and style with practicallity and "is this really necessary to have in? what about people with slow internet that don't like lots of map transitions? and do I really have anything fun in this walking to another room bit?". I'm sure it wouldn't have compromised your style to skip that one bit and go straight to the deck with the briefing room, as we had to walk through that too.

Just some thoughts.

So, that's pretty much what I tried to mean in my comment. But I was limited in the number of words I could use. I had to just condense that down to "Try and make it more Cryptic Style" but I don't mean make your missions without your own style!

I'll ignore the green bit if that was meant to be an insult because I wasn't trying to be mean to you - I gave an honest review and rated according to what it said each star means.

I'd be happy to try your mission again and re-rate and re-comment on it in the future if you decide to update it And I hope you don't just diss my mission for being too "Cryptic like". Incidentally there's a known bug in it where none of the NPC animations are working and that's why you might see people standing on tables when they should be lying down. So keep that in mind as it's out of my control :p

The green color was more of my curiosity of what would the post look like in a shade of green.

Thank you for writing back. I have a much clearer understanding of what you mean now. You were saying that the briefing room scene mechanically was hard to follow and needed some labor.

Yes, originally in the story, I had written the background to be at Drozana Station between a Ferengi contact and the player. Then I played the mission a couple of times and wonder if there was to much time in terms of travel. Someone posted they felt it was to much travel. So, I rewrote the scene and constructed the briefing room scene.

I wanted the story to have a more science feel. Also, I wanted the scene to have a more military staff meeting feel to it.I have been in many military staff meetings. From playing this game, my experience with dialog with staff meetings seem more like 'someone who has never been to a staff-meeting' type of meeting.

When I post the story to the live server, I am going to have to remake all these NPC's and stage sets. At the same time, I want to test out the flexibility of redressing stage sets. I am also hoping that at some point, we can copy sets over to other stories. When I build a set here, I make a detail map of the layout and assets that go into the map. I also mark its location based on the x,y, and z coordinates.

I like having the characters walk through the ship because for the over all plot of the story this is a quiet moment for the character. In about four episodes, it is not going to be as quiet or subtle. SO this episode needs to contrast that.

Also, in Star Trek, all missions usually begin with a staff meeting. The captain gets his or her assignment, and then he or she gets the staff involved in the mission. The develop a plan and then proceed with the mission. That is what this scene is intended to do. You have a Criminologist, Military Tactician, Anthropologist, and Psychologist who will aid the Captain in the story. This scene introduces them to the story.

At this stage they only need to give enough information to drive the plot. Through the whole serial, they will provide more information. There is no sense in going into all that detail now because it is on the Tribble server. I do not want to create a detail story, and then I have to make it all again on Holodeck.

Mechanically, I tried the scene with both dialog boxes and popup's. There is a problem with popups right now. I cannot port my Actors to the popup dialog box. The tool has a mechanism to do this, but it doesn't work when I go to add my actors to the stage. The popup dialog only seems to work correctly when I put a bridge officer from the players crew in its place.

When I wrote the new scene, the executive producer released a post that said a newer dialog tool was being worked on. So I decided to bear through it now with Talk you Contact tools for now. I figure I could at least work out the dialog of the characters and the sequence of how they fit together int he conversation.

Ideally, when the newer tools are released, this scene will work where the player can actually make inquiries and get certain information. For now, I think that my time is better served going with what the tool can do.

For the space map, I went with the current design because when I used automatic markers, they did not always work correctly. The player would hit the mark and nothing would happen. Also, realistically, a ship flying by navigational buoys is not out of the ordinary. I lived on a aircraft carrier for five years. I remember all the times we deployed and got underway. The feel from that scene captures that moment. That quiet moment as the ship clears the port.

Deck 23 is essential to the story because it will used in a later episode. For those who care to walk around the ship, it introduces these important things now that you do not think is necessary. That is how I write stories. It may seem so unimportant now, but later you will learn their importance. At some future point, the player to solve the riddle of the over-all story will have to take all these events and places and put it all together.

One note about the transporter room is, originally when I search through the details and asset library, there where no transporter rooms. SO I took the Starbase 39 set and rebuilt it for my purpose. I only needed a section of the map. SO I took some walls and a door frames and built the set out. I wanted new players who are looking for ideas for other sets to see what you can do with the set tool. I put a door there because I did not want the corridor to end at a turbolift. The transporter chief becomes important later in the story.

Also, I am not concern with people who have old computers. I know that is probably condescending, however, you want to play in a game based on the future, play with a modern computer. I play the game on three displays. I am sure this next statement is cynical, but I don't want to limit the story because someone is using a computer built in 1982. But just think, when they do modernize, I won't have to go back and remake a new story. The story will already be made for them.

