Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Steelpoint » #100804

Bottom post of the previous page:

Just for a second I imagined a team of Marines from Doom 3 sweeping through the place.

I actually do think this semi-sec antag system might be unique and interesting. This gives security a sort of antag mode that's not really a antagonist.

Essentially Security would become a sort of merc/military force with access to equipment designed for lethality and not non-lethal combat, but the downside is that this merc force will give the datnum system a lot more threat to work with.

For example, officers would normally give 1 threat each as per the current design doc, but if they are replaced with the uncommon merc security then each officer might be worth more threat, from 2 to 5.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Ikarrus » #100888

Just letting you know I've started working on datum-based gangs. I estimate I'll be done in just a few days.

Soon we'll technically be able to support up to 7 gangs at a time.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by lumipharon » #100889

Oh lawdy.

I personally don't think multiple gangs in their current form would be that great, but the 'street gangs' mentioned in the OP (small number of people, can't convert, no dominator etc) I think would be pretty damn awesome, even with multiple of them, with their own dens in different parts of the station.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Ikarrus » #100890

Yeah, I might not even use multiple gangs in the actual game mode. But moving them to datums improves maintainability significantly, and allows us to do more than what we've been able to should we desire.

Admin-run nation-gang rounds soon.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Aloraydrel » #100898

Hyped
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Incoming » #101652

So the current plan is that the first pull request, the first thing that will actually go live on the server, will be mostly a refactor (a refactor meaning changing code without changing what effect the code has on the game). This would be the actual datumizing, but the game mode code would still only put out the current kinds/numbers of antags and any of the bits listed in red back in the antag datums post will be in code but not naturally occurring. I'll be starting this part in the next few days.

The second part will be things like the threat system, this is the part with a heavy reliance on balancing and specific situation problems (like emp monkeylings in malf). Separating things out like this is more "honest" in terms of selling the changes, and also means that if (when) things go a little weird with datum based antags during the first day or two I can be sure that the problem lies in the system itself, and not with some interaction with something new I threw in there.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Amnestik » #101785

All these low chance antags mean very few people are going to get to play them very often. Adding more antags should mean people get to play antag more often, not less.

Plus a lot of the gimped, weaker versions of antags you suggest just don't seem any fun to play. Cultists and revs without the ability to convert, with only the objective to reach Centcom? What's the point? What's their IC reason for even being there?
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Saegrimr » #101790

Amnestik wrote:All these low chance antags mean very few people are going to get to play them very often. Adding more antags should mean people get to play antag more often, not less.

Plus a lot of the gimped, weaker versions of antags you suggest just don't seem any fun to play. Cultists and revs without the ability to convert, with only the objective to reach Centcom? What's the point? What's their IC reason for even being there?
Sort of half correct. You'll have a lesser chance of playing any specific antag type, but overall a higher chance of being an antag at all.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Incoming » #101807

Amnestik wrote:Plus a lot of the gimped, weaker versions of antags you suggest just don't seem any fun to play. Cultists and revs without the ability to convert, with only the objective to reach Centcom? What's the point? What's their IC reason for even being there?
A lot of the gimped conversionless group antags are more to allow for balanced low pop versions of previously high pop only roundtypes. The other use for them is to allow aspects of those antags to exist in other roundtypes without them dominating the flow of the game. A wizard round with a cadre would still be a wizard round, but a wizard round with a revolution would almost certainly end up more revolution-like than wizard-like in terms of how people experience it. WizRev would still be a thing to prevent meta, but it would both have a very high population requirement and be fantastically rare to appear.

