Come roast on this tentative design

[twoski]

I've been goofing around with QDMM and i figured i should first do some planning before i make anything.

I have a list of principles that in my mind make a map good.

- No room will be larger than the player screen size. If a department has more space than that, then it needs to be properly partitioned.
- Arteries are the backbone of the map, not the departments. Everything should be modeled around the placed arteries. 
- Medbay, security and AI/command are the most important departments and should be given preferential access to the main arteries and positioned accordingly.
- Major arteries (hallways) should be 4 tiles wide.
- Minor arteries should be 3 tiles wide.
- All major departments should be surrounded (or at least have most walls covered) by outer maintenance tunnels or arteries.
- Maintenance tunnels should be 2 tiles wide when connecting to 1 tile wide parts, so people can't get stuck as easily.
- Arteries should not be interrupted by departments or go straight through them. Departments should branch off from the arteries.
- Players should not be able to sprint for long periods. There should be plenty of points in arteries where players have to open doors to continue, or change direction. This ties into the first principle.
- Science lab and engine should be kept on the fringes of the station since they're the most likely to cause catastrophic damage, statistically speaking. I remember an old goonstation map where R&D wasn't even on the same Z-level and had a built in nuke so the RD could blow it up if needed.
- Navigability is nice. Making the main arteries snake around in weird contortions creates an environment that is more difficult to learn and navigate effectively.
- The bar/cafe is what i would consider the social hub of the ship and thus should be immediately visible once you enter the station from arrivals. It should also be on a main artery.

[removed old image]

Legend
- Royal blue is major arteries.
- Darker blue is minor arteries.
- Light purple is maintenance tunnels.
- Unlabeled are general purpose rooms or some other room type i didn't specify such as chapel. 

Other notes
- Security Aux is what i imagine would be a big holding pen for permabrigged prisoners. I like the idea of jailbreaks still being doable since there's maintenance access along the sides of the jail.
- I like the idea of having a room specifically meant for holding lab animals and animals used in cooking. It's close to the kitchen, genetics and R&D which is ideal.
- I think a decently sized crew quarters room should be near the main artery at the front of the station and should probably be where head of staff has their headquarters.

It's not perfectly to scale, but the layout is generally what i want to go for. Can anyone think of ways i can improve this? In terms of scale i imagine it would be roughly the size of cogmap (like 120x120).

[twoski]

Some good ideas and pointers so i redid it a bit.

Spoiler!

I like the idea of having departmental pod bays for most departments and keep an emergency pod fabricator at arrivals and EVA in case something goes south and people can't get around as easily.

The end product probably won't be as simplistic and rectangular, this is just a general guideline for what i want.

[Frank_Stein]

I like that design. I think the only thing I would change about it is moving evac to left of waste disposals. I think that would give it more foot traffic to that corner of the station

[warcrimes]

Gay Baby Jail
Can you uhhh ???????
What?

[Technature]

I'm, quite frankly, amazed you can fit three massive words in there when the four letter "Brig" would have been fine.

Also

4.Bigotry and sexual content is a non-negotiable hard 'no'.

[twoski]

apologies, it was a reference to that one cat picture meme.

---

I like that design. I think the only thing I would change about it is moving evac to left of waste disposals. I think that would give it more foot traffic to that corner of the station

that could work. i was interested in making evac more central to the station but if moving it would help equalize traffic (since mining and waste disposal would probably be low traffic zones) then maybe it's a good idea.

[twoski]

I got the hang of qdmm so i did some really basic layout placement.



Not sure i like how jiggly it is. The idea was to make it so you can't sprint all over the place easily without putting tons of doors. But maybe just having doors every X units might be preferable to the station being full of jagged corridors. Some opinions would be nice, i'd rather not commit to a design that ends up being clunky/obnoxious in practice even if it reduces long corridors and areas that are longer than the player's screen.

Blue is the 4 wide main arteries, green is the 3 wide minor arteries. Bottom right is where i moved evac since it was too close to the engine for comfort before.