I am going to go work on the mechanical layout of the story, and I also want to see if I can have the NPC's sit in the chair. I do not know how to do that yet.

Thank you.

I forgot, the technical notes. I put those in the dialog box because, I notice when people playing the story seem not to have either Star Trek knowledge or game mechanic knowledge about certain things. So, since it is helpful for some players who do not know these things, I put those in.

I am considering creating a Narrator character to come in and help with plot points. Ideally, I want to have a computer library that the player can access the information, however the game does not allow multiple button dialogs.

I sat down last night and reworked the dialog boxes. I had to make a series of actors for the show. I am not sure if I can port them to other stories. I reworked much of the dialog boxes. I removed the long series of interact buttons in the briefing scene. I reworked the introduction with Captain David Ford.

I decided to use the main popup dialog tool to handle the quotes. I think that the actions are better in the button boxes. I think this will keep the story with a more immersed feel. I added a narrator to the story. It may be corny, but it seems to fit the story. I hope it does.

I republished the story as version 3.

@Peregrine_falcon, your post is a good reminder of the dangers that reviewers/critics face

Fortunately I only intend to review and not publish anything, though I try to keep up with the latest bugs and other pitfalls that authors are facing. As somebody who is still recovering from a series of strokes, I have problems enough following my own life story

I think I know what you mean, Falcon. Someone was wondering why in my mission, scannable objects would suddenly appear out of nowhere. Well.... They don't. They just get suddenly highlighted once the objective to scan them starts. That's all, and it even happens in regular missions!

But... Hey, so what. In the long run, it will all even out. Only worry about the stuff that indicates real problems.

First of all I want to point out, I have yet to play your mission but I found this thread and have read through it and found there was a couple things I wanted to add.

Secodnly, I like your style, I hope that most people will follow their own, but keep it close to something that you would see in an episode/movie/book of trek, though obviously with it being a game kept in mind...

As someone who likes visuals myself, I understand where you are coming from, there would be alot of people who would love to roam their ship. However there is a time and a place, people who have picked up your mission generally want to do something during that specific time (as some peoples time is limited), and if they wanted to just "wander" then they would outside of a mission.

You mentioned that they did it in the shows, while yeah they did roam corridors on their way to somewhere, those moments were usually used as character development between two or more characters and rarely had a single person just walking down the hallways unless it was apart of the plot (think ghost ship). The only time you include "travelling" between point A and B in a story is when something interesting happens, again people don't want to read about a boring journey as they could be spending that time doing something else.

My suggestion is to put a reason to have the journey in there, have the captain meet someone along the way that gives a piece to the plot, or maybe something that foreshadows a future mission? Or include some sort of tension or friction that makes it interesting, whilst keeping to your concept of "calm before the storm", you don't want to lose your players/readers before they get to the interesting stuff

I am sure that is true, but you have to realize that only people who have been in that situation are more likely to feel that sense. Most people in the game aren't looking for the peace, STO is an action game and they want to get into it.

It is sad, as your style is more artistic and emotional based which is what some people want to see, but be prepared for people to criticize it because they're just looking toward getting into some conflict.

Well this is good, I like this idea, though as I haven't played the mission yet I am not sure how they are introduced, is it memorable enough for when the player goes back later they realize this foreshadowing? or do they not realize it because they saw it as just another piece of decoration as they ran past? I can see either way working depending on your own personal preference, but it should be a clear choice as to which way you want to go.

This was just a friendly critique from a story writing point of view from what I've read in this thread, I like your attitude and think that once the foundry goes live you will have some top quality pieces worth playing. Obviously it's up to you whether you use my advice or not, as it's your story and you know how it plays out in the end, but just remember that at this early point, people don't know of the fun action to come in later missions and you will need to hook them in now in this mission so that they will return to play the rest later on.

One idea I had was to introduce a recurring character from your crew (but not one of your BOs) in my missions. Each mission, he might have a piece of dialoge or just his standard chat response. And in one mission, something would happen to him and if you had listened to the (mostly optionally dialog) before, you might recognize him and "care" for your poor crewman.

That's something one could do in a "walk-the-corridors" scene, too. Just establish a few recurring characters and have them some "chat" going on that might later tie into the plot, or just be there for color.

The best advice I ever got about self editing came during a high school creative writing class. I don't remember the exact quote and can't even remember the author who said it (for some reason I'm thinking Faulkner) but it goes something like this:

"Find your favorite part of the piece and get rid of it."

I could now write a 20 page essay on what that means but I think it's best if you spend the next 20 years thinking about it (as I have).

BTW, don't read into this, Klytemnestra. I am, in no way, inferring anything specific regarding your mission. I haven't even done it.