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

[ghost]

Seems like Crash Landing is the map name, then.

[ghost]

@Skullyton that's an idea we can consider, I rather like it. Ruskie Derelict is tried and tested.

[FudgePucker]

You know what, the SME would be perfect to set up depending on how the atmospherics work. You got a very large SME chamber with it being mostly N2 and some O2, the volume of the entire planets atmosphere means that you wouldn't risk it over heating.

Just put down some catwalks around it and add an emitter and some rad collectors and baby we power now.

Gotta produce a shitton of plasma to speed up global warming to help heat up the planet.

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

Pardon to rain on everyone's parade, but you're all forgetting something very important:

The presence of antagonists on this map will make it nigh-unplayable because any damage they do to the "station" will be all but impossible to repair, especially if they go loud early. Either this map would be restricted to extended rounds and nothing else, or you'd have to make the whole thing perfectly self-sufficient from the very beginning.

[FudgePucker]

Yes but they have less means of doing damage due to the lack of toxins and atmospherics.

You think that I can't reliably make box, meta, deff, and with more effort, taxi (Little effort if I used bombs due to how small it is) nigh-unplayable?

Oops, I just attached that really fancy plasma cooling loop with scrubbers in the plasma tank to the station, and spaced the socket wrenches (hell that is even overkill, last three times I did it they didn't even notice the source of the plasma flood).

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

Yes, but at least in those cases there's the potential to rebuild because you don't have to recreate entire systems from scratch. In this case, there might not even be the materials needed to do that. You have a point about toxins, but let's all remember that Nuke Ops begin with bombs made for them and a Wizard's fireball is plenty destructive as well. Even something as petty as throwing all the station's metal into the dungeon level when nobody else is ready to explore it would bring any form of expansion screeching to a halt.

Additionally, consider that at the start of the game Medbay will have only first-aid kits available to them at the very most, so anyone who dies early is bound to stay dead. All it would take is one guy with a murderboner and a halfway decent weapon to depopulate the station at high speed to the point the round may as well end. (At that matter, how WILL the rounds end since there's no shuttle to call?)

And now that I think of it, consider how it would interact with antag objectives. Given the dearth of items available at first, it's possible that someone would be given an objective to steal an item that doesn't even exist. Overall, this map is a nice idea in theory but in practice it would go over like a lead balloon. SS13 is not Dwarf Fortress, nor does it need to be like DF. At the very least, make it feel like it's actually a part of SS13 instead of a spinoff that borrows a few elements from it.

[ghost]

Also btw if you guys need more spriters I will help.

[NigglyWiggly]

I can sprite some stuff too, if you need me

[ghost]

NigglyWiggly! I still don't know you but I still love your name.

[NigglyWiggly]

I still don't know you

B-but

[ghost]

Okay sorry, I mean actually talk to you.

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

Soo...nobody's taking my points into account at all? It's something I'd really suggest you think about before spriting, game balance is kind of a big deal.

[ghost]

@icantthinkofanameritenow The intention would be to have all traitor items accessible from the very start. As well as that, any key items that can not be made or built will be accessible at the start as well. If people choose to target the limited resources and destroy them, so be it, I would argue that that is a flaw with all maps rather than solely this one. In terms of how limited resources are, there will be many trees scattered around, so there will be no shortage of building materials. R&D is fully set up at the start, and hence should be more than able to produce a lot of resources themselves, and the intention is to have low value minerals accessible to mine fairly easily.

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

I suppose that's a bit more sensible. I was under the impression this would be a bare-bones map as its precursor was when we tried doing it. I'd also argue that medbay would need a cloning pod already set up as well to prevent irreversible loss of life early in the round, as well as replacing Security's stun batons with police batons to xompensate for the initial lack of power.

[FudgePucker]

@icantthinkofanameritenow Hell if it is on a crashed emergency shuttle then they get defib and sleepers, more than enough with proper meds to save a life.

At least force them to build a cloner, it isn't that hard.

[FudgePucker]

Alright, did some thinking.

What kind of equipment will the miners start with? They need a few ore boxes so that they can get a shitton of iron and glass. There needs to be some way to turn ore into sheets, having all three or four smelting equipment and the conveyors might be a little too big. How many mining rigsuits are there going to be?

What are engineers going to start with? Are they going to have to fight off the assistants for an easily accessible electronics crate to get yellow gloves to put down powerlines?

An idea to help solve some of the bulk of having suit storage machines would be to start off engineers, atmos techs, CE, parameds, and the shaft miners off with their exosuits, because they are going to need to spend most of their time round start anyways out in the elements.

