/tg/Station 13

Hey howdy, this isn't to announce any project of mine or anything (I'm a terrible mapper), but rather to propose one to other mappers.

There's this idea that's come up a few times about an on-planet map. Instead of being stationed on Space Station 13, it'd be on a normal planet terrain. To keep players from wandering off, ideally there'd be harsh alien life and dangerous terrain on the outskirts of the main base area.

I figure it would look a lot like this:


It would ideally look in-game more like that one snowy away mission, where the different "outposts" (which would serve as different departments) are all separated. Most of the outdoors would effectively be the like station's hallways, only larger and less populated.

Functionally, actual station equipment would work pretty much the same as on-station. You'd still have all the departments and all their gear. Blowing up tiles would reveal craters instead of space, which wouldn't suck you in but are highly hazardous (we could make them instakill you like on lavaland, but that might be too strong). Wiring would be mostly laid out outside, and each department might have to get their own SMES to prevent sabotage from being too simple. The mining shuttle, the emergency shuttle, and escape pods would all work basically the same way: The mining shuttle would take you to a nearby moon/asteroid, and the pods and emergency shuttle would just take you off the planet to a nearby Centcomm outpost.

The outskirts would be very difficult to inhabit and their lethality would be much like space is to the space station, in that going out there is practically a death sentence (and is very good for hiding corpses). It would be a wilderness setting, although since it's an alien planet we'd be able to take some artistic license with it. Deeper parts of the forest could have chasms that instakill you if you accidentally fall into them (like on lavaland). I imagine we could try to employ Remie's random generator system so they're not always the same. We could also employ hostile mobs that attack people who go too deep into the trees (again, like lavaland). Inhabiting the wilderness isn't impossible, but it is difficult (just like making space autism forts in space). Trees can be cut down and wildlife can be killed. We could also have bridges for crossing chasms (and they could be made of wood, to give it more use).

Since we're on a planet, we can also have new systems and random events. Weather would be a big one, with a night/day cycle that makes the outdoors difficult to traverse at night (and enrages the wildlife in the outskirts...). Hard rain that freezes people (and cleans off bloody clothes), hail that injures people and damages wires. More severe random events like earthquakes could also be implemented (for example, earthquakes could make the screen shake (like meteors), occasionally damage wiring, and cause people to trip and take damage if they're not near a wall). Wildlife attacks could also be another theme. A roofing system could be useful, but that can be a discussion for another time (perhaps we could use the system that making bases with the blueprints uses, in that if the base is atmospherically safe and sealed on all sides, it automatically gets a roof).

Ideally we could throw this into map rotation. Space z-levels might have to be overridden and replaced with generated forest levels. The jarring change in scenery could be very interesting for the game, and could allow for lots of new features (such as the colonization aspect that is practically absent on the Space Station).

Is it feasible? Can it be done? Should it be done? What are your thoughts?

when did it change from space STATION 13 to space WORLD 13

Totally in favor of trying this if someone actually did it.

ALSO SPACE STATION DOESN'T REQUIRE SOMEONE TO BE IN SPACE, SPACE INCLUDES PLANETARY STATIONS BECAUSE YOU'RE STILL IN SPACE JUST ON A PLANET

Planet maps are just more fun in my opinion, coming from someone who's played on them before, they let players have way more freedom

we junglestation now boi

Newfags so new they don't remember the STARTOADtm orginal....

JUNGLESTATION

JUNGLESTATION IS BACK

Is it feasible? Yes.

Is it feasible to maintain a planetary station at its full potential, planet related events/weather and all while keeping it as part of the rotation back to space stations? That might be messier.

The only two things really stopping us right now are

1) A lack of a well fleshed out planet. I'm working on this.

2) People won't want to leave box/space, condemning such an effort to a novelty (or causing a big community split if its forced).

I have believed for years that SS13 would be better and have far more room to grow if placed on a planet though.

A planet map would need soft and hard boundaries to progress, not to mention something to enhance security of areas such as the armory and AI upload. They are not nearly as secure when anyone can walk around the perimeter. A lack of vacuum will also make it difficult to kill people as an AI, as they can just stroll outside

A planet (or moon) doesn't have to have a human-friendly atmosphere. It could be poisonous to breathe, have too high a pressure, too low a pressure, be subject to extremes of temperature, all that sort of stuff.

Or we could just make basil the space map and turn Sybil into the planet map and not allow map rotation on it.

i'd try it out

Shuttle between the two servers? Is such a thing even possible?

We could technically do that if we did it by prefs and made both servers into one big server?

