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Regarding the Revert of Genetics


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Yes. Genetics is hereby reverted once more.


The main reason for that genetics was added back in under the pretense that Nanako was actively working on a remake of it. At which point, it'd be playable again without the shenanigans. Nanako left, and we've not yet picked up all of the pieces she left behind. The RnD project has been picked up by Printer, however, the genetics project is left unclaimed. So until it's claimed and implemented, genetics will be left back in its place of dead, and accessible only via adminbus.


Also, regarding the proposals of switching off to minor powers only. It was considered, however, it'd require the removal of remoteview and -say, (because muh metagaming) and after that, there wouldn't be enough left to really justify a job.


So, yup, that's that. I know there's a few fans of genetics out there, and I apologize for letting you down like this, but that's the present situation and we don't have an immediate fix for it.

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What about minor powers and switching access to Scientists?


Just a suggestion.

 

Also, regarding the proposals of switching off to minor powers only. It was considered, however, it'd require the removal of remoteview and -say, (because muh metagaming) and after that, there wouldn't be enough left to really justify a job.

 

And yes, technically you address the issue of not having enough content for the job but. I don't really know if keeping the shell is worth it like that.

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Disapointing indeed.


However, let me take this opportunity to again reiterate a Genetic replacement that, unless I'm mistaken, any half decent coder familiar with Byond should be able to easily knock out.

 

K0NFL1QT wrote:

Since we've switched to newcode that is completely without Genetics in any form, I've been thinking about a fresh take on the role. The part that everyone hates about Genetics is the chucklefuck who ruins it by rushing for Hulk/TK/X-Ray, the top tier powers, and then goes rogue. Good Geneticists that don't do that get to sit in one spot and press buttons on a console all shift, and then not play with any of the cool stuff they discover. And really, those powers aren't the fun things about a Geneticist from an RP standpoint; it's the potential to take a creature and make it better, but in plausible ways that aren't 'now your eyes shoot lasers'. We do need Genetics in a form, it's mechanically useful for fun things, and for getting players back into a round, and it's thematically rich in the way that it allows deaths to be both canon and impermanent; we don't need 'powers'.


We need a Genetics system that still permits creation of protohumans, because protohumans are just so useful. You can use them for surgery shenanigans, greater scope revivals in the cases of body destruction, you can use them for Sciencey weapon testing, you can use them to practise combat moves, setup fake murder scenes, living blood bags and gene sources. Lots of stuff you can do with protocreatures. I also think Skull was headed in a good direction when he implemented the organ printer and tried to minimise general genetic fuckery. The problem was that organ replacements were hardly ever needed. You could already fix damaged organs with surgery, or chemistry. So, how do we combine these ideas and Make Genetics Great Again? The Biological Engineer. The Organ Splicer.


You know how the DNA Scanner deducts biomass from a cloning pod and spits out a clone of whoever you scanned? Well, what if you could choose to clone a blank? It consumes biomass, takes the same amount of time, but pops out a bald protohuman with no defects. No monkey SE tweaking necessary, only biomass. Select the race, print out the most bald, generic version of skrell, tajaran, unathi, etc. All mindless and ripe for organ/blood harvesting... or whatever fun things you want a protocreature for.


But that's only half of it. Take the old bio-printer, this also now consumes bio-mass instead of metal, but prints enhanced organs. This whole Geneticist idea really is more of an organs expansion, in lieu of stripping out powers. You can have a variety of printable organs of varying biomass costs depending on their effect, and these would cause noticeable changes without being zero-to-hulk. Every organ requires its specific surgery to implant, which means no more self-testing Geneticists on a rampage. It's all about subtly enhancing others.


For example, engineered limbs or implanted organs could;

Give immunity to alchohol related poisoning, for that one bored assistant who keeps coming in with massive liver damage

Increase the damage threshold of bones.

Increase the natural rate of regeneration, as well as metabolism.

Increase capability for seeing in the dark.

Permit breathing different atmospheres, or widen the threshold of pressures that can be breathed in.

Allow radiation resistance.

Increase movespeed slightly.

Add the 'jump' ability, at a reasonable distance.


There's a lot of possibilities that are slight improvements, but each one is minor and doesn't turn you into an unstoppable hulk. Each one requires surgery to install. You might also need a new way of generating biomass to counter the costs for all of this, but there's usually a lot of wasted biomass in the morgue if you know what I mean. Make a big human blender, mulch that dead guy right up, stick the meat in your protomaker or bioprinter. Monkeys would also fit in the blender.