As for IC stuff all sizes of revolution want the same thing in killing the heads, under developed cults are just budding acolyte groups with lower expectations (sacrifice a guy or two and get the fuck out of there), and street gangs don't have the charismatic leaders needed for their dreams of conquest yet and just want to fuck over the other gang(s) for intruding on their turf.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Saegrimr » #101811

I just realized how hilarious its going to be to get those ahelps of "WOW STOP FUCKING AROUND BADMINS THROWING A WIZARD AT ME AND KILLING ME" when this does happen.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Perakp » #102619

I started working/ messing around with antag datums last year, but didn't finish it because of reasons. I've put up the branch here. It might give you an idea of what you're getting into, what to do and what not to do. There is a lot of duplicated code with gamemodes, so once you get the base done it should be simple enough to put things in order. Then there are admin buttons and late-joiners and mind.dm is not pretty. btw don't even try to compile that branch.

One thing I struggled with was how to keep references to all the different antagonist handlers. Preferably you wouldn't create all these handlers at round start, but only when an antagonist of that type is created. But then you also want to have the code that decides if that antagonist is playable this round in the handler to keep it neatly separated from the gamemode/ticker code, so you need an instance of the handlers for that at round start.

I'd suggest sketching out the structure you are going for and trying to think if it's possible to do the work in smaller pieces. For example I'd like to DELETE ALL THE GAMEMODES and just do a version of traitor that compiles, then put all the other modes in. But yeah, good luck. When you get to edit_memory(), Topic() and all the make_x() in mind.dm, you will cry.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Incoming » #102693

I'm already there, it already hurts. At the same time it's part of why I wanted to remove the knots from hideous tangle of code in the first place.

Work is moving, slower than I hopped, but I promise I won't let this become my version of the chemistry rewrite.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Amelius » #102931

This sounds amazing. especially the 'mini antag' idea that will drastically spice up lowpop rounds. Balance is going to be key here though - for instance, blob rounds really really only needs a single traitor to bomb in front of the blob to make it a loss for the crew, and believe me, people will do this for similar reasons as suicide macrobombs at roundstart. It might be a good idea to largely restrict it to a (common) 'station emergency' mode where you have a billion different antagonists, while adding a very low chance for alternative antagonists to appear in other gamemodes to stem meta, at least until thorough balance testing is hammered out.

Also, still, it might be cool to work certain concepts into core gamemodes. Like, traitorchan could spawn any permutation of traitor/changeling antags, some with specialized equipment / more TC / etc. I quite enjoy the idea of having different levels of danger for antags, because not only will it likely result in more people being antagonist (and thus, more chaos and general crew activity), but also more variation.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Ikarrus » #103095

If you're going to let players belong to more than one antagonist faction, how will you manage multiple HUD icons?

This is actually a problem we have now, with loyalty implant icons being moved bringing attention to it.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Takeguru » #103348

I would have the icons blink between them all.

Probably the best solution I can think of, if not the most visually appealing.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Steelpoint » #120182

So err.

Is this ever going to see progress? Or is it as dead as many of our dreams.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Tornadium » #120196

Please god let this happen.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Scones » #120211

dead
plplplplp WOOOOooo hahahhaha
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Tornadium » #120281

Is there any previous work I could pick up from?
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by AnonymousNow » #121915

There's always hope, though there's not always the skill (by which I mean, I couldn't code to save my life, but I want to see this happen).
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by whodaloo » #121919

incomings sig says its a WIP

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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Incoming » #121939

Someday, someway. You just have to understand that getting motivated about game mode code is pretty much the hardest thing I've ever had to do as a hobbyist coder. When progress does happen it's not for pleasure, oh no, this is pain every step of the way.

I've joked occasionally that the timescale is currently "quicker than Number's chemistry rewrite". HOPEFULLY it won't take a matter of years.

Edit: To put it another way I annouced I was going to do this right at the end of June, if you look at my github contributions you can see that pretty quickly afterwards that my productivity fell off a cliff. That's because that chart only really tracks stuff that I've put up for consideration in a pull. All that big white zone is me either trying to do this or getting needlessly stressed with this project and steping back to cool off.

Again, I REALLY do want this, but I can only do it at a pace that keeps my sanity intact, and lately that's been slow as hell.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Tornadium » #121994

I might be able to pick up part of it.

