-
Posts
470 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Everything posted by wowzewow
-
This post is in two parts, the map and the concept, so I'll review them seperately. The Map Honestly, I think it's due to remap the Horizon - it still hasn't shaken off the technical debt of NBT and how hastily cobbled together and rehashed it all was. It's a vast improvement over the "Station-on-Wheels" that is the current Horizon, which is as aesthetic as a brick. It actually looks like a ship! However, it does need to be pared down a few notches, size-wise. Which could be done by smaller decks, more floors. Still - it's too early to make decisive criticism, because with a map as large as this, it very much needs a review-by-committee and due process. The Concept Good concept, and pushes the envelope - although it needs to be reeled back a bit. I like the idea of an independent ship - players should have a greater stake in their workplace and their RP enviroment, after all. (We could have very meta discussions on map design like the Stupid Tree, but in canon) But, I do not think ditching megacorporate hegemony is the way to go. Personally, a large part of why we've moved towards this is because of how stifling the old "Everyone is Nanotrasen" setting was. Now, we're trading a blanket "Everyone's Nanotrasen" with "Everyone's Independent". There isn't very particularly interesting about "EVERYONE WE ARE NANOTRASEN TOGETHER KILL ANTAGS!!" compared to "Hey. We're both Zavodskoi here, turn the other eye, let's team up against that Idris guy instead" Another reiterated problem is authority and stakes. If everyone's independent, there isn't really much reason to listen to authority RP-wise other than a personal agreement between everyone, which is fragile at best. Honestly : It isn't that hard of a problem to solve - Megacorporations *should* have moderate authority - it's just that characters have a more outsized investment in the ship altogether - something akin to owning stocks in your own company IRL. You are still very much behooved to your corporate master. It's just that you're so far out in the Spur that you're (mostly) free of corporate authority and oversight that you're granted some more autonomy over other ships. Frankly, I'm just rather dissapointed at how much of a backseat the Megacorporations have taken all this time. There's a lot of interesting intra-ship conflict and flashpoints that doesn't even need antags to start, but are woefully underutillized, e.g. Corporation vs Corporation disagreements - profit over friends, etc. There's a reason why Revolution is such a compelling gamemode.
-
Honestly, thinking about this, a lot of the problem actually just simply stems from the all-encompassing always accurate extremely adaptable Body Scanner which kinds of sucks out any and all interesting depth to the job. I've always been a staunch advocate of "Ghetto medical/Manual medical", e.g. using Stethoscope to check heartrate, penlight to check eye-damage, grab-inspecting for fractures, etc. etc. which adds a lot of opportunity to roleplay. Unfortunately this goes against the main modus operandi of medical players of "SAVE EVERYONE", and it would be an extremely unpopular nerf. I've got some ideas for reforms for medical. It's just whether medical players are ready for it - and willing to accept it.
-
I think an easy solution would be to allow Physicians to do some very rudimentary chemistry. And physicians can already do basic surgery. I found it strange that CMOs can do advanced chemistry that while normal physicians can't do basic chemistry. Also, physicians can basically hold down the entire fort solo on lowpop. I think the problem stems from people believing that everyone in medical *has* to have an absolute prime directive - a side effect on how absolutely laser focused on mechanics the whole department is most of the time. Thing is, it doesn't have to be a bad thing, or a "problem" that needs to be solved, Physicians can do some RP by doing checkups, surgery, EMT-ing, trauma, sensor-watching... The only real time this issue compounds is on highpop, honestly, when every role is *absolutely* filled. But at that point I'd just say to "find your own fun" like any other less-mechanically intensive job on Aurora that has to do EVERY ROUND, mind you. (Psychologists crying in the corner.) Physicians are a jack of all trades, master of none. Unfortunately people are way too focused on the "master of none" part. At the end of the day, that's their role. A relatively safe pick in majority of situations if you just want to *play medical* without thinking too much.
-
Generally I think the larger issue stems from Machinist being stuck in Operations. This identity crisis issue has been here since day one of it's migration between departments.
