MalMalumam

@Zundy Something like this?

@TrainTN There's actually two soda dispensers; one's turned around backwards, by the door. The one inside the kitchen is for chefs who feel like pouring their reagents into those chemical cartridges I laid out next to it, and using that soda fountain as an impromptu Cooking Dispenser. In re: the private rooms, I originally went with material doors, but then I thought it'd be cool to have lockable doors, like the toilets, so I made them into airlocks. (Can't lock windoors/material doors.) But the curtains are a cool idea! The bar is a bit squished, yeah, but so is the current bar : P The north counter is to provide a place that's out of line-of-sight (and thus line-of-hearing) of the southernmost row of barstools, per @kyres1. How would it feel if it had red carpet instead of blue carpet? And a dedicated liquor cabinet is an excellent idea! Thankee : ) Don't worry, I've put emergency doors around everything; the railings will stop the flow of objects. Though admittedly an open-air concept will have a bit more trouble with breaches. @furrycactus Those solid chunks (along with the color scheme in total, I think?) were actually @Happy_Fox's idea. I'll experiment with it and post the results in the discord. In re: botany as a straight line- I actually got feedback from a couple hydroponics players saying they really preferred having it be a straight line; it's easier to work that way, instead of having to go in an awkward circle like it is currently. And uh... yeah it was kind of an afterthought as to where to put it : P I knew I wanted the diner to be where hydro is now, so by necessity hydro has to be somewhere else. I could try raiding the old bar's space in maintenance to "flatten" the kitchen or diner and give some more vertical room to hydro, or I could get rid of some of the private rooms for the same thing. I could also bulge out hydro into the hallway a bit. I can't expand it south without going into disposals, though there is some unused space in maintenance south of the east side of hydro I could scavenge... hmm... In re: the stage: from what I understand, the stage is basically not used at all. I've certainly never seen anyone use it. I actually tried to make what is currently the game room a stage, but that was shot down because "no one ever uses the stage, and we have the holodeck anyways for that." And since the hub of social activity - the bar/diner - will be literally right next to the holodeck this way, I think the "we have a holodeck anyways" argument is stronger. Seating for the holodeck just means picking up a (bar)stool and walking on over with it, or using the holo-seating available in certain programs. It is a little sad that it's not a big square rectangular room for big huge celebrations, but again... holodeck. If needs truly must, the western section of the diner could have its freestanding walls and railing torn down to make way for a Christmas decoration : ) @Zundy Definitely could turn some of the private rooms/the game room/spare table set/etc. into something like that! Kinda like the merchant, but on-station? I remember on Paradise an assistant or something would do kind of the same thing, taking up the vacant office and hawking their illegally acquired wares. (Vox Trader, perhaps?) In any case, I feel it's a bit beyond the scope of what I'm capable of doing at the moment, though in the future someone else could definitely modify them : D

Updated main post with additional resources, mostly focused on MIDIs.

Updated pic since last time .

@DanseMacabre Honestly I think the songs we have are either good, or we shouldn't remove from the codebase due to how iconic the songs are. (Or they aren't implemented anywhere, but may be used for events, I guess? IDK.) But even just compressing the main jukebox+recordplayer songs has given us 20MB. Compressing the songs using my method is a given IMO since it doesn't degrade quality in way I can notice. I listened to each one. (Though I didn't listen to each ambience I altered.)

@Carver If the admins find my size-reduction PR acceptable, then it definitely shouldn't, and we may end up with a smaller resource file if not all the space made is used up. MIDIs can be pretty darn small, like 10-50KB (though they can be larger). Sticking to that size, we could easily fit 20 songs in a single megabyte.

