/tg/Station 13

*Not drawn to scale

Featuring three (large, aiming for 1k x 1k or so) Z levels stacked on top of eachother.

Z1 will be space. It will include various debris/asteroids, as well as half of a large destroyed space ship. There will be a bluespace cannon the crew can utilize onboard. It will be reached via shuttle from the surface. Thinking about going off the Z level throwing you onto the jungle (falling out of orbit) but I'm not sure on that yet.

Z2 will be jungle. There will be two large holes, one where the Necropolis is poking out of lavaland, and one where the front half of the large shuttle in space tumbled into the surface and punched through it. Corruption spreads from the hole where the Necropolis is. The station will be on the coast, with the AI sat on an island out in the ocean.

Z3 is a lavaland cavern. On a rock island below the station, surrounded by lava is a series of half finished tunnels and abandoned buildings. Essentially maintenance. This will be accessed by elevators (basically shuttles) and ladders from the surface level (or by setting off a bomb and falling through the floor). The Necropolis is obviously off in the corner as well.

List of things that still need to be mapped. If you'd like to map them/have ideas on how you'd like to do it please bug me and we can figure out if it fits my """""vision"""" before you waste a ton of time on it:

The jungle

Lavaland

The station

The maint area under the station

The crash site

The destroyed ship

The Necropolis

neat

also is this the new meme board now that ntr hut is dead

Yeah

cool ty

1k x 1k? Hot damn that's a lot of working space.

Do you have any exact idea on what the crashed ship was before-hand? The on-board bluespace cannon makes me think you're gunning for something along the lines of the battle cruiser away mission, but with less syndicate and probably missing a good chunk of it. If that's the general idea, I wouldn't mind claiming that as something to piece together, making those types of structures is more interesting than fully-intact ones.

should make an intermediate sky level between space and ground

put a randomly generated floating island or two in there, put a castle on those as well

yes

I imagine the half of the ship still in orbit is the medbay/command/sec area, where cargo/engineering/research was the half that got blown the fuck up and crashed into orbit. If the engine was completely gone it'd explain why building a new shuttle on the surface or whatever would be easier than fixing the one in orbit. Plus, those three areas would be the ones that would make the most sense to warrant sending a salvage op team to recover goodies from at the bottom of a crater in the necropolis.

Oh and cargo should totally be a salvage op team on this map. Instead of pushing crates they run around looting ruins on the surface, and venturing into the crashed ship for research documents and bubblegum.

It would be good if Hostile boarders were still in the blown to fuck ship.

Think carp or stuff that went around to pick on the survivors.

There should also be a ghost role of a dude that crashed along with the half of the shuttle and survived the landing, annd has been hiding in the wreck trying to not get eaten by monsters.

Couple questions regarding the mapping.

1. Do you have a general mind in what the station main base should be like. Previous thread I mentioned I would be interested in putting the base over a chasm/river to make it more deadly. I made some shit map last thread if you haven't seen it.

2. How do you feel if the departments weren't all connected and some were separated with exposed jungle area connected via a walkway.

3.You had a idea for a defense pillars. Are these 40k magic voodoo shit that just works or are they actual structures that generate a fence around them? (think ghostgate from morrowind.)

4.How Big do you think the station should be, how (poorly) stocked should it be?

5. AI sat island connected via bridge or boat?

6. More gameplay oriented, but any chance swimming could become a thing if we're going to have water in the overworld? Something that's need to be considered when mapping.

I think we're getting a little too ambitious here. The station should still be the center of the action. Half the problem with gateway was that everyone fucked off from the station in large numbers. It's a meme, but Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's easier to develop for, and it's easier for players to grasp. Depth and complexity are not necessarily the same thing.

Flightsuits woot.

Really though can we get Bay's multiz system it would be better than shuttles.

kevinz000 wrote:Really though can we get Bay's multiz system it would be better than shuttles.

Remie is doing the Multi Z where you can see up/down

Will there be an Aux Base? Build that thing up and drop it at a random spot/designated spot and expand?

Does it have to be jungle, really? Why not ash-covered mushroom stuff, we have the sprites for it already and they're even ausops sprites.

I think the jungle and rain is more visually interesting and diverse than another bleak grey expanse.

If you want to add randomized surfaces later on then that is fine but for now this is going to be jungle.

ChangelingRain wrote:Does it have to be jungle, really? Why not ash-covered mushroom stuff, we have the sprites for it already and they're even ausops sprites.

Could make that a cave between lava and jungle

iamgoofball wrote:

ChangelingRain wrote:Does it have to be jungle, really? Why not ash-covered mushroom stuff, we have the sprites for it already and they're even ausops sprites.

Could make that a cave between lava and jungle

We're not adding another Z worth at this time, too much mission creep.