-
give me ideas for fluff medical equipment
wowzewow replied to La Villa Strangiato's topic in Suggestions & Ideas
They are coded in and were a formerly job-spawn item. -
We really need a title for this setting.
wowzewow replied to CourierBravo's topic in Suggestions & Ideas
Unfortunately "Corporate Dystopia" isn't even particularly uniquely Auroran - this applies mostly to every other SS13 server as well, from the fact that majority of server lore branched out from the original Nanotrasen Megacorporate Goon lore. (Hell, I even think Eris done it better, because it's a literal anarcho-capitalist society where everyone has guns and what-not) Ironically, our corporate lore is the most neglected out of all of the other lore comparatively, and is further diluted by all the other planet and species lore. Not like that's a bad thing, but that's just how it is. -
I'll just cut to the chase here. Way back when, Med/Sci and Com/Sec were one large department. Machinists, formerly Roboticists, landed solely in this very same department. Same with Virology and Genetics/Cloning. It's why they got removed. They didn't belong in Medical or in the game entirely because they were a neccessity Medical Job while playing as an optional Science Job. Machinist should be put back in Science. Like a lot of Science jobs, if there simply aren't any IPCs nor Borgs on board, then they are an optional Science Job. If there are, they are upgraded to being a necessity Medical Job. Even so, Nanopaste basically renders a lot of their stuff moot. They are only in Operations solely for the wishes of Corporate Lore - which personally, is the most undeveloped, and probably will be for the forseeable future in favor of Shiny New Planets. But basically, they should be returned to Science, and integrated like how Bay does it - the Machinist's surgery room is also connected to medical, so Medical can use it temporarily if all other ORs are full. Note that the Machinist isn't responsible for any medical stuff. They are just physically connected.
-
Well, a lot of the things I've really wanted to say have been already iterated on in the thread, like giving special treatment to those who are able to play for a specific 3 hours in a day (while other people have to wake up for work tommorow morning are given the shaft...) Hopefully, I think the Cold War and Konyang arcs are the exception, not the rule for events going forward. My general thoughts are that I simply think the server simply hasn't had enough time to settle properly. With the old Aurora Station, events were very much large and bombastic, but still generally contained within the confines of the station, which helped ground them a whole bunch. Post-NBT however, the scope has practically increased by orders of magnitude overnight. Which I feel has alienated a whole lot more people, and magnified my feelings about how impersonal old Lore was on the Aurora as well. Why should I care about happenings across the galaxy if it isn't going to affect my life on the station right here, right now? Why should I bother reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of a planet I'm never going to see, with people I'm never going to meet? Which goes into my next point. Direction and Ambition. Aurora has very much been a loosely held together conglomerate of passion projects, all with different loose threads of people tugging in different directions of their ambitions. With NBT everyone's been practically cut loose on what they want to do, and it's going to take a while to reign everyone in a certain direction. For me, I hope it is the "small-medium event, personal slice-of-life" kind, but I cannot definitively say for sure. In conclusion, I think we still need time to settle down post-NBT. Server culture, organization, development, lore just needs time to catch-up. It's a very much wild-west at the moment, and I feel it's going to be hard to exactly lock down canonicity when, say, the layout of the Horizon could change tomorrow, or sections of lore getting retconned and rewritten. Which I suppose is both a blessing and a curse that Aurora is one of the last HRP servers with continuous development. Hard to leave a mark on something's that always changing.
-
This would probably have a lot more meaning if it wasn't just possible to create a disposable character for every canonical event and running into danger to kill themselves.
-
this should be in the lore canonization applications section
-
Not my PR. Seeing the reactions this probably should be discussed. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/18404
-
Voting for Dismissal as well.
-
I can't believe I've been here long enough that people have already forgotten how bad rat roleplay is. Anyway. This has already been discussed ad nauseum. Immediate vote for dismissal.