How close is it to being complete?
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by CPTANT » #143841

This seems completely dead.

It shouldn't be because antag datums is one of the most crucial updates to the gamecode in years.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by CPTANT » #148825

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/14877

It's back!


Anyway I was thinking, is mind attached datums really the best/most flexible way to implement the features we want?

The main problem is that gamemode code can't really deal with multiple roundtypes running at once

Wouldn't it be way easier if we just have a list of currently running antag types/ gamemodes stored somewhere on a controller?

Then just assign priority to the different modes when it comes to certain effects such as calling the shuttle or end conditions.

So something like this:

Controller
-wizard
-win conditions /other conditions
-players
-Gandalf macwizard
-traitor
-win conditions / other conditions
-players
-greyshirt macshit
-Mexican Zete
-Honkman the honking clown
-lings
-etc

It seems easier to implement and more flexible to me then storing all information into minds.

edit: shitty forum breaks my spacing.
Last edited by CPTANT on Mon Jan 25, 2016 6:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Timberpoes wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm The rules exist to create the biggest possible chance of a cool shift of SS13. They don't exist to allow admins to create the most boring interpretation of SS13.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Incoming » #148858

Mulligan actually does what you're suggesting here by recursively placing new game modes on top of old ones as the old ones run out of antags. The problem was that every game mode was designed with the expectation that it had full control over the roundtype. They were all designed by different people at different points over a course of years of development, and when one was finished it was very rarely updated to conform with other modes.

It got so bad that literally the only roundtypes I could add with mulligans was traitor, changeling, and traitorling. Everything else just carried way too much baggage to fix (not that I didn't try).

I can assure you by moving the majority of the work to a mind attached datum it will improve maintainability of game mode code a hundred times over. It does this because it standardizes antag behavior/equipment, denies coders the powerful assumption of full overriding round control, and comes with the assurance that I'll at least attempt to clean everything up to begin with.

---

Also just a note but that design document is very old. It's still more or less the overriding idea of datum antags, but expect some things to look different then what I initially stated here (especially things from that "potential new antags" table).
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by CPTANT » #148895

Incoming wrote:Mulligan actually does what you're suggesting here by recursively placing new game modes on top of old ones as the old ones run out of antags. The problem was that every game mode was designed with the expectation that it had full control over the roundtype. They were all designed by different people at different points over a course of years of development, and when one was finished it was very rarely updated to conform with other modes.

It got so bad that literally the only roundtypes I could add with mulligans was traitor, changeling, and traitorling. Everything else just carried way too much baggage to fix (not that I didn't try).

I can assure you by moving the majority of the work to a mind attached datum it will improve maintainability of game mode code a hundred times over. It does this because it standardizes antag behavior/equipment, denies coders the powerful assumption of full overriding round control, and comes with the assurance that I'll at least attempt to clean everything up to begin with.

---

Also just a note but that design document is very old. It's still more or less the overriding idea of datum antags, but expect some things to look different then what I initially stated here (especially things from that "potential new antags" table).
Yeah, but I was just thinking that doing so from a controller would be more flexible when antags die and stuff. It just seems to me that a gamemode controller doesn't actually have THAT many variables to control, it is mostly win conditions, if the shuttle can be called and what antags to spawn. Than some added stuff about how it should interact with other modes, so if win conditions still apply when other antag's are also present.
Timberpoes wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm The rules exist to create the biggest possible chance of a cool shift of SS13. They don't exist to allow admins to create the most boring interpretation of SS13.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by Super Aggro Crag » #148909

Things are going to get messy.
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Re: Datum Based Antags Design Document (WIP/Preview)

Post by CPTANT » #168475

Dead.


Still the desired feature most beneficial to the game currently.
Timberpoes wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm The rules exist to create the biggest possible chance of a cool shift of SS13. They don't exist to allow admins to create the most boring interpretation of SS13.
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