Multiple biomes can exist underground. Some ashy and mushroomy, some hard basalt rock and lava, some expanses of the necropolis.

Durkel wrote:Couple questions regarding the mapping.

1. Do you have a general mind in what the station main base should be like. Previous thread I mentioned I would be interested in putting the base over a chasm/river to make it more deadly. I made some shit map last thread if you haven't seen it.

2. How do you feel if the departments weren't all connected and some were separated with exposed jungle area connected via a walkway.

3.You had a idea for a defense pillars. Are these 40k magic voodoo shit that just works or are they actual structures that generate a fence around them? (think ghostgate from morrowind.)

4.How Big do you think the station should be, how (poorly) stocked should it be?

5. AI sat island connected via bridge or boat?

6. More gameplay oriented, but any chance swimming could become a thing if we're going to have water in the overworld? Something that's need to be considered when mapping.

1. I'll have to go look at that

2. That'd be pretty cool

3. It's up in the air. Voodoo shit sounds easier

4. Probably around boxstation for both, maybe a bit less bloated (and obviously divided over two z levels)

5. Both

6. It will probably have to be at some point yes. Could just be acidic impassable terrain and act like lava though.

If there's gonna be water I want my buoys added finally

Cheridan wrote:If there's gonna be water I want my buoys added finally

SPACE FISHING BUT NOT IN SPACE BUT IN PONDS

I don't think 1k by 1k is going to be suported by byond, also keep in mind there's a hard 65k cap of map models.

That, and there is still going to be a need for a fourth Z-level, for purposes of Nukeops/wizards/where-gateway-leads/abductors/adminmemes, though that one could be standard size.

Also, where would the Gateway be located? On the surface, on underneath it?

Scott wrote:I don't think 1k by 1k is going to be suported by byond, also keep in mind there's a hard 65k cap of map models.

I raised this issue, but as goof brought up, we load the map using the maploader now.
Which means the only map byond touches would be 3 1000x1000 zs, and they'd all be /base/turf and some kind of base area, meaning there'd be like, 2 models.

The limitation is in byond's internal maploader, not in the one Yota wrote.

That's a great point...holyshit, we can do the hash map format.

Scott wrote:That's a great point...holyshit, we can do the hash map format.

Hash map format? What's that

Jungle is more unique looking than another red/grey environment, and the one screenshot of the WIP jungle textures has me excited for its use.

I was thinking.

What if we added a form of 'random generation' to the jungle map z-level?

What I'm suggesting is that outside of the immediate area around the crashed ship, you add 100x100 or 200x200 pre-crafted tiles that are placed in order next to each other.

The general theme of this development is that you've crashed onto a strange, unknown environment. If we don't look at some form of random generation then it won't take long for people to recall the map and figure out the good 'meta' movements.

Having people develop a 200x200 large tile won't fully eliminate the meta aspect, but it will make the terrain more complicated to go into, and it makes mapping for such a massive map more manageable with a team, since instead of everyone competing you can have everyone developing mapping tiles that all go in the same map, hell you can make more map tiles than the final map would support.

Just my thoughts.

would there be a way to make the zlevels loop or something? So going right up to the top would send you to the bottom of the zlevel?
as though the spherical planet had been magicked onto a square

factoryman942 wrote:would there be a way to make the zlevels loop or something? So going right up to the top would send you to the bottom of the zlevel?
as though the spherical planet had been magicked onto a square

well it'd just be a really small planet.

Yeah randomized environments are mandatory but that's something to worry about way further down the line.

We do need some randomisation and I think my suggestion would be a good idea for several reasons.

• It makes map making/editing easier for mappers, as instead of everyone competintg over a 1000x1000 map you instead have individual people working on smaller 200x200 map chunks that can all be added to the game.
• It lets us have a somewhat consistent and balance wise manageable overworld that is not as heavily RNG dependant as Lavaland is.
• It makes explorations of the overworld not a easy affair even for veteran players, due to the large array of map chunks.

Here's a image overview of what I mean by this system.

The station is in the bottom left of the map, a nearby river is adjacent to the station and is one of the four main overworld features that is guaranteed to spawn 100% of the time. In the north east of the map is the hole leading to the underground and the origin point of the spreading corruption. To the east of the station is one half of the crashed space station.

Every tile with a '?' should draw from a pool of 200x200 tile pre-made maps.



Furthermore, if you want to go the extra mile, you can divide the pre-made maps into three unique tiles.

• Tier 0 - Three chunks directly connected to the station. These Tier chunks will be safe from wildlife and show signs of heavy exploration and pre-built structures. Aside from basic construction materials there's little of the way around here that is of interest to explorers.
• Tier 1 - Most planet chunks are Tier 1, these contain a range of wildlife threats and a moderate amount of interesting and unique equipment, but nothing stand out.
• Tier 2 - Rare chunks, usually only one of these spawn. These contain unique and useful items, ranging from powerful items to equipment that can save the station, or allow for evacuation, however these chunks tend to spawn closer to the spreading corruption, so speed if of the essence to discover these Tiers, and then excavate the needed materials.

