Away Site Mapping And You!

[Kintsugi]

Have you ever looked at the server and thought - Man. We don't have enough away sites and ships. And exoplanet ruins? Don't even get me started! It's a barren wasteland! 

Well, here's what you should do - map them yourself, and I'll add them for you! That's right, no coding necessary. Unless you want to learn. In that case, I'll help you. But if you're a humble soul who just wants to dip their toes into the contribution waters with the easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy contribution format of away site mapping, look no further - I'll teach you how to get started and I'll handle the rest when you're done.

First, you'll need two things.

1. A copy of the Aurorastation source code, downloaded at https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pulls

And

2. StrongDMM, a mapping program, downloaded at https://github.com/SpaiR/StrongDMM

All you need to do is extract both somewhere specific on your computer. I don't care. It's up to you! You just need to have them some place you won't delete them or something. Now you just have to:

Launch strongDMM

Click "File" in the upper left corner

Click "Open Environment"

Navigate to your extracted Aurora code

Open that folder

Click "aurorastation.dme" and open it. It'll look like this.

Then, once it has loaded:

Click "File" in the upper left corner

Click "Open Map"

Navigate to the maps folder, and then one of the subfolders, depending on what you want to map

Click a preexisting map

And use that as your base! You can delete it completely if you want. StrongDMM is very intuitive to use - the buttons here:

Are your selection modes

This

Is your environment tree, which contains all objects in the game. You can search for them to find specific things, or navigate through the tree - which will take much longer.

And this

Is your object selection and the variables preview. Variables are things like direction or special names or whatever. You'll figure them out as you go along.

From there, you can begin mapping! You can make full-blown away sites, or ships, or you can make exoplanet ruins, which can be very small - if you don't want to map anything big. Exoplanet ruins would be great right now, because we don't have any! If you have any specific questions, just DM me. And just remember - I'll add whatever you add to the game for you! No need to do it on your own.

When you're done with something, just click file - save as. You can always come back and work on it at a later date, too.

 

[WickedCybs]

I'd recommend trying engineering in order to get a feel for things mechanically, because a  bigpart of it is messing with the game map and fixing/improving/adding stuff. It'll also give a better understanding of power and atmos. Most away sites that aren't asteroid/planet ruins (though even some of those can use it) benefit from having a functioning power/atmos system.

[Kintsugi]

38 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

I'd recommend trying engineering in order to get a feel for things mechanically, because a  bigpart of it is messing with the game map and fixing/improving/adding stuff. It'll also give a better understanding of power and atmos. Most away sites that aren't asteroid/planet ruins (though even some of those can use it) benefit from having a functioning power/atmos system.

True. Having an away site or ruin with fully-fledged atmospherics or power systems would definitely set them apart from most of the ones we have atm

[Captain Gecko]

Now that's a tutorial I highly appreciate! I've been considering mapping for a while now. Thanks!

- I've got two questions now, one, we're speaking of having sites stand apart from others, it makes realize... What are the limits of what we can do? How out there some of these sites can be? And are we looking for specific things?

- Do these sites have to be ruins/derelict/other things to explore (IE a big dionae gestalt like we had on the Aurora as an away site) or can we also map more lively areas, sort of like the space bar and civilian station we currently have, even if it doesn't feature any ghost roles (could've been only recently abandonned for instance) ?

[Marlon P.]

Good guide +1

[Kintsugi]

12 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

I've got two questions now, one, we're speaking of having sites stand apart from others, it makes realize... What are the limits of what we can do? How out there some of these sites can be? And are we looking for specific things?

An away site can functionally be very simple or extremely complex. As for how "out there" they can be, I would stray from anything that is 1. overpowered or 2. immersion-unfriendly. There's no standard here to my knowledge but you're going to way things to be balanced and to be immersion-friendly. As for what "we're looking for", I can tell you that we do very much need exoplanet ruins - these spawn randomly on asteroids and planets and our lack of them is why we don't have exoplanets spawning and why the asteroids are so boring.

12 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

Do these sites have to be ruins/derelict/other things to explore (IE a big dionae gestalt like we had on the Aurora as an away site) or can we also map more lively areas, sort of like the space bar and civilian station we currently have, even if it doesn't feature any ghost roles (could've been only recently abandonned for instance) ?

They could presumably be anything that makes sense in that given circumstance.