/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

NoxVS wrote: And what if comms are down and someone shoves you down disposals? Just die?

From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck.
Truth is...the game was rigged from the start.

NoxVS wrote:And then no one responds because they either didn’t notice, didn’t care, or don’t know where disposals is. Last time I got stuck down disposals I was screaming for help for a good couple of minutes before anyone showed up. And what if comms are down and someone shoves you down disposals? Just die?

sounds like a solid rule 10 situation

The rules wrote:10. Losing is part of the game.
Your character will frequently die, sometimes without even a possibility of avoiding it. Events will often be out of your control. No matter how good or prepared you are, sometimes you just lose.

specifically:

... sometimes you just lose

Is every complaint people post about this map going to get brushed aside?

if the complaint is from you or nox then yeah

carshalash wrote:Is every complaint people post about this map going to get brushed aside?

Yes. It's hip to act aloof and snarky at valid points that you can't answer.
The incinerator door system is still broken in the map, by the way. It always jams if you're trying to go from internal-external and you have to unweld your way out of the middle chamber.
The layout is fucked, unintuitive, maint is disproportionately huge for a mid-pop station, public botany is bizarre, regular botany doesn't even make lip service to providing stuff for the kitchen (aside from the who-cares change of finally giving kitchen/botany mutual access for once), kitchen is hilariously unfun to use because the sink is inside the fucking back room and the general layout is annoying, the bar has the same problem as box and delta where the soda/booze dispensers aren't accessible at the same time from a single tile, fire extinguisher slots are still super rare, the approach to medbay allows for an easily-destroyed cloning section while allowing for trivial access to secure storage, medbay also has a disproportionately enormous security room, the windows are all sorts of extremely fucked, the SM layout is really not fun to set up as an engineer while there's not enough free space to easily customize, and the map is so garbage in general that nobody ever treats it seriously.

All that huge run-on sentence is there to say that MMMiracles seriously needs to sit in on rounds in Sybil or even Bagil and actually read all the constant bitching that is going on by most of the actual userbase. It's all there, it's just that nobody wants to post on the forums just to have their concerns and complaints dismissed by Discount Oranges.

if you think a giant circle is an unintuitive/confusing layout then god help you boy

the incinerator will forever be the bane of my existence though

I'll have a look at the incinerator once your recent Donut tweaks PR gets merged, the component IDs or pipes are probably just fucky

Yeah it was the vent pump subtype, fix PR is up.

MMMiracles wrote:if the complaint is from you or nox then yeah

based lmao

Telecomms server air alarm is not properly configured, it's just set to the default.

I honestly think we should have MMmiracles on and observe and forcemap the map to donut for a while and just watch how much everyone fucking *despises* donut

nobody takes this map seriously and it's basically treated as the new birdboat, Lets let goon keep donut and add a new and up to date map in it's place, Kilo, or CAPTTLasky's WIP map come to mind

valid criticism is important but why keep a map everyone fucking hates playing on

why does MMM have any more control over the server configs than any headadmin has?

he owns the map

Detective Google wrote:I honestly think we should have MMmiracles on and observe and forcemap the map to donut for a while and just watch how much everyone fucking *despises* donut

nobody takes this map seriously and it's basically treated as the new birdboat, Lets let goon keep donut and add a new and up to date map in it's place, Kilo, or CAPTTLasky's WIP map come to mind

valid criticism is important but why keep a map everyone fucking hates playing on

I meant have an admin force the map as donut and have him on to watch how it goes, not implying he had the power to magically force the map to donut with his mapper voodoo

Dude I fuckin' love these kinds of complaints with nothing to work with past 'i don't like the map', almost as much as I love the complaints where people go on about ALL the issues with the map and when I actually get them to post an issue, it's something like 'well chemistry doesn't have a large beaker at roundstart' and suddenly run out of complaints.

I fully understand if you don't like the map due to the layout or how its structured but when I scroll through the community meeting and complaints are shit like "i hate the map because I don't know the layout" or "well other people consider it the bad map so that means admins can shit on the round so nobody actually learns the map", what the hell am I supposed to do with that? I only saw about 2-3 actual pieces of criticism during that segment of the community meeting with the rest being actually useless to work with. Like, damn man, if you got issues with the map I WANT to know what they are. I want to go through the same process Metacide did of literal years of tweaking to get Meta to where it is now, but I can't with the current shit show.

