Crash Landing (Snow Map) - Project Discussion

[ghost]

Ship's crashlanded on a snow planet with limited resources. Things that need to be coded for it, preliminary discussion

• cut down trees to get wood - @unid15
• proper snow tiles - @DrCelt
• coldness of snow - @DrCelt
• hypothermia - @DrCelt #7158
• RANDOM BUILDING POOL - @unid15 #8683
• z-level transition in snow - @DrCelt #7223
• cannibalism?

sprites - @Inorien and @Skullyton have agreed to make some. we need more spriters.

• yetis? -
• ship debris.
• fireplaces / camp fires - @NigglyWiggly & eliminator
• snow coloured minerals - @Skullyton
• snow mobs
• snow flora - @Skullyton
• igloos -
• expanding @Nienhaus 's paths - @Skullyton
• snow animations like in snowfx.dm but MORE OF THEM.

map

• MAIN Z-LEVEL crashed ship, maybe the size of meta's escape shuttle with materials sufficient to build a station (maintain minimalism!), - an abandoned cargo outpost with an AI core & mineshaft as well as flora and minerals.
• UNDERGROUND MINE Z-LEVEL - cold, high risk high reward minerals
• TCOMMS-LIKE DUNGEON Z-LEVEL
• Mappers, you don't even have to map an entire station. Just map a cosy wee cabin with a wee bit of loot maybe a wee bit of lore too, and we'll copy it in to our "random pool"

things to port:

• those really cool /tg/ winter clothes

[FudgePucker]

11/10 best sprite artist

[DrLeprikon]

Thanks, I am a certified drawed in IRL, so this was an easy gig for me

[ghost]

They need better shading, Boris. Also perhaps you should use a better source to base your image on as this is what fir trees look like! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Snow_on_fir_trees.jpg

[ghost]

@Zth-- Any help is of course appreciated.

[ghost]

What needs doing?

[Inorien]

SPRITES, EVERYONE SPRITES

FLORA DEBRIS SNOWY SHIT ANIMATED BLIZZARD WITH DIFFERENT INTENSITIES

[ghost]

After holding votes in both deadchat and ingame, I have came across the following conclusions, take them as you will

• Most importantly, people are fairly hyped for the idea of a snow station.
• Nienhaus' Snow sprite is considered better than the "old" snow sprite.
• Nienhaus' Wooden door sprite is considered to be better than the "old". but their wooden walls are not.
• People do like the idea of a crunching sound playing as they walk on the snow - with most arguing for around a 25-50% chance.
• People are divided by the idea of a chance of "getting stuck in the snow"
• People do very much like the idea of choosing buildings from a pool to randomly generate on the map.
• People do very much like the idea of an underground mine, some suggest both, with the underground being far more dangerous - hellroid springs to mind
• People are in favour of a snow map "dungeon/castle" like tcomms - but they also warn that this is an extra and should not be focused on right now, and should be very hard to win, and have a great reward.
• People like the idea of both a blizzard random event as well as it passively snowing.

What does this mean?: I'll immediately get to work on porting Nienhaus' snow sprite and wooden door, and add a crunching sound for snow. In the same request, I'll make an unsimulated, around -20c snow tile. Mappers, you don't even have to map an entire station. Just map a cosy wee cabin with a wee bit of loot maybe a wee bit of lore too. Three z-levels are defined - The mine, the main z-level, the castle/dungeon.

[Inorien]

Sounds good. I'll continue throwing things together when I have time, but I do have exams in 2 weeks and those take priority for now. I'll improve the yeti, do more various flora (but we don't want too much - not more than 3-4 differently appearing plants, else it'll be kinda weird) and snowy versions of existing turfs that will be used outdoors, eg floor tiles. Is it feasible to do something like - freshly laid metal floor tiles, after some time outdoors/snow 'event' they get partially snowy, then eventually completely covered in snow? Walking over them would remove one 'tier' of snow or reset the timer on it progressing to the next 'tier' of snow. End result, if tiles are outdoors for too long with no traffic, they become hidden by snow. Idea is to encourage outdoor traffic or regular snow shoveling to avoid paths between buildings being lost (get lost in woods or at an out-of-the-way location, suddenly no clear path back, encounter yeti camp).

Hot lights - more outposty version of space heater, also provides some illumination, melts snow around it.

Metal walls for buildings - low temperature outside, slightly higher temperature inside. No idea how feasible these would be in BYOND, but it'd be a cool dynamic.

Let's just move away from BYOND and make a proper game engine / port SS13 to a proper game engine that isn't made of cancer

[ghost]

@Inorien Unfortunately we can't remake the wheel. Yes, I was considering a blizzard event or some kind of passive snowing.

[Inorien]

YesWeCan

MakeSS13GreatAgain

[Iamgoofball]

ayy, important question:

did you faglords port the Materials datums from bay or make your own yet

[ghost]

@Inorien So by flora, do you mean trees, bushes, tiny trees, grass?

There an image of the ground snow sprite I can use for a background so I can see how it'll be?