We could have a pref that makes you spawn on the planet or station (your choice) with a shuttle in between

The downside is that this would be ridiculously hard to code, very intensive on the server because of all the tiles that need to be atmos active, and this would be pointless because why would you need two fully functional stations in one map

woah haha you posted right as i bumped

I didn't post that today what the fuck

>zilenan thinking he knows how to code and the best way to do something like that


BYOND supports cross-server functionality

Yes, and this would require both servers to be the same in attitude, functionality, and organization which you've said you don't want many times in the past.

What about the third server? maybe use it as the planet?

Endozworld wrote:What about the third server? maybe use it as the planet?

ehhh, i don't like the idea of splitting our community.

I think it would work best with each major department as a building so like, you have a medsci complex, the brig complex, the Main complex (command and civilian), and the supply complex, with minor rooms scattered about

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I think it would work best with each major department as a building so like, you have a medsci complex, the brig complex, the Main complex (command and civilian), and the supply complex, with minor rooms scattered about

I like it but either combine science and supply or add security to the main complex.

Underground maintenance tunnels for Engineering with access ladders when?

Man, this reminds me of Doom 3. I loved those corridors.

DemonFiren wrote:Underground maintenance tunnels for Engineering with access ladders when?

Man, this reminds me of Doom 3. I loved those corridors.

There was an away mission with ladders and levels, why not the mining level be a ladder below maint?
Have it go
Command tower.
Departments.
Basements (backrooms)
Maint.
Mining.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I think it would work best with each major department as a building so like, you have a medsci complex, the brig complex, the Main complex (command and civilian), and the supply complex, with minor rooms scattered about

This is kind of the idea I was going for. Each department is their own building. The space station has hallways between departments, the colony has trails between buildings.

DemonFiren wrote:Underground maintenance tunnels for Engineering with access ladders when?

Man, this reminds me of Doom 3. I loved those corridors.

Oh, that'll be good. Maybe we will get some of that mysterious """paranoia""" this game is supposed to have

PLASMA PLANET! Plasma mens running around naked outside while humans need to get an environmental suit. Oxygen being the deadly gas in the weird pink atmosphere. RIVERS OF LIQUID PLASMA chemist goes out to snatch a beaker and a plasmacarp pulls him in!

We dwarf fortress now

Incomptinence wrote:PLASMA PLANET! Plasma mens running around naked outside while humans need to get an environmental suit. Oxygen being the deadly gas in the weird pink atmosphere. RIVERS OF LIQUID PLASMA chemist goes out to snatch a beaker and a plasmacarp pulls him in!

>human breathes out ever
OH GOD WHYYYY

Bouncing some ideas i had about this.
What if mineing is remade into the scavengers that must strike out to bring back food, water, guns and raw mateirals maybe tech they find along the way. Secuirty, engineering and R&D stay the same for their tasks to keep the buildings running smoothly. Could also split it up where players where divided between two or three hidden forts that are competing for resources, players always watching their backs trying not to be followed back home.

Have the player bases start inside hills or underground with secret entrances, with the option to expand down or into the mountain or build a trading outpost outside.

Events:
dust storms
Raiders
monsters tunneling though the floor in areas
rouge machines discovering the location of the base

Round end? a distress beacon is placed in each base, when pressed each other base and some ruines will recive the signal locating the base to other players, if the beacon lives for 25 minutes a rescue ship lands and picks up the survivors.

Lavaland station.

Sidon wrote:Lavaland station.

Aaand there it is folks 10/10 fund now

Wot if a gas giant station so if you make a breach gas floods in and crushes you instead of flooding out and causing your bloods to burst.

I think lavaland might be a bit edgy and fantasy to have the main game take place in honestly.

If this map ever does get made we could have Lavaland be a series of subterranean caverns rather than a far off asteroid. Maybe have auxilliary cave entrances outside of the main outpost in the surrounding wilds. Really though making a planet map is a pretty big undertaking even beyond laying out the map itself. There is a ton of balance and game mode related stuff to consider, not to mention replacing every single Z level aside from maybe centcomm

Super Aggro Crag wrote:Wot if a gas giant station so if you make a breach gas floods in and crushes you instead of flooding out and causing your bloods to burst.

I remember this KSP mod that allowed for inflatable balloons so this guy made a cool airship bungerope over the gas giant thing

kinda unrelated but i'd like to find the picture

basically, I like it but if we're in the atmos of the gas giant we're prolly all dead too, considering how much gravity they have.

That's what the anti-grav generator is for

Wyzack wrote:If this map ever does get made we could have Lavaland be a series of subterranean caverns rather than a far off asteroid. Maybe have auxilliary cave entrances outside of the main outpost in the surrounding wilds. Really though making a planet map is a pretty big undertaking even beyond laying out the map itself. There is a ton of balance and game mode related stuff to consider, not to mention replacing every single Z level aside from maybe centcomm

Replacing other z-levels might not be as hard as you think. We have Remie's procedural wilderness generator already in the code, and we could do ruins the same way lavaland does it with them being randomly picked and placed.