MMMiracles wrote:Dude I fuckin' love these kinds of complaints with nothing to work with past 'i don't like the map', almost as much as I love the complaints where people go on about ALL the issues with the map and when I actually get them to post an issue, it's something like 'well chemistry doesn't have a large beaker at roundstart' and suddenly run out of complaints.

I fully understand if you don't like the map due to the layout or how its structured but when I scroll through the community meeting and complaints are shit like "i hate the map because I don't know the layout" or "well other people consider it the bad map so that means admins can shit on the round so nobody actually learns the map", what the hell am I supposed to do with that? I only saw about 2-3 actual pieces of criticism during that segment of the community meeting with the rest being actually useless to work with. Like, damn man, if you got issues with the map I WANT to know what they are. I want to go through the same process Metacide did of literal years of tweaking to get Meta to where it is now, but I can't with the current shit show.

you can dislike a map for reasons other than it being actually flawed, departments might be in weird directions, or odd layouts, or in general you might just not enjoy playing it, which I don't.
I can't think of a reason or reasons why I don't like donut, It's just not particularly fun to play on, especially compared to the other maps we have.

I don't like Donutstation and the only explanations I have for that is A) I don't know the layout (which is stupid I know, this is true of every new map) and B) It feels very barebones compared to other stations. It doesn't feel lived-in and I just find it boring.

It's good of you to be so open and receptive to feedback.

I can understand to an extent how you feel about it being bare bones and I am trying to take steps to fix that (mostly maintenance currently), but do you have any examples of what makes you feel like that? I can see a few areas that could be touched up but otherwise I'm not entirely sure.

The core issues with the map aren't going to be fixed with "minor adjustments" so to speak. The core concept is simply unappealing to people outside of memes. Considering that the reason the map got made was as a "SINGULOOSE EATING STATION FROM INSIDE OUT" meme, what else would you expect? If I had to pin down one major issue that rises above all the others, is that it's simply not intuitive or obvious where different departments are. This isn't just pinned down to "you don't know the map", this isn't really a major issue on other stations.(aside from pubby engineering, but I also dislike pubby) The core concept of a circular hall also just doesn't work very well. Like it or not, bored of it or not, squared off straight hallways work best in BYOND, and deviating from that just isn't appealing to the vast majority of the playerbase. Also, you can't just toss out "I dislike the map" as an invalid opinion. Most people aren't able to provide constructive criticism, and in some cases constructive criticism may not even help the core issue. If the majority of people dislike playing on a station, what's the point? The only time I ever see the map played is on medium-low pop on Sybil when people just want to troll the rest of the server.

...and before you go "meta good, other station bad", Box happens to be my favorite map. Delta, Kilo, and Mini are all also good and well laid out maps.

Honestly, if that's how you feel about the map then there's not much I can do to cater it towards people who share your viewpoint. The map had a fairly decent response during creation/testing with the singularity being the main criticism originally (why I eventually changed to SM), so I don't exactly see where you get the 'only reason this map was made' argument.

If you struggle with finding departments when you either go left or right with relevant departments with some level of cohesion being close to each other, WITH an updated wiki page, then I can't help you. I don't think anyone can help you at that point, honestly. You have diagonal movement which makes the circular design super easy to traverse (I made sure that halls were always at least 3-wide and going wider if necessary). There is a subset of people who enjoy the map for not being standard, so I'll keep trying to cater to them while accommodating those who still prefer box-standard.

To clarify my above post, I'm not trying to shit on you or your efforts in trying to create a unique map concept. Only trying to put into words why many players(including myself) hold a large disdain for the map. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to have a "non-standard" map type in the game, but I do think it's a bit of an issue when the majority of players dislike playing on it.

I wouldn't go as far as saying majority dislike it, more of there being a very vocal group who tend to be very assertive about shit they dislike in the game, for better or for worse. Either way, I try to fix these issues without straying too far from the original concept.

PR with various changes I've made based on both personal choice and feedback I've gotten. There's a full map of the update as well here. I'm considering this PR finished unless I get more criticism on the matter.

I've already stated my view on the original concept itself, so I won't beat that horse any longer. So far, the PR looks pretty good, but I do have a laundry list of issues with xenobio.

