About The Pull Request
Simply converts all instances of soundkeys that use get_sfx from strings into defines.
E.g. "sparks" is now SFX_SPARKS
Why It's Good For The Game
It makes life a lot easier when you're looking for a sound effect. You just type SFX_ and you get suggestions in VSC. Plus, it looks better.
image
Changelog
Not player facing.
How do I play/test/operate this?
Download NT Frontier on any modular computers. It should debrief you on what experiments are available and how to publish.
If you want to do a bomb experiment, make sure it's captured by the doppler array (as usual) and then print the experiments into a disk and publish it.
If you want to do a gas experiment, make the gas and either pump it into a tank and 1) overpressurize it with a "clear" gas like N2 or 2) overpressurize tanks with the gas itself. Make sure you do the overpressurizing in the compressor machine. When tanks are destroyed/ejected leaked gas will get recorded. Print it into a disk and publish it.
For publication, the file needs to be directly present inside the computer's HDD. This means you need to copy it first with the file manager.
Fill the data (if desired, it will autofill with boiler plate if you dont) and send away!
Doing experiments unlock nodes, while doing them well unlocks boosts (which are discounts but slightly more restrictive) which are purchaseable with NT Frontier.
If you are testing this and have access to admin tools, there are various premade bombs under obj/effect/spawner/newbomb
A doc I wrote detailing the why and what part of this PR.
https://hackmd.io/JOakSYVMSh2zU2YL5ju_-Q
---
# Intro
## The Problem(s)
Ordnance, (previously toxins) seems to lack a lot of content and things to do. The gameplay loop consists of making a bomb and then sending it off for credits or using it to refine cores. Ordnance at it's inception originally relies on players experimenting and finding the perfect mix over multiple rounds, but once the recipe for a "do-everything" mix got out, the original charm of individual discoveries becomes meaningless.
Another issue with ordnance is the odd difficulty curve. As a new player, ordnance is almost impossible to decipher, but once you watch a tutorial or read a wiki and can mail a 50k into space, there pretty much isn't anything else to do. Most players will be satisfied at this point without the gameplay loop encouraging them to understand or play more. The only thing you can do afterwards is to sink your teeth in and understand why that particular mix explodes the way it does. This again has a significant difficulty curve, but if you do that, the department doesn't acknowledge or reward that in any way. There are pretty much two huge spikes, with the latter one not really existing inside the department.
TLDR:
* The content being same-y over rounds.
* Odd difficulty curve:
1. A new player is oblivious to everything.
2. Those in the middle can repeat the final goal consistently without needing to understanding why
3. There is nothing to justify spending more time in the department after reaching the midgame.
## Abstract
Scientific Papers aim to add a framework to run multiple experiments in ordnance. Adding more experiments scattered across various atmospheric aspects might allow players of various knowledge levels to still have something engaging to do. A new player should have an easier challange than to mail a 50K. While those that already can make bombs should have an easier time understanding why their bombs explode the way it does. Once they fully understand why, they can set their sights on taking advantage of another reaction to set their bomb off or hone one particular reaction down.
## Goals
* Have some intro-level challanges for new players.
* Have some semblance of late-game challanges for more experienced players.
* Explain the mechanics better for those in the middle of the road.
* Incentivize trying new things out in the department.
* Better integrate Ordnance with Experisci
## Boundaries / Dont's
* Do not incentivize people to learn ordnance by using PvP loots.
* Do not shake or change the reaction system by a huge amount.
* Disincentivize having a single god-mix that does everything.
****
# Main design pillars
## A. Framework surrounding the experiments
### A.1. New experiments
Add new experiments to the ExperiSci module. These will come in two flavours: New explosions to do, and various gas synthesis experiments. Both of these are actually supported by the map layout of ordnance right now, but there is no reason to do anything outside of making a 50k as fast as possible.
