/tg/Station 13

boxstation has been stagnating with a pretty round ruining bug for a bit now that causes the powernet to bug outin the middle of the round. from what ive been able to gather, power just stops flowing through the cables, even if theres a radiation collector making power on it, cables just say "cable not powered". if it were an issue with something taking all of the power in the powernet, it would at least show the power in the grid as well as the load. the only way to fix it(temporarily at least) is cutting and mending a wire, it usually breaks a few minutes/seconds after that though so it doesnt really work as a fix.

>remove the OG map from the rotation

fucking zoomers, I swear

post this in mapping instead, so someone can push a fix rather than removing the best map in the game. improve, don't remove

Just port boxstation from citadel

what does boxstation from citadel have?

dildos

It'll be disappointing if this thread gets Box cut. Especially if no earnest attempts have been/are made to fix the power bug.

bugs aside its a bad map. Maints awful, all the APCs are located there for some reason, its old and boring.

remove

Back in my day people would oxytank suicide hopline if it wasn't box

I'd be pretty sad to see it go just over a bug but I dunno how deep said bug goes.

Id rather see more pubby over box, maybe even donut. At least donut is still being updated.

Box has no character at all. It's completely bland, and its medbay is absolutely terrible. Box either needs removal or a lot of updating.

Ahh yes, the most important facet of a map in a sandbox game where decorations are easily added, “”character”.








I like when my medbay lobby is the actual walk in lobby instead of this weird centipede that ruins all the desks.

deedubya wrote:>remove the OG map from the rotation

fucking zoomers, I swear

post this in mapping instead, so someone can push a fix rather than removing the best map in the game. improve, don't remove

lmk when boomerstation's coders support box

The powernet issue is a code issue that only hits box, even the code has stopped supporting box

RaveRadbury wrote:

deedubya wrote:>remove the OG map from the rotation

fucking zoomers, I swear

post this in mapping instead, so someone can push a fix rather than removing the best map in the game. improve, don't remove

lmk when boomerstation's coders support box

i'd work on it if i knew how to fix said bug

also my fear here is that people dislike box for nebulous reasons that will boil down to "I like the bad design choices on other maps that benefit me in the short term" like overabundant loot

NoxVS wrote:bugs aside its a bad map. Maints awful, all the APCs are located there for some reason, its old and boring.

remove

APC's being in maint makes it the best map in rotation.

box has plenty of character, its box

Nabski wrote:APC's being in maint makes it the best map in rotation.

This is one thing I like about Box.

Also I like the bad design choices on other maps that benefit me in the short term like public/maint costumedrobes and soap in the theater/bathroom.

Don't try to reduce the argument against Box to "hurr durr no insuls". There are a lot of legitimately bad design choices in box.

- Science and Cargo are off in corners far away from the other departments (Engineering is too but it gets a pass because it's shoved off in a corner on Meta too)
- Poor use of real estate in the central hallway - do we really need the blank walls of the grav gen, tech storage, the janicloset, the bathrooms, and the teleporter all in the center of the station? In meta all the areas around the central hallway are either high-activity areas or have big windows or big shutters to let people see in.
- AI upload hidden in the bridge instead of out in the open where people can interact with it
- Most of the maint rooms are too far away from any of the departments to be useful. In meta all the maint rooms are close enough to another department that you can go between your secret lair and your real job pretty quickly. In box you have to navigate the massive maint maze if you want to get anywhere.
- A bunch of rooms that are both too out-of-the-way to attract dynamic player interactions but too public to attract people doing sneaky stuff. e.g. the garden, the locker room, the vault, the library. Contrast with rooms in meta like the vault hallway or the library gameroom, where you can get away with a quick murder if you're fast enough, but it's also public enough that you can lure your victim in pretty easily.
- In general, a lot of empty unused space - engineering lobby, medbay by where cloning was, the big cap's office and meeting room, the big area in cargo for the miners, the big bar (with a really shitty tiny theatre), the empty north part of the chapel, the big EVA that takes up way too much hallway retail, etc.
- A general lack of detail in the floors. I'm not asking for kilo levels of decal, but box right now is REALLY bland in a lot of places.

