JackHunt wrote:
The station is supposed to be big, hulking, and empty. It's a secret, corporate, research facility and I wanted this map to feel like that. If I’ve made it a bit too brutalist in some areas, hopefully the detail in the areas you’ll be staying in, not passing through, makes up for that. I am fairly certain that Med and Sci being apart will not make or break any map but this can be left up to testing. I don’t think I have enough information to make that call anyway. As for the security, feedback was that things were too secure previously and I had to introduce various insecurities to compensate. It’s a balance thing and it’ll need some playtesting to figure out. There’s random stuff in space and empty rooms for people to go build autism forts in. There are 59 glass tables in my map. Box has 41. Meta has over 100.
I understand the vision, however, regardless of how well you think you've pulled it off, you've only managed to create something ugly and probably not that fun to play on. Medical and Science are the two most played departments, and they most definitely make/break a map. Notice that the only populated place on Box is the right wing, where Medsci is? You definitely need to reconsider. I don't think security is bad enough to say a lot about, but it has some ugly shapes for no real great reason. Random space for autism forts is an awful idea, considering there's massive amounts of empty space just outside the station. Metastation, which is incredibly cramp, is rife with locations for autism forts without the need for so much empty space. I see one almost every round.
On glass tables: Meta having over 100 is a lie. I specifically placed all of them myself. Glass tables are located exclusively in insecure medical areas, all break rooms, and the bridge. That's it. Remember that glass tables, even though they look nice, don't work as good as normal ones. They don't look that great in random places, either.
JackHunt wrote:It really, really doesn’t matter that it’s shaped like a penis. Besides, since you’ll only ever see 15x15 tiles. Captains office has been moved around a bit. There’s plenty of room so I tried to de-clutter it. There’s AI status screens now. There’s a table because you need to put the items somewhere. AI upload didn’t used to be insecure. I’m sure I can find a happy medium when balance changes are made. The vault is a potato because who cares? It’s the vault.
You can easily expand the bridge area, which is small and cramped, back into the massive empty square just behind it, and then place tables or racks around. The random tables with no chairs or anything looks like total garbage, you could even add a storage room in the nearby maintenance. Anything but what you did.
The vault, regardless of its importance, should at least look nice. It's a fortified base to hold a very important object.
JackHunt wrote:I really don’t get where you’re seeing the penis. Seriously, it doesn’t matter. There’s an antechamber to the armory so both Warden and HoS have access. The barriers went there because that’s where there was space. Wardens office got rearranged and resized. Equipment got moved around as well. HoS is important. He gets a fancy office and it’s not like Sec is starved for space.
The sec office is the balls, the hall is the shaft. And it does matter!! The antechamber could work better if it wasn't totally barren sans four barriers that crowd the room. I would suggest removing it altogether and expanding the armory in it, that would make an oblong albeit DESIRABLE shape, not like a potato but more like a mushroom.
Security on this map is pretty small, considering you felt the need to add an antechamber and turn the sec office into a sort of hub (which I appreciate, honestly, it makes it a place people will actually be.)
HoS, even if he is important, doesn't need an office that's so big it's actually empty. That's not fancy, it's poor design.
JackHunt wrote:So I’ve tried bombing it. At the absolute best you can take out the CO2, Plasma, N2O and some mix machinery. Or, if you want to risk standing 10 tiles from security, you can get the O2 and N2. You pretty much cannot get the Air tank without standing IN atmos or right the heck next to security. Of all the places to drop bombs atmos is actually pretty tame. I mean the pumps will stop working but it’s not going to kill everyone on the station before the shuttle arrives. A bomb anywhere is pretty much a shuttle call now. Can you explain what really makes my atmos different from Box? A bomb in maint right next to it is going to fuck it up on either map, right? If it absolutely must go, I have an alternate mock up with it moved down but I think that I’m not going to move it before playtesting feedback. The maint is crappy as is the lobby so I’ll work on that.
Trust me, I'm not worried about bombing. I'm worried that you can easily crack open a wall, build a plating and 2 walls w/ an RCD, then remove the last wall and now you have access to a huge amount of deadly, incredibly deadly, round ending equipment. Given you didn't separated distro from the rest of the place, you don't even have to open one more door/window to fuck with that either.
Box's atmos is on the peripheral of the station, it has a separate distro loop, the equipment is nicely distributed about the room, and the desk is a small modular room that makes sense.
JackHunt wrote:Lobby has walls now. I rarely see people use the desk. Why must it be connected to the inside? Test chamber is now for grenade mixes, not atmos (unless you make plasma smoke grenades) so the vents are gone. Machines were rearranged. Why are hallway departments bad without exception? I’ve broken it up with vendors, beds and walls. Morgue is small in area compared to box or meta, it’s just long. It also is a good hiding place, like laundry, in an otherwise fairly open department. What is actually wrong with virology? Genetics was made bigger. Dunno what else to put in it though. Good idea on the roller beds.
I always see people use the desk every round. The desk being connected from the inside makes it easier to climb over a table and hack open a door, making the department have an interesting weak spot. Hallway departments are boring and lack character. There's no nice, central area to explore around in, and have everything given to you from one place (like you did with Security, which I said I liked), instead you have obnoxious wings to navigate around in.