### A.2. Rewards for experiments: Cash and Techweb Boosts.
Scientific papers will add a separate experiment handling system. A single experiment will be graded into various tiers, each tier corresponding to the explosion size or amount of gas made. Doing any tier of a specific experiment will unlock the discount for that specific reactions. A single explosion **WILL NOT** do multiple experiments (or even tiers) at once.
On publication, a partner can be selected. A single partner only has a specific criteria of experiments they want. The experiments will then be graded on "how good they are done", with the criteria being more punishing as tier increases. Publication will then reward scientific cooperation with the partnered partner. Players can spend this cooperation on techweb boosts. Techweb boosts are meant to be subservient to discount from experiments and will not shave a node's price to be lower than 500 points.
**Experiments will only unlock nodes, discounts are handled through this boost system.**
This is more for maintainability than anything.
### A.3. On Tedium
*This is a note on implementation more than anything, but I think this helps explains why several things are done.*
Due to the nature of atmospheric reactions in the game (they're all linear), tedium is a very important thing to consider. An experiment should have a sweet spot to aim for, but there should not be a point where further mastery is stopped dead on it's track with a reward cap.
Scientific Papers attempts to discourage this behaviour by having the "maximum score" scale off to infinity but with the rewards being smaller and smaller. The sweet spot is always there to aim for and should be well communicated with players, but on their last submission of an experiment topic players should be encouraged to do their best. There should always be a reward for pushing the system to it's limit as long as it doesn't completely nullify the other subdepartments. This is the reason why there is a hard limit on the number of publications and why the score calculation is a bit more complex than it needed to be.
## B. Gas Synthesis (Early-Mid Game)
Scientific papers will add one new machine that requests a tank to release x amounts of y gas. This will be accomplished by adding a tank pumping machine which will either burst or explode a tank, releasing the gas inside. The gas currently requested are BZ, Nitryl, Halon and Nob.
The overarching goal of this compressor machine is to present a gas synthesis challange for the players and to get them more accustomed to how a tank explodes. The gas synthesis part can always be changed in order to reflect the current state of atmospheric reactions.
## C. Explosion Changes (Mid-Late Game)
### C.1 Cause and effect.
The main theme of the explosion changes is establishing cause and effect of explosions. Reactions that happens inside a tank that's going to explode will be recorded and forwarded to a doppler array. Some experiments will require only a single cause to be present (think of it as isolating a variable). This is currently implemented for nobliumformation and pressure based bombs. Having other reactions occuring besides noblium formation will fail the first one, while having any reactions at all will fail the second one.
Adding more explosions here will be a slight challange because as of now the game has only two reactions that can reliably make an explosion.
### C.2 Tools upgrade.
Doppler array has now been retrofitted to state the probable cause of an explosion, be it reactions or just overpressurization on gas merging. These should help intermediate players figure out what is causing an explosion.
Added a new functionality to the implosion compressor:
Basically performs the gas merging and reaction that TTV does in a machine and reports the results back as if someone uses an analyzer on them. Here to give players feedback so they can try and understand what is actually going on in a bomb.
## D. Player Interaction
There should be more room for more than 1 player to play ordnance simultaneously. Previously players are also able to split tasks, but this rarely happens because tritium synthesis needs only the gas chamber to be reconfigured. Now, different players can pick different experiments and work on them. Players can also do joint tasks on one single experiment. Gases like noblium will need tritium production and also a cooling module online.
Ordnance can also coordinate with their parent department on what they really need, be it money or research bonuses.
# Potential Changes
The best-case changes that can be implemented if the current roster of content isn't enough is more reactions that can be used in bombs. Eliminating bombs entirely goes against the spirit of the subdepartment, while adding new ones will need a lot of care and consideration.
Another possible change is to implement a "gas payload" bomb. Bombs that has a set number of unreacting gas inside that will increase the heat capacity, reduce the payload, and neccesitates more bespoke mixes.
Adding more gas synthesis experiments is discouraged. The main focus of ordnance should be bombs, with gas synthesis being a side project for ordnance. These are present to ease the introduction to bombs and provide some side content.