[twoski]

Made some good progress today, i ended up with enough space for 2 other miscellaneous rooms where i wasn't expecting to fit any. I think actually working on the rooms once you have a rough layout is the best way to do it since that's the only way you will know if you need more or less space. So i'm working from the top down and trying to keep roughly within the boundaries i set with the purple squares.

Someone mentioned that major departments should have little alcoves off the main hallway where people can congregate to yell at them through the service window and i think that's an excellent idea. I also want to have pod bays for the major departments, so maybe that's what i'll cram in the upper ? room.

I moved the bar closer to the middle of the map so it'll get more action. Added a barber shop and a utility room closer to arrivals. Added a tool storage next to the rec room and added a shitty clown hole area near the maintenance area east of arrivals. I gave the clown some bath salts and meth in his room, i dunno if that's frowned upon. I think it's fitting.



I need to think of more misc rooms, so far all that comes to mind is an arcade.

Also it's less apparent at the top of the map but i reduced the jitter in the main arteries, especially on the horizontal areas, since it was a bit over the top.

[twoski]

lil more progress



you can see how much the result differs from the initial footprint. i kind of gave up on having departmental pod bays, i think instead they're gonna just be more general use and not affiliated with any specific department. should there be any sort of airlock security measures in place? i assume having airlocks all over the place might make it really easy for villains to get around.

Animal storage got moved next to botany since i had a surplus of space in there and nothing to do with it. I think it works better like this anyhow.

[twoski]

Mostly focused on the security area today.





The idea is that the security guy strips someone naked, chucks them in the red chute of their choosing, then once their time in jail is over the security guy just opens the floor hole which dumps them back into the holding cell, where the security guy should put their belongings beforehand. Once they get dressed etc they can jump down the parole hole and end up back in the lobby area so it's very hands-off for security. Also there's food chutes for the prisoners as well, i'm just using a tinted version of the garbage chute for the sprite though.

[Technature]

I feel I should note that security should be able to get into the brig without having to use something as unreliable as something that shoots you onto the floor, where someone could take advantage of that. This way they can break up fights between inmate, retrieve their cuffs, and (probably most importantly) prevent inmates from attempting to escape.

Though I could just be missing a door here.

[twoski]

I could just add a brig access door where the clown punching bag thing is. Probably not a bad thing to have.

[ZeWaka]

To me, the map just feels very uninspired. You said over Discord you were going for realism, but this just looks unfun to play on.

Security feels strange, with the entrance being in a real weird spot with no way to see outside, the layout flow is a weird curved shape that avoids becoming a smooth loop, the armory is protected by a single window, and the pod bay is so far away as to be useless.

Moreover, you don't need to provide gear for 14 officers. That's just asking for assistants to break in and steal a locker. If there was ever resource bloat, this is it. But it also feels quite sparse, with a lack of decor and inspired design. It's lacking in flavor and detail.

The dorms and bathroom area are another mess. there's no need for that many beds or bathrooms. It just feels copy pasted and frankly, ugly. The HoPs office fees drab and boring, with things shoved into corners. Customs(?), the Detective's Office, and the Captain's area feels the same way.

Arrivals is just copy-pasted from Cog1, with the shuttle being extended for some weird reason.

Tool storage seems decent enough.

The Bar, Dining Area, and Fancy Lounge area are also unnecessarily large, spacious, and drab. I bet clarion could fit the whole medbay in just that Catering area. It suffers from the same problem as the rest of the station, bloated yet sparse.

Frankly, I could describe the whole station similarly.

Also, thindows suck and are terrible.

Edit: you said "No room will be larger than the player screen size. If a department has more space than that, then it needs to be properly partitioned."
This map clearly breaks this rule.

[warcrimes]

You asked for a roast, so i'm pulling no punches here. Hope you'll forgive me eventually.