1: There's only two slimes. Every other map comes with three. This makes starting out much more cumbersome.
2: The slime consoles are on the opposite end of the lab from the entire rest of the workplace. This makes working here extremely inconvenient with the starting layout.
3: Two freezers. Why is this even necessary? It looks like a waste of space.

How I would fix it: Move all the slime pens 2-3 blocks to the left. Delete the bottom freezer. Move the top freezer to the right of the new top slime pen location. Move both slime consoles to the right of the bottom slime pen location. Perhaps move a bio-locker so that they both flank the airlock, and shuffle around the machines/tables to look more cohesive and clean. This would put the layout of donut xenobio more on par with all the other maps.

Something like this suit better?

MMMiracles wrote:-snip-
Something like this suit better?

Honestly, that's more or less spot on. The only change I'd suggest there is to swap the locations of the killroom airlock and freezer to make it look cleaner/more sensical. For a mild nitpick; putting a table or the smart storage in between the two slime consoles would help a tiny bit. Otherwise, that's immediately a crap ton more convenient, and more in line with other xenobio layouts.

edit for my nitpick: Just noticed that would probably make the lower left glass table inaccessible, so if the nitpick is to be considered, you could also swap the locations of the water tank and the top right table.

edit the second: Behold my mspaint visualization:

Theres a glitchy bit of something which resembles the cooling area of the sci tech server room in space for some inexplicable reason. Just gonna say that.

yo what if i added a second floor with catwalk maintenance and hallway overhangs while redoing chunks of lower maintenance to accommodate it lmao

I dig it.

What is this fresh hell you're about to bring upon us?

pls do a sewer/maint level below the main station in addition to catwalk maint

On a more serious note from the last post: the first iteration is probably mostly going to be figuring out what works and what doesn't work. Stuff like chemistry's plumbing is currently sitting on the 2nd floor with ladder access with the rest of the area being harder to break flooring that mimics the station's exterior hull. Sensitive areas (i.e atmos, armory, toxins) have reinforced hull to make breaking in through the roof harder.

This project is probably gonna take a good minute but hopefully by then 513 will be stable enough and we'll have fixed some of the visual issues with openspace by then because honestly this is cool as shit to play around with.

Right now I'm mostly fucking around with ideas while waiting on some of the more glaring visual issues to get fixed. Here's some screenshots of what I've been messing around with:

Blowing a hole in chemistry's plumbing room into the security office below 2nd floor of the library, including private studies, a balcony view of the floor below, and a printer room Reworked armory floor 1 Reworked armory floor 2 Some idea of a permabrig overlook so officers can treat it like the gladiatorial arena that is actually is. Maintenance balcony/catwalk section
I've replaced the overhead maintenance bit with a secondary primary hallway so I can more easily connect all the upper floor rooms for public access. This also means 1-2 primary elevators and an array of ladders to travel through the levels. Stairs feel way too easy to break the illusion of upwards/downwards movement so I'm probably gonna avoid those entirely unless someone has a nice way of accomplishing them in a completely destructible environment.

I honestly would like some "maint" rooms that are actually abandoned rooms connected to the hallways if this happens. Just to make the station seem more ancient and badly maintained.

MMMiracles wrote:Blowing a hole in chemistry's plumbing room into the security office below

Spoiler:

I know this post is a bit old, but allowing anybody with a crowbar and welder to deconstruct one floor tile for an easy entrance into the would be a major headache for security.

The other screenshots look pretty awesome though.

Farquaar wrote:

MMMiracles wrote:Blowing a hole in chemistry's plumbing room into the security office below

Spoiler:

I know this post is a bit old, but allowing anybody with a crowbar and welder to deconstruct one floor tile for an easy entrance into the would be a major headache for security.

The other screenshots look pretty awesome though.

I think that's just the medbay lobby security kiosk. No biggie.

Farquaar wrote:

MMMiracles wrote:Blowing a hole in chemistry's plumbing room into the security office below

Spoiler:

I know this post is a bit old, but allowing anybody with a crowbar and welder to deconstruct one floor tile for an easy entrance into the would be a major headache for security.

The other screenshots look pretty awesome though.

