Kaed

Most likely I will, but that will be lower priority behind getting the round antagonist to work properly. Extra bells and whistles are to be added once the meat of the code is done. The way I'm imagining it, a 'victim' is not chosen until the moment the meme steps through the 'start' portal thing. This will most likely not be something you opt into (you will only opt into being a meme), though I am tenuously thinking certain roles will be exempt from being a target, such as the loyalty implanted ones. The cognitohazard's 'control' over subject zero is extremely limited but we sort of have a standard in place that certain roles just aren't supposed to be involved with round-start antaggery. Let me know if you think this should be exempt from that. As for someone needing to cryo, good question. I think I will add a special exception to cryo code that will prevent someone from being deleted in a cryo tube if there is a cognitohazard currently infecting them, and also an adminverb that just reshuffles who the target of the cognitohazard is (including deleting the trigger item and spawning a new one in the new person's). This seems like the easiest and least fucky way to manage this. Just ask a staff member to press the New CH Host button and you get moved to someone else, problem solved. If there isn't a staff member online, I think you're just SoL. I can't really justify giving cognitohazards a 'rewrite causality' power on the player side, because they might start using it if they just don't like their host somehow, or to escape being in trouble.

Ignoring my speculatory things that you have explained, the fact remains that you, playing a short scientist skrell, actively chased down a 7 foot lizard who had just paralyzed you with an eye flash. We ran in circles there for almost 15 seconds before you finally got me, while I frantically tried to find the right power to click on to shut you down (a screech), but couldn't do so because I constantly had to be moving or you would stab me with the syringe. If you had stabbed me while I was attacking you, or maybe shot me with a syringe gun from a distance, I would feel this was even slightly valid, but you were hunting a larger individual down with unknown abilities with a chloral syringe largely because you knew, possibly on a tactical level level, that it would instantly shut me down and even if I attacked you afterwards, I would be helpless shortly after. This is my problem with it. Your character showed zero fear in the face of someone who was physically stronger than them, and chased me down in circles for an extended period of time, despite that in any logical circumstance, they would allow a dangerous criminal who had attacked them to leave. You did not even stop to go 'hey, leave or I'll sedate you, monster!', you just went straight to wordlessly opening two doors to start chasing me. I only knew to start running because I could see the syringe in your hand. This is almost textbook powergaming and dismissing roleplay for the sake of winning, putting your character in danger because you know one click will win you the fight. It's just about the same as rushing a person with a gun to chloral stab them because you know they won't be able to fire the gun enough to kill you before it paralyzes them.

Okay, so my first part of doing this is going to be making a 'starting point' for the cognitohazard to join the round. In that vein, I present to you the concept for the cognitohazard start area. Please keep in mind 100% of what is in this image is placeholders - all of it will have unique sprites more fitting for the antagonist, and it may even change shape over time. But here's how it works. This ares is called 'Conceptual Space' and exists on the centcomm layer. The cognito hazard 'spawns' here as a sort of glowing ball of light or something, and in the first room, a number of objects will surround you. They will allow you to pick your thematic nature and what your 'trigger object' looks like. There will be an array of technological, supernatural, junk/trash, and innocent objects to pick from. This object will come up later. You will select one by floating up and clicking on it. Once you do, the entrance to the next room will open. You will not be able to leave the room without picking a thematic object design. The next room is where you will choose your memetic trigger phrase. There will be some sort of object in this room you can interact with, and it will let you pick what your phrase is when you spread. Please keep in mind that admins WILL be informed of the phrase you have chosen, and will (probably) slap you if you pick something stupid/OOC/immersion breaking. Fortunately, you can change it as many times as you like using said object. Once you decide on a phrase, about 30 seconds later, the entrance to the last area will open. This will be a a simple portal of sorts. You float into it, and the round starts officially. You will be linked to a randomly selected crewmember as your 'patient zero'. You are now invisible and all the stuff mentioned earlier in the thread is now in effect. This individual also has a small trigger object placed into their bag or pocket or some available space. This is implied to be the object that they picked up somewhere that they forgot about until now that caused them to be infected with your cognitohazard. It will also have the same sprite as your selection from room 1 of Conceptual Space. It is in no way linked to you. Destroying it does not destroy you, and while I might allow it to be studied, it only exists to provide a causal link to how you infected them. I might also create an event so that people 'discover items at the bottom of their pack' randomly, to create false-flag cognitohazards, so that people don't immediately metagame it any time an object appears in their possession they don't remember having before, much the way bluescreened APCs used to be.