-
Yes, of course. 1. Porting Man. The thing is. I really would agree with you. But it is simply a matter of difference on when. Again, the majority of sprites we have at the moment are 2007 /tg/ codersprites. I do not blame any amateur spriter using it as a reference, because they don't know any better. What do I say then? "Sorry, I have to reject your sprites because look terrible, and it is through no fault of your own that you chose to use codersprites as a reference." It'd be like if coders had nothing to go off other than 2010 Aurora codebase documentation, and then asking the team to singlehandedly and uniquely code shuttles and exoplanets. It's unfeasable, it's populist. Unless this can be rectified we will be at an impasse until the end of time. 2. Spriter Guide/Palette Stuff We wouldn't even need to have this conversation if I was allowed to simply get all our sprites up to speed instead of this endless back-and-forth. It's basically playing a constant Ship of Theseus of trying to police our new sprites and fix our old sprites. It is humanly impossible for me to juggle so many people with differing artstyles, wants, needs, visions all at once. Especially given our revolving door contributors over the years, a consistent artstyle will simply not emerge from randomness. At the end of the day, only after all is said and done, then we can constructively work on an artstyle. Until then we're basically just stuck reinventing our own wheels over and over.
-
Unfortunately, since Goonstation has a differing Github license than ours, we cannot port things from them. However, if you *do* find an alternative that similar on another server, it would be much more likely to be ported.
-
On Direction : I've made it very clear in the past, and most of my views have not changed on the matter. They are not staff restricted, and free to read on the across the forums on the Guides and Tutorials. If you ever do plan to sprite, are spriting, or have sprited, I urge you to read them. I'm frustrated that I have to keep repeating this againl : Port whatever that already exists in game and from other servers. Unique Aurora things should be appropriately given tailor made sprites, unlesss sufficiently generic to fall into the former category. This is mainly to just stop people from constantly reinventing our own wheels and waste their own time. Once porting is complete, we can use all the assets we've gained to springboard more effectively into building our own repository. Honestly, I can agree with your rhetoric about not porting. However, it is simply not feasible at the moment. Average day-to-day spriters on Aurora do not have such a wide repository and knowledge of other servers. Typically, our current sprites, which are extremely dated, are used as reference, and in turn, create sub-par sprites. This isn't ideal, I do not like people wasting their effort with poor tools. On Artstyle : I have exhausted all possible avenues of discussion about our artstyle with you. Absolutely basic concepts for a cohesive artstyle cannot be agreed upon. Palettes : You have disregarded discussion on. Perspective : Matt had to do a veto to go forward to use 3/4ths as a perspective. There are a myriad of other issues, but the main point I would like to put across is that your idea of an artstyle has no documentation whatsoever. There is nothing I can work with. On Porting : As to my knowledge, I do not know of any ban of porting whatsoever. All I know that exists is a restriction on porting from other servers with differing licenses. I remember my discussion with Arrow when I mistakenly ported a slot machine from Goon (which was later rectified), with a different license from ours. As far as I know, you, Kyres, have been the main, and only spreader of this rhetoric. In no point in this project you were forced to overextend yourself. In fact, I specifically requested you to stop and wait for other spriters to finish their work as well so we could cohesively move forward together as a team. Was it the best decision at the time? Debatable. But it was the best decision I could make at the moment with the knowledge I had at the moment. Then, for the walls, I had to grapple with you on deciding on the actual perspective of them because wall-mounted objects relied on their shape and form before I could start working on anything. You were advised to stop working on walls any further, and I explicitly warned you that any work then on would be subject to further changes. You then decided to wordlessly drop new computer console sprites, which was not requested, nor wanted, at all, as well as wall mounted objects. Which I very explicitly expressed that I would be working on. Which, I might add, time and time again, you have tried replacing. Across multiple PRs. I cannot fathom why you have kept doing this, other than leading me to speculation. They aren't even ports - they are fully original made sprites by myself. Same as the computer consoles. Which you also baffingly tried to replace as well, with pale imitations of TG style consoles. Which also lacked a majority of program sprites - which the existing ones already had. I'd understand if you tried to replace ported things, sure. But trying to replace my completely original sprites which are already well situated in the server is confounding. I accept that this project has not been as well organised as it should have been, seeing as it's the first major project I've undertaken in leading other