Official(?) Alcatraz Station Discussion

[Arborinus]

I am still very much on hiatus but I am making this thread just to be fair to people on IRC etc. that I've talked to about this. The name is not final, feel free to suggest a new one!

This thread is about the unfinished map I've been working on since like 2014, Alcatraz Station. All images and broken promises are not final and will not reflect the final product blah blah blah. I will change and update this post as development goes on.

Ask questions about the map or about how I mapped this monstrosity here!



Features:

• The station is built on an asteroid/meteor/comet/correct term. This opens up opportunities for people to create and explore tunnels, make secret rooms and offers a new style of play not really seen much before on the server.
  
• Station departments are split up into "pods" and glass walkways bridge between them. You could also go into maintenance and out an airlock after suiting up to take a longer route to where you want to go.
  
• Some new coded features I will not unveil just yet.
  
• A hot tub, a nuclear shelter, a lion pit and more!
  
• The PTL shoots through genetics and genetics alone.
  

To-do list:

• Finish engineering and QM areas, map touch ups.
  
• Rework my old asteroid wall sprites, maybe code autowalls for them?
  
• Somehow finish wiring and piping after trudging through it for possible decades.
  
• Probably a lot more that I am forgetting.
  

More W.I.P. preview images in old-lighting vision:
Spoiler!

[Frank_Stein]

Whoaaa is that a food conveyor belt for the dining hall? How trendy!

[Flourish]

I love the images you've posted

How did you get the inspiration for/come up with this station? Do you envision it in a particular setting or for a particular group of people?

[Mageziya]

One thing I'm curious about is travel time and scale. There's lots of long, barren corridors, and long uninteresting corridors could incentivize movement (for better or worse) among players.

What's the scale of this map compared to cog 1 and cog 2?

[NateTheSquid]

i love it. for prison shenanigans we need to add fake asteroid chunks, to replace broken ones for tunnels. and allow slow digging at asteroids with spoons.

it does seem a little big though, as mageziya said. could always probably just shrink things and move departments closer to eachother.

[LuigiThirty]

Even if you wanted the long distances you could break up the long tunnels with guard shacks, medical stations, escape hatches to hollowed out rooms that are abandoned or under construction.

[warcrimes]

got any better-resolution on the whole map?
kinda hard to make anything out

[Arborinus]

Whoaaa is that a food conveyor belt for the dining hall? How trendy!

Yep. Maybe, just maybe it'll get people to eat the food more.

I love the images you've posted

How did you get the inspiration for/come up with this station? Do you envision it in a particular setting or for a particular group of people?

Not completely sure since it was so long ago but I've always liked the mining z-levels on both goon and /tg/ (unless it was changed). Before map rotation and community maps were a thing I thought it would be cool if it was an alternate game mode like Disaster mode where people had to do some weird secret stuff to make it appear for one round. But in the end with the new systems I just made it a normal station map.

One thing I'm curious about is travel time and scale. There's lots of long, barren corridors, and long uninteresting corridors could incentivize movement (for better or worse) among players.

What's the scale of this map compared to cog 1 and cog 2?

Alright, if I'm a little generous for all maps and round and not count weird exterior structures, here's how they are in tiles long by tall:
Cog1: 130x140
Cog2: 150x130
Alcatraz (counting long hallways): 200x180
Alcatraz (squished together): 105x150

So really it's kind of taller but narrower than those two maps, funnily enough. The barren and uninteresting parts are being worked on, like I said it's unfinished. The means of travel between station sections were also an idea of mine, but let's just say you're on the right track.

got any better-resolution on the whole map? 
kinda hard to make anything out

Not yet, it's not done. The previews are just to get an idea of the map, and it's a lot of work to make a whole map image which I'm not going to do if I haven't done everything yet.

[elan_oots]

Not yet, it's not done. The previews are just to get an idea of the map, and it's a lot of work to make a whole map image which I'm not going to do if I haven't done everything yet.

There's a menu option for that in FastDMM, if you want to check that out.

[ZeWaka]

So really it's kind of taller but narrower than those two maps, funnily enough. The barren and uninteresting parts are being worked on, like I said it's unfinished. The means of travel between station sections were also an idea of mine, but let's just say you're on the right track.

I love how you did that

[Gannets]

Neat!

[Recusor]

Looks very cool. How does atmosphere work if we were to breach a corridor into the surrounding rock? Does air/heat just flow in, or would we have to pressurize? Ive had alot of issues recently with construction/getting air into places on cog1 and 2

[ZeWaka]

Looks very cool. How does atmosphere work if we were to breach a corridor into the surrounding rock? Does air/heat just flow in, or would we have to pressurize?

Air/heat should distribute evenly. So, if you dig enough you'll need air cans.

[atamusvaleo]

Can't wait to extend the long arm of the law into this station. 

:saddowns:

PS: Looks like you've got it covered but if you need a hand with any sprite work, I'd be happy to contribute.

[Arborinus]

Haven't been able to work on this, once summer is over there will probably be more time, ironically.

I'm not sure about the current state of Blob, but I can see some problems with it on this map and just being able to go anywhere and grow to round-ending status without ever seeing a single person. I think it would need to be coded that they can't eat asteroid walls or are just disabled for this map or something, this would need to be tested.

PS: Looks like you've got it covered but if you need a hand with any sprite work, I'd be happy to contribute.

I'll open this offer up to anyone: If you want some to contribute some cool decorative objects, I'll try to see how I can add them. If you notice, I sprited some new floors, halfwalls, etc. Some things that could be done: more floors, new shrubs, posters, statues... Whatever you can think of really, but the requirement is that it's only function is to look pretty (doesn't need coded) or isn't too ridiculous (don't worry, anything too goofy could probably fit in the clown room or something).


I would also like input on this half wall sprite. It's for the brig and is meant to be drab but it looks pretty dumb. If anyone wants to take a crack at making a better one, go ahead.