This is Foundry 101, a beginner’s guide to creating missions in Star Trek Online (STO) using the Foundry, STO’s user-generated content authoring tool.
Please select a tutorial from the list below.
The tutorials are probably best done in order, but feel free to jump around if there’s a particular part of the Foundry you want to explore.
All tutorials are in PDF format.
NOTE: The Foundry was updated for STO Season 6 with some great new features; the Foundry 101 tutorials on this page will soon be updated to reflect the recent changes.
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| Before getting into the nitty-gritty of using the Foundry, try this: a tutorial to demonstrate how you can build a simple patrol mission from scratch in just 15 minutes. Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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| This tutorial covers the basics of creating space, ground and interior maps, customizing the background of a ground map, getting to grips with object co-ordinates, and how to get the player to spawn exactly where you want them. Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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| Populate a map, learn the laws of gravity, avoid graphical glitches, turn tables into transporters, and raise interior maps to new heights. Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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| An introduction to objectives, including a summary of the different types, how to add objectives to a mission’s storyline, and how to allow the player to do more than one objective at once using a Complete All group. Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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| A closer look at the four types of mission objective (Interact with Object, Reach Marker, Talk to Contact, and Kill Enemies), how each type can be customized, and how to add a counter to an objective. Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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| The only thing you can’t manually insert into a mission’s storyline is a map transition… so how do you do it? This tutorial explains all, with a particular focus on the first map transition of a mission (the trickiest one to understand). Download: Full-color version | Printable version |
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Coming soon: tutorials on contacts, dialog, combat, triggers, and publishing a mission. |
Last updated: September 3, 2012
added link from sbugc. Great site.
29 January, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Nice place! Can’t Wait for more guides!
30 May, 2012 at 1:15 am
Only wanna state that this is handy , Thanks for taking your time to write this.
1 November, 2012 at 8:25 am
The directions were useful and helped me figure out a lot of what I was doing wrong. However, I found the paragraph style layout hard to follow and wasn’t always sure where an instruction ended and a new instruction began. I think a step-by-step format would be easier even in paragraph format. Here is an example of how I think it would have been easier to understand. From the 1st PDF: “1. Build a Mission in 15 minutes!”, very 1st paragraph on starting **** (1) Log in to STO, (2) Click on the Create Content tab, (3) Create new Federation test character…, (4) *** not all the instructions but you get the idea.
21 May, 2013 at 9:47 pm
Hey Dirk, thanks for the feedback. I’m glad you found the tutorials useful; they were written originally as a column for an online magazine, and space was very limited – hence the condensed paragraph style. In time, I may re-format them into a slightly more user-friendly layout. They need updating in any case to take account of changes in the Foundry editor! Ali
22 May, 2013 at 7:48 pm