Perpetual Entertainment has announced that Andrew Probert, the senior illustrator for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, has joined the development team for Star Trek Online.

StarTrek.com reprinted the press release in which Perpetual explained that Probert had become the design consultant for the game, which will be set 20 years after Star Trek Nemesis. Probert designed the main and battle bridges of Captain Picard's Enterprise, as well as the updated Romulan warbird and the Ferengi Marauder seen on The Next Generation. He will be updating interiors for galaxy-class ships for the game, with initial blueprints available at Perpetual's site.

"I was happy to be asked by Perpetual to contribute new design thinking and explorations into a Star Trek universe no one's ever seen," Probert said in the press release. "I'm sure the fans will enjoy discovering and exploring all the new spaces we're creating."

Glen Dahlgren, the Star Trek Online design director, mentioned Probert's arrival in his discussion of the development of the new starships, asking, "Who doesn't want to wander those halls, walk around that bridge, or explore the holodeck?" He described such a ship as "a flying city" and asked such questions as how hundreds of people used a single sickbay "with a waiting room that holds only about three."

Dahlgren discussed the process of brainstorming and searching through both sets of Enterprise-D blueprints for previously designed rooms before creating their own areas associated with known rooms. They also chose sites for places described but never seen, such as quarters for cetacean crewmembers.

Fans can see a preliminary layout of the Science/Medical Deck on the site. "I want to make it clear that this material is concept art," wrote Dahlgren. "We've yet to actually build these spaces in our engine...but like any material we release this early, these plans could easily change."

Information on Star Trek Online is available at Perpetual.

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