Here's an example of the things I'm talking about - the meta arrivals hallway:

Now here it is in box:


You can immediately see the difference in the amount of detail meta has in the little light-grey squares at the walls. These are in a bunch of the non-departmental hallways in meta and they go really far to make the hallways look less bland. You can also see that the box hallway is twice as long as meta's for no real reason. It's not like it has a bunch of important stuff on it - it just has locker room, tool storage, garden, gateway, and more tool storage. Basically, rooms you'll go into a max of once per round to get something. By contrast, meta has two different rooms of cargo and the library on its arrivals hall - both major departmental areas.

Here's another example of the differences in the level of detail:

Meta bridge:

Distinct color scheme from the rest of the station. Lets you know you're in an important area. Nice detailing in the little hallways at the entrances. Fancy glass command center at the comms console. Snack machines. Space window lets you see the crew from across a cool barrier.

Box bridge:

Same color floors as the rest of the station. Boring normal tables. No snack machines. Boring iron chairs instead of cool swivel chairs. No cool space window. Random supply cabinet facing the wall. Bland south wall where the AI upload is.

Box has always had power issues ever since mice could eat wires but the coding issue is new.

Box feels like a map from 2010 in its design and philosophy, it's managed to be barebones despite being wasteful in its space usage.

If I were to re-design Box, I'd re-do it using pipe and cable layers, shrink down various rooms and re-jigger the layout to re-centre the action away from the east hallway.
Hell, I think Box would be a good candiate for using multi-z whenever that gets finished.

Qbopper wrote:

RaveRadbury wrote:

deedubya wrote:>remove the OG map from the rotation

fucking zoomers, I swear

post this in mapping instead, so someone can push a fix rather than removing the best map in the game. improve, don't remove

lmk when boomerstation's coders support box

i'd work on it if i knew how to fix said bug

also my fear here is that people dislike box for nebulous reasons that will boil down to "I like the bad design choices on other maps that benefit me in the short term" like overabundant loot

maps have been getting their overunbandant loot cut a lot recently. on meta, for starters, cargo's maint and public tool storage dont have insuls anymore, and all of the static maint sunglasses spawns were removed. public autolathes were taken out of every map a while ago, too.

this is more of a personal preference rather than objective pro vs con, but i dislike the maint APC's. makes it extremely inconvenient to try and fix if you are a job without maint accessthat needs to fix an APC(especially if you dont have access to the maint doors of the place that you're trying to fix either. example: chef wants to fix medmaint APC because nukies arrived and all of medbay is dead). might be a neat way to give engineers a job that cant be stolen on manuel but the large majority of the servers arent centered around waiting for everyones favorite enhanced tiding/antag job to start taking responsibility. seriously, play a round on box where a nightmare spawns, enjoy your APC getting fixed never unless you have someone proactive that also wants to use your department.

referring to boxstations powernet as a powernet is an over exaggeration. it's a power LINE, im not sure it connects to itself anywhere. the issues with this are obvious.

boxstation med could use a proper buff. the only crew monitoring computer is in CMO's office, most other maps(except i think donut? not sure) have them available to doctors SOMEWHERE roundstart at least. there was some other stuff that bugged me but i forgot, i quit playing med on box after the 3rd round ruined by the power bug.

the lack of epic gamer loot is the least of box's issues.

before people get started on the "just fix it dont remove it" mindset, feel free to make the changes yourself rather than telling the people that dont like box to do it. if you dont know how to map or code, then learn how to. it's what i did. it's what every other contributor does. you don't need to be a genius, just some time and energy. you dont even have a deadline. box being removed from rotation doesnt mean theres no hope for it. once you learn to map and or code and fix the stuff people dislike about boxyou can make a pull request and get it back in rotation.

I updated its xenobio. For me at least it's my favourite map to do xenobio in, with Pubby coming second. Meta's xenobio is shit

Yeah maybe the loot has been cut now, but really the reason why everyone loved meta when it was released compared to other maps was because meta literally had 3x of loot and general supplies while the other maps did not. Then it got even more freebies over the years and this further cemented its status as everyone's most beloved map.

Saying meta is bad doesnt make box any better, you know.

Grazyn wrote:Yeah maybe the loot has been cut now, but really the reason why everyone loved meta when it was released compared to other maps was because meta literally had 3x of loot and general supplies while the other maps did not. Then it got even more freebies over the years and this further cemented its status as everyone's most beloved map.