Lavaland station would be fine. It's not at all edgy.

Super Aggro Crag wrote:That's what the anti-grav generator is for

A machine that, once destroyed, immediately destroys the station. Maybe it slowly cracks the outer Windows???

An idea I had for the planet map is that it would be a multi-z level affair on a planet, with the upper surface levels being nothing but a small security outpost with turrets that would have to be reloaded by engineers to fend off a trickle of respawning hostile NPC and possibly player mobs that would encroach upon the outpost from the dark, imposing jungle in the distance. If the mobs are allowed in they would likely murder everything inside and kill turrets, letting in additional mobs. Underneath the surface z-level would be where everyone else is, slightly underground where all the living quarters, kitchen, hydroponics bays, and other various current-station jobs are located. There would be periodic invasions of hostile tunneling mobs/player-controlled mobs that would require a response from the security or security-equivalent, and further into the caves would be completely unlit and pitch black territory filled with hostile organic plants akin to venus fly traps that catch and gib people, traps that are hard to avoid without prior knowledge, as well as a sparse amount of mobs to prevent people from suicide running for gear. There would also likely be turrets underground pointed towards cracks in the caves that monsters would occasionally spawn from and attempt to rush the civilians, baying for blood all the way. All turrets would shoot anything that comes in front of their cone of view, and require no upkeep but an occasional refilling of ammo that there is a plentiful amount of in engineering that is also used in their pistols that they would use to hunt mobs and defend themselves while performing upkeep.
Even deeper into the caverns down a static spawned pathway would be a ruined prior outpost set up by Nanotrasen, now the home/hive of an invasive species that must be cleared out by miners at the start of every round so they can use the only entrance within it to get to the more valuable mineral patches even deeper underground. Miners would be given assault rifles and possibly even merged with security to give them something to do. From there, they gun down the ridiculously numerous organisms, mining and smelting metal for ammo on the way, and then going into the Deepest of the Deeps. The Deepest of the Deeps would be mostly what lavaland is right now, with horrific daemonic mobs infesting and corrupting its very surface just under the hellscape blackness that is the caves above. The DotD would be incredibly mineral rich to offweigh the risk associated with killing the invasive mobs, have denser mobs around the miners' entry point, and also have much more unique loot and special ruins and secrets.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Wyzack wrote:If this map ever does get made we could have Lavaland be a series of subterranean caverns rather than a far off asteroid. Maybe have auxilliary cave entrances outside of the main outpost in the surrounding wilds. Really though making a planet map is a pretty big undertaking even beyond laying out the map itself. There is a ton of balance and game mode related stuff to consider, not to mention replacing every single Z level aside from maybe centcomm

Replacing other z-levels might not be as hard as you think. We have Remie's procedural wilderness generator already in the code, and we could do ruins the same way lavaland does it with them being randomly picked and placed.

Something thats been bugging me is how z level transitions would work

Space works easy right now because the borders of each z level are featureless and blend in with each other but that's not the case for a planet zlevel. Would gates be an acceptable solution

Different levels of it accessible by ladders would work decently.

Well, you're better off making underground caves or mountains if you want to extend the playable area. Z-levels in byond rarely work well with each other, Even lifeweb's creator knew this despite wanting to "make a huge map" which is really just as big as our maps anyway.

I'm pretty sure Lifeweb doesn't actually emulate gravity either, it probably just has teleportations between zlevels and deals damage depending on how many you fall, how heavy you are etc.

paprika wrote:Well, you're better off making underground caves or mountains if you want to extend the playable area. Z-levels in byond rarely work well with each other, Even lifeweb's creator knew this despite wanting to "make a huge map" which is really just as big as our maps anyway.

I suppose this could work too. The edges of the z-levels could have a big dome around them or something. I think that might be a lot harder to do, though, since then we'd have to fuck around with interactions of the terrain between z-levels and such.

imblyings wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Wyzack wrote:If this map ever does get made we could have Lavaland be a series of subterranean caverns rather than a far off asteroid. Maybe have auxilliary cave entrances outside of the main outpost in the surrounding wilds. Really though making a planet map is a pretty big undertaking even beyond laying out the map itself. There is a ton of balance and game mode related stuff to consider, not to mention replacing every single Z level aside from maybe centcomm

Replacing other z-levels might not be as hard as you think. We have Remie's procedural wilderness generator already in the code, and we could do ruins the same way lavaland does it with them being randomly picked and placed.

Something thats been bugging me is how z level transitions would work

Space works easy right now because the borders of each z level are featureless and blend in with each other but that's not the case for a planet zlevel. Would gates be an acceptable solution

Anything that provides a mostly solid barrier with a transition point you can map from a->b would probably work fine, cave entrances, ladders etc.

I was thinking tunnels but sure gates work as well