Exterior sections have a special flooring with higher blast resistance and extra deconstruction steps. Secure areas like Security have a reinforced version of this that's even more annoying to deconstruct. Both variants cannot be RCD'd at the moment. Breaking in through the ceiling is going to be a lot more difficult since it's pretty much one of the sneakiest ways into a room right now but requires some actual prepwork.

MMMiracles wrote:Exterior sections have a special flooring with higher blast resistance and extra deconstruction steps. Secure areas like Security have a reinforced version of this that's even more annoying to deconstruct. Both variants cannot be RCD'd at the moment. Breaking in through the ceiling is going to be a lot more difficult since it's pretty much one of the sneakiest ways into a room right now but requires some actual prepwork.

Yeah, I hope you can figure it out. If you can't see them coming, then the problem persists no matter how long it takes to deconstruct the floor. The need for some sort of measure of counterplay against bombers, assassins and thieves that come from above will be a constant across all multi-Z maps, and not many people have given it much thought.

There should be a notification if someone decons the floor above you.

I heavily disagree with the armory being out of sight of the warden, nevermind most of it being on a completely different z-level. It'll make it far too easy for the armory to be looted.

Work has slowed down now that the bulk of Christmas has come and past, so I've had some free time this holiday to work on the map again.

The gist of taking advantage of multi-z right now is to extend the room departments have for current and future content additions, as right now there is very little in terms of workable room for departments. Obviously there will be some upper maintenance and a secondary public hallway, but this is meant more as a way between the extended sections of departments rather than trying to be a separate floor entirely with its own parts. You shouldn't necessarily feel the need to visit the upper floor too much since the map is already big enough as is without adding extra baggage.

For the actual layout:

General Changes (as of writing)

• There are two sections in the public hallway that let you access the upper floor's hallway, a staircase/elevator combo in the northern section where the gateway used to be and a southern staircase next to custodials.
• To power upper levels, there are several engineering-access maintenance shafts that hold the pipe/powernet machines that transfer power between levels as well as an access ladder. The engineering access is due to these being decently powerful points to break up distribution of power/air.
• Yeah there's an elevator now. It won't gib people or out-right kill them but it'll really hurt to get smushed by it. Watch your step!
• Railings actually work now and you can break/build/climb over them.

Department-Specific Changes (as of writing)
Command

• Gateway has been moved to the upper floor above Engineering to make room for easier public-access to said upper floor.

Engineering

• The SM cooling loop now wraps around the top and across the ceiling of the SM chamber to open up some space.

Supply

• Mail Office was moved to the 2nd floor and a supply security checkpoint was put where it originally sat.
• The QM's office has been slightly renovated to move more of his paperwork upstairs. Has also been given a small balcony to overlook the main cargo warehouse.

Security

• The armory was broken up into two floors, with the more lethal weaponry being stockpiled upstairs. This upper section is more reinforced with exterior motion cameras to prevent easier access.
• Added a general overlook to the permabrig for officers to watch from above. Has valve controls to the knock-out gas.

Chapel

• I gave it some pews. I dunno what else to do with really, so.

Library

• Added a second floor with a private study, some extra bookcases, and a room with several printers/book binders to mass print pictures of your ass. Library's backroom has a special ladder to traverse through these floors.

Hydroponics

• Added a second floor that hosts a couple extra trays, a nice view, and a dedicated apiary section for BEES.

Medical

• Plumbing section added directly above Chemistry for ease of access between the front desk and their personal meth chemfactory.

It should be noted that this won't be pushed in any extent until at least 513 stable due to some things needed on that build to make openspace look less ass when dealing with pixel-shifted things, which happens to be pretty much every wall-mounted object in the game. I'll keep the 1-floor version updated and maintained in the mean time until then, though.

y'all mind if i turn the ai sat into fort knox

The grind continues as I make the station more multi-z friendly, mostly right now trying to alleviate some of the cramped spots that existed due to a lack of proper spacing.
The vault was already bad enough, but when someone decided to move the upload to the public hall it made this entire section feel extremely cramped, so I ripped out what was there and turned the vault/upload access into a generalized command entry. Tool storage was moved to the side for this, leaving two central staircases that lead to either the vault or the upload. The extra room also meant I got to add an extra bit of maintenance to snake past through tool storage to Engineering (i'll fill it with something eventually).
For when you need to access the upper exterior hull, you can find 4 of these access shafts in the station corners. The doors are engineering access, since regular crew probably doesn't have a very good reason to be walking around on the station hull.
Similar to above, but these shafts transfer power and atmos between the floor's maintenance sections. You still need engineering access, but at least you won't need a space suit.
I've moved the gravity generator above the SM room, making it centralized and infinitely easier to access for the people who actually have access to it and watch over it.