I don’t give a fuck about the maint loot, no one gives a fuck about the maint loot except people looking for excuses to complain about meta. I prefer meta because the other maps are stale, have boring feature, are poorly designed, etc.

imagine needing maint loot in the age of techwebs

NoxVS wrote:I prefer meta because the other maps are stale, have boring feature, are poorly designed, etc.

I think you prefer Meta because it's what you're familiar with myself

cacogen wrote:

NoxVS wrote:I prefer meta because the other maps are stale, have boring feature, are poorly designed, etc.

I think you prefer Meta because it's what you're familiar with myself

Nope, other maps are just shit. Been playing for like almost 2 years now I think? I’m fairly positive I’m familiar with these maps.

Funny how no one can defend box without attacking the people complaining about it or other stations.

I think box would be tolerable to me if it was updated to have a better maint.

Even paradise has a better version of box. The /tg/ version just feels old and sad.

Kryson wrote:I think box would be tolerable to me if it was updated to have a better maint.

Even paradise has a better version of box. The /tg/ version just feels old and sad.

any map effort should be moved to make the maps that work multiz friendly, we dont need 5 maps anyway if it means they get worked once in a year/never

Wanting to remove a piece of ss13 history from the game cause its out of fashion is disappointing.

You may as well suggest to remove the Clown.

The crux of the issue seems to stem from a mapping or coding issue, I'd recommend investigating fixing that issue before throwing out the entire bathroom, with the baby.

Boxstation is a nice map, very nice medbay and engineering. Security has its own Atmos which you don't see anywhere else. Lots of room in maint for projects and shady activities. I think with some bugfixes and moving almost EVERY apc into the view of cameras it could be good. Boxstation has my favorite AI satellite by far.

Yenwodyah wrote:Don't try to reduce the argument against Box to "hurr durr no insuls". There are a lot of legitimately bad design choices in box.
- Science and Cargo are off in corners far away from the other departments (Engineering is too but it gets a pass because it's shoved off in a corner on Meta too)

I don't know how 'next to the hop line' and 'next to medbay, botany, the chapel, library, and departures' are shoved off into a corner, but if that were the case, how's that a bad thing? Because it takes longer to walk between departments, which would mean that it matters where you are at a given time and have to factor in travel time? Sounds like a good thing to me. Just less easy if you're trying to play ss13 as a singleplayer game.

- Poor use of real estate in the central hallway - do we really need the blank walls of the grav gen, tech storage, the janicloset, the bathrooms, and the teleporter all in the center of the station? In meta all the areas around the central hallway are either high-activity areas or have big windows or big shutters to let people see in.

Ahh yes, big activity areas like the corporate showroom and ai upload and what the fuck are you talking about with tech storage? It's in the equivalent place to on meta. Where's the problem here? I don't mean with tech storage, I mean with anything being in the central hallway. The problem is that it's not the same as meta?

- AI upload hidden in the bridge instead of out in the open where people can interact with it

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
The only people who should be accessing the upload, also known as a high security area, have bridge access. 'where people can interact with it'. In the average round it's visited about three times. Are you complaining that it's harder to hack into it on box? I'm not even going to argue whether that's true or not, but box is far from the only station with an out of the way upload- delta has it on the fucking AI sat.

- Most of the maint rooms are too far away from any of the departments to be useful. In meta all the maint rooms are close enough to another department that you can go between your secret lair and your real job pretty quickly. In box you have to navigate the massive maint maze if you want to get anywhere.

Rather than spending a few paragraphs, again all I'll say is travel time is important, and the thing about ss13 is it's a game where you can build stuff, especially with our pushing for longer rounds. Rather than on stations like delta where you say "why build a maint bar? we already have a fully built one with a fucking rage cage in maint" on box you might say "hmm, no, these spots won't do, I'll just have to build my own!" which is infinitely more interesting than the 50th cult base in the abandoned surgery room. Every map except box has this problem, not the other way around.

- A bunch of rooms that are both too out-of-the-way to attract dynamic player interactions but too public to attract people doing sneaky stuff. e.g. the garden, the locker room, the vault, the library. Contrast with rooms in meta like the vault hallway or the library gameroom, where you can get away with a quick murder if you're fast enough, but it's also public enough that you can lure your victim in pretty easily.