Still got this in planning.

Tail attachments, obvs

BYOND Key: Kaedwuff Game ID: b1k-aJgf Player Byond Key: Simfanatic Staff involved: Garnascus Reason for complaint: This person plays a skrell scientist and they spent most of the round constantly powergaming. First, they planted themselves down in telescience and began using it to grab any injured person they could get hold of (with pinpoint accuracy that may or may not have been the result of using an ooc calculator), with careless disregard for whether anyone else wanted to participate in doing their job, like medical. Several times, I overheard them causing injuries with careless use of the device (at least one person lost a leg due to this and the skrell just shrugged this off as their own fault for not following his directions on where to stand after grabbing them without asking, and I myself was grabbed as part of said group surrounding an injured person when he interrupted it by yanking us en masse into telescience). Furthermore, they evidently saw their RD, who was the other vampire in the round besides me, draining someone's blood, and took that as an opportunity to quietly prepare a syringe full of chloral hydrate for later 'just in case' instead of reporting the situation to security or something. This lead to me attacking them later on in the round, failing to grab them, and while I was backing out, they rushed into the chem lab to grab that syringe then began actively chasing me (already a known murderer who had just paralyzed with with an eye flash) down, trying to stab me with the chloral syringe, before THEN calling security to collect me while I was paralyzed. (After uttering the very unskrellish sounding phrase "Get fucked!" or something along those lines, but that's a lore consideration more than anything) Later, after the RD enthralled them, they shortly after went AFK, and were unable to respond to admin PMs when garn finally came back to respond. This may or may not have been a result of rage quitting the game after 'losing' to the other vampire, I don't know. I also haven't seen them before this round, but some of the other players reported that this 'solo operative' behavior he has is not a new occurrence. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes. Garn was afk at the original time of the ahelp, and did not respond until the end of the round, when the player in question had afked.

Yeah but humans shouldn't get to be as special as all the others. Did they go through a whitelist to get to play? No, they just got their language handed to them in a small loan of a less than million years of culture in this sci-fi setting. Also, as the primary species of the server, there is more reason for the xenos to learn their languages for better communication, and the station isn't even IN the sol system, so most crewmembers would have had to learn it anyway.

Finished the PR. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/6372

Humans don't have tails.

Let's be honest, the way that you put them on the station is a little bland jackboot. They've got all this tech that they supposedly invented but almost none of it is usable because you said so, because you want to 'encourage them to interact with people'. That's all people do all day playing this game. Why create the rich back story and lore for this species if none of it almost none if it is going to be used so you can shove this conflict down their throat. Telling people all these cool things Aut'akh can do but that they don't get to do 'because I want them to be friendly and outgoing'. If you had started out by giving them access to the Mesh and something happened that took it away from them maybe the players would care more. But you're expecting people to role-play caring about something they've never had, and experienced no sense of loss for, just because you wrote down on a piece of paper that their character's supposed to want it. The lore and gameplay segregation gulf is too large. It's like saying that a character is addicted to heroin, but there's no heroin accessible on the station that they can strive for or struggle to obtain. They just kind of once in awhile say gosh I really wish I had some heroin then move on.

The idea of 'gud coder points' is sort of interesting, but I feel like it would be kind of turnoff to fresh contributors. I don't want to necessarily drive people away by forcing them to eat their brussels sprouts before they can get their dessert, but I would like to try and encourage a mindset of taking a few minutes to to at least sift through code and see where instances of the thing you changed shows up, and consider whether you need to add stuff into those spots or revise them to avoid bugs. Like... making sure that your steak is fully cooked before you eat it. Food analogies. I think the problem that is causing so many bugs is that new people have a very myopic viewpoint on submitting PRs. They know a thing they want to change and they focus specifically on changing that thing, without investigating what and where said thing is used. This 'checklist' sort of behavior would also help people understand the structure of the code a little better even if they aren't trying to change it all at once.

