Beltstation: could it be done?

[The Grim Sleeper]

So this isn't one of those 'hey coders, do this'-type ideas, this is strictly speculative.

A station design that just 1 long corridor, stretching all the way across the z-level, and connects back to itself, pacman style.

The first obvious obstacle would be visualizing the station across the boundary. You can't have people jumping into a black void and then pop out on the far side of the station, there would need to be some sort of camera effect, that allows you to see there, complete with all the stuff going on.

The second obstacle would be physics across the boundary. You can teleport mobs just fine, but what about projectiles? Explosions? And smoke or foam? The new liquids?

And would such a station be fun?

[babayetu83]

i need some visual aides here

[poland spring]

what would happen if you took a ball of weed as big as the sun and threw it at the sun

[TheOnlyRyan]

Im not even sure what you mean by belt station.

A station that instead of walking everywhere, you take belts like a shuttle car? Before you leave the medical sector you slap a bar sticker on your face and hop on the belts to take you to the bar or something?

[Haprenti]

No, the concept is pretty clear, two sides of the station are connected through the z-level boundary.

It's more like a ring than a belt.

[medsal15]

There is a possibility that it is possible, but I doubt you can reach and touch the sides of the z-level. We will probably need teleporters around.

[The Grim Sleeper]

No, the concept is pretty clear, two sides of the station are connected through the z-level boundary.

It's more like a ring than a belt.

Yes!

Think like halo:combat evolved-style halo-ring-world. But in 2D that looks like an endless corridor.

There is a possibility that it is possible, but I doubt you can reach and touch the sides of the z-level. We will probably need teleporters around.

The whole point is that there aren't any visible teleporters. You just walk on and on and on. You walk past the Medbay, the labs, the garden, the kitchen, the bar, the bridge, the Medbay, the labs, the garden, the kitchen, the bar, the bridge, the Medbay, the labs, the garden, the kitchen, the bar, the bridge and so on, all seemingly seamlessly.

[Vitatroll]

and thus Donut3 was born, lol.

Uh, not sure? It's a neat concept but it'd take rewriting a bunch of aoe stuff. You could test out how it works now (stuff like bullets and transition lag) by building a quick hallway-type construction on the derelict z-level.

[Frank_Stein]

Nah this makes sense. When you hit the edge of the z level you just end up on the other side of the same zlevel. That already happens in some cases.

This seems perfectly feasible to me, but maybe with tweaks to other z level functions

[ZeWaka]

seemingly seamlessly.

impossible with BYOND

[Frank_Stein]

There would definitely have to be a seam, so I guess the best way to handle that would be to have some kind of access tunnel on the edges of the z-level that are barren.

Crossing over that area would warp you over, but you're going to run into problems when people try to damage one side when it doesn't carry over

[Faceplant]

If it was possible, and assuming there's nothing blocking the main hallway, there would be some fun shenanigans.

Setting up a battery of emitters would turn the hallway into a deathtrap.

You could keep throwing paper planes and they'd keep flying, assuming no one puts anything in the main hallway.

There would be no feeling more satisfying than buckling someone in the middle of the hallway, shooting away from them, then watching the bullets loop around and hit them.

Go-kart races would be awesome, especially if more obstacles were added as people completed laps.

If the hallway is wide enough, then with the help of some crayons and color-coordinated teams, we could have SS13 football.

Rocket shoes would be siiiiick

Going reaching lightspeed while skating would be siiiickeeerrr.

[warcrimes]

make the crossover spot an airbridge, with the usual undestructable unobtainium shuttle tiles. That way a) no continuity error on the crossover, and b) no walking from perfectly-safe station into literal space after an edge bombing

[The Grim Sleeper]

make the crossover spot an airbridge, with the usual undestructable unobtainium shuttle tiles. That way a) no continuity error on the crossover, and b) no walking from perfectly-safe station into literal space after an edge bombing

I was thinking some sort of security camera-style trickery could be used to allow sight across the seam.

[amaranthineApocalypse]

make the crossover spot an airbridge, with the usual undestructable unobtainium shuttle tiles. That way a) no continuity error on the crossover, and b) no walking from perfectly-safe station into literal space after an edge bombing

I was thinking some sort of security camera-style trickery could be used to allow sight across the seam.

Well, i believe the way those work is by tying your viewpoint to one of the cameras, but that does give me an idea.

I believe it would be possible to create a sprite which displays whatever is on a tile at any given time. Like a photograph except it keeps updating the contents of itself. Now, i don't believe it's possible to put sprites over the edge of the map, so what we need to do is make the last half screen (realistically slightly over half a a screen) of each side of the map impassable in some way. Probably by using a line of teleporters connecting to the other side of the map. These teleporters should handle any problems with projectiles or throwing and probably with bot patrols too.

With this, we could easily put together half a screen of updating tiles at the edge of the map. This at the very least would give the illusion of it being connected. If we make it a turf, we can have it update it's own opacity based on the opacity of the turf it's viewing solving any line of sight problems.

This does still leave a few problems though:

• This likely would not capture pixel movement properly
  
• This doesn't handle lighting across the seam
  
• Nor explosions across the seam
  
• Nor atmos over the seam *scream
  
• I haven't looked at the code, so i'm not sure whether it's possible to make it defer the right click menu to whatever tile it's linked to
  
• If it is, then examine text code will need to be modified to account for this as it would likely report as being too far away
  
• The science teleporter would make this artificial difference in map size noticeable and without a countermeasure would still be able to teleport past the seam.
  
• Non radio chat would also need to be altered to account for the seam
  
• AI targeting for space bears, guardbuddies, medbots, beepsky etc. would need to be worked around somehow
  
• Sechud/antag overlays could potentially have problems too? Could be dealt with via code in the turf though
  
• Updating the sprites every tick may turn out to be laggy as fuck
  

I think that's the vast majority of issues. If we can solve all these, then it becomes very possible indeed. Atmos, lighting and explosions are the difficult ones.