The garden on box is next to where people SPAWN IN and has windows, the garden on meta is in a windowless room in the place where you get fancy clothing you don't need. The library is near several departments on box while on meta you mostly see its gameroom used as an exit from maint because it's again a windowless room nobody has reason to go to. Not sure why places like the vault being out of the way (except it's even more out of the way on meta) is a bad thing, but cool I guess.

- In general, a lot of empty unused space - engineering lobby, medbay by where cloning was, the big cap's office and meeting room, the big area in cargo for the miners, the big bar (with a really shitty tiny theatre), the empty north part of the chapel, the big EVA that takes up way too much hallway retail, etc.

Not a problem, but fortunately for you it's also a not-problem meta has with the waste that is the corp showroom and the hallway right above it and its own excessive secondary cargo room. A lot of empty unused space? Sounds like a lot of empty usable space to me.

- A general lack of detail in the floors. I'm not asking for kilo levels of decal, but box right now is REALLY bland in a lot of places.

Decal the floors yourself! I like the unwelcoming aesthetic. It's a work station, not somebody's mansion.
I'm not going to get into the examples much, but you can't put supply cabinets facing the wall on box when cabinets have no directional sprites and wall facing cabinets exist on every fucking station. Yes one of the hallways on box is longer than the one on meta because... they're two completely different stations, with completely different HALLWAYS. What the hell? I'm sorry boxstation isn't the exact same as metastation. Maybe then we could cycle between metastation and metastation back and forth on the map rotation. Why would we want variety in our maps if it makes us play the game differently?

NoxVS wrote:

Grazyn wrote:Yeah maybe the loot has been cut now, but really the reason why everyone loved meta when it was released compared to other maps was because meta literally had 3x of loot and general supplies while the other maps did not. Then it got even more freebies over the years and this further cemented its status as everyone's most beloved map.

I don’t give a fuck about the maint loot, no one gives a fuck about the maint loot except people looking for excuses to complain about meta. I prefer meta because the other maps are stale, have boring feature, are poorly designed, etc.

I'm not talking about maint loot specifically, meta just had more supply of everything. I remember the first time I played viro on meta I was astounded at the sheer amount of plasma I started with. Or the public lathe (now removed). Every job had a lot more supplies and roundstart stuff compared to Box. Of course people were quick to accept it and now still feel attached to Meta.

confused rock wrote:Maybe then we could cycle between metastation and metastation back and forth on the map rotation.

The playerbase: "Yes"

Yenwodyah wrote:

confused rock wrote:Maybe then we could cycle between metastation and metastation back and forth on the map rotation.

The playerbase: "Yes"

Up to date ones: I think its worth bringing up that box is the most played non-meta map currently, though I dont think it deserves that status. Only nostalgia is keeping it afloat, I dont have that so I can look at it objectively and say its kind of shit.

Before box broke:
People that don't like box: "I don't like box"
People that like box: "Well why don't you fix it then!"

After box broke:
People that don't like box: "I don't like box and it's broken"
People that like box: "Well why don't you fix it then!"

Alright I'm going to make a pull on the map, so far my only changes are changing the flooring on the bridge to make it more interesting, and removing some R-Walls from old genetics. I want to wiggle around where genetics was because I don't know how that was done.

What else is some low bar stuff you want to see?

The powernet is a circle, with 1 level of redundancy just outside engineering. In my opinion this is a good design as it gives engineers a reason to wander maint and fix it.

Strangely enough people don’t follow the “why don’t you fix it then” ideology when we talk about cloning and sleepers; but even with all the indifference towards “server culture” coders won’t put box off life support to finally let it fucking die

them almonds spinning hard alrite

Just put Box out of its misery, we need less maps anyway. If people update it now, we'll just have the same situation in a few months.

do we need some big man approval before pring the removal or what?

Denton wrote:Just put Box out of its misery, we need less maps anyway. If people update it now, we'll just have the same situation in a few months.

Better than wasting someones time yeah.

If we were to hypothetically reduce our officially supported maps to 3 my picks would be meta, delta, pubby. With kilo still pretty new and donut being actively converted to multi-z, box just has no competitive edge.