I'm not gonna give any concrete dates for when this will be ready for testing, but I will say a good chunk of the work has been completed. There's still a few ideas I want to try out as well as coding a few ways for players to traverse between levels themselves without map-placed methods, but otherwise you could probably play a proper round on what I have so far without much issue past whatever unseen issues multi-z brings balance-wise. Keep an eye out on the coding/creative channel on the official discord for the next few weeks because I'll probably be occasionally running a test server for people to fuck around in and find ways to break the map while I iron out the worst issues.

Looks interesting!

Dorms got a bit of a make-over to accommodate a larger crew!
The cramped barracks has been turned into a small arcade and the downstairs shower/locker room has been changed into a cubby section with a staircase leading to the 2nd floor. Upstairs has turned into a large dormitory section, fit with gender-separated barracks and separated showers/locker room. Each bedside is completely encased with tinted windows and a tinted windoor, meaning nobody can see you while you're inside. While you have a lot less room to do recreational activities, it's a lot less likely for someone to get the drop on you unexpected.

I do like to see a different take on the same old shit with your sleep pods

Atmospherics now has a smaller upper room that functions mostly as a clear space for people to try setups without having to worry too much about the existing atmos layout or clearing out a section of maintenance. It comes with a spare mix tank and external hull access leading to the upper section of the atmos chambers below. This is meant mostly as a starter for pipe autism and is left fairly blank so renovations into larger spaces if you put in the effort.

Only other real change is that there are sections of grille/girder walling surrounding the outer section of the upper hull to help against space dust/meteors, since the upper part of the station no longer has the benefit of departments/larger maintenance as a buffer to the main hall for external damage. Probably only really good for space dust, but it's better than nothing.

Good to see you're still improving/adding stuff to Donut. I still have to play a lot more on the map before I can criticize or give feedback properly but I play on it as much as I can.

An advise I can give you which is mostly common sense is don't get too discouraged by the lack of constructive feedback/criticism or reluctance from the playerbase to play on your map/s. People tends to gravitate towards whats popular and whats played at the moment regardless of the lack in variation because its the easiest and most comfortable option.

One thing I will say is don't hesitate in drawing ideas and even changing stuff drastically a bit around mirroring other maps. People might find certain aspects of other maps which are appealing just seem less appealing or "meh" in yours, without necessarily being bad.

In short, if you see a lack of constructive feedback and people "disliking" the map just because, try experimenting and shaking stuff up a little in it, and don't be afraid to inspire yourself with aspects of other maps, it might give you some interesting results.

Also from the get go, respect for being a mapper and putting the effort to add some map variation in /tg/, it is appreciated

Here's my feedback from playing!

upper halls probably don't need to exist, they're very bland I found the catwalks above SUPER cool so i think you should keep them as "rafters" and let upper maintenance have doors to access the rafters

cargo is godly

chem factory is godly

botany is godly

would appreciate a second zlevel piano balcony for the chapel like some real churches have

prison is way too big i feel

armory is godly

i love the center bit

the captain's chamber can be opened up from the roof with a small explosion and tools, i don't know how strong that is balance wise

i would make way more maintenance for some parts of the station that just have roof panels, it's pretty boring with basically open space

and finally, i'd implement some kind of glass floor or add more catwalks in general. looking at lower floors makes for a lot of gameplay (and you could have the rage cage in dorms be a glass box which makes me giggle

AND there is a single wall from the zlevel below exposed that you should cover up, it's to the east of the grav gen in space

To be honest I have to give props to MMM for keeping up development on the map despite all the negative commentary the map gets. Even if I was never a big fan of the ring design and awkward layout that results from it, thumbs up dude.

The left AI upload turrets (farthest from door) shoot the right ones (next to door) when you stand in front of the door. I also like this map, I just don't know my way around it and the layout feels weird but I'm ok with that.