Second Progress Report - 08/17/2023

Been a while, huh? Yeah, we kind of forgot this existed. MeeM here. Usually, I'd be working on the wiki, or mapping a new thing, but we needed a new progress report, so I went to write one.

It's been almost one year since the last progress report. We've made great strides of changes to Shiptest since then!

Sprites

The most prominent topic visited on the previous report, touched here again! Artists have made great progress since - mostly notably, a complete makeover of our dear ships' walls and basic machinery, granting them an unique appearance. It certainly makes us stand out from other servers.

Ships are not the only thing that's been updated. To go along with the new look, lizards and underwear have recieved a new coat of paint, orchestrated by Thgvr.

Full body prosthetics of lizards have also been granted a new look that suspiciously resembles synths.

If that was not enough, major factions have received their own factional gear updated and resprited, including SolGov, the Minutemen, the Saint-Romaine Militia, and Inteq, by PositiveEntropy, retlaw34, and Halcyon, respectively.

Make sure to give our artists some love. They help make the world you play in!

Gameplay

What's a game without good gameplay? I know we're developing in a twenty year old atmospherics simulator, but hey, it's good.

Outposts

Packed along comes Outposts, a major altercation to the core gameplay loop, created by tmtmtl30. Outposts are stationary zones on the overmap in which ships can dock, with their own unique hangar, and go up through an elevator into the main area. Here, players can trade, setup shop, and interact with other ships for whatever, whenever!

Subshuttles

By TheMoonItself, we've also got Subshuttles now! They are tinier ships that dock with bigger ships, which allows for endless possibilities - delivery, transport, medical, trading, restaurants, boarding, human-delivered torpedoes, the list goes on! Several ships already use them, and even more are waiting on the github.

Anomalies

Part of an effort to make research less standing-in-one-spot and more engaging, anomalies are strange artifacts within space that apply special effects. Most notable is the throngler.

Bjarl, a maptainer and the creator of anomalies, had this to comment this them:

Anomalies are a thing I have a passion for, having played Stalker quite a bit, and experiencing tg's own anomalies (which this is based off of.) My general idea while approaching the design was to make thematic hazards that could be interacted with in unique ways. For an example, you could harvest plasma off a plasmasoul, or use a veins for gore. I won't list all the anomalies I added here, but there's a unique assortment, with each planet spawning different types of anomalies. You can even use them as a weapon by tactically detonating them!

Overmap Updates

Space wants to kill you, and Bjarl has been working on representing this through more overmap threats.

Here's what Bjarl had to say about them:

Prior to my overmap update, most overmap hazards were rather static threats. The most minor of electrical storms would literally explode ships into nothingness, Ion storms didn't work at all, and most meteor showers had poorly balanced lists of meteors. I reworked physical storms to only fire once you start moving so fast, allowing you to take a comfy sunday drive through asteroid fields if you so desire. Electrical storms no longer eviscerate your ship either, instead opting to damage machinery and cause injury (unless you dive into a major one...)

Gas Giants

Gas giants are planets full of, well, gasses. They are extraordinarily rare, but if you want to harvest massive amounts of one gas, there's no better spot.

More Storms

Ever been attacked by swarms of migratory carp? No? Well, now you can! If you drive a bit too fast, you might get caught up in one of the new storms, which include dust storms and carp storms. Some rebalancing to previous ones, as mentioned previously.

Mapping

On the Mapping department, we've had a great deal of ships added, deprecated and/or removed, with around 20 or so ships created for the game, and some 13 ships removed. We've also had our fair share of ruins added, with some 30 ruins thrown in among a variety of biomes and planets.

Let's go over some of the more notable ones:

Updated Twinks

I was asked to put this as a header. Anyhow, as the title states, we have entirely reworked the Twinkleshine-Class, by yours truly!

Now featuring telecommunications, an engineering section, and a Dark Gygax! Though the war has been long over, you can still put the fear in those who may oppose the Syndicate!

NT Dreadnaught

As a rival to the Twinkleshine, the Heron-Class is NanoTrasen's own big battleship, by Spockye.