people. I have good faith that this is just a comment on my mismanagement of my project and nothing else. No, it is not. It is to organise and genericise sprites for future use, as well as to expand our sprite repository for future exoplanet and event projects. For most events you have worked on, you have mostly wordlessly worked on your own seperate branch, before asking a Head Developer to merge it to master without a PR. Which is perfectly understandable, to keep events spoiler-free and under lock and key. Most events were self-contained anyway, and would have no lasting effect on the artstyle of the server. Similarly, in the Adhomai arc, a lot of assets were not seen anywhere else, and unique to Aurora's setting. Therefore, there was no need for any major changes. For the Konyang assets, I am not sure what alternative course of action I could have taken here. It was already bundled and merged into the codebase without much fanfare. Making a follow-up PR to rectify thing was the most sensible thing to do for me, after you went no-contact with the server and left without a trace. There a mismatch in perception of how much I had changed. Most of it was organization, and some were basically palette standardization and improvements so they can also be used outside of Konyang. Not to mention a sizable chunk is original work done by myself, and a lot of original content made by other developers have been completely untouched, save for being moved to different .dmi's and folders. This is a very large assumption to make about the wider community. However, I would like to formally apologize to Nienna, who was caught in the crossfire of this, and Atteria especially. Closing Thoughts : Frankly, I'm very emotionally exhausted from all of this. As if my original work does not matter, for all I've done for this server : contained sprites, fixing inhands, overlays, animations, myriads of loadout clothing, the fact that they can be recolorable, multi-colored, all of the different variants and alt-styles. For a complaint about me devaluing other's work, I've really had come to grips on how much I've been pidgeonholed into being "THE PORT GUY".
-
Well, I was thinking it of being more of an opt-in thing. You don't have the obligation to answer it, but the option is always there.
-
Sounds good on paper, but I don't really why this can't be done on an unofficial capacity. Main concern with Staff bloat isn't going to be particularly benchwarmers and braggarts, but most likely the administrative overhead. Having a dozen or so quasi-officiated mini-mods is going to be another thing moderators and admins have to keep track of. And I don't particularly like the idea of picking favourites in the community. You are either part of Staff, or aren't. It carries a certain amount of responsibility that necessitates this sort of division. As for mechanical mentoring, I do not think this is necessary. Aurora already has a reputation of being one of the most forgiving places to learn SS13 mechanics in, namely because of the low stakes and low intensity gameplay the consistent Extended rounds provide - we don't particularly have round-the-clock fragging that Goon or /TG/ does that neccessitates this. As for lore mentoring, we already have the Lore discords. I'm not a Loredev by any means, but it's been the forefront of Lore Team community outreach, and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. However, I am not opposed to implementing a Mentorhelp system for /all/ current staff, Devs, CCIAA, Lore and all. They have chosen to invest a large time into Aurora, and are more likely to be able to help with any, if not all issues, aformentioned Mentors deal with.
-
This is actually against the rules. It is not allowed to name custom items after departmental uniforms. If there are any missing suit sensors, or alternative uniform types that are lacking, then please request for them to be made.
-
Wowzewow - Human Lore Deputy Application
wowzewow replied to wowzewow's topic in Developer Applications Archives
Of course, no problem. Perspective, for the most part, and this is two-fold. I have a fresh pair of eyes only someone from a wholly different background could only provide. Speaking of which, my tenure as a developer has greatly improved my judgement on what is possible for lore-related things - whether it should stay on the wiki, or could be implemented some way or another in an event or what-not. I know what works, what doesn't, and what to do to make it work. I'm very cooperative - I'm open to feedback, compromise, open discussion, anything goes, so long as it's reasonable and feasible. Well, I'd like to reiterate that this is only a small part of what I plan to contribute content wise in my tenure as a human lore deputy - it's just one of the more prominent examples that I've given the most extensive thought over. It's only a small part in what is to be a greater project to mostly unite and improve all of human lore's planets to be up to code and more standard with one another, such as Pluto and Europa, for example, which lack a Culture section - not to insinuate there is a lack thereof, but perhaps needs more elaboration and categorization. Some planets have different methods of categorization, some with different styles of writing. Some have their history near the top, front and centre, Elyra has it near the bottom. It's rather headache inducing, especially given the herculean task of comprehending the entirety of Auroran