Literally in no part anywhere that I posted in this thread have I indicated that this object has anything to do with occult influences. In fact, the only time I even try to explain it I use the term 'bluespace' and 'boloneymancy' (which is a joking term more than an indication it has anything to do with magic). You do not have to understand how it works when it is using existing scifi logic of bluespace to telegib everyone on the station. And the fact of the matter is that blowing up the station is not a sustainable action in the code. You cannot cause an explosion that deletes the whole station without grinding the server to a halt. The only thing you will ever be able to do is just make everyone drop dead in a completely intact station. Additionally, as other people have pointed out in this thread, a nuclear weapon is not going to be as effective in space, especially positioned in a room at the top of the station where most of its energy will be vented upwards into space instead of down through multiple walls and floors in a whole lot of rock. The reason why people think a nuke is so deadly and strong is because we only have context for that in a modern setting. It's the most powerful weapon the average layman can imagine as a real thing. This is because most people do not know much about science. For instance, that the most powerful bomb currently imaginable by our understanding of science uses superradiant scattering, not nuclear fission. Not that I'm saying that this particular object needs to be grounded in science, I'm fully aware it's a piece of sci-fi nonsense that is mostly an excuse rather than a full explanation. And I think that you are putting too much thought into what captains are going to need to understand. All that really matters is that the captain's are aware that activating this device will kill everyone and everything on this station. That is the sum of the knowledge that captains need. They don't have to feel emotionally invested in the concept of the weapon as something that they understand. In fact it actually makes it a little more interesting if there's this mysterious superweapon right above their office that they were told will kill everything if they activate it, but they have no context for what it is or how it works. They can be scared of it as an unknown instead of just blandly thinking of it as a big bomb. The average baldie does not need to know there is a bomb on the station, or a superweapon. They are not even supposed to. Their ability to understand it is irrelevant. All they need to know is the captain is telling everyone he's very sorry for what he's about to do and that you're all going to die. And the difference between this and the Death Squad is it doesn't take a half hour or more to finish while they hunt everyone down so they can murderbone them, and we can move the fuck on with our lives. Definitely a step up in my opinion. We can either keep having an excuse mechanic (everyone drops dead on a non-exploded station) or get an excuse plot device that actually functions as described in on the server. I'd rather have the latter.

I've noticed a few PRs over the last month where someone adds in a new feature without doing anything to tidy up consequences with their PR, such as completely screwing up balance without adding anything new, (Ala the late LordFowl PR about removing borgs and doing literally nothing else to compensate) and just recently had to do some cleanup after the pen-clicking PR caused all children of the pen object, such as chalk or crayons, to also click like pens. I also recently put through a PR that severely reduced the damage of spears and pikes, which were apparently flat out ported in without any consideration to what was actually written there potentially causing problems. If someone is going to contribute code we need to start encouraging them to have a better idea of what they are doing and the consequences of their code changes instead of just chuckling and pushing through the latest meme PR because it's funny unless someone points out the problems to them in the PR thread. It was only a couple of lines of code to fix the chalk clicking bug and the ridiculous damage of diamond/plasteel spears, but the problem could be a lot more difficult to fix the next time a poorly thought out PR change is put through because no one took the time to sit down and study the effects of it on the rest of the code or the game balance. It might even go unnoticed for months if it's something obscure and rarely used in-game. For instance, it took months after someone added in telegibbing before we discovered it was possible for ninjas to telegib people they have in a grab with proper positioning. There's still a bug report up about that, sitting there unfixed. Presumably because no one really knows how. And we still have situations on station where it's too dangerous to use some of the default teleport beacons on the map because they're too close to mapped in windows and objects that can telegib you completely out of your control. Important questions we should be having during a PR (and probably more): Does the object I modified to have new features have children in the code, and is this new feature appropriate for those children? Do I know what all the values of this item actually are, if it's pulling information from other parts of the code that aren't right in front of me? Have I considered what removing/adding this feature might do to gameplay balance or am I acting purely out of frustration for something that happened in a round? Do I actually know everything that is going to be affected by this change, or am I just assuming? It's great that we have an open source community where anyone can contribute, but we need to be a little more responsible about what we put forward.

