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New admins, New map and the future.


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Aurora is a glorious machine. A machine with many parts that all somehow work in tandem to keep this ordered chaos we have going. Do not misunderstand me. I am proud of each and every staff member we have and as head admin myself and shadow are concerned with the admin side of things. To that end we have decided to promote two moderators to the rank of secondary administrator. Any good machine requires an upgrade or at least some repair every now and then. To that end our dev team has made some real progress with our new map. Testing has been happening every weekend for the past few weeks now. While the elevators seem to have a taste for human flesh the test otherwise seem to be going well. There are of course many variables to consider and many more kinks to iron out. With summer upon us along with the spike in player count the future is happening a lot faster than we think.


New Admins


After much deliberation and council from the other admins we have decided to promote both trickinghatster and Shameonturtles to the rank of secondary administrator. Aurora sometimes asks a lot of our staff but these two have maintained a consistent pattern of activity in the year they have been on staff.


The New Map


The new map presents us with a lot of challenges and questions to consider as far as administration and development is concerned. It is a much larger station than the exodus and there is a lot more room to hide if you are the type that solemnly swears to be up to no good. We are paying very close attention to how antagonists and security operate. We are willing to increase officer or other slots if it becomes appropriate for balance. the so called "metagame" will likely need quite a while to adjust as the players learn the intricacies of the station but so far it seems most are quite pleased with how the map is playing.


The future


I have compared aurora to a machine many times in the past. The statement is true enough in a sense that our departments somehow manage to work in tandem for the ultimate goal of you the player. I confess that even as one of two head administrators that i do not fully understand how such a thing Continues to exist. There are days where aurora appears as a frustrating game of whack-a-mole. An issue you did not consider has cropped up and as you move to deal with it two more crop up as a result of your solution. Complaints pile up, tempers flare and moral outrages are behind every door. Do not take me for decrying aurora's doom. I take pride in my position and i believe in this community. I believe in you. Aurora has surmounted every obstacle it has been faced with. I believe the time has long since passed where aurora was just another role play game involving 2d spessman. we have eked out a community here, we have grown relationships, rivalries and friendships alike and through it all have become something much more than the sum of our parts.


There will come a day when the last round is played on aurora. When the last captain's announcement is made. When the last scientist is eaten by slimes. When the last chef abducts pun pun. when the last supermatter explodes. When the server ends a round...for good. Our community is one not so easily killed however. The friendships we have nurtured and the connections we have made will last a lifetime. That being said that day is not anytime soon. Our server staff despite all its fault is the most stable it has ever been. our player count has been slowly on the rise for the past year now. Our development has escaped the usual burnout ss13 devs meet. features are actively being worked and many exciting secrets are in the works. I am so proud of what we have achieved here. It is all ultimately pointless if nobody plays or has any fun. There are many challenges yet to face and we as staff certainly have room for improvement. That being said the future is bright indeed.

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  • 1 month later...

Since no one actually responded to this, I'll just use it to contain my own announcement/speech.


Well, the Nümap is now live. With it ends almost exactly three years of planning and dreaming: for those uninformed, the original idea of Aurorastation having its very own map conceived about 3 years ago, when YeahChris was still Head Admin and I was a fresh-faced Head Developer who was just learning coding. It went through two separate iterations, both of those failing, and now finally landed in the hands of the current development team. Who, over the past six months, have contributed over 300 000 lines of code into the development branch, and along with it, hours of work tending to bug reports and player feedback.


On that note, I would like to personally thank everyone who has been absoloutely instrumental to the development and completion of the project:

  • Lohikar - For his amazing and indepth work on the SMC port + other mechanics which actually make a map of this scale playable.
  • Lord Fowl - For his management of the mapping project itself. Unfortunately he chose to retire right before release, due to wanting to move on. We wish him the best of luck!
  • Juani, Keknar - For their work on the actual map itself.
  • Alberyk, Arrow, Printer, Moondancer - For their work on the code, contributing both features and bugfixes in support of the testing weekends.

 

All of them did amazing work and if I had medals to pin, I most certainly would. Thank you, all of you again.


And a thank you to all of the community members who participated in the testing, feedback, and development cycle of the server. Your reports and feedback have been instrumental in squashing countless amounts of bugs, and making sure that the map actually ships in a very playable state.


It is also due to this, effectively three year old undertaking, that myself and the Head Admins have chosen to call the station NSS Aurora. No II, no new name. Just, the Aurora. With respect to our community. Any new maps made after this will probably be called something else.


One thing I would like to touch on, however, is that there are still issues present. For one, malf can spawn both a malf and normal AI. There's also ZAS being zaney, and autodrobe pulling its old tricks. While not an ideal release state, it was a decision to push the map and features into master code regardless, as to halt development and feature creep. We could have probably sat testing and patching this for another month had we kept going, but there really is no point to it. Those issues will be fixed over the next few weeks.




That's that. The past done and sorted. What now? We no longer have a massive project to look forward to and to concentrate on. Well, in about a week, the development team is going to have a planning session to discuss exactly that! But I will tell you my general plans, what I want us to start thinking about tackling. Consider it a point of, what to expect and think about over the next six to nine months.


First, game flow. The SS13 formula is tried and true, but it's old. Very old. The addition of mixed antags on new map helps break up the flow, but the general gist of it is still there. I would like us to think of ways to kick the standard, prep for shenanigans, have antags create shenanigans, go home, formula in the nuts. We don't have amazingly clear opportunities infront of us like a certain other HRP server does, but I'm sure we can think of something.


Second, departmental mechanics. Zuhmed was recently pushed into testing over at Bay, it might be an interesting thing to consider (don't jump, it's not a final decision yet). Specially since last development meeting, we decided that we're going to be reviewing a potential rework of medical itself. Alongside that, we also have the IT team project to start and finish. So new gameplay elements for existent and new jobs are a definite short-term goal!


Alongside that there's the idea of persistence. We already have a decent amount of persistent inducing mechanics. And a good step-off point for going on with that is definitely the economy. There already exist plans, both mechanical execution wise and concept wise, we simply need to apply manpower. And we'll be looking into that as we convene and plan.


Those are roughly my three goals. If you have any ideas of your own, feel free to post them in the suggestion forum! As you can probably see from the projects subforum, we've actually started paying attention to them and incorporating them into our plans! Perhaps don't get your hopes up too much just yet, as we're only one cycle into doing it. But just maybe, it's possible that said place is no longer the place where ideas go to die.

 



 

Rightly. That wraps up what I wanted to say, I think. PSA + plans + thanks yous all rolled into one. I know I don't express gratitude too much, but seriously, I mean it. Thank you to each and every one of you who's participated in the project in any and all capacity.


Hope all of you enjoy the new release, and 1.2 million lines of code and map! (Oh, and feel free to post in this thread your responses and shit.)


Apartment server soon, my friends. With ERP and hookers.

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I can't say if I was the first (or even the last) to spout the "new map NEVER" meme and I probably shouldn't even be posting because of that, but for a time I fervently believed in it because the idea of a new map was a curse that lasted for three years.


And I'm so glad I was proven wrong. There are some things I don't necessarily like about the new map but it still has its strengths and by no means is it completely untouchable in terms of its core aspects. Just like the Exodus map, it has its strengths and its weaknesses, most importantly, we can finally call it "ours." I think that makes it more special than anything else, and I extend a thank you and also an apology for being a memer shit to the dev team. It's good to see that we can also finally push changes and bugfixes out faster too since we aren't sitting on the dev branch for a weekend then switching back to vanilla with the old bugs and issues.


Here's to another three years of new map memes.

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