Here's my (a clown asshole's) advice.
Stop thinking so much about your hallways and your sec layout and all that- You're trying to run and buddy, you're gonna need to crawl first.
Lookin at these screenshots, what really stands out to me is the complete lack of
- APCs
- Wires
- Atmospherics
- Disposals pipes
That's the vast majority of the time you're gonna spend on a project, and you gotta get those down first, if not in tandem with the rest of it. Let them branch organically as you build rooms around the infrastructure.

Secondly, this layout is not really playable, imho. I suggested back on discord that you make an exercise of running from each department's inner core to sec, then back, then to medbay, etc - to get a feel for it. Either you didn't, or you have the patience of a saint when it comes to long narrow featureless windowless corridors punctuated by mandatory shifts from the W key to the A and D, as exciting as those may seem.

Third, and this one is the most immediately striking, as an artiste - Atmospherically, thematically, this is not going in a direction I like.
You mentioned a backstory that describes it as an "old but reliable" installation (as much of a mary-sue as that is), but this feels quite the opposite. It doesn't feel worn-in, old in any sense of the term, not serviceable, not simple either - it reminds me of Ikea flatpack furniture laid out between cardboard dividers in a school gym. Something about it looks like it's an endless sea of grey tile upon which you've just kinda drawn rectangles and zigzags. It looks brand-new and contracted to the lowest bidder, but not in a charming way. Stop and take the time to study a map, to the detail, to the attention afforded to each and every room.
More square footage does not equal more interesting.

4th, now i'm getting into actual design issues, the podbays being out at the end of once again featureless corridors, not great. "Maintenance" tunnels? I don't see any at all?? (unless those 1-tile-wide hallways are maint, in which case don't tile them, that defeats the purpose of being able to access the infrastructure). Security is laid out 100% not to allow, but to cause, frequent breakouts with no way to prevent them. Sec will absolutely just weld people into lockers. The entire arrivals delta, with the bar and catering nd all the rest - is going to end up pretty barren and empty. Other than new players showing up (who actually need to LEAVE the main hallway to get into somewhere interesting) - theres no reason for traffic to go north.
The gigantic army barracks and double enormous bathrooms (gendered?? why??) are also absolutely baffling.

Now i need to address the actual design GOALS you've set out, because I take issue even with the ones you managed to hit.
- Arteries are the backbone of the map, not the departments. Everything should be modeled around the placed arteries.
This is bad. Nobody goes into a hallway in order to see the hallway. Halls serve as ingress and egress to places that need transit, not the other way around. Halls-first-departments-after is lazy patchwork at best and a fundamental misunderstanding of the game at worst.
- All major departments should be surrounded (or at least have most walls covered) by outer maintenance tunnels or arteries.
Again, this is so so so weird. Lends more to the flat-pack cardboard atmosphere. Where am I in the station? oh i've got gray hall to the south, gray hall to the north, gray hall to the west and - OH! to the east is a slightly narrower, but still gray, hall.
- Navigability is nice. Making the main arteries snake around in weird contortions creates an environment that is more difficult to learn and navigate effectively.
This one is actually the #1 complaint we recieve about new maps. Don't actively try to make it shitty. Bad design is the worst antagonist.

There's more but I really think it's worth completely reconsiddering your goals here. Start by making a single, functionning, isolated room with power, doors, lighting, and disposals. Show us in-game screenshots. Work on a design aesthetic that fits one room, make it look realistic. Then maybe make a second room.

A Hall of Hallways is a bad carnival trick.

[twoski]

well i can't say i didn't ask for a roast. and i do appreciate honest feedback. i will try and work through the responses in order.

Security feels strange, with the entrance being in a real weird spot with no way to see outside, the layout flow is a weird curved shape that avoids becoming a smooth loop, the armory is protected by a single window, and the pod bay is so far away as to be useless.