lore, and I plan to amend that. An improvement I'd like to add to most, if not all planets, would be short Character Creation Guides, outside of the OOC "This character is from a region of X, and is enforced by administrative staff". Most of our gameplay and natural exposure is not with the planets themselves, but the characters that come from them - hopefully this will seek to eliminate "Biesel syndrome", where players are more comfortable in making more adventurous characters, knowing that they have the approval of the lore on their side, rather than passing remarks and advice from the Discords. Another major part of lore I'd like to expand upon is how faction interaction affects the minutae of daily life on the Horizon. Space opera is fun and all, but doesn't pack as much of a punch as I'd like to. There's already inklings of factional interaction on the Horizon already, for instance, the rivalry between Biesel and Sol, Dominians grouping together for events. There's a lot I feel that can be explored, and make selecting one's faction have a much greater impact - perhaps Dominians would look down on Coalition of Colonies' people for being welcoming to IPCs? Bieselites, Elyrans and COC members being all buddy-buddy from their shared heritage of being freed from Solarian authority? Not to mention all the non-human factions I'm omitting. There's a lot of unlikely friendships, conflicts and player interaction that can stem from this, as well as real-life geopolitics we can take inspiration from. Perhaps a faction relationship chart would be in order, but I digress. To elaborate on Americentric, I am not referring to being focused on the United States, the country, specifically. My main point was more focused on American cultural zeitgeist, namely as a basis for the main point of view for writing other cultures, being the baseline, "generic" culture. It's not entirely anyone's fault, but it just so happens due to the nature of the fact that a portion of lore writers, present and past, are American, and are used to writing this way. I've gone over this in more detail in my response to LVS, but again, it's akin to the Aliens, Weyland-Yutani style of writing that focuses on how Japan/China would affect the United States primarily - joint colonization, corporate mergers - "this is how X would affect the US, therefore, this is how X would affect the world as well." rather than how each country would seperately interact with the world. It's hard to explain, but it's a bit of a disconnect from how Wikipedia presents itself in more of a diplomatic, United Nations-style globalist and neutral style of writing. I'd like to again reiterate that I am not of the view that the entirety of the lore is as such, only parts of it. I can see the sentiment, but for the most part, my duties as a developer and Spriter are far divorced from writing lore - even for helping out with events, I am mostly there to discuss feasibility and the in-game mechanics of such, rather than having any involvement in how the event or greater repercussions in lore, or any arc that it resides within. Although I can understand how one may draw similarities from Developers and Lore writers as being "creatives", I believe it wouldn't be much different from having a member from the Administrative staff be a Lore writer, and as before, there have not been any issues with them. -
Seeing this as already addressed, locking and archiving.
-
Voting for dismissal
-
This is powercreep, literally. Textbook definition. We don't need an arms race of continually adding weapons to each and every job. Miners are already balanced around KAs - having shotguns also inadvertently fucks over Antagonists as well, intentional or not, because KAs are balanced around doing little-to-no damage in atmosphere. Arguably, you could order guns as Operations, but that requires going through the bureaucratic process, which keeps it in check. Just nerf the speed and damage of the simplemobs. Either that, or as Carver said, reduce the spawn rate. Voting for dismissal.
-
I like the idea of protists, actually. It helps to tie into the "life-seeding, last common ancestor" vibe that Diona have going on. It also helps that protists are more general - rather than trading a plant pidgeonhole for a fungus one. This can help to expand the baseline Diona and allow them to really pick and choose what to get from both plant and fungal life. Hell, some can even specialize towards one path or another, which ties into the Diona growth theme where they slowly find themselves and their place in the universe. Some can specialize depending on their origin, too. Perhaps they have the ability to graft foreign lifeforms to themselves, in order to replicate it. Like a Skrellian Diona, who is adapted to aquatic flora, has blue blood and synthesizes Dyn. Again, this really opens the floodgates for new Dionae subspecies, if the team chooses to do so - one can choose to specialize towards plants or fungi, a bit of both, or something new entirely. This will also hopefully prevent retconning past lore, just with a few minor adjustments.
-
Changing to being fungi-based is a really drastic and fundamental change to the well-established identity of Dionae. Being plant-based symbiotes with fungi would achieve similar results proposed in the document, while still preserving their plant based origins. A more fungi-focused version of Dionae would work better additively as a sub-species, rather than a complete replacement.