Steelpoint wrote:Wanting to remove a piece of ss13 history from the game cause its out of fashion is disappointing.

You may as well suggest to remove the Clown.

The crux of the issue seems to stem from a mapping or coding issue, I'd recommend investigating fixing that issue before throwing out the entire bathroom, with the baby.

Not from the game. Out of rotation until at the very least the power issue is fixed(the bug, not the shitty powerline). This was by no means intended to be a permanent removal. Box is the map i learned ss13 on and I figure it's either the first or second most played map i have across all servers. If a lot of the playability issues are resolved(ACTUAL issues, not personal likes vs dislikes such as APC placement). To give some insight on what I see as an issue - medbay only has 1 crew monitor console, and it's im CMO office. Basically cucks the medical doctors out of crew monitors unless they beg for money to buy one(it costs ~2x what they get roundstart. this isnt an issue itself - most maps have the stationary crew monitor consoles so they can look at them inside of med. The advantage to the portable monitor is that you can look at it anywhere and it's a lot more useful for EMT work.) This next issue might already be resolved, but the cook didnt have botany access last time I checked. Ideally this wouldnt be an issue, but asking a botanist to do like 10 different plants so that you can make a few quirky dishes is a tad unreasonable with the amount of other content botany has to offer, let alone the fact that a lot of botanists are either experienced players that want gamer plants OR new players that probably dont know how to mutate plants.

That said, Box isn't altogether a terrible map. Xenobio feels like a lot less of an autist island than it does on metastation, Same with virology. They feel a lot more attached to their respective departments (because they literally are), a nice change from meta's space tumor designs. Another personal opinion - the empty/expendable rooms on box are really nice for giving a variety of places for projects and or illicit storage.

Is the power bug really unique to box? I could swear I was struggling with it on Meta a few weeks ago

yes. the issue you were struggling with is unrelated. something that can cause this sort of behavior is if theres a body getting dragged into a shocked grille by moving air(see: perma prisoners failing to break out). there's a key difference though - with box, using a multitool will show that all cables are unpowered entirely. with the issue i mentioned, the powernet shows that there is power in the grid, but all of it is being used by the power load from the shocked grille. another similar occurance is if someone wires an SMES into itself, it can steal all of the power in the grid, ending up as a net negative if the input is higher than the output from the SMES. Again, both of these issues occur on every map, and they are easily identifiable as NOT being the same issue that boxstaiton consistently suffers from.

imsxz wrote:yes. the issue you were struggling with is unrelated. something that can cause this sort of behavior is if theres a body getting dragged into a shocked grille by moving air(see: perma prisoners failing to break out). there's a key difference though - with box, using a multitool will show that all cables are unpowered entirely. with the issue i mentioned, the powernet shows that there is power in the grid, but all of it is being used by the power load from the shocked grille. another similar occurance is if someone wires an SMES into itself, it can steal all of the power in the grid, ending up as a net negative if the input is higher than the output from the SMES. Again, both of these issues occur on every map, and they are easily identifiable as NOT being the same issue that boxstaiton consistently suffers from.

Proofs? Round ID? Github issue?

lol why not just fix the issue?

BeeSting12 wrote:lol why not just fix the issue?

because it is possible that they do not know how or don't much care - removing box is easier than fixing it

why didn't this logic apply to other removed maps we used to have? nobody wanted to fix and update asteroid so it fucking died; leave fixing maps up to those who want to play on them

Flatulent wrote:

BeeSting12 wrote:lol why not just fix the issue?

because it is possible that they do not know how or don't much care - removing box is easier than fixing it

why didn't this logic apply to other removed maps we used to have? nobody wanted to fix and update asteroid so it fucking died; leave fixing maps up to those who want to play on them

basically, you're completely correct. if box had someone who maintained the map this wouldn't be a problem. box shouldn't get special deprecation privileges when any other map dies hard when maintenance dies

>boxstation does not receive maintenance and is deprecated
went to check this thinking probably the xenobio changes i made were the last time the file was edited and ended up being very wrong

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/ ... tation.dmm

cacogen wrote:>boxstation does not receive maintenance and is deprecated
went to check this thinking probably the xenobio changes i made were the last time the file was edited and ended up being very wrong

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/ ... tation.dmm

i mean most are just for all maps but you know that isn't that bad as you'd think