Moreover, you don't need to provide gear for 14 officers. That's just asking for assistants to break in and steal a locker. If there was ever resource bloat, this is it. But it also feels quite sparse, with a lack of decor and inspired design. It's lacking in flavor and detail.

i'm not happy with the sec layout in its current form, i agree it is a bit of a labyrinth. i took out the windows on the armory since there's nothing in there warranting them in the first place. i also cut down on lockers, there's now 2 special equip lockers, 4 standard equip lockers, and 4 sec lockers. the rest is all just clothes and vending. worth noting that the special equip/equip lockers will be behind HoS-only doors so he would need to allow security access to those.

most of what i have is really barebones since it's constantly shifting around as i squish things together and resize rooms etc. so i try my hardest to stay away from fine details, which is why a lot of the map seems so bleak and samey. once i nail down some layout that works i'll probably do an actual detailing pass instead of just tossing stuff in the room i think it should belong in.

The dorms and bathroom area are another mess. there's no need for that many beds or bathrooms. It just feels copy pasted and frankly, ugly. The HoPs office fees drab and boring, with things shoved into corners. Customs(?), the Detective's Office, and the Captain's area feels the same way.

dorms is what i consider a failed experiment. i had this wacky idea to make everything based on a station population of 40 people, which as it turns out, is a fucking batshit insane idea. so today i bit the bullet and started nip-tucking every room that was overbloated with useless clutter.

Arrivals is just copy-pasted from Cog1, with the shuttle being extended for some weird reason.

Yeah i dumped that in back when i was doing the initial layout just to get a feel for how big arrivals would be roughly. It's been totally redone.

Tool storage seems decent enough.

* twoski lights a tiny candle to celebrate

The Bar, Dining Area, and Fancy Lounge area are also unnecessarily large, spacious, and drab. I bet clarion could fit the whole medbay in just that Catering area. It suffers from the same problem as the rest of the station, bloated yet sparse.

Agreed, i gave those a good chopping today. The fancy lounge is still MAYBE too big but i think they're within range of the size they should be.

Edit: you said "No room will be larger than the player screen size. If a department has more space than that, then it needs to be properly partitioned."
This map clearly breaks this rule.

so it does, but after my nip tuck pass i think i've cut out a lot of the problem zones.

bear in mind that long main arteries will not be long uninterrupted lines, there will be door slabs that partition them into manageable chunks. i left that for later, but i have been taking note of places where those partitions would fit nicely as well as good spots for emergency fire door lines.

Lookin at these screenshots, what really stands out to me is the complete lack of
- APCs
- Wires
- Atmospherics
- Disposals pipes

Disposal pipes generally seem to just follow the hallways/corridors where they are easily accessed on all the maps i've looked at, so all you need to worry about early on is their entry points. Once you know all the entry points and where they have to converge you can just put it all together in one fell swoop.

I suppose APCs/atmos/wires are a bit more involved so it would be good to at least plan ahead for their requirements.

Secondly, this layout is not really playable, imho. I suggested back on discord that you make an exercise of running from each department's inner core to sec, then back, then to medbay, etc - to get a feel for it. Either you didn't, or you have the patience of a saint when it comes to long narrow featureless windowless corridors punctuated by mandatory shifts from the W key to the A and D, as exciting as those may seem.

None of the rooms seem problematic in terms of distance to the major hubs, thus far. I don't see how the corridors being rather bland at the moment ties into that though. Most aspects of the map are barebones right now since i'm constantly chopping things up.

Third, and this one is the most immediately striking, as an artiste - Atmospherically, thematically, this is not going in a direction I like.
You mentioned a backstory that describes it as an "old but reliable" installation (as much of a mary-sue as that is), but this feels quite the opposite. It doesn't feel worn-in, old in any sense of the term, not serviceable, not simple either - it reminds me of Ikea flatpack furniture laid out between cardboard dividers in a school gym. Something about it looks like it's an endless sea of grey tile upon which you've just kinda drawn rectangles and zigzags. It looks brand-new and contracted to the lowest bidder, but not in a charming way. Stop and take the time to study a map, to the detail, to the attention afforded to each and every room.
More square footage does not equal more interesting.

it may very well turn out that my approach is no good. i didn't really use a concept for my map in the sense that other maps such as donut station did. it's just a looping corridor design that i'm fitting rooms into.