As far as I can tell, most of these ideas should be easily achievable. The only 'new' thing is the manblender actually just a gibber, the rest is copies of things that already exist but with slight changes, like a list of enhanced organs or a cloning pod that only spits out preloaded protohuman blueprints. Thoughts?

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I'm glad to be rid of genetics, that sub-department was a constant source of headache, but how do we make protohumans now? They're super useful for, like, all sorts of science stuff.


Also, fixing aesthetic stuff with genetics can be important in ling rounds where people don't want to spend the rest of the round wearing the wrong face.

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Damn shame it had to be removed, but I understand why. Hope it gets reworked into something amazing and fun, until then, I'm going to need to put a fun character on hold.

 

I'm curious exactly how many instances of hulk fueled grief rampage there have been since fulltime new map, to warrant such a sweeping feature removal without even a discussion.

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if someone else can magically conjure up knowledge on how to use DM and they have a desire to do some change to bring back genetics so that it isn't wholly just a grief subdepartment, and it is an interesting system that can be used for roleplay reasons and thus taken seriously as a result, then go ahead and do it. Presenting solutions that none of the devs currently have as a priority will unsurprisingly go unheard and put on the backburner. Genetics won't be coming back until significant change is done to it. Being an Iᴅᴇᴀs guy isn't necessarily productive if it requires a lot of work for one or two devs to be doing when they already have a full plate of bugs to fix, features to implement and projects to plan out for the coming months.


If you want genetics back with your own solution, learn how to code and present PRs with your own work on how to fix genetics and make it great again.

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If misuse of Genetics is such a pressing issue to warrant it's immediate removal, it wouldn't be a stretch to then prioritise its replacement with something fun, sociable, thematicly appropriate, less grief prone but still useful without jumping organ recievers immediately to overpowered; but that hinges on any developer to take an interest in the project. I presented a system that shouldn't be too hard to implement for an already skilled coder, but would make a good replacement for the possibility of hulk rampages. However, if no current dev is interested, then so be it. But I thought it relevant to at least present the idea again.


And, I get it, 'lrn2code' and do it yourself. I'll certainly dive back into Byond code and attempt a more thorough feasibility examination and see if it is as simple as I presume. And, if not, then why not.

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Regarding "Get a coder to do it, it's relatively easy!" Our developers are all assigned major projects which they have to work on, and on the side, they can do w/e. When assigning major projects, project age is one thing that's considered, and the project priority is another. This is why the genetics rework was not assigned to anyone this time around: it's not old (started in March 2017, as opposed to something like the economy meme, IT department, or even the RnD remake; all of which are planned as to-be-worked-on over the next 2 months), and it's not high priority (unlike new map cleanup).


When I say I don't have developers to assign to this, I would expect that to be respected a little more than it appears to be.

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I didn't mean to seem hostile with saying the whole "learn to code and do it yourself" thing, but coding things and ensuring the idea implemented doesn't suck to begin with... is not necessarily a very easy thing to do, otherwise genetics would've been dealt with an issue awhile ago.


It's just a very frank way of putting it, because unless you can coerce a coder with free time to help you work out how to do such a thing, it's nothing that anyone wants to work on right now. I can't say I speak for the dev team but I'm sure they all got their hands full doing stuff.

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When I say I don't have developers to assign to this, I would expect that to be respected a little more than it appears to be.

 

Of course, but those comments were in response to Schev. You hadn't said anything for or against my idea and I didn't presume a moderator spoke for the dev team. I was just pointing out that, unless I'm mistaken, my proposed idea should be relatively simple. It was concieved with relative simplicity in mind. More complex than just removing already written code, yes, but far easier to implement than if you were trying to design the current genetics system from scratch.

 

I didn't mean to seem hostile with saying the whole "learn to code and do it yourself" thing,

 

I didn't take it with hostility to begin with; I was remarking that it's a valid but trite response. I know full well that the best way to get a feature coded is to learn to do it yourself and go through the peer review process.

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What about minor powers and switching access to Scientists?


Just a suggestion.

 

Also, regarding the proposals of switching off to minor powers only. It was considered, however, it'd require the removal of remoteview and -say, (because muh metagaming) and after that, there wouldn't be enough left to really justify a job.

 

And yes, technically you address the issue of not having enough content for the job but. I don't really know if keeping the shell is worth it like that.

 

I feel like it is, since it allows for just enough RP stuff to not be completely pointless. Like this shift, for example: A bunch of miners found Xray vision. All it would've taken is a quick scan and they could've been set to normal at the end of the shift.


