Perpetual Entertainment vs Cryptic Studios

For those of you who don't know, before Cryptic Studios got a hold of the Star Trek IP, it was originally given to another company called Perpetual Entertainment to be developed into an MMO. Though, after a few years into development the company went bankrupt and closed.

My understanding is that they were close to finishing the game engine for the PE version of Star Trek Online when they finally had to close their doors. When Cryptic got the IP, they used their own proprietary game engine to recreate Star Trek again and they developed what we now know as Star Trek Online.

I have to admit though, from time to time, I look back at some of the publicity information for PE's Star Trek Online and I wonder what it would've been like. One of their goals were to have real players staff ships, instead of Player controlled AIs. They would've had in-ship travel time and, from the looks of it, properly scaled interiors.

Take a look at some of these in-game shots and tell me below what you think.

Very pretty but i would have been sceptical of player crewed ships.

Being that they had consultants and designers who actually had a hand in the TV series and movies (John Eaves, Andrew Probert and Mike Okuda) I can only feel that the visuals of the game would have looked much better from the beginning.

Wow, impressive. Those shots are fantastic. Of course, the grass always looks greener... ;) Thanks for sharing. I like the idea of player staffed ships but I have a hard time visualizing how that would work from the player's point of view. Although it may be a role-players dream come true.

I remember the early PR about player controlled ships and BOFF positions and I think that would have been fantastic. I was looking forward to being the Chief Medical Officer with my crew :)
Its a pity we never got the chance to experience what PE had offered originally. Thanks for the rememberal Nick

The screen shots you posted are big improvement over what is currently in game.

I also like how uncluttered the screen was, for me as an MMO player the least amount of stuff
on the screen is better.

Having a ship you can actually move around in would have been very cool. I also like the look, colors and feel of those screen shots.

If there is one thing I'm happier with Cryptic's reality versus PE's concept art it's ship design. Granted Cryptic has created some questionable designs for ships (I think all of the Galaxy variants preceding the Venture were Capital F-ugly!), I can't think of a single Perpetual concept sketch that wasn't horrendous.

That ship in the screenshot above is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It looks like a dog dragging its butt across the carpet to me, and I just can't get the visual out of my head.

The game never really even made it to alpha testing, though, so it's doubtful that player crewed ships would have gone very far beyond the concept stage. Ship design was also still very early, so it's likely that the ship designs would have been refined to a point that they were more acceptable by the larger fanbase. They had Probert, Eaves and Okuda on their side, after all; Cryptic doesn't. Logan made it sound as if he was the first one to try to contact them at Cryptic.

"Player staffed crews" sounds a bit miss leading. Basically, really people would've taken up Bridge Officer positions. For example, someone could've been the Chief Tactical Officer which I think would've been really fun way to play.

Yes, a lot of their ships were butt ugly, but none approached the hideousness of the ship with holes in the saucer in the original Cryptic trailer for Star Trek Online. With time, I bet PE would've made cannon ships. Their Akira looked fantastic.

It all looks very interesting - as a late comer I wasn't aware of any of this.

Some of the concepts sound quite good. One of the things I lament about STO, for all its good points, the stuff to do with your ship is, even now, still just a bit of a bolt-on. The interiors, the crew - there's a lot of what made Star Trek what it was missing - the interaction on the bridge, the ship-board action - these have been as integral to Star Trek as the exploration and your ship warping around and getting into space battles.

Quote by scoobs

It all looks very interesting - as a late comer I wasn't aware of any of this.

Some of the concepts sound quite good. One of the things I lament about STO, for all its good points, the stuff to do with your ship is, even now, still just a bit of a bolt-on. The interiors, the crew - there's a lot of what made Star Trek what it was missing - the interaction on the bridge, the ship-board action - these have been as integral to Star Trek as the exploration and your ship warping around and getting into space battles.