https://youtu.be/5vrY1UL5lYs?t=254

4th, now i'm getting into actual design issues, the podbays being out at the end of once again featureless corridors, not great. "Maintenance" tunnels? I don't see any at all?? (unless those 1-tile-wide hallways are maint, in which case don't tile them, that defeats the purpose of being able to access the infrastructure). Security is laid out 100% not to allow, but to cause, frequent breakouts with no way to prevent them. Sec will absolutely just weld people into lockers. The entire arrivals delta, with the bar and catering nd all the rest - is going to end up pretty barren and empty. Other than new players showing up (who actually need to LEAVE the main hallway to get into somewhere interesting) - theres no reason for traffic to go north.

yeah the skinny corridors are maintenance. i'm not sure how breakouts would be a thing with the existing sec layout though, it seems roughly similar to other brigs - you have the brig chute and the intermediate cells before being dumped back into the lobby, i can't see how an unarmed man has a chance at escaping there at all (ignoring the thindows, which i will be removing entirely).

the bar and cafe is facing the prospective entrance to medbay so i can't see how it wouldn't have incredibly high traffic. it's on what i imagine would be the highest traffic junction on the entire station, the path that connects medbay to command and also is the main route to sec from that side of the station. the north side kind of suffers from being mostly filler rooms/crew quarters/tool storage/equipment storage but from what i've seen, every station has that one big chunk of rooms that don't belong to any of the big departments cuz there's only so much real estate you can cram them in before you're out of space.

Now i need to address the actual design GOALS you've set out, because I take issue even with the ones you managed to hit.
- Arteries are the backbone of the map, not the departments. Everything should be modeled around the placed arteries.
This is bad. Nobody goes into a hallway in order to see the hallway. Halls serve as ingress and egress to places that need transit, not the other way around. Halls-first-departments-after is lazy patchwork at best and a fundamental misunderstanding of the game at worst.
- All major departments should be surrounded (or at least have most walls covered) by outer maintenance tunnels or arteries.
Again, this is so so so weird. Lends more to the flat-pack cardboard atmosphere. Where am I in the station? oh i've got gray hall to the south, gray hall to the north, gray hall to the west and - OH! to the east is a slightly narrower, but still gray, hall.
- Navigability is nice. Making the main arteries snake around in weird contortions creates an environment that is more difficult to learn and navigate effectively.
This one is actually the #1 complaint we recieve about new maps. Don't actively try to make it shitty. Bad design is the worst antagonist.

i think the first point is just a way of viewing the typical web of rooms on the station. in some designs you have what looks like a tree that branches off into different departments if you were to map out their main halls. my take on it was to just take that tree/branch structure and connect branches together into loops. there's a handful of stations that do this pretty well i think.

kinda like https://i.imgur.com/rGLymxT.png

obviously it can be more complicated than that based on the station you use as an example but the idea was that every division is a part of a circuit, rather than a branch on a tree. obviously my assertion that everything should unerringly adhere to the shape of the circuit was wrong - i've had to already do some resizing and moving on it since i drastically overestimated the space i'd need.

i'll concede the second point. nobody wants to be surrounded by maintenance shafts.


anyways here's some more recent pictures. i did a lot of downsizing and getting rid of wasted space. captains quarters, HoP, cafe, bar and jazz lounge are all downsized. sec wasn't really edited much aside from making the main access a double door and getting rid of some thindows.



i was goofing around with arrivals and air bridges, i'll probably get yelled at for this. the north side is totally useless and probably would just confuse people but i think it at least looks kind of cool. like an actual arrivals shuttle port.



i'll probably just remove the pod bays i've scattered everywhere. it was a novel idea but this map already has a very interconnected layout so it's not like you're going to be stranded with no way out if someone explodes a chunk of the circuit. some departments warrant one but putting them on random sections of the station doesn't seem worthwhile.

i like the idea of having the north chunk at arrivals with some sort of emergency EVA setup in case arrivals somehow becomes cut off from the rest of the station. but that's probably a very low likelihood situation. i dunno.