Eh, maybe it's just me but a space z-level doesn't really seem necessary. Wouldn't it be more intense if three crew were actually stranded on the planet instead of able to take off into space any time they want?

Also, just out of curiosity is there actually a limit to how big a z-level can be? I'm not sure how big exactly the CM planet map is but it feels like it might be a bit larger than tg's station z-level.

Jacough wrote:Eh, maybe it's just me but a space z-level doesn't really seem necessary. Wouldn't it be more intense if three crew were actually stranded on the planet instead of able to take off into space any time they want?

Also, just out of curiosity is there actually a limit to how big a z-level can be? I'm not sure how big exactly the CM planet map is but it feels like it might be a bit larger than tg's station z-level.

We have space ships now, doesn't mean we are capable of interstellar travel.

And people are attached enough to space and it is enougj a part of our history that it seems wrong to exclude ir entirely

Steelpoint wrote:spelunky maps

Would be cool

can they be 256*256 rather than 200*200
256 is a nice number
or maybe 128

I'm not very inclined to work on a proper ground map until we get confirmation if we're going for a giant 1000x1000 map or if we're going to use some kind of other system instead. I've aired my concerns and suggestions on the matter.

However I'm also interested in discussing the composition of the map, here is what I'm thinking off what the main wall and floor tiles should be.

• Dirt Tile - Standard grass tile, no slow down or impediment.
• Mud Tile - Uncommon grass tile, slight slow down when walking on it, should only appear near water tiles or in pre-made 'swamp' areas.
• Quicksand Tile - Rare tile. Someone who steps into it will be immobilised and will sink slightly into the tile. User must either slowly resist out of the tile, or they need someone else to 'pull' them free of the tile.
• Forrest Wall - Wall of bushes and plants, blocks movement but is easily brushed aside by your hands.
• Thick Forrest Wall - Very thick wall that needs to be hacked away with a sharp weapon, blocks line of sight.

Steelpoint wrote:I'm not very inclined to work on a proper ground map until we get confirmation if we're going for a giant 1000x1000 map or if we're going to use some kind of other system instead. I've aired my concerns and suggestions on the matter.

However I'm also interested in discussing the composition of the map, here is what I'm thinking off what the main wall and floor tiles should be.

• Dirt Tile - Standard grass tile, no slow down or impediment.
• Mud Tile - Uncommon grass tile, slight slow down when walking on it, should only appear near water tiles or in pre-made 'swamp' areas.
• Quicksand Tile - Rare tile. Someone who steps into it will be immobilised and will sink slightly into the tile. User must either slowly resist out of the tile, or they need someone else to 'pull' them free of the tile.
• Forrest Wall - Wall of bushes and plants, blocks movement but is easily brushed aside by your hands.
• Thick Forrest Wall - Very thick wall that needs to be hacked away with a sharp weapon, blocks line of sight.

Run Forrest Run.
It's Forest.

Looks like even a 750x750 map crashes dream daemon on startup, so I guess this is all on hold for now.

I guess worst case scenario we can do a series of 255x255 z levels put together but that would be very disappointing.

What's the status on everything between 256 and 700?

I forgot to actually stop the 8 empty levels of space from loading as well, and they would have all been stretched to 750x750 automatically, so I should probably try again properly.

If that fails, can always do 3 levels of 255 x 750 because distance away from the necropolis probably matters much more than width

Surprise, when I dont try to load an extra 8 Z levels of nothing it works.

750 x 750 (with 3 zlevels, not counting centcomm) looks like it might be our map size.

Were you loading TGM or DMM format; if TGM try a larger size in DMM. You'll also need to try both with a very large type dictionary.

It was 750 x 750 of empty space with pubby station copypasted into it, in DMM (which caused lavaland/centcomm etc to be 750 x 750 as well).

Tons of runtimes because of all the non turfs and the shuttle getting fucked up somehow but it didn't crash so it seems feasible if the loading is actually done properly.

I was thinking, what do we want the new ground station to look like?

I was thinking more along the lines of it looking similar to Boxstation honestly.

I've mocked up a 'proof of concept' to show off how the new jungle tiles look in game.

My ideal is that the further away from the station you go, the more thicker and harder to navigate the map becomes.



We also really need to have better Dream Maker icons for the grass and trees, its impossible to track what your doing when the entire screen is covered in grey icons. Also the trees should block movement.

the trees are floortiles, because kor sucks.
they should be objects damnit.

Edit: Actually no, they are objects, I *SWEAR* he was trying to do them as turfs...