[ghost]

@Skullyton We've recently voted to change the snow sprite. These are the sprites we intend to change it to, thanks to the lovely @Nienhaus. - https://www.dropbox.com/s/mlqtuupyq1pc1lt/Snow.dmi?dl=0

[Inorien]

Exactly Skully, go for bushes, happy little trees, rocks, anything to add some variety to the landscape. But like I said, we don't want too many. If there are tens of different kinds of floor decorations around the outpost, it would not look natural at all

[Zth--]

I think 255 x 255 is small for the main map. Can we have a larger one?

[ghost]

@Zth-- The idea is the main map is fairly sparse. It'd seem even sparser if it's big, but that's not necessarily an argument against it. - I guess we could?

[ghost]

Unless APC power system gets reworked or you hack in an infinite APC for the whole z level, I don't see how building settlements with functioning machines will be feasible.

Perhaps make every machine function like emitters do, draining power directly from cable knots underneath them if there is no APC detected.

[ghost]

I tried to work on an Arctic Station very long ago. I scrapped everything (either way it was average code for the most part), but I still remember some important design points :

• Realistically, the temperature can go as far down as -80°C to -90°C, which is already very hardcore (basically guaranteed to kill you unless you have all protection flags and internals)
• Average is around -50°C in Antarctica, which is basically a big frozen continent
• Ideally, outside temperature should be at the average most of the time, and randomly switch to Blizzard state which lowers temperature dramatically
• Average pressure is 68 kPa. This isn't actually enough to do pressure damage, but it will likely be far too thin to breathe. Do be careful as you might have to manually spawn snow tiles with more air
• Z-level transition in snow is very easily done by ripping off transit zones. You could have everything fully open on all sides, or intentionally funnel all directions so the transitions aren't too obvious (a glacier tile that can't be broken, or an arctic ocean tile type should both do it)
• Underground mining is something I had considered too. Add a way to build mining elevators that move you to the special mine Z-level. Make sure the Z-level is blocked on all sides (maybe with some "bedrock" type of rock)
• Snowmobiles are important. Cargo could most likely annex a snowmobile hangar for that purpose
• The Base Turf system was added explicitly so that things like the Singularity or blowing up walls can spawn any turf under them, instead of space
• Emergency shuttle can just go ahead and land on a marked landing pad and go into space. It just werks, reduces work needed for Centcomm and gamemodes massively
• Cutting down trees isn't hard at all, but it poses gameplay balance problems (how much per tree, should trees regrow naturally, be replanted, should the axe be the fireaxe, wouldn't there be problems with making fireaxes, an insanely robust weapon, publicly available)

Hypothermia/Hotspots/Protection is the biggest problem, since it needs intensive coding to be up to gear with a station that fully simulates heat difference :

• Human base resistance to cold and heat should be MUCH, MUCH lower and increase significantly when you put on a jumpsuit so that some jackass doesn't run around outside naked, and then proportionally depending on what body parts are covered how well. This however needs a full rework of protection flags AND clothing
• Hotspots right now are pretty shit and are only used to start plasma fires. This means fire will need to be fixed to not be fucking shit and not produce 5000°C every time you try to light a wood fire, and work outside (which is even harder given that outside tiles need to have bottomless air capacity to not be switched over). That also means an extensive ZAS rework

So yeah, it would need a lot of work; You could also go through it step by step and assume that you'll either have very cool systems with nothing to test it on, or a pretty hardcore Arctic Station where you die pretty quickly when outside unless you have a hardsuit

[FudgePucker]

Fire would have to be reworked and switched to an entirely new system for this gamemode.

The fire simulation and atmos simulation is based on you being stuck in a cramped space station with a small atmospherics, not an entire planet.

[ghost]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g6p250z4bg6dhoz/Snow%20%281%29.dmi?dl=0

Added the crossroads, T Junction, full, side, small corner, and circle snowroads as were requested

[ghost]

Thanks @Skullyton ! @FudgePucker It's a cold planet, which means the fire behaviour does not need to change. @dylanstrategie Thanks for your invaluable help and input. Any chance of you joining the project?

[ghost]

I have a huge backlog that I need to go through, so I can't really assist much

[ghost]

'Course you can! Never say never.

[PJB3005]

I'm so fucking tempted to drop clockcult and code this.

[ghost]

Drop everything. Snooow.

On Thursday, December 3, 2015, PJB3005 notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm so fucking tempted to drop clockcult and code this.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/d3athrow/vgstation13/issues/6789#issuecomment-161784651 .

[ghost]

@Nienhaus ah, hello. How did you want your snow tile icons implemented, the 0-6? Did you have a system in mind, random, or were some tiles weighted to be more likely? @PJB3005 I didn't even know you were still working on that. Don't feel a need to drop it though, I would feel bad if you joined the project at the expense of finally finishing clockcult.

[ghost]

@DrCelt When I made it I expected them to be all random.

[ghost]

Grand.

[ghost]

I've now coded the snow turf.