This is already a thing in the game, and it's incredibly lag heavy. It's so lag heavy that spawning it makes the game stop processing deleted objects because the processor can't keep up with it once it starts going. In other news relevant to this concept, behold! With the assistance of @SmallGreenAnt, we've come up with a design prototype for the new auth disk. No longer will it be a 1980's bright green floppy disk, but rather a mysterious NT branded dongle object of unknown purpose, with little code scrolls and warning symbols. What do you guys think?

What's wrong with jury rigged lasers?

Then I choose to voice my opinion that I don't think any of these 'optional additions to the server' need to be added. I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by presenting these works then acting extremely snobby to any negative feedback here. I don't think you really understand what it means to sell something to people. You certainly aren't obligated to change your vision just because others don't agree with it, but when your response is to self-importantly tell people that 'you don't care what they think, your artistic vision is all that matters', you're not going to gain much support from them. Your art doesn't deserve a pedestal or a place on anyone's fridge just because you think you deserve it. You claim to not be trying to sell anyone this update, but by putting it out there as a reform to what we currently have, with phrases like I intend to remake every single uniform and a lot of the other clothing (jackets, hats, ect) in my own image, you are tacitly putting forward that you want people to accept your vision for the uniforms over others. You can't do that then act like you're above the opinions of the masses and will only listen to what you want to hear. So I have to say again that between the lower quality of the sprites and your unpleasant attitude, I don't want this work being associated with the server. I don't think you should change them. I think you should just stop, take a step back, and re-evaluate what you are doing here and how you are behaving. Yes, I'm only one voice, but you are picking fights with multiple other people at the same time, having to make multiple posts just to cover them all. If you think learning how to be diplomatic is entirely irrelevant when you are presenting work to people, then I do not think you are going to get very far in an artistic career, even outside of voluntary spriting for this server. You also make a lot of broad assumptions here that seem to be based on opinions that I don't share, like that the corporate uniform I enjoy is 'the symbol of shitsec', and that mining has 'the worst uniforms, but it doesn't matter because no one sees them'. I don't agree with either of these things. I think corporate uniforms look crisp and handsome, and I like looking good while I work as security, instead of like an ugly mall cop. Shitty roleplayers will exist regardless of what they wear, and you are placing an irrational amount of weight on something you don't like as a cause for behavior you don't like. Your desire for feedback on what you have created indicates that everyone would enjoy your work if you just modified it a bit, but you reject any modification suggestions that your extremely specific vision doesn't agree with, so what is really the point of even giving you feedback?

I strongly disagree with this. If you're going to introduce something new it needs to be as good or better. Introducing something new that is worse is a bad step to take and it's just change for the sake of change. Most of what I've seen so far is not a step forward. Both in the blandness of the uniforms and the sulky defensiveness displayed by the OP. The old uniforms may not be the best looking things that we have, but they are well-drawn, a lot of them have shading and contrast to them. They feel like adequate simulations of a 3D object. Most of these sprites appear to be two dimensional. It's evident that the spriter here is not extremely skilled, but is doing the best they can. It's nice that they took the time to make the sprites, but effort put forward does not automatically make something worth adding in regardless of its own merits or lack thereof. I personally am strongly against streamlining appearance of characters to be only one certain way. The removal of uniform options it's a step down from what we currently have. There is also very little respect given to the thematic nature of colors in this game. It appears that the intention is to make uniforms look like generic sci-fi uniforms rather than space station 13 uniforms. On several occasions you have all but thrown away the color themes that make things distinctive, such as mining having purple, and security having black and blue. This is a good start, but I think you need to make some more polish to these uniforms and listen to feedback from players.

It's not about the number of z-levels itself, per se. It's the amount of simulated terrain in the server's limited memory. A layer that is entirely space tiles (which are unsimulated terrain) is barely even there as far as memory usage. Aurora is already so large that they are pretty close to the memory cap. Adding new layers full of things without removing things from other layers is not really much of an option.

Wait, they replaced the derelict with this? I thought it was just a new feature.

Wow, is this what it's like from the outside when I post a snarky, passive aggressive comment because I don't like what someone said. My eyes have been opened. Moving aside from that, what do you want telescience to do to be more relevant? This new content was added with the intention of it only being able to read reached with a certain method. There doesn't need to be any connection between tele science and Away missions. So what would make it more relevant to you?