There should be a somewhat well-justified goal in adding new synthesis experiments: e.g. BZ is there as a "tutorial" gas, Nitryl to introduce players to cooling/heating mixes, Halon to a more efficient tritium production, and Nob as a nudge to nobformation bombs and mastery over other aspects.
# Conclusion / Summary
Add more experiments to ordnance that players can take, accomplish this by:
1. Making the players perform gas synthesis or make bombs.
2. Have them collect the data, see if it fits the criteria. Explain why if it fits and why if it doesn't.
3. Have the player publish a paper.
Reward them based on how well did they do, give players agency both on the experiment phase and also publication phase.
---
TLDR: Added new experiment to toxins, added the framework for those experiments existing. Experiments comes in gas synthesis and also bombs but with more parameters. Experiments needs to be published through papers, various choices to be made there.
Implementation notes:
Because of how paper works, ordnance experiments are handled outside of experiment_handler components. My reasoning for this is twofold:
The experiments will be completed manually on publication and if the experiment isn't unlocked yet it will still be completed.
Experiment handler datums have several procs which require an atom-level parent, and I figured this is the most sensible and cleanest way to implement this without changing the experiment handler datum too much.
Small change to /obj/machinery/proc/power_change() signal ordering to adjust the state first and then send the signal. Didn't found any other usage of this signal except mine but barge down my door if it broke something.
Rewrote the ttv merge_gases() code to be slightly more readable.
A small code improvement for thermomachine to use tofixed (my fault).
Ordnance have been updated to enable the publication of papers
Several new explosive and gas synthesis experiments have been added to ordnance
Anomaly compressor has been TGUIzed and now supports simulating the reaction of the gases inside the ttv.
New tank compressor machine for toxins. You can overpressurize tanks with exotic gases and complete experiments.
Several techweb nodes are locked and require toxin experiments to complete.
Toxins can purchase boosts for various techweb nodes.
You no longer need to anchor doppler arrays for it to work.
Doppler array and implosion compressor now supports deconstruction, implosion compressor construction added.
Doppler now emits a red light to denote it's direction and it being on. Doppler not malf.
Implosion compressor renamed to anomaly refinery.
Created a new program tab "Science" for the downloader app. Removed Robotics.
Reworked the code for bombspawner (used in the cuban pete arcade game)
About The Pull Request
Adds back dissection surgery for the purposes of performing experiments. Replaces the existing slime extract fetch quests with dissection surgery for biotech, and adds xenomorph dissection as an extra discount (though I would like to see a node require it some day).
Why It's Good For The Game
Science has no incentive to actually scan slime extracts for biotech, as the primary consumer is medical.
In practice, this means that the grey slime extract experiment, which can be done round-start, is frequently left unperformed. This lets medical have some level of control over their research, while still leaving the actual act of researching the node into the hands of the science department, or heads of staff.
Changelog
cl
add: Added back dissection surgery, which can be used with an operating computer to perform experiments for research.
add: Biological technology's requirement has been changed from scanning one grey slime extract to performing a dissection surgery.
add: Advanced biotech's requirement has been changed from scanning three slime extracts to performing a dissection surgery on a nonhuman.
add: Xeno-organ biology and Alien Biological Tools' now have additional discounts for performing a dissection surgery on a xenomorph.
/cl
the unregister_events() proc is used to stop listening for a signal from a previously scanned atom for experiment purposes. if the experi-scanner wasn't used for scanning atoms for physical experiments previously, it would cause a runtime, trying to unregister a signal from a non-existant atom.
* proof of concept
* pinpoint scan type
* whoops
* whoops take two
* parenting
* moving it all to use points, hacky desc edits included
* adding experiments to techweb v1
* v2 + descriptions
* v 2.5
* review compliance
## About The Pull Request
stop forgetting to include mapload, if you don't include it then every single subtype past it by default doesn't include it
for example, `obj/item` didn't include mapload so every single item by default didn't fill in mapload
## Regex used:
procs without args, not even regex
`/Initialize()`
procs with args
`\/Initialize\((?!mapload)((.)*\w)?`
cleanup of things i didn't want to mapload:
`\/datum\/(.)*\/Initialize\(mapload`
Basic Cytology Scan Experiments no longer ask for Unknown fluids instead of mice.
