A map/station with randomised elements (mockup inside)

[AnonymousNow]

So, ages ago, I thought up a rough station design based on limited, consistent space for each department, forcing some departments to make do with what they had while still being very playable - it'd be easy to traverse, it would still have places to hide, and it would also make an excellent setting for team battles, since territory was consistent, but claims were precious.
I called this concept Tilistation, and you can see the mockup here.


I've been attached to the idea since, but I'm neither a coder nor a mapper, so my abilities were rather limited. Still, I found myself revisiting it the other day, with a number of things about the stations we play now being very different, and thinking - hold on. There's another idea here.

Below you'll see a variant mockup with more blocks. It doesn't have the shuttles and the solars, but perhaps the scale is a little more clear in this recent example I've been tinkering with.


What I'd thought of was this - if each department is consistent in size, shape and placement, then why can't we have this sort of station where the placement of each department is randomised in each round?

Take the second image, for example. The departments are roughly colour-coded in ways you'll probably mostly find recognisable, and that's the way I put them on there according to a rough logic - but what about, by using a system similar to how we place objects and ruins etc. roundstart right now, making each block department randomised depending on a rough logic of its own? As examples:
- Arrivals, departures and cargo bay will always need to be placed next to space, and their respective shuttle docks will be there as well, on the adjoining section of hull across the corridor.
- Command and the AI core will always take one of the four centre blocks.
- Engineering will need to be next to open space. This station was designed with solar arrays in mind, but building an engine or using a turbine is entirely feasible.

Departments that require an external dock would have airlocks in the large external maintenance tunnel opposite them, like virology or xenobiology's mantrap airlocks, but lacking the lockdown cycling.

It's a pipe dream, and I lack both the time and expertise to do it, but it's been bugging me for the last little while, so I figured I'd throw something down on Paint to show what I meant, though I know nothing'll come of it, probably. Hell, I'm still attached to the 9/16-block literal metal box-station idea even if the randomisation is unfeasible.

[SpaceManiac]

Several other servers have experimented with randomization and it is definitely technically feasible especially with our map template system.

However, I am not at all a fan of the grid-station design. It seems like it would be boring to play on this map.

[AnonymousNow]

Several other servers have experimented with randomization and it is definitely technically feasible especially with our map template system.

However, I am not at all a fan of the grid-station design. It seems like it would be boring to play on this map.

Really? I thought it would be interesting, seeing how the different passageways change the way people move around each other. It'd also be fascinating to see how territorial control would work, with factions like security and cults/revs vying for space, blockading corridors, overtaking or recruiting departments to the cause and so on.

[pubby]

Several other servers have experimented with randomization and it is definitely technically feasible especially with our map template system.

However, I am not at all a fan of the grid-station design. It seems like it would be boring to play on this map.

I've been meaning to ask about this.

Would you guys accept map generators written in another language (say, C++?). Or does all the code have to be in BYOND?

To me proc gen makes lots of sense for space/lavaland content. A randomly-generated station could be cool too, but is harder to code and won't exactly look good.

[deedubya]

The randomly generated station concept you've made here seems to be lacking something very essential to all maps: Maintenance tunnels. I know it's a rough mockup so far, but this doesn't seem compatible with what we generally accept as an ss13 map.

I think rather than designing a map with identical "chunks" that you could load a static department in, it'd be more feasible to design a proper map, then design several different variations of a section of that map that would be selected at round start. Like, imagine the engineering section of boxstation. You'd have that entire section of map, and have four different designs for it ready to be loaded in: Cargo, engineering, arrivals, or departures. Then it gets placed into the cut out section of map, preserving the preexisting hallways and maintenance tunnels, thus still leaving you with a fully functional map.

[AnonymousNow]

There are maintenance shafts in the mockup - a "ring road" that runs around the entire station floor, and an internal pinwheel-shaped maintenance corridor in each of the 16 blocks - but to add further tunnels, you could designate some of the criss-crossing pathways between the blocks as maintenance, possibly even randomgen'd, and cut them off with maint doors.

Your suggestion looks good, as well. It needs immediate readability and no redundancy, but that shouldn't be an issue.

[SpaceManiac]

Would you guys accept map generators written in another language (say, C++?). Or does all the code have to be in BYOND?

BYOND would be preferable so that you don't have to install extra stuff to play that map.

[cacogen]

Cube Station? Like from the movie Cube? And the departments move around? And some departments kill you in unexpected ways? And you have to throw your shoes in to test it? I'm not being serious but I want the game to have gamemodes that are more like Mafia/Werewolf or The Ship. It used to feel more isolating and there was more paranoia back in the early days.

Anyway your post also reminded me of reading a small amount about Derek Yu's level generation for Spelunky and I found this thing as the first result on Google (he also has a book). It might give some people some ideas. Spelunky is a 2D tile-based game like SS13 (but side-scrolling, obviously) and has pre-designed rooms that are randomly arranged in a way that always guarantees an unobstructed path to the exit (in our case this would mean connecting arrivals to departures with public hallways). Then it adds traps and enemies and things, which I guess would be items or structures that aren't necessities for a room's functioning.

You can also draw a parallel with how Lavaland generates its tunnels (hallways, maint) and places the ruins (rooms/departments).

You're certainly not the first person interested to see how a randomised station would pan out. Might be shit. But you can't know until someone with coding expertise sinks tens or perhaps hundreds of hours into making it.

[SpaceManiac]

r4d6 from Citadel is working on something in this space

Spoiler:

[Vorak]

Beestation is working on something similar with randomised maintenance on normal maps though we need alot more templates before it can be implemented.