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Star Trek Online: Exclusive new screens & interview
Cryptic's Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich gives us the low-down on Star Trek Online and reveals new screens. Part 2 tomorrow...
Written by Dan Hutchinson, 12 November 2009
GamerZines: Does it surprise you that it has taken this long for a Star Trek MMO to appear when other (arguably lesser) franchises have been blessed with one already?
Craig Zinkievich: I think that the idea of a Star Trek MMO has been around for a long time. But actually making MMOs is a very technically challenging endeavour.
We at Cryptic were very excited when the license became available and we were able to secure it. We're all great Star Trek fans here, not only had we been waiting for STO for the longest time - now we were able to make it ourselves and guarantee that it got done!
GZ: What is it about the Star Trek universe that makes designing a Star Trek MMO particularly challenging?
CZ: A few things, I think. The universe is immense. There are over 400 hours of Star Trek TV shows and movies out there, and almost everyone one of them has a new reference to an alien species or location that's someone's favourite. When we sat down, as Star Trek fans, and listed out everything that we wanted to see in Star Trek Online - it was HUGE.
When you think about Star Trek there is no way to separate the image of the iconic starships from the away team exploring an alien landscape. We knew right off the bat that we'd have to make both the space and ground experiences. That's two games right there!
GZ: How will you be making sure the players stick to the conventionsof Star Trek? Will you be banning names like "xxJT Kirkxx" for instance? How about ability to create new races - surely a mechanic ripe for prime fiction abuse?
MMOZine Issue 18
For our latest Star Trek Online coverage, click here to download MMOZine Issue 18 for free.CZ: We'll probably keep people from being James T. Kirk and having a ship named the Enterprise - but aside from that, we're going to try to give people the freedom to customize and create in the universe.
In Cryptic's experience, allowing the players freedom to customize results in a deeper and cooler game world. They'll create costumes, species or an amazing backstory that we could never imagine. For every "fiction abuse" we see 20 or more hardcore role players who create things that blow us, as developers, away.
GZ: What will the gameplay process of exploring and claiming new worlds be like?
CZ: We couldn't make a Star Trek game without allowing the player to "Boldy go where no one has gone before!" The dev team here has invested a huge amount of our engineering resources into creating what we call the "Genesis System." It's a series of technologies that allow us to procedurally generate content. It gives us the tools to create hundreds of systems, planets and alien species that you will be able to interact with.
If you're interested in exploring - you can pick a star cluster to go into, and you'll be transported to one of those thousands of alien systems. You can explore the system - maybe there's just an asteroid field with some anomalies to scan, or maybe there's a strange alien race that needs your help. You'll be able to store the coordinates to go back and visit the system again, or you can trade them with your friends or Fleet members.
GZ: Is there anything in your original design that just isn't working well in testing?
CZ: There was a lot in the original design that we thought would be extremely important to the game - but when we got to it, we realized that the game wasn't really lacking without it.
Initially we thought that targeting an enemy's subsystems and reacting to yours going down would be a major portion of space combat. When we got to implementing our original vision, it just ended up adding noise to the gameplay. We kept scaling it back until it fit in well. Now only Science vessels have the ability to do this all the time - other configurations of ships can get the ability based on your bridge crew. It works great now - but is totally different than what we had originally envisioned.
Star Trek Online coverage available in MMOZine Issue 18 - click here to download it for free!
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