Featuring a hell of a lot more crew than the Twinkleshine, a CentCom Fleet Captain, and an ERT team, it's more than ready to silence those that disagree with corporate.

Salvage(d) Ship

The removal of the Tide-Class vessels, while sad to see them go, brought along by PrefabQusar a new type of vessel for greytide enthusiasts - the Junker-Class!

Wooden walls, electrified grilles, lack of insulated gloves, permanent smell of burnt flesh, trash-eating maint goose. What more could a tider ask for?

Comms, Bandages and Paper

Marking the returnal of SolGov into the game, the Chronicle-class, engineered by Bjarl, is the replacement for the Cricket-class and the Solarian choice for all communication-gathering needs, while the Paracelsus-class is their very own medical ship, designed by PositiveEntropy.

Within the Chronicle comes a telecommunications setup, for SolGov vessels to talk with each other, and included with the Paracelsus lays a premium mix of medicine, living quarters and chemistry. Both ships are, in Solarian fashion, stocked with copious amounts of coffee, hot chocolate, ink, and paperwork.

Pills Here!

The Pill-Class, a ship consisting of three tiles of complete misery and meant as a punishment ship, was very popular among players, but it was removed from normal play after rounds turned into the dreaded Pilltest, where the only ships flying around were Pills. UnFortunately, Bjarl experimented with an even bigger Pillbottle-class.

Originally purposed for stress-testing subshuttles, this absolute monstrousity of a ship consists of 10 prisoners and 8 Pill-classes. With awful engines and barebones equipment, it relies on pills going in and out of the ship in order to gather resources, if they did not all explode in the first 30 minutes. Awful.

Bjarl had this simple comment about it:

I regret making it.

Theoretical Engineering

From the shipyards of the Galactic Engineering's Concordant comes the Lugol-class, brainstormed by Goober3. This highly experimental design is a dream come true for every engineering and atmospherics technician, with plenty of material, tools to spare, and a massive sandbox.

As unstable as the more radical components of the GEC, it has a tendency to have "incidents", ranging from exploding planets and ships to making entire sectors be radiation hazards and creating black holes. Be wary.

Ships Added/Reworked

Lore

As with every Roleplay server, we have our own batch of lore, and we've been certainly working to make it better than ever! I've asked Valorium for some commentary on the lore:

Howdy! This is Valorium, head of the lore team. MeeM went ahead and asked me to give my input on some of our lore proceedings for this update. So, aside from what's been mentioned already, here's some of the lore that's changed or been added since our last progress report.

SolGov

After being placed in the backburner for a good while, The Most Serene Solar and Intersolar Confederation makes a return into the game, with brand new lore to accompany it! A highly bureaucratic and naturalistic republic upholding a policy of armed neutrality, they represent the home system of humanity within the world of Shiptest.

Valorium had this to tackle on:

In addition to the notes above, the historical background of SolGov has been heavily revised.

Also, here's PositiveEntropy's commentary, the current writer of SolGov, who absolutely did not hold me at gunpoint for including such short commentary on their creation:

Hey there! PositiveEntropy here, the current writer for everyone's favorite Serene Solar And Intersolar Confederation to throw my two cents regarding the development of the faction. Originally headed by Voltriar, followed by TetraZeta, then by PiperDoots, and finally to me- this group was heavily rewritten from its original rendition. Starting off as yet another generic HFY group (A legacy from the whitesands era), the pivotal influences of swiss neutrality and political comedies from shows such as "Yes, Minister", as well as the solid basis the previous writers and artists provided, helped form the concept for the luddite-influenced society we see today. It was quite simply a position I would've never expected to be in, if you asked me a year ago. After all, my only point of reference for SolGov was what was in the game (it sucked), and during this year-long development period, these ideas were left on a limbo and were never truly added until late May of 2023. My hope is that with its recent rework, others may enjoy its more subverted cultural approach of coffee and paperwork, in comparison to other unified human societies you may have seen in other servers!

