Star Trek Online Interview

Now that the game has been online for over two months, the folks over at 1UP’s RPG blog have slapped up an interview with Star Trek Online executive producer Craig Zinkievich about the team’s current and future plans for the sci-fi MMORPG.

What are some of the challenges of designing large-scale content for Star Trek Online?

Craig: There are a number of challenges, actually. Just from the technical side is developing maps with a large number of people in mind. Putting 40 or more people on one mission map introduces quite a few problems to tackle. How do you optimize graphical elements so it’s not a slideshow? How do you keep lag from becoming a problem? From a design side, how do you create a 40-person choke point? How to create a Star Trek adversary powerful enough to be a threat to that many people? Do you instead create a lot of different adversaries? Then it goes back to a technical question.

That said, we’re constantly getting more out of our engine, and even now we’re able to do tons more than what we were capable of at launch. We want to create maps and missions designed for multiple teams in mind. It’s just a matter of time.