jackfractal

It would seriously limit traitors and other ne'er-do-wells. Hiding in a locker is one of the few ways to escape the AI. This would not be a small change.

I've got to redo a lot of character creator stuff for my Shell project (still need a better name). If Skull doesn't get too it, I'll check it out.

Yus! I will have something to show later tonight.

Hmm... a few more off the top of me head, Residential Farming Mining Wormhole Jump Gate (they're stations, right?) Dry Dock Entertainment and Recreation (space disney world!) Storage and Resupply Manufacturing Energy Production (mass solar cells) Accidental (space hulks)

Totally! I credited you in the other post but not here. My apologies, this was Nik's idea. I've tried to make it clear, but people keep thinking that the synthetic skin will be obligatory or something. That is not the case. You will still be able to look like an IPC, you will be able to have a posibrain and you will have absolutely identical mechanics (with the possibility that taking damage will scratch your paint). This is adding options, not taking any way. Big TV head robots guys are sticking around. Have no worries.

Tossed up the current implementation plan for 'shells'. I'm going to hold off on doing threads about the other two. I don't want to over promise, and the IPC modification gives the greatest bang for my development bucks. I'm still really not sold on that name by the way. Someone please come up with something better.

So I pitched this big lore change for synthetics over here and I mentioned that there would be a few mechanical changes to make the whole deal work better. Strictly speaking, none of these mechanical changes are necessary for the lore to work, but they are what I was thinking while I was writing the lore, and I do intend on implementing them, so I thought I’d write them out. I mentioned three big ones, IPC’s becoming ‘Shells’, laws being attached to brains and not to bodies, and an AI access code system. After thinking about this, I think the IPC modification is the most important of the three, and gives the greater return on investment, so that’s the one I’ve written out below and is the one I intend to start working on. IPC’s Become ‘Shells’ I’m still not entirely sold on the name, but the idea is that the mechanics for IPC's will be absorbed by something called ‘Shells’. Shells will have identical mechanics to an IPC. The same overheating, the same mechanical bodies, with a few cosmetic changes. You will be able to pick the kind of brain that exists inside the artificial body. The choices are a posibrain (like existing IPC’s) or an MMI containing a brain from one of our sapient species (whitelisting required as appropriate). You will be able to pick whether or not your character has paint (each body part will be paintable individually), no paint (bare metal), or has synthetic skin, fur, or scales. You will be able to pick whether or not your character has a tail. You will be able to pick your head, with a variety of non-television options. If you have synthetic skin on your head, you will be able to define hair and eyes like you would an organic character Synthetic skin will also be an option for organic characters with artificial limbs. Shells with synthetic skin will be clearly identified in Examine as non-organics. The technology isn’t flawless yet. Synthetic skin (and paint) will take damage as the limb takes damage. Repairing the limb will not necessarily repair the synthetic skin or paint. You’ll need a repair items from robotics to do that. Shell bodies will be constructable on station, though they will be more expensive to build than tool-robots. Why do this? In addition to the rule of cool, there are a number of people already playing full replacement cyborgs with synthetic skin. This will allow those people to match the game mechanics to their fluff. I think it will also inspire some interesting new characters, and provide a lot more visual variety for our synthetic crew members. This will also allow IPC’s to be rebuilt when they're killed, and also let robotics to build entirely new crewmembers from posibrains, much like botany does with diona. In addition, it will provide a viable alternative to cloning for organic crewmembers, which will offer some interesting roleplaying opportunities. How expensive is this to implement? Creating new IPC heads and adding the option to spawn the different kinds of brains is very easy. Making the synthetic skin and paint work properly will be more challenging, as the code for robotic organs is very weird. Rather than being a subclass, the functionality for robotic organs contaminate regular organ code all over the place. It’s very frustrating. Due to byond’s awkward lack of mixin classes, I expect I’ll have to tear out all the biological info for organs into a separate parallel datum called ‘tissue’, and then make generic organ objects that defer functionality to their tissue’s. That’s going to be time consuming and prone to bugs, but would ultimately allow us to easily implement new organ types. One could create crystal, nanomaterial, or energy organs easily with such a system, using a minimal amount of code. Another advantage to this would be to allow for variable quality robotic organs, or organs with special properties.

I like this idea. I would like it more if you could give your little brain-parasite pets new powers and abilities based on what slime cores you inject them with.

Hey! Thanks everyone who likes this. Glad to know you feel that I wasn't completely off track. To answer some questions and concerns. @DeathlySoul: How will the existence of access codes change things for the station-bound synthetics like the AI and cyborgs? Very little! The AI and the round-start Cyborgs and Androids will start with the full set of access codes like usual. The limitations on access codes will be mostly relevant for androids/shells/cyborgs/pAI's who are created on station during a round, or for Shells/IPC's who decide to acquire a binary modem. I'll open a thread about this later, but the basic idea is 'If you don't get law-synced, you don't get full access.' @TheCritsyBear: Wait, all my existing IPC characters won't look like robots anymore? No! No no no no no! They will. It's just that they will have additional cosmetic options. You will still be able to choose to look like a totally robot-lookin' big-tv-head IPC-type guy. That is still totally a thing you will be able to do. That is a cool thing and I definitely don't want to get rid of that. You will just have the option of having different kinds of non-TV heads, different kinds of brains, variable paint jobs, and synthetic skin. If you choose synthetic skin, you will be able to look like a squishy human (or fluffy Tajaran, or scaley Unathi), but that is not required. I will also open a thread about this later. @Xanderdox: This idea would invalidate the plan I had for a future event. Eeeeh... kinda? You mentioned two days ago that the event involved the government of Beisel replacing their police force with IPC's. That's still totally a thing that can happen, they'd just be 'police robots' rather than 'police IPC's'. The same event can still work. I think.