I won't get into how I think that genetweaking should be ubiquitous in this time line or anything but... I feel like getting rid of it doesn't serve much, and better to have it a little then not at all, right?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been working on the idea of Xenogenetics, which could be quite a simple system but would add a great many blocks and slow down would-be hulkists while adding a great deal of freedom to any aspiring geneticist. That is instead of the species block we introduce a block for Ribosome and blocks for each Species Polymerase. I've also got an understanding of DM and could start implementing it but want to hear what folks think first.


The Ribosome block will designate whether the organism has advanced protein expression, it covers the whole species to protospecies by being on or off respectively. If no species polymerase is on, then they are a slime or slimeperson depending on the ribosome, or if the human polymerase was on then they would be a human or a monkey.


As for the protospecies for each race I've taken into account sprites and animals already in the game with an evolutionary link to the lore...

Slime -> Slimeperson

Monkey -> Human

Chicken -> Vox

Spider -> Vaurca

Corgi -> Tajara

Lizard? -> Unathi

 

I've included slimes because I believe they're like primordial ooze, or atleast the grandchild of after protozoa. They are genetic beings that adapted and evolved to all of the more complex multicellular planetary life. A raw force of evolution! I'm writing a book in game on the origins of slimes and will make a hyperscientific lore application for these theories but slimes should be genetic beings and would help fill in the no-polymerase hole of gene activations.


This system would allow anything to be transformed into anything else but before you panic about all the "fake furries", the consciousness should always have a genetic origin. So a transformed organism should be easily distinguished by a natural, they'd lack

the language and social customs as well as the finer features that only members of the species or a trained eye would distinguish.


Also having multiple polymerases would allow new hybrid species but until that's all properly figured out for all combinations, I'd suggest a genetic abombination sprite to fill in (like the changling monster) and tox damage due to xenoimmune responses waging war against each other. I've only be dossing about with ideas of dominant and recessive species traits but it should be something figured out from everyone who knows each species better.

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I've been working on the idea of Xenogenetics, which could be quite a simple system but would add a great many blocks and slow down would-be hulkists while adding a great deal of freedom to any aspiring geneticist. That is instead of the species block we introduce a block for Ribosome and blocks for each Species Polymerase. I've also got an understanding of DM and could start implementing it but want to hear what folks think first.


The Ribosome block will designate whether the organism has advanced protein expression, it covers the whole species to protospecies by being on or off respectively. If no species polymerase is on, then they are a slime or slimeperson depending on the ribosome, or if the human polymerase was on then they would be a human or a monkey.


As for the protospecies for each race I've taken into account sprites and animals already in the game with an evolutionary link to the lore...

Slime -> Slimeperson

Monkey -> Human

Chicken -> Vox

Spider -> Vaurca

Corgi -> Tajara

Lizard? -> Unathi

 

I've included slimes because I believe they're like primordial ooze, or atleast the grandchild of after protozoa. They are genetic beings that adapted and evolved to all of the more complex multicellular planetary life. A raw force of evolution! I'm writing a book in game on the origins of slimes and will make a hyperscientific lore application for these theories but slimes should be genetic beings and would help fill in the no-polymerase hole of gene activations.


This system would allow anything to be transformed into anything else but before you panic about all the "fake furries", the consciousness should always have a genetic origin. So a transformed organism should be easily distinguished by a natural, they'd lack

the language and social customs as well as the finer features that only members of the species or a trained eye would distinguish.


Also having multiple polymerases would allow new hybrid species but until that's all properly figured out for all combinations, I'd suggest a genetic abombination sprite to fill in (like the changling monster) and tox damage due to xenoimmune responses waging war against each other. I've only be dossing about with ideas of dominant and recessive species traits but it should be something figured out from everyone who knows each species better.

 

We already had protospecies for Unathi, Tajara and Skrell, the farwa, naera and stok.

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Excellent, I've only seen farwa but thought they were Tajaran (Will always believe Ian is actually an evolutionary cousin of Tajarans though). So how do ya think of xenogenetics otherwise for bulking up the genome? I think it may be an easier system to implement on top of the pre-existing and could then be updated with increasing functionality.


What would your thoughts be on species hybrids?


On another note bloodtype could also be added with blocks for A antigen, B antigen and Rhesus factor, with neither A or B active is O. It should just be the one ABO gene but it may be easier with the 2 unless we divide the hex limit by 3 on the 1 and assign accordingly. As for a new genetic "superpowers", there could be a new D bloodtype like a galactic donor type which anyone (or thing) is compatible with or the reverse, T bloodtype which is more toxic as far as incompatibility damage goes to anyone else.

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