[ghost]

@icantthinkofanameritenow I would love a bare bones map as the ideal but that inevitably relies on admin intervention, so we must be realistic and provide people with the tools to help themselves. I'm not sure about cryo to start with as it's reasonably simple to set up, and actually hold on, what's the coldness required for cryoxodone to work?

[FudgePucker]

@DrCelt

What's the coldness required for cyroxodone to work

Oh. Oh god.

HYPERZINE 10u PILLS 10000000000u OF CYROXODONE/CONEXDONE IN BLOOD STREAM

LETS FUCKING CHARGE THOSE HILLS NAKED.

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

What he means is that the minimum temp is 170K or so...which may in fact be how cold it is "outside". So cryo may not even be needed if you can just dump someone outside after feeding them a few cryo/clonex pills.

[ghost]

How's about limited stuff in the crashed ship Z-level (The ship itself in one corner, medical shuttle with medical basics in another corner, mineshaft, etc.) and have some of the higher tech stuff in a derelict base on another Z Level (Hardsuits, cryo, cloning, R&D servers, etc.)

On top of that, extreme cold in atmospheric conditions freezing up hardsuits when?

[FudgePucker]

@Skullyton That would make some projects an absolute shit to work on like tcom projects and the like.

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

If we only had ore redemption machines...

[ghost]

Cryo would need temperatures below -100°C to work. If you restrict the coldest temperatures to about -90°C, it should work fine

[Zth--]

Guys don't forget that this is a survival map, if people don't cooperate they should die at 20-30 minutes because of random events/coldness/etc. If not, people will get bored really soon. About systems, we have botany and ghetto chemistry for medbay. Advanced stuff should be available rarely or never.

[butthatswrongyoufuckingspiral]

Going to be signing up as a mapper once we get a clear picture of what we want. I'm totally hyped for the abandoned colony concept. What I'm wondering is, is there going to be an end-game, for example, getting to the point where we construct some form of escape shuttle to leave the planet? I don't think it would be very exciting to just hail CentComm and get rescued so, maybe make it canon that the planet's atmosphere or whatever disrupts communications to and from the planet.

[NigglyWiggly]

@Zth--

if people don't cooperate they should die at 20-30 minutes

This, as comfy as it would be to have your own little secluded snowy cabin and stuff, the point of this is that it's not exactly a comfy situation, I assume. You should be working together to stay alive, maybe scavenge parts of your ship to build radio equipment to hail CentComm through the macguffin field that messes with your radio?

EDIT:

[DrLeprikon]

@butthatswrongyoufuckingspiral That is exactly what a sea of plasma would do! When a sufficiently powerful transmitter, the command console for example, attempts to contact a distant NanoTrassen relay node, it releases an electro-magnetic wave, which is comparable to a burst of gamma radiation, it excites the plasma sea the way a radiation storm would, which makes the substance evaporate and, since it is a rather dense gas, form an opaque cloud, that would slowly enroach on the crashed ship, seeping in through the tiniest of cracks and behaving as though any material were a semipermeable membrane, eventually suffocating the stranded men!

Is that any good? Can I be the Nestor of spess?

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

@Zth:

Shouldn't there be a way to end the round quickly just in case the macguffin isn't found before shit hits the fan (e.g. a traitor enters murderboner mode right off the bat before anything gets set up and destroys the bodies so they can't be cloned)? Without adminbus intervening, I mean.

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

Given that this is a survival mission, that it will be rare, that many players will flee for the entire round, and because all the balance and rethinking problems, this map might as well not have antags.

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

@ihadtoregisterforthis

I brought that up earlier. While that's the best solution, it would also mean that the map would have to be locked of regular rotations as a result. You'd either need to bus it to make sure it only triggers on Extended (and turn random events off, the prototype version failed since there were no maintainence tunnels to escape a radstorm from) or host it on its own server. Neither of those is what I would call a long-term solution to the issue.

[ghost]

It is a dilemma, yes. The way I see it is there are two main options

• Full extended, no way to call for help - this is not vg's ss13 and certainly could not be placed on the map rotation
• Call for shuttle possible, antags enabled, map rotation on. - This detracts from the "stranded" element - could take longer (?)

Honestly I'm in favour of the map rotation trouncing all else in regards to this, but I'm interested in your input and will ask the thread for theirs in a time that isn't dedpop.