• If you click the snow and stay still, you can make a snowball.
• If you use a shovel on it, you can clear a path.
• It is unsimulated, but the temperature and pressure are as desired. (-40C for now and ~100 kpa)
• looks pretty bitching
• if you walk in the snow you've a chance of making the comfy arse crunching noise.

Pictures soon.

[FudgePucker]

You know what, I just remembered something.

There shouldn't be any way to generate a singularity, and if one does happen it should end the round like the nuke going off.

The singularity might be able to be stopped or fuck off into space, because its just space and the space station to feed it, if the singularity was made on the planet, then it would adsorb more mass to increase its size than possibly going in the other direction into space, meaning it would eat the entire planet in under an hour, starting with the atmosphere.

[ghost]

@FudgePucker Probably a wise idea.

[ghost]

[ghost]

[Zth--]

Walls are too square. I'm so fucking hyped. Fuck.

[ghost]

@Zth-- those are the normal wooden walls. If you want to make a better sprite go ahead :^) But yeah actually, that's probably the best way to make this project finish faster, help out! If you're hyped, why not channel that into coding, mapping, or spriting?

[ghost]

Also: I need a damn name for the map. What'll it be called? This is probably the most crucial part.

[ghost]

Marooned? Crash Landing? Snow place like home? Snowzone 13?

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

If things get messy I propose changing the theme from a crash land to a extremely small and non-functional outpost. With this you can place equipment essential to players but not for building, give an explanation for shuttles to go down to the planet, somewhat explain the players that spawn in, and a few more.

[ghost]

@ihadtoregisterforthis So basically every other map, but this time in the snow?

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

EXTREMELY small

There exist snowflake machines that need to be spawned in, or stuff no one would care to build. An example to both is a prison cell.

[ghost]

[Redacted] the snow planet.

[ghost]

@ihadtoregisterforthis we should be able to get everything we need in one shuttle.

[DrLeprikon]

Here is some concept art you could give out with the collectors edition!

I gathered the engineers would miss the cooling opportunities space offered, so I put in some sea!

You could have it consist of a liquid that has a very high heat capacity, so that thermal plates would work well in there, the way they would in space, except the temperature the gases in them would be approaching would have to be higher than 0K, but it doesn't have to be 0C, since the liquid is not water! You could even have the liquid be plasma, that'd make a good reason for a NanoTrassen ship to wind up there, perhaps with the plasma sea even causing the crash!

You could have an underwater cliff serve as the z-level boundary in the sea with only mechs and plasma_guard suits capable of staying close to it. Falling into the abyss that lies past the edge of the underwater cliff could take you to a new z-level, where there would be no natural light and mesons wouldn't work because of all the plasma, which could turn it into a hardcore asteroid for the miners!
Whenever the blizzard hits the sea could freeze over, lowering the temperature that the gas approaches if it is in the thermal panels in the sea, and allowing for people without plasma protection gear to walk over the frozen sea to an island z-level, which turns into a nice place when the blizzard is over!

The mountain could offer the regular asteroid expirience for the miners in the form of pre-built tunnels with minecarts, loot and monsters!

Thumbs up, comment, like and subscribe if you think these are horrible dumb ideas

[FudgePucker]

What engines would the engineers be able to set up?

Singularity is off the table, due to the previous point I made of the singularity going to stage ten and eating the entire planet before you could even say 'well shit, guess making a black hole on a planet and not in the middle of space was a bad idea.'

AME is boring and I refuse to set it up.

PACMANs would be interesting due to the whole mining prospect and the cold outside would work as a ghetto cold room to prevent them from melting down .

Atmospheric engines (TEG, SME, and R-UST if you are an ABSOLUTE MAD MAN) would need some consideration with how atmospherics would work an a planet, plasma and CO2 output shouldn't fuck over the immideate area, they would go out into the entire planets atmosphere, not exactly good for the planet, but who gives a shit, its in the middle of nowhere and an emergency. A fun bonus objective for engineers and MoMMIs should be making an engine big enough that it would turn the planet into a bright and sunny (and horribly toxic) beach resort from polution and global warming within a year. How bad of a green house gas would plasma be? It produces more CO2 than the laws of physics allows (1 mol of O2+1mol of plasma =>2 Mol's of CO2).

[DrLeprikon]

Doesn't water electrolysis produce two mols of hydrogen and a mol of oxygen per two mols of water? It's not the number of molecules that's constant in an isolated system, it's the mass and the energy

[ghost]

Boris. The implication of a fisherman in a sea of plasma amuses me. Please tell your friend to draw a fisherman riding the plasma waves.

[ghost]

@FudgePucker the shuttle crashes with a PACMAN on board though you could order the parts for a RUST with cargo.

[FudgePucker]

Oh and a shard as well right?

Will there be a 'your ship was a piece of fucking shit and we need help' discount on the shard? It is one of the most expensive things to buy because you don't want cargo to have one and blow themselves up and engineering starts with one.

[ghost]

All this talk of cargo being used for buying things, but what about stuff being located in the ruskie derelict outpost?

[lwjoestar]

Why not just call it Crash Landing? Simple, gets the point across, nobody will be confused about what they're in for when the vote screen comes up.