It is kind of a pointless money sink to have to buy them in rounds, so seems reasonable to me to have the library have them. But don't think you've fooled me! I see your secret agenda to try and make the librarian relevant again! How dare you try to change our librarian status quo of sadly sitting alone in the library for a half hour before cryoing or AFKing

We have had this argument on multiple occasions, generally on discord, and in every situation you have failed to accept the answers I give you as to your satisfaction. It's not that I don't want to dignify you with a response, it's that I just don't have an interest in recycling an old disagreement where you tell me I'm a horrible human being multiple times and demand I acknowledge your accusations. It goes nowhere, and eventually I tell you that I have stopped caring about what you think about me and you get angry and storm off. No, I don't think I'm toxic, but you already know this, because you've asked me similar questions to this before. It's also a meaningless statement, because generally people do not take actions they think are irrational or unjustified unless they are actively malicious. You have also accused me of this before, alongside statements like 'you are a troll'. I don't recall ever coming onto this forum thinking 'how can I upset a person today?', but the question of whether I think I am 'toxic' is irrelevant, because I'm not the one who is going to determine that. Neither are you. I don't think it's any doubt that I have some anger issues and problems dealing with them, but generally speaking, I don't think that they're worthy of 'being removed from the community'. I have cut down on/ceased directly insulting people, and while I have a tendency to be sarcastic and snark, I have yet to, say, quit the staff team in a rage and make a post where I insult the entire community at large in a vitriolic post. There's people still on this forum who have done that, in fact, and are welcome still here.

I think that being drawn into an argument over an extremely subjective matter such as that ("Are you denying that you are toxic despite the evidence" is already and extremely loaded and leading question. Whether this constitutes actual actionable evidence is not up to people outside of the staff team) is not something I need to be doing right now. You and I in particular already have a history of being at odds with each other on multiple occasions, Scheveningen, so your input is far from impartial on this matter. If there is a staff member or someone that actually is a decider in this issue that would like to address these stated issues or ask me questions, I'd be happy to answer them. There has already been one flat out insult directed at me that a mod deleted, and there is no reason for this to turn into a kangaroo court. If someone has more items (such as posts where I was rude to someone, not accusatory questions or speculatory insights into my character) they would like to present as evidence, feel free to do so.

It's fairly easy to make things look worse than they actually are when you cherry pick pieces of a conversation and then provide your own context to make things seem as rude as possible. For instance, that bit about 'indulging you' does not include the multiple post exchange I had with Conspiir where he continually insisted that I make up a plot and lore on the spot for the subject of the suggestion thread, was unsatisfied with my 'idk bluespace?' answer, despite multiple people including myself basically going 'dude it's not that important' until he flat out demanded I give him what he wanted and I snapped at him in that fashion. After that, he seemed to realize he was being kind of pushy and explain that there had been a misunderstanding about what he was trying to communicate with me, and we had a much more amicable conversation in the rest of the thread. You can't just fixate on a single part of a long post and try to blow up it's context to make it sound like I'm being snobby towards the community at large. And I don't even remember some of these posts or the contexts of where they came from. How far back are you digging, exactly? Some of these sound like they are coming from my moody 'the server is doomed no one cares about the lore or anymore why should I even try' phase which was some time ago last year. And one of them was even directly referring to a screenshot someone posted of an item they wanted in the game, I think? And I'm pretty sure 'Thanks, I hate it" is literally an internet meme that is used comedically when you see something you don't like, but I'm no... memeologist.. or anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure aside from the one about the Molecular Destabilizer thread, none of these are even from this year. If these posts were actionable at the time, and upset someone, they should have been reported? If I have been such a consistantly toxic influence on the community, there would be a lot more examples of my toxicity, and they would be more recent. As someone who has well over a thousand posts on this form, there is a plethora of things I have posted at other people.

It's incredibly easy to disable/destroy him already, and he's not even tracked by any system so he could just vanish and no one would notice. It's like worrying that might tie you up, when plenty of people out there are ready to kill you just because you're in the way. He's largely a joke relic of the past in any case. I don't think worrying about nerfing beepsky should be a concern in this thread.