Webcams are not a necessary feature of voice-rp. I play a sizable number of rpg's over voice-chat and webcams are used extremely seldom.

Might be possible to put a fizzle or visual feedback for a second or two before a generator shuts off.

So! Yesterday I made a bunch of criticism in Xander's 'Law-bound IPC' thread and someone asked me if I could explain what I was actually arguing for, instead of just poking holes in other people's ideas. I... realized I didn't know, so today I spent some time and wrote a proposal for the history and current taxonomy of artificial life. You can find it here.

I am really liking this one, the warden's office in particular, but I'm not sure the rest of security would appreciate those windows

Ah, my bad. Reading comprehension fail. As you were.

This is the syndi-bot by another name. My experience with syndicate robots is that tend to be extremely lethal, no matter how nerfed. We don't have a good way of partitioning system access for synthetics on this server either. This means that a syndi-drone would have station-wide access unless someone wanted to rewrite the entire ai_action system. That system does need a rewrite, but it'd be a bit of a job...

Can I recommend Atomic Robo as the system? It's not super complicated, and it has awesome SCIENCE related shenanigans.

Those are some dapper unathi FilthyFrankster. Love your lineart, very subtle.

And RAID, to kill the danged little bastards.

They could have evolved from a species that has complete protein manufacturing capabilities. We need to eat protein because we can't produce the eight essential amino acids, and we're either bad at, or unable, to produce most vitamins as well. If the skrell biosphere evolved from creatures who had cell architecture capable of producing the protein building blocks that they needed entirely from simple components (common sugars for example) then the entire biosphere would be able to eat... pretty much anything. I haven't really thought through all the implications of that, but it would make their biosphere very unusual to human eyes as extreme specialization would not be an advantage in most cases. An alternative, if we wanted to go with the bio-luminescence idea, the skrell could host beneficial bacterial colonies throughout their body (which is where the bio-luminescence would come from) and those bacteria colonies could be the ones that balance their nutrition. Like human gut fauna, but more distributed throughout their body. They could even have a sort of paired cell structure. Skrell cells and bacteria cells could be linked in some way, much like how our mitochondria are single-celled organisms that were either eaten by or invaded our ancient single-celled ancestors and just stuck around in a symbiotic relationship. We keep them safe and provide them a home, and they produce ATP which we need to power our chemical factories.

..But organs don't have a tech origin. They can if we want 'em too...

Hmm. Well this went in a direction I didn't anticipate. I suppose I should have been more careful with the title. I guess this can be a general 'stuff I miss' thread, but I was really talking about "This was a cool thing that happened recently, but I didn't get the whole story and would like to know more." A place for fruitful questions and multiple perspectives, not really for laments. Ah well.

There are times, lots of times, where I am on station and I am doing my thing, and I can tell that something cool is happening just around the corner. But I miss it. I'm busy, or I'm doing something else, or it zooms by too fast in the radio chatter, and all I'm left with is this fleeting impression that something interesting flickered past me in the dark. So this thread is to ask people about those things that you missed. This isn't a place for acrimony or argument. This isn't a place to ask 'Why did you do this?' or 'Why didn't you do that! Argh!' That's what the complaint boards are for. This is a place to ask people, "Hey! I thought this thing you were doing was really cool. Can you tell me more about that?" I'll go first. To Whomever Played Centurion in the MALF round on May 28th, 2015, the one where the Red Queen tried to hijack the ERT's shuttle, I thought your characters search for 579233 was really cool, and I really wanted to ask about it, but I was run right off my feet the entire round and I never got the chance. What was all that about? I want to know more. - Jack

*waves the flag here one last time*

The brig is still impenetrable. It's nice, and probably how I'd design something if my goals were to really prevent people from escaping, but escaping is very important to this game. It is too difficult already, and this will make it nearly impossible to do with stealth or subtlety. The only way I can see for springing someone is to burn/bomb your way in through the visitation area, but you'd better time it almost perfectly because the AI can lock you out of the brig proper with the airlock. Even then, there's nowhere to run without having to cover an enormous amount of distance. If you're a newcop and you're trying to get a captured team member out into the relative safety of space, this map makes that pretty much impossible without disabling security entirely.

@Rusty You favor Option B I see. @Eliot. And you like the 'add additional capabilities' option. That's usually the more interesting one, but it's also much more expensive in terms of production time, and, of course, some people will hate it.