The Wiki

The lore team has been working to make the lore, usually relegated to the HackMD, more accessible by placing it into the wiki (by that i mean around three people copied and pasted some docs from there so people don't have to delve into the writers' chaos dungeon). A basic framework has been set, and in the upcoming months will be expanded upon. You can help!

The Installation

The Installation is a rather unheard of faction within Shiptest, likely because it has been left in the background for quite some time. Although most other Positronics belong to their respective faction, The Installation represents the Positronics' hold within the lore, for all silicon-based life.

Here's what our lore head has to share:

Though the Installation has existed in lore-limbo for a little while now, it has now been revamped and made into a proper Frontier faction. The Installation is a former Nanotrasen megastation now occupied by synthetic lifeforms from across the galaxy, some more benevolent than others. The station is split between the democratic, carbon-friendly Preservation League and the eldritch, silicon-supremacist Silicon Elevation Council. Enjoy the nightlife! See the wonders of a synthetic-oriented society! Try to avoid the sporatic skirmishes, SEC espionage and periodic assaults on carbonkind! We've had a couple of events oriented around the Installation and its denizens, as well as some external lore documents you can read more about below!

The Colonial Minutemen: The Frontiersmen, BARD and GOLD

The Minutemen are the dedicated peacekeepers of the frontier sectors, formed from hastily put together colonial militaries, and eventually weaved together into a coherent government body.

What does Valorium have to say about them?

Since our last update, the Colonial Minutemen (the coalition of independent colonies out in the Frontier) received a touchup to their backstory in the form of the Frontiersmen, a faction of hostile pirates that wreaked havoc upon the CMM colonies early in its history and have come back to haunt the Frontier, with new ruins, equipment and events built to accomodate them. Additionally, the Colonial Minutemen received two new sub-factions to liven them up: the Biological Assessment and Removal Division (which is a colorful bunch dedicated to wiping out hostile alien fauna that threaten the colonies) and the Galactic Optimum Labor Division (an economic/regulatory body that helps facilitate trade in the Frontier), with new gear and ships to match.

Miscellaneous

Alongside major lore updates, we've also had some touchups along the way.

Documents and Timeline

Some additions to the game's timeline have been created. And as a way to portray and exemplify the lore within the game, some in-universe documents have been created, including interviews and news articles.

To supplement our in-game lore and the bevy of formal documentation surrounding our factions, history and setting, the team has been working hard to create lots of in-universe documents: works that exist from within the setting that provide details about the world of Shiptest that would be difficult to explain via formal documentation. As noted above, these include interviews and news articles, as well as research notes, history books, biographies, pop-science essays, poetry and more!

Main Primer

The primer itself, which is the page to introduce new players into the lore, has been updated to hopefully be more comprehensive and thematic. Be sure to give it a look over.

Shipwrights and Gunsmiths

The lore regarding ship and weapon manufacturers have been expanded, and shipwrights have even recieved their own little logos to go into ships.

If you're curious about who makes the ships you fly and the guns you shoot, you can check it out.

In a similar fashion to our shipwrights, we also have some new background additions in the form of our gunsmiths, companies and organizations responsible for the manufacture of the many firearms in use around the Frontier, including Hunter's Pride (a Saint-Roumain Militia-based organization producing old-Earth firearms), Scarborough Arms (the company responsible for the creation of most Syndicate firearms) and more!

Supernatural Culling

Cults, wizards, and witches were cut from the game in lore! Here's Valorium's commentary:

Because of some issues with the wider implications in the setting, as well as a lack of fitting with our general vibe, wizards and cults have both been scrapped from our lore in their traditional incarnations. The final outcome of such is pending.

Quests

Someone made a Homestuck-inspired(?) webcomic titled DECOMPRESSED, and a lot of people liked it. So much infact, that we've had our very own webcomics based on it!

Squidquest

Squidquest puts the Syndicate crew of a Komodo-class on a special mission in the spotlight. It's created by one of the folks in the lore team, AsciiSquid, so it's fairly truthful to the lore.