[ghost]

Okay so what I was thinking was you guys could add a new type of generator that can burn coal or charcoal called the Integrated Coal/charcoal burning generator, ICB Generator. Make it that if you cut down a tree along with making a fire-pit and burning it for at least 10 seconds and putting it out you get charcoal for the ICB. Along with there should be a Russian or some other misc group that has a small outpost station with just enough supplies for maybe 4-5 people? and it has an underground level, can use the mining elevator sprites, and it leads down to a partly mined out cave system. Oh and maybe have like 4-5 dead bodies randomly spawn around the map with supplies.

[NigglyWiggly]

Not wanting antags on this map

Guys guys Did no one remember The Thing? You'd be stranded with this horrible shapeshifting creature in the middle of nowhere with no way to call for help, and you can't just run out into the snow because the cold will kill you, I don't really know how our changeling mode would work with this, what with the slow absorbing and all, but it could be fun, you wouldn't be sure who you could trust but because of the hazards you couldn't just go out alone

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

@NigglyWiggly

Beyond the obvious fact that nobody in The Thing was looking for their valids, they also had an advantage by way of that one blood test that could prove whether or not somebody was a Thing. We don't have an equivalent of that on our server, so it would devolve very quickly into "kill everyone else, just to be safe". And that's assuming that Security was present and relatively competent. If they aren't around, I can imagine things quickly turning into an every man for himself situation. Plus, with no shuttle present how would the round end?

[NigglyWiggly]

@icantthinkofanameritenow We could make a little machine to test blood, that way it can be on this map only and not a common thing, and they didn't need Security in The Thing, they just all ganged up on Blair and tossed him in a shed. Besides, I'd assume most of the crew would be armed, not just security, right?

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

@NigglyWiggly

The blood testing machine being a unique part of the map could work, as long as it was made in a way that its deconstruction or destruction was somehow impossible. Otherwise smarter lings might try to get rid of it or sabotage it. Assuming it was a traitor+ling round, an e-mag could rig it so the result was set to generate a false negative if the users blood is tested- or it could be made to give positive results for everyone even if they aren't changelings.

As for making everyone armed...do you really trust the greytide to have the self-control needed to not shoot anyone they don't like?

[NigglyWiggly]

@icantthinkofanameritenow Deconstructing the machine would be bad, yeah, but sabotaging it is always nice, the emag stuff could be good for that. The issue of arming the crew is a kind of debatable one, on one hand, yeah, I'd hate for every greytider to have the means to kill anyone they want with ease, but at the same time, there are supposed to be hostile mobs outside, right?

[icantthinkofanameritenow]

@NigglyWiggly

I'm not arguing with that. I just don't trust a lot of people to resist the urge not to turn their weapons on each other. Besides, they can always fall back on spears or the like at the very least.

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

The bunsen burner awaits

[Blithering]

I would be up for some spriting work. I did have a snow/Hoth stormtrooper in the works to go with the big mess of stormtrooper sprites I was making, but I'd probably be best waiting until the lot that are already have been finished are put on the github by some kind soul before throwing more on the pile, or it'll never stop growing. Let me know what still needs working on and I'll give them a shot. Since you're on an ice planet you're going to be needing a TRANSPARENT ORANGE CHAINSAW. Slidey slider has been slid, transparent orange chainsaw now lives up to the hype.

[ghost]

@Blithering while I can get around to coding pretty much any sprites into the game (I'll code your sprites if you sprite my code baby~), the stuff I believe is necessary for now is listed in the OP and if there's a name on there beside it someone's taken that job already. - but I'd fucken love to have hoth sprites in the game for this honestly

[Blithering]

Guess I'll take ship debris then. Are we using the standard white shuttle tileset as a base?

[NigglyWiggly]

@Blithering I'd go with a darker tone, just for some contrast with the snow

[FudgePucker]

Got it, give the escape shuttle scorch marks from reentry into the atmosphere. The escape shuttle wasn't made to enter an atmosphere and is now darker with black streak marks on the walls.

IDEA GENIUS

[ghost]

@fudgepucker

reentry

But if it's never been on the planet before how can it re-enter?

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

@Blithering But is it transparent?

[DrLeprikon]

@DrCelt It's not reentering the planet, it's reentering a medium that is an atmosphere, doofus! I still remember you trying to convince me someone aboard the station can't hear someone pressing their helmet against the window, which is also wrong! Can I be the lead physi-realisics of this project?

[FudgePucker]

The smart ass just got smart ass'd Thanks @DrLeprikon

[Blithering]

@ihadtoregisterforthis Unfortunately not. Haven't worked out how to get transparency on dreammaker yet. It will become transparent as soon as I figure that part out, then we can all be the lego man.

[ihadtoregisterforthis]

Select a color and slide the slidey slider on the side of the palette