[1 Dismissal] Holographic Crew & Holo-Emitters

[DrHobo]

I'm sure lots if not most of us love the EMH from Voyager and Zimmer from Red Dwarf, and there are a lot of good IPC players here. We've got holodecks, holograms, pAIs and so much wonderful things to get nerds hooked to like crack, but what do y'all think about playable holograms?

Just like the EMH they'd need a holo-emitter or projector which would be like their positronic brain, MMI or the like and they could have it on any targetable part of their body while they're on, like the doctor has on his left arm or smeghead on his well, smeghead. It may be seen when examined and must be targeted if ya want to disable them with brute attacks.

As a hologram, they'd be resistant to brute or toxin and sensitive to disruption by energy weapons and even burning, but they wouldn't need to eat and breathe or worry about cold or pressure. They'd just need to charge their emitter, though they could always save battery by staying in the actual holodeck?

The emitter could be repaired by the roboticist and would even make a new job variant, "holographic engineers"? The holograms would need to follow the silicon laws as well as all applicable rules and regulations that would be encoded in them, as well as be controlled by a whitelist. They may be an AI like the doctor or could be a new way to resurrect players from clone records like Zimmer was, so safety controls are very debatable.

There's actually a fair few episodes where EMH plays the antag and where holograms become dangerous, they are great episodes and it would be even better to play them out with y'all even if I probably wouldn't even apply for whitelist.

[Diggey]

This could also be cool for when the holograms are restricted to the AI holopads,aka they can't just walk around all over the place,limiting their usefullness

or just with an emitter if they want to interact with the physical

and yeah,an antag Hologram that wen rogue porting all over the place,adjusting the valves and the AI has to try and stop them,and then he's suddenly over there fucking with atmospherics and bwahm

okay,sorry got carried away

I want this to be a thing or to be rebutted by a developer

[Butterrobber202]

Bay 12 has this if we want to steal.

Anyways, I've always thought it would be cool to allow the Captain to do an 'All Call' which makes him appear on every holopad on the station for glorious announcements. As in, he temporarily has a lot of holograms of himself. And I'd 100% support getting personal Halo type AIs, like Cortana, mainly for RIG use.

[Lohikar]

Bay 12 has this if we want to steal.

Anyways, I've always thought it would be cool to allow the Captain to do an 'All Call' which makes him appear on every holopad on the station for glorious announcements. As in, he temporarily has a lot of holograms of himself. And I'd 100% support getting personal Halo type AIs, like Cortana, mainly for RIG use.

 

Bay has holocalls, this is something different assuming I'm understanding the OP correctly.

[Butterrobber202]

Bay 12 has this if we want to steal.

Anyways, I've always thought it would be cool to allow the Captain to do an 'All Call' which makes him appear on every holopad on the station for glorious announcements. As in, he temporarily has a lot of holograms of himself. And I'd 100% support getting personal Halo type AIs, like Cortana, mainly for RIG use.

 

Bay has holocalls, this is something different assuming I'm understanding the OP correctly.

 

Yeah, I know, that's why I crossed it out, but we should steal that anyway.

Anyways, Cortana AI would be cool.

[DrHobo]

Yeah what I was suggesting would be hologram characters rather than pAIs, though holographic pAIs could get the ball rolling if pAIs could be installed with a holo-projector and a power cell for it. hpAIs wouldn't be able to really do much anyway but would make a change from all them cats.

I realise there may be some balancing issues for more able holo-characters but when their projectors run outta battery, they'd just blink out of existence and leave the emitter in their place, as would being EMP'd and being zapped in general. There was that episode where the EMH woke up 800 years in the future and from all their descriptions of life as a hologram, that existential nightmare of a black screen and nothingness is just part of life as a hologram. It would be the responsibility of the crew (roboticist) to keep holograms running just like positronic brains and MMIs

Without battery they may be limited to getting summoned by the crew from holopads but could be more restricted in their actions than if they had a fully fledged "energy-photonic matter converting" holo-projector (or something, names and lore jargon can all be bashed out easily, star trek itself has some good lore on the technology) that could freely walk about and interact with the station.

There could be a server for holograms kinda like the R&D server that has all the callable ones saved in it, could back them up on disk as well and use the disks to transfer them to holo-projectors. So would just need the server machine, console for using it, disks for backing up and the projector.