With the hopefully-maybe-being-merged-at-some-point diner I'm submitting to the github, I felt like it would be really cool to add some new music to the jukebox. There's very few songs on it, and even fewer on the phonograph. The primary constraint is file size - every time a new piece of music is included, players have to download it into their cache. I've made a pull request to shave about 25 megabytes off of the Aurorastation cache; if that gets accepted, we'll have room for some more songs. That being said - I wanted to ask, do people think that we should have new songs in the jukebox? And which songs should be included? What sort of music or genres should be available in the bar/diner's jukebox? Important things to keep in mind: File size. We generally want to convert all music to .ogg (vorbis) format, as these are the most compact recording files that BYOND can read (occasionally mp3 beats it, but not often from my experience). My approach is to download and install Audacity, import (File->Import...) the music I want to compress, change the bitrate down to 22050 if it's higher than that (Project Bitrate in the lower left hand corner), and export it (File->Export...) as .ogg (vorbis), using quality option 0. Depending on the song, this can get 1-4 minutes of music packed into a megabyte, with basically no quality loss. It is quite possible to get smaller file sizes, and feel free to experiment with e.g. 8000 bitrates, but be aware that it will generally degrade the quality at least to a small degree. But the smaller the file is, the less of a burden it is to include it, so... The other option is to use chiptune-style file formats. The ones that BYOND can read are .midi, .mid, .mod, .it, .s3m, .xm, and .oxm. These don't record an entire song in its entirety, but just have an arrangement of notes (and sometimes instrument sound sets). These are the stuff that those atrocious violin and piano "songs" are made of, but they are also capable of producing quite good-working songs- for example, one already in the game, clouds.s3m (attachments), or this .midi of "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean that I plugged into the jukebox in my test server and recorded (attachments.) Licensing. We must ensure that the song we want to include has a license that lets us do so. From what I understand, this means it is public domain, is under one of several kinds (but not all) of Creative Commons licenses, or that the artist has given permission for its reuse. The licensing information needs to be submitted with the music so that we can record it in the licensing file in the music folder So with all that - what do you think? Got some (low-file-size) songs you'd like to include? Submit them here! Helpful resources for finding songs that have compatible licenses: Reddit: A List of Royalty Free Music : letsplay Reddit: What are your fav free royalty free music sites/artists? : Filmmakers Reddit: List of Free Music Resources: NoCopyrightMusic View by License search for .mod files A collection of public domain jazz recordings Sim Gretina, who licenses their work under an attribution license. The phonograph already uses some of their work. A composer's collection of royalty-free music they made. A database of public domain songs. The Mutopia Project, a collection of a couple thousand songs' sheet music, available in MIDI. This article mentions some websites that have compatible licenses with their MIDIs. Some other web sites with royalty-free music. EDIT 9/24: more resources below! Three cool real-music open-license websites: https://prosearch.tribeofnoise.com/search/index https://freemusicarchive.org/ https://publicdomain4u.com/public-domain-genres/ Classical music MIDIs: http://www.jsbach.net/midi/ I found a bunch of ... very old websites with original MIDIs on them that *may* be usable...? Ask if you want the list of them; I have them bookmarked. All original music from here is free to use. http://www.mightymidi.com/ Public domain MIDI songs. Might be able to find some other music on this website too. https://opengameart.org/content/original-midi-album These MIDIs are published under CC 3.0 NC SA: http://fredrikj.net/music/ https://milkytracker.org/downloads/ A vast collection of websites, many of which may or may not work: http://www.synthzone.com/midifile.htm Another reference website: http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/PublicDomainMusic.html An AI program you can use to generate your own MIDIs by prompting it with samples (copyright status uhh... ...?) https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ Attribution-only license MIDIs: https://patrickdearteaga.com/arcade-music/ Yet another reference website: https://libguides.libraries.wsu.edu/creativecommons/audio And another: https://inspiredpublic.com/audio/ I... think these could be used for our purposes...? http://funkyremixes.com/ Compositions released under CC BY 4.0: https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/2015/01/my-music-library-is-now-licensed-under-cc-by-4-0-that-means-free-for-commercial-use-youre-welcome/ One more reference website for the pile: https://www.musicoutfitters.com/soundimage.htm By manually typing in "midi" into the tag= in the search bar, I got the tag search on this website to find the midi files here (under public domain): http://beta.ccmixter.org/stems?tags=midi A good chunk of this guy's music is made free under Creative Commons: https://soundcloud.com/stevenobrien/ hesapirate.ogg clouds.s3m

Here's how it's going so far:

How often do players have to download the music? Only every time they clear their cache? And I'm sure we can find songs without licensing issues (CC, public domain, permission). I managed to get a 4 minute song that Quill on the discord (don't know their forum name) posted, that's free to use, down to 1.2 MB. @Arrow768

Here's an update of how I've been doing it, in conversations with others on discord.

Wonder if I should add more music to the jukebox? Like this playlist? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puM1k-S86nE&list=PL6ZqmjFrOgyGWWwKQEQG280qOJsmyyWwy&index=4 Or perhaps some of the Fallout 3-NV-4 music? Just imagine Big Iron playing...

Another idea, after feedback from Ferner and Jade.

It's heavily in progress, but here's how the diner is going so far.

@niennab It does feel like that a bit, yeah, but then again one could argue the same for basically anything related to mapping before NBT. It'll be several months-ish before NBT comes out, anyways, and we'll be playing on the Aurora during that time.

Would it also make sense to move the "opening" of the bar/kitchen onto the central hallway ring, where Hydroponics is currently, so that it's more visible and also closer to the holodeck?

For reference, this is the bar and kitchen area, with everything cleared out of it and the walls made square:

@TronHoward It could! Or it could also not. Just depends. @ThelonTV Sure, it could have that. I'd have to learn how conveyor belts work, but that's okay.

I'm considering mapping out a combined bar and kitchen, so that there's just one place for bored people to RP people to congregate in, instead of two. What would you like to see in such a rework? Suggestions I've heard or thought of so far: A proper club, with a dance floor Bar with no seats A proper restaurant, with waitstaff and all - back kitchen, front register/desk, large seating area A line setup at the front desk, so people are encouraged to find a table and sit down EFTPOS being already setup 1x1 and 2x2 (or more?) tables A stage (and job slot(s)) for a proper entertainer (not memey clowns and mimes) with rails and custom lighting Customizable lighting (we have all these different colors of light tubes but they never get used : ( ) Edit: here's my map so far.

