/tg/Station 13

Nobody else made a thread yet. Give your feedback to Nanites being removed here.

I mean we got this... ...replaced by this: My feedback is this:

Do Circuits have any real application outside of griefing or replicating things the station already has, like Health Scanners?

Genuine question because my last interaction with them was a clown traitor MMI'd and put in a circuitbot forced to yell that he was "a naughty boy" repeatedly, given a bunch of ways to spam sound effects, etc.

Pandarsenic wrote:Do Circuits have any real application outside of griefing or replicating things the station already has, like Health Scanners?

Genuine question because my last interaction with them was a clown traitor MMI'd and put in a circuitbot forced to yell that he was "a naughty boy" repeatedly, given a bunch of ways to spam sound effects, etc.

Supposedly they "have a bright future". So it all hinges on some untapped potential we have yet to see. Maybe in a couple years they'll be good? But in the meantime, the wiki article is bare bones and there's no quick guidance at hand when starting from scratch. Surely sounds ripe enough to replace a settled, known mechanic already.

As you've said they're commonly used by griefers and when not used by griefers the applications they have are overcomplicated 2.0s from other mechanics already present in the game, so whatever.

Nanites, like them or not, were a well-founded feature, easy and fun to teach to others, used by antags, non-antags, griefers and non-griefers, and it had actual positive/negative impact on the station while involving the player aspect (nanites in player hosts who were directly affected by them).

Circuits seem more like a single player feature you can spend your shift to jack off to with variables and shit, much like wiremod in gmod, to boast about how your complex logic circuit allows you to open a door.

Both could have co-existed because they are as different as botany and cargo. No, nanites weren't discouraging people to learn circuits. Circuits not being interesting or as complete as a feature was.

Maybe if noone touched nanites for years it's because the majority of the playerbase had no problem with them? Aside from people liking/disliking their implications I mean.

If you as a coder find a problem where there isn't one, instead of saying "but noone fixed them for 3 years", fucking fix them yourself or leave them alone.

This post is pointless but it feels good to rant a bit. Have a good day, specially the coders/mantainers.

Agux909 wrote: Supposedly they "have a bright future". So it all hinges on some untapped potential we have yet to see. Maybe in a couple years they'll be good? But in the meantime, the wiki article is bare bones and there's no quick guidance at hand when starting from scratch. Surely sounds ripe enough to replace a settled, known mechanic already.

As you've said they're commonly used by griefers and when not used by griefers the applications they have are overcomplicated 2.0s from other mechanics already present in the game, so whatever.

Nanites, like them or not, were a well-founded feature, easy and fun to teach to others, used by antags, non-antags, griefers and non-griefers, and it had actual positive/negative impact on the station while involving the player aspect (nanites in player hosts who were directly affected by them).

Circuits seem more like a single player feature you can spend your shift to jack off to with variables and shit, much like wiremod in gmod, to boast about how your complex logic circuit allows you to open a door.

This. I have seen far more "turn that damn thing off, it's spamming general" than useful things come out of Circuits. Circuits is just Cytology 2: Released in a barebones state, useless and will just fade into the background. Circuits should not have released in such a shit state; it really does just feel like a coder had an idea for a mechanic, put in the bare minimun then said "the other coders will fix it".

Nanites leaving... is fine, I guess. Nanites weren't the most interesting or interactive thing in the station, they unemployed medbay and killer nanites are so lame. However, replacing a fully fledged out mechanic with a barebones almost prototype of a mechanic was a incredibly stupid move that WILL be detrimental in the long run.

If the creators don't expand it, nobody else will.
-> Circuits are pointless, annoying and can't do cool stuff.
-> In turn, nobody will love this feature, and people will even hate it with its spamming.
-> In turn, nobody will want to give PR's to circuitry.
-> In turn, circuitry will just be Cytology again, useless and forgotten by most but a select few.

Taking off Nanites and replacing it with Circuitry was bad for the game. In my opinion, the Nanites replacement with Circuitry should be reverted, with Nanites back and Circuitry gone. I'm not saying this because I like Nanites; in fact I agree it's poorly designed for players who aren't playing Scientist. I'm saying this because what it was replaced by is an objective failure of a mechanic that is never going to reach its full potential.

In fact, I'd be fine with Nanites being gone and nothing replacing it; Circuitry and its "I made a robot who screams!" memes have made rounds actively worse than if it wasn't there. Circuitry itself doesn't really do anything to help or improve the round while the only thing it can do - screaming robots - is just awful.

Nanites were bad, and it somehow got replaced by something even worse. We'd just be better off with neither and instead just give more content to the now-renamed Toxins/Ordinance, Genetics or some of the other content-starved R&D areas. We shouldn't be adding more half-baked systems into Science, we should be giving more depth to the ones already there.

-> In turn, nobody will want to give PR's to circuitry.
If the creators don't expand it, nobody else will.

sooo you know there's already like 4 people actively working on circuit prs, and we literally have twelve open right now, right?

Just make an exception for the current feature freeze and say that circuit features are okay, boom every feature coder is on circuits.
Like I have some ideas for circuits(mainly just making bs launchpad usb integration less painful so you can do fun stuff with it.) and the feature freeze is stopping me from adding anything cool to circuits.

Another idea I had is emagged circuit components, if you emag a circuit printer you get access to some fun and actually interactive circuit components. Also just a side note, can we make illegals behind weapons development technology, experisci is the destroyer of traitor gimmicks.

Noodlecat wrote:Just make an exception for the current feature freeze and say that circuit features are okay, boom every feature coder is on circuits.
Like I have some ideas for circuits(mainly just making bs launchpad usb integration less painful so you can do fun stuff with it.) and the feature freeze is stopping me from adding anything cool to circuits.