As for appearance, they could be pre-installed at the start of the round with the same as the chameleon kit and edited by a roboticist using the console. Kinda like the episode where the EMH starts shrinking and engineering doesn't give any fucks, they'd need the roboticist or RD to change their appearance because otherwise they could get a bit out of control and shapeshift to other jobs rather than follow their pre-programmed or known specialities.

I think there's a lot of potential for holograms and I'm sure there's plenty different ways to implement it, it'll be exciting to see where this goes. I'll have to finish going over http://www.byond.com/docs/guide/ and the source, fork the git then send in a dev app so I can lend a hand. I don't want to swamp y'all with more suggestions when there's plenty yar busy on and I'm just enjoying the game for free (who has paypal these days? haha). Though I am absolutely useless at spriting, especially to the quality here, and if I wrote lore it would be confusing at best (though perhaps educational and hopefully insightful for those with the patience to decipher). I do have a fondness for DM, it's the same kinda indentation structure as most of my notes anyway and could be a code spaghetti, something I'm used to working with. It's 5:30am, I'm gonna just submit before I really dig myself into a hole.

[Lohikar]

things

You are not required to be a dev to open pull requests to the repository.

[DrHobo]

Hot dang! Well I'll get to work!

[Arrow768]

If you intent this to be a new species, then as per current policy the mechanics of that species need to be completely different to warrant the addition of a new species (and even then its no guarantee) or a existing species needs to be retired.

[Butterrobber202]

If you intent this to be a new species, then as per current policy the mechanics of that species need to be completely different to warrant the addition of a new species (and even then its no guarantee) or a existing species needs to be retired.

 

can we exterminate the fucking guwans

[DrHobo]

Ok sorry I've been a while but have been working on this and some other random things and pretty much got it figured out, I hope. So like mob/carbon and mob/silicon, I propose photon so we can add things like photonic fleas, holodeck characters and photonic beings of pure energy etc down the line as well as provide the basis for hologram characters.

A hologram will be a bit like carbon and a bit like silicon, they'd have a Photonic Matrix which is effectively like their brain with their player id and all that jazz. It'll be stored on a hologram server and can be loaded to photonic matrix disks via a hologram console which can be loaded into holo-projectors which with a battery, some wire, a screwdriver and valid ID card can be activated to spawn the hologram character.

Hologram characters will have their Pattern Stability and Matrix Integrity, where damage to stability will stun, drop and eventually switch them off even without hitting the holoemitter directly while integrity damage will effect subroutines and can be from lethal lasers, radiation, holo-projector damage, and a growing amount of ways. Subroutines are like the hologram's organs and genetics but could also be verbs like (De)Activation. This is all on top of breaking their holo-projector which will be on a pre-determined and visible body location while active.

Some subroutine examples (working titles)

Vocal -> mute

Universal Translator -> deaf

Optical -> blind

Tactile -> hands

Locomotor -> legs

Aesthetic -> appearance could be modified as if wearing chameleon gear? if damaged can use staticky sprite

Authorization -> access

Ethical -> like silicon laws can be corrupted or changed under extreme conditions

Primary Function -> Job/Skills

Subroutines can be changed/repaired in the hologram console, which just takes time (src modifies/debugs photonic matrix subroutine..., loading bar above head). Holograms can't use the hologram console for obvious safety reasons.

Damage to the holo-projector can be repaired with nanopaste, cable and welder.

Only 1 PMD can be active at a time for any hologram character, because "photonic entanglement" so any more holo-projectors will fail to activate if loaded with an active PMD. Without a holo-projector, they may be summoned to the holodeck and will be powered by the APC there. It could also save battery just by being in a powered holodeck.

When they are deactivated, they may dream or see space as they don't exist outside a virtual void of nothingness and existential despair but may be only able to hear silicon chatter. Holograms will still have the equivalent of clone death syndrome if the same disk isn't recovered from old holo-projector so will lose memories as if it's been factory reset.

So all the objects, machines and mobs to hopefully implement this system are, is a Hologram Server, Hologram Console, Photonic Matrix Disk, Holo-Projector/Emitter and the holographic mob itself.

What do y'all think of the system and anything it's missing?

[LordFowl]

Voting for dismissal, We already have plenty of races.