The interiors in Cryptic's STO was a bolt on, and still is just a bolt on. They serve no purpose other than to look awful and hastily done (in my opinion). When people come to your ship, they tend to hang out in 1 of 2 places; the oversized bridge or the oversized lounge. I would have loved to have seen how Perpetual handled the game. They looked like they were going for an even 50/50 split between ship and person.

While the perpetual ship concepts looked awful, as NicholasJohn16 pointed out, the initial cryptic concepts looked like butt as well. I really doubt the player staffed ships would have lasted long outside of the concept stage, if they had kept the game; but I do believe that having actual Star Trek designers on hand would have put the game head and shoulders above Cryptic's current model.

I would have to say I would have loved to see PE's world come to life. I followed the Star Trek MMO from PE's first official announcement they had the IP and were starting it up. (They went bankrupt because some of their financial supporters pulled out cause CBS wouldn't let them have unconditional rights to the IP, ie they had to get approval like cryptic does for races/changes/factions etc.) It was a sad day for me cause i loved the PR on it. The player run ships, from their info that Engineers could upgrade ships, make engines better, shields, "craft" weapons and gear etc. Also how every person started with their own shuttle/runabout/flyer and the bigger the ship the more people required to fly it.
I think one of their biggest statements that got me hooked, was their example of a borg invasion. Where they stated 20-30 ships could show up to repel a Borg cube, and IF the players were lucky there would be 1-2 surviving ships at the end of an encounter. Now "THAT'S" the scale of a borg encounter. Not our, oh look a borg tactical cube, don't worry, I'll bring my Sovereign, you bring your Defiant refit, and we'll just bring an NX-01, a Miranda, and an Oberth to leech some easy XP. Yeah.. that feels REAL borglike. ;)

As much as I like STO as it is now, it doesn't compare to what could of been from PE. When I first learned that they got the IP and what they wanted to do with it I couldn't of been happier. I will agree that some of the concept ships did look odd like th science ship with a donut saucer, but I think this was an internal concept. The idea of having the essential crew be players was amazing. Where the captain would give orders, navigator would pilot the ship, tactical would deal with the weapons ect. I also loved the ideas of away missions where the medical officer could beam an injured player straight to sickbay. The interiors they showed off were amazing, as well as the concept sketches for different areas of the ship. For alpha they also had a great engine already in place, I never really liked Cryptic's cartoon look. I also like the idea of starting at Starfleet Academy and then being called into active duty. I really wish this made it.

I remember these images and how freakin long I had to wait for a game to actually be made. I completely didn't even realize that PE was the original producer and then Cryptic started it up again. I just thought it took an extremely long time to produce the game. While there's always room for improvement I'm pretty content with Cryptic's take on STO and I wouldn't trade all the fun content that the team has labored so hard and for so long to bring us, for the very much still only conceptualized ideas that PE never got off the ground. Plus I'd much rather be in the Captain's seat then any other station on the bridge (maybe the helm).

I found another Interior shot showing off the UI from PE's game engine. This looks much closer to a final version.

The UI still looks very much WIP but that hallway is pretty damn sexy.

Quote by Halish

The UI still looks very much WIP but that hallway is pretty damn sexy.

I think the idea was to have a very minimal UI.

The phrase "like throwing a hot dog down a hallway" comes to mind.

Quote by NicholasJohn16

Quote by Halish

The UI still looks very much WIP but that hallway is pretty damn sexy.

I think the idea was to have a very minimal UI.

The phrase "like throwing a hot dog down a hallway" comes to mind.

That is a VERY odd comparison and brings so many wrong images and bad memories to mind. >.

Concept artist from Perpetual Entertainment, Ryan Dening, who was orginally working for Star Trek Online, now works as the senior concept artist for The Old Republic. His concept art gallery is amazing...

http://www.deningart.com/gallery_main.html

As nice as those screen shots are, it's always really easy in hindsight to be able to say this is what could have been with pre-production screen shots. There's no way to really know for sure if the game was going to actually look like that. The best we can do at this point is take things we like from those shots and suggest them to cryptic and hope they use them. It just sounds like buyers remorse to talk about how much better things could have been.