You can actually complete the scan now, since you can't grow a basic datum in a vat.
Simple_animals / mobs are the biggest lie in this code-base. They're far from simple and have an extreme god-object problem. Especially when you get to /hostile, where there is so many procs, vars, and what not, that you can't make any interesting additions without snowflaking the hell out of the code.
This PR hopes to help kill this problem by introducing a new /living subtype, /living/basic. The idea of this refactor is to slowly start moving all old simple_animals to this new system, moving over behaviors like charging and more extravagant mobs like megafauna over bit by bit similar to how newfood was implemented.
One of the other big goals of this refactor is to move many of the fringe simple animal behaviors into either AI datums, or components/elements. (Some of which still needs to be done in this PR).
As a proof of concept, I created the base mob/living/basic, and moved cockroaches over to the system. Since cockroaches have both a passive, melee and ranged mob.
This PR does slightly affect balance as the behavior isn't 1-on-1 due to it no longer running on the janky /hostile behavior, but I tried to keep the effects to a minimum, and the glockroach and hauberoach are not spawnable through many means as far as I know.
Repaths everything referring to "toxins" while actually meaning either the room in science or plasma gas. While this PR might be disrespectful to our forefathers, given this is (I believe) a holdover from as far back as the Exadv1 days, this has constantly irked me since I started working with the code. None of the player-facing stuff has referred to plasma as toxin since before 4407 hit, besides the Toxins Lab, and yet all of the type-paths are still pointing at toxins, making it a nightmare to search for in a map editor, and making the code needlessly easy to confuse with that of toxin damage. So this just fires it into the sun.
Anything relating to Toxins, the science subdepartment, now makes reference to Ordnance instead. This felt fitting enough given the focus of the subdepartment is around the creation of and testing of explosives.
Anything relating to plasma gas has, fittingly, been made to refer to plasma gas.
Edit: Ah yes, I feel I should probably apologise off the bat for the size of this PR- the code touched is mostly atmos machinery and simplemobs, a few sprites here and there, and of course the station maps + a few offstation maps.
Makes the code more legible and makes mapping less painful.
(The payment has been made)
Tachyon-doppler arrays now work when on a different z-level than the RD server provided both of them are on a station z.
Same applies for all things using the experiment handler component in fact.
Converts most spans into span procs. Mostly used regex for this and sorted out any compile time errors afterwards so there could be some bugs.
Was initially going to do defines, but ninja said to make it into a proc, and if there's any overhead, they can easily be changed to defines.
Makes it easier to control the formatting and prevents typos when creating spans as it'll runtime if you misspell instead of silently failing.
Reduces the code you need to write when writing spans, as you don't need to close the span as that's automatically handled by the proc.
(Note from Lemon: This should be converted to defines once we update the minimum version to 514. Didn't do it now because byond pain and such)
Sourced from #59118 and a cursed project I'll pr later, This pr contains a lot of harddel fixes for stuff that pops up after a player interacts with something. I'm not gonna list them all here because there's something like 60 130, check the commit log if you're curious
Oh and I moved ref tracking screaming to a separate define, and made some optimizations to the thing in general. I think that's it, this pr is a bit of a frankenstine
A new side-job for cargo. Prepare and launch exploration drones at distant sites to encounter weird adventures, collect loot and expand the station cargo network. Adventures - the main content type here, can be written by anyone without any knowledge of programming. The purpose here is creating an way of interesting way of delivering lore (and adding some new job content/cargo expansion method).
Co-authored-by: tralezab <40974010+tralezab@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: EOBGames <58124831+EOBGames@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Fikou <piotrbryla@onet.pl>
Co-authored-by: Aleksej Komarov <stylemistake@gmail.com>