Virology is a long hallway with equipment placed sparingly around the walls. It isn't cool to have to move around the entire hall to exit, if you're working in the bottom nodule.
JackHunt wrote:Shooting range was lengthened and moved horizontal. Still don’t see why it has to be so big. What is wrong with the bomb range exactly? Mechbay is functional and doesn’t need to be bigger. You don’t use it for much. I’ll try and move around the equipment in R&D. Toxins can be rearranged too. The trash room is for storage and deliveries. It’s also fairly tucked away in a busy department.
Shooting range can be used to test guns that, when used in such close proximity, can hurt you. The bomb range has a massive weird thing with windows and targets just floating there, also it's misshaped for no really good reason. You aren't always prioritizing function, sometimes you also want it to be nice to move around in and nice to look at. Yours isn't.
JackHunt wrote:Reworked it and freed up a lot of space, QM is in the top corner now and it looks much better. Random plating outside is just for flavor. Hardly anyone will see it. It’s rough now but why is the mail room the worst thing you’ve seen in your life? You got three incoming disposals from three departments, three conveyors to sort on and one output. I’ll try rearranging to conveyors nicer. I have an idea for the layout.
For flavor, consider making the plating bumpy, like it's a bit of broken garbage instead of intentional. Did I say the mail room was the worst thing? It's incredibly convoluted and annoying to use, but what I meant was bad was the room where all mail sorting is done in the pipes. That's annoying. Also, please give it a desk.
JackHunt wrote:The bar is a bit small. I was trying a more open look. Why are the doors important? The kitchen is also small, I agree. Botany works fine in my experience. There’s always a table by the trays and the oddness of it doesn’t stop you from being efficient. I’ve moved some of the equipment around. Gibber is next to a public hall. It’s hard to break in there and not get caught. On box you can always slink away into maintence. What’s wrong with the chapel? The library got redone. Looks better now.
I don't like an open look, I enjoy the diner look of Box, and the hole-in-the-wall look of Meta, but not the open look of asteroid. Sorry. The doors are ugly and not really needed. Botany may work "fine", but seriously, look at Meta's botany. That's incredibly organized and like the peak of efficiency. It works spectacularly, yours most definitely doesn't. A botany needs, more than anything, organization so you know what you're doing. The public hall that the gibber is near is also the dorms, where no one ever goes. It will be easy to break in.
The chapel is incredibly small and not really fit to be called a "church" area. For real. Thanks for working on the library, I love a good library.
JackHunt wrote:I was going for labyrinthine actually. It’s the place where the shady shit goes down and in an otherwise open station provides a lot of nooks and crannies. Besides who uses dorms? ERPers and Antags. It’s like perfect for them. The 2x2 tiles are a picnic blanket… . The holodeck, fighting ring and biodome are all part of the fitness section, I feel like they work well together. Escape and Arrivals are pretty transitory. The escape bar is there since it’s a mandatory part of most rounds, you might as well provide *something* while people stand in escape. Bonus points for the bar being pressurized separately.
Look at Efficiency Station 3's dorms. It's tucked away, small, dank, and barely lit. When I say small, I mean it's completely puny. You don't need a labyrinthine and ugly dorms to serve that purpose, you just need to put it in the right place and give it the right atmosphere. The picnic blanket is just ugly, remove it please. I know that all three being near eachother work well together, but their placement as just a single node in the corner makes it look like it was lazily thrown there.
Just put arcade machines or, wow, an actual arcade room with funky carpets there! That would be really dope.
JackHunt wrote:It’s too long? Not enough hiding spots? Too linear? Not linear enough? I tried the twisting and turning maint as a contrast to the huge open and departments. I’ve been tweaking it but most areas have tons to do in them and plenty of alternate routes. I know it’s not square but that’s not actually a gameplay problem. In fact there is a degree of skill navigating the twists and turns while being chased. Hell to walk through is exactly what maintenance is. Pipes and shit, grilles, turns, twists. It’s not designed to be easy and boring to walkthrough like the main halls. I’ve since added some more areas and loops as well for variety.
It's an absolute travesty. It's bulbous, unnatural, it doesn't look like what the hull of a space station should look like. It's just as open as the departments, and it has no particularly interesting commodities. You need to shave it down so it does the most with the bare minimum, not the bare minimum with the most. I could care less for if maint is square, Metastation's is more like weird cracks going through the station and I love that. What matters is aesthetics. Maintenance doesn't need to be easy to walk through, but it should be interesting.
JackHunt wrote:I’m already doing some other maps on the side. I’d like to see some more testing with this before I throw it away. More generally I’d also like some more feedback if anyone else wants to rip it apart like allura did.
It's fine if you just want to get experience mapping, but I'm saying that I would genuinely be disgusted to see this map added to the codebase. I think you should take your ideas and apply them in a more concise, concentrated way. This map is just a bunch of random ideas of an optimistic, budding mapper whose talent increased gradually, causing nice areas like the biodome but hideous areas like medbay. You need to start over so the map is consistent.