Oranges admitted it's not a feature intended to add anything interesting to a round. They're there just for memes, and actual cool stuff is never gonna make it through.

Jaredfogle wrote:

-> In turn, nobody will want to give PR's to circuitry.
If the creators don't expand it, nobody else will.

sooo you know there's already like 4 people actively working on circuit prs, and we literally have twelve open right now, right?

The 12 opened PRs are either super trivial or won't be merged because they would make things more interesting or exploitable. Those 4 people working on it will get burned out pretty fast when they see their complex unique fatures get heavily nerfed or rejected time and time again.

Circuits all in all are a loss/loss singleplayer feature for losers that want to show off how big their brain is.

The 12 opened PRs are either super trivial or won't be merged because they would make things more interesting or exploitable. Those 4 people working on it will get burned out pretty fast when they see their complex unique fatures get heavily nerfed or rejected time and time again.

Crazy, not only is not one thing said here true but you're also saying it to the maintainer who is code reviewing them (and has code reviewed at least 20 or 30 circuit PRs for the past two weeks alone) with the intent to merge them. This gives a better narrative to nanite removal being a mischievous plan just to troll you though, so sure let's go with that.

Jaredfogle wrote:

The 12 opened PRs are either super trivial or won't be merged because they would make things more interesting or exploitable. Those 4 people working on it will get burned out pretty fast when they see their complex unique fatures get heavily nerfed or rejected time and time again.

Crazy, not only is not one thing said here true but you're also saying it to the maintainer who is code reviewing them (and has code reviewed at least 20 or 30 circuit PRs for the past two weeks alone) with the intent to merge them. This gives a better narrative to nanite removal being a mischievous plan just to troll you though, so sure let's go with that.

Only when I start seeing people doing impactful, game changing stuff with circuits in a round I may consider start taking your word with any weight.

It's okay, I don't actually care how you read it

I can't wait to come back to this thread in December and laugh at all the "it's being actively worked on & it will get new cool feature" posts when that inevitably doesn't happen

Go for it! Doesn't change any of the points I made about nanites though

Jaredfogle wrote:Go for it! Doesn't change any of the points I made about nanites though

Actual question, as someone who hasn't touched Circuits, is tentatively interested, but just hasn't gotten around to trying them so far: What kind of stuff can you do with them now other than noisemaker grief, and what are those new PRs going to add to that?

Also, do you need special stuff to make airlocks circuit-controllable? I feel like I remember someone complaining about that.

Pandarsenic wrote: Actual question, as someone who hasn't touched Circuits, is tentatively interested, but just hasn't gotten around to trying them so far: What kind of stuff can you do with them now other than noisemaker grief, and what are those new PRs going to add to that?

Good question. The drive of new circuits is primarily USB cables--they connect directly to machines/computers and can automate them. Currently, USB support is limited, but the PRs that exist expand it. Recently we've added it to air alarms, a bit less recently we added it to bluespace launchpads (which a good handful of people are having a lot of fun with). If you search usb_port in the codebase, you should be able to figure out what machines are supported where.

The broad goal is to have USB support on everything that isn't abusable. This means, for instance, that communications consoles won't have USB support since automatically sending messages/shuttle calls sounds only to be frustrating, but we'd definitely expand it to things like the SM monitor app so that you can create automatic SM setups.

Pandarsenic wrote: Also, do you need special stuff to make airlocks circuit-controllable? I feel like I remember someone complaining about that.

The only thing I can think of is that you need some fairly weird combo in order to actually put the circuit in...it might just be right-click but I forget.

Jaredfogle wrote: The broad goal is to have USB support on everything that isn't abusable. This means, for instance, that communications consoles won't have USB support since automatically sending messages/shuttle calls sounds only to be frustrating, but we'd definitely expand it to things like the SM monitor app so that you can create automatic SM setups.

You extremely have my attention.

You already kinda can with air alarm USB support, but having access to the exact information about the SM that the monitor gives I imagine will expand that a whole lot.

Agux909 wrote:

Jaredfogle wrote:

The 12 opened PRs are either super trivial or won't be merged because they would make things more interesting or exploitable. Those 4 people working on it will get burned out pretty fast when they see their complex unique fatures get heavily nerfed or rejected time and time again.

Crazy, not only is not one thing said here true but you're also saying it to the maintainer who is code reviewing them (and has code reviewed at least 20 or 30 circuit PRs for the past two weeks alone) with the intent to merge them. This gives a better narrative to nanite removal being a mischievous plan just to troll you though, so sure let's go with that.

Only when I start seeing people doing impactful, game changing stuff with circuits in a round I may consider start taking your word with any weight.

[youtube]tV2tehpw9cs[/youtube]

oranges wrote:

Agux909 wrote:

Jaredfogle wrote:

The 12 opened PRs are either super trivial or won't be merged because they would make things more interesting or exploitable. Those 4 people working on it will get burned out pretty fast when they see their complex unique fatures get heavily nerfed or rejected time and time again.

Crazy, not only is not one thing said here true but you're also saying it to the maintainer who is code reviewing them (and has code reviewed at least 20 or 30 circuit PRs for the past two weeks alone) with the intent to merge them. This gives a better narrative to nanite removal being a mischievous plan just to troll you though, so sure let's go with that.

Only when I start seeing people doing impactful, game changing stuff with circuits in a round I may consider start taking your word with any weight.

[youtube]tV2tehpw9cs[/youtube]

I must say, removing nanites close to feature freeze was a bad idea IMO. Circuits are completely barebones and merging any new circuits PRs is impossible now. So what we have is a barebones feature that won’t be fully realised as a replacement for nanites for yet another month. I don’t doubt that circuits coders right now have multiple ready PRs they’re willing to merge at first possible opportunity, but right now we don’t have a replacement for nanites to fill the void.