Sure! ...well, it's still all a fuzzy undefined idea in my head. But basically: -Adds a Solar Shuttle dock. Contains a Solar Shuttle, shuttle control console, teleporter keyed to the Solar Shuttle, bluespace power receiver, and grid SMES. -Adds Solar Shuttle. Generates power by getting really close to the sun with some super high tech solar panels, then teleports it back to the station's bluespace power receiver. Shuttle has a personal teleporter for workers to leave and enter it without having to recall it from the sun.

I should clarify, there would be a receiving relay on the station's side, which would tie into a grid SMES, which sends out to the rest of the station as normal. I'd be willing to try to code/sprite some/all of this out, though I'm a complete noob and it'd probably take me a long time. It's more of a personal project/idea/fantasy, if anything.

~ ~ Make Solars Great Again! ~ ~ I've been bouncing this around the discord for a while, but I thought I'd make a forum post to get more feedback. Basically, I wanted to buff solars. Not gonna lie. It seemed silly, given the phoron shortage, that we were relying on a source of power that was 100% phoron and also incredibly rare - the supermatter - with some sort of weird magic lightning ball (Tesla) as a backup (which might also be based on phoron), with solars as a puny last-ditch backup source. But the sun's rays are so weak way out in the Romanovich Cloud... to generate the same amount of power as the supermatter, you'd have to pave ten whole screens of the asteroid with them! ...But what if you could just get closer to the sun? You'd need less solar panels! ...What if you got, like, REALLY close? Enter the Bluespace Solar Shuttle! Using bleeding-edge advances in bluespace miniaturization, manipulation, and targeting, as well as advanced solar collection technology, this shuttle sidles right up next to your local star (relatively speaking - 2 million km at the nearest), and, thanks to the power of the inverse square law, taps some of the millions of watts per square meter of power that are otherwise just going to waste, and teleports it right back to the station! Sure, most of that power is used up to teleport the rest, but that leaves quite enough to rival the output of any supermatter engine. ahem... Anyway, here's a crappy diagram I made in Paint. The basic idea is: sunlight is focused by the big mirror onto the extended focusing prism and is routed through a many-layered prism. The prism separates out each wavelength of light, and directs each wavelength to its corresponding solar cell (technically, it's an "optical rectenna" - a different technology from the photovoltaic cell, which promises to replace them in today's world). The rectenna matrix makes electricity, which powers the shuttle's SMES, then the SMES for the personal teleporter, then the SMES for the power teleporter, and finally what's left over goes through the power teleporter to the station. The leftover light that couldn't be separated out or converted is reflected out through the exhausts. Since you'll be leaving the shuttle in orbit around the sun, you'll want to be able to teleport out of it (and back into, if needed). In terms of custom setups and tinkering, I have some ideas, but no idea which ones would work best. Distance to the sun, how extended the mirrors are, how finely tuned and targeted the bluespace power relay is to the station's receiving relay, which wavelengths you attune the separation prism to, how efficient you set the rectennas to, the SMESes themselves, what orbiting program you set the shuttle to, how you tune the station's receiving relay... there's a lot of options. Different parameters for different suns could be a thing, too, if the NBT folks think that's a good idea : ^ ) Catastrophic failure could be an option, consisting of perhaps maybe a malfunction in the teleporter causing a massive beam of light to tear the station in half, or mistargeting causing electrical storms to zap across the station, or random bluespace portals to start opening up and exposing parts of the station to vacuum... Of course, catastrophic failure could also just simply be "the shuttle blows up." Or maybe... no catastrophic failure, just failure to align...? Anyway! What do you think?

Perhaps you could make building combat mechs dependent on being in red alert?

I'm working on a PR to make drawing a cult rune much less obviously kooky : D I did try to suggest in the Cult wiki article that people should consider alternate objectives, such as mass conversion or sacrificing a certain target. But yeah, the combat/murder focus could be toned down. Maybe take a cue from Wizard spells - grow evil plants, a knock spell, mind swap, etc.

So here's all the events: Minor: APC Damage - no announcement Brand Intelligence Camera Damage - no announcement Economic News - appears in Tau Ceti Daily Lost Carp - minor carp migration Money Hacker - someone's account gets hacked and the money drained - HoP gets a notification on their requests console Money Lotto - announced in Tau Ceti Daily Mundane News - Tau Ceti Daily PDA Spam Wallrot Clogged Vents False Alarm Supply Drop - may or may not be announced - random loot crate or bluespace golem rune appears somewhere CCIA General Notice Lizard/rat infestation Moderate: Moderate carp migration Comms blackout "Ionospheric alert" Electrical storm Gravity Failure Grid Check Ion Storm (AI may get a new law, bots may get emagged) Meteor Shower Prison break Containment error - Xenobio Containment error - Bridge Radiation Storm Random Antag (not announced) Rogue Drone Moderate Spider Infestation Space bat/spiderling infestation Major: Blob Major carp migration Meteor wave Space vines Spider infestation Hivebot/slime infestation

I have found random events to be kind of dreary and repetitive, yeah. Might be worth removing them for a while just to see what people say and how people deal with it.