Internquest

As the name states, Internquest follows along the path of an unfortunate Central Command intern, planned by PositiveEntropy. Shenanigans ensue. Although it is currently on hold, the story has unfolded quite a bit, and is a good read regardless.

Intequest

This one is the newest, and seeks to tell the origin of one of the factions within the game, Inteq. It is still within early stages, but has a promising start.

If you wanna read 'em, they're available in the Shiptest discord.

Development

This is the section for things that either didn't quite fit the previous categories, or are more backend oriented. Not many exciting things lay here, but they deserve their own separate area.

Ship Descriptions and Faction

Something that players were complaining about was the lack of information when choosing a ship to play on. The only way to get information was either experience, word of mouth, or the Wiki pages, which most of the time were incomplete or entirely missing. Ship tags and descriptions provide a solution to that by bringing about a basic overview of a ship's specialization and lore, while also tagging it to provide some more specific information.

The results are pretty good! You can also hover over their name to see their faction.

Performance Improvements

Another common complaint is the performance within the game. While it is indeed BYOND's fault most of the time, we're also behind schedule in terms of performance updates, being a Whitesands-derived codebase. Mark, our project lead, has been working behind the curtain to get us up to speed with fixes and patches. I can't really show an image, but trust me on this, it runs better!

More Character Slots

With the current amount of roles present within the game and the roleplay focus, it was deemed appropriate to have a higher limit for characters. You don't have to use the twenty characters slots. But you could.

Removal of Flypeople and Squidpeople

It's what it says on the tin. Flypeople and squidpeople were heritage from Whitesands, did not have lore, and nobody wanted to maintain them. As a result, they were cut from the game.

Closing Thoughts

This report is drastically different from the last one, probably considering it's been a year of progress since then. I do sincerely hope it's faithful to the original vision of the first - I've asked our maintainer and staff team to provide commentary on these contributions and to make sure it's relatively correct. There's been some other major contributions in the works and released that I haven't talked about, but I may touch them on the next report (if that ever comes). Until then, farewell!

Server Costs

Hi, this is the section where I shill for the server host. Do you like testing ships? Do you like shipping tests? Would you like to give your gold to a dragon? Please donate to Zephyr's Patreon, our server host. They're the reason the server is not running on a Raspberry Pi inside a pizza box. Not begging, yet!

Zeta's Devlogs - The First One - 09/23/2022

Tetra here, writing about... whatever comes to mind? All related to development of Shiptest, of course. So what's there to talk about?

How about my favorite subject, sprites! (and more broadly, aesthetics, visual cohesion, artistic guidelines...) This devlog features a lot of commentary from Any%, co-headspriter.

SS13's visuals are something special, brought about by the unique conditions of Space Station 13 development. There's over a decade of assets made by contributors of all skill levels following different aesthetic preferences. The result?

It brings a tear to the eye.

Admittedly, I'm cherrypicking an egregious (well, readily available) example from a server that doesn't prioritize aesthetics, but it demonstrates exactly the kind of mystery soup that SS13 has evolved into aesthetically. There are sprites that date back from and before r4407 right alongside a (poorly) modified version of Tau Ceti's tileset! What's going on?

Lots of legacy sprites tend to be legacy for a reason. We should look at replacing them eventually, but knocking out primary visual offenders is our priority – Sprites that give people the wrong idea about what this server is. — Any%

What did she mean by that? Well-

Sprites like the retro laser gun, air alarm, APC, and other things that don't fit our aesthetic, but are so ubiquitous they comprise of their own aesthetic that runs counter to our current one.

That's not to say these sprites are bad in any objective manner. A lot of them are Bad, but others are serviceable, even great. In a different context, on a normal Space Station 13 server, following the Space Station 13 server Aesthetic, they fit in perfectly.

The problem comes when you try to diverge from that.

Currently we have the strange blessing of, honestly, not all that many glaring stylistic clashes- But you can definitely tell what has and hasn't been touched by skilled hands in the last actual decade.

Of course, the problem goes beyond just skill. If you told a dozen of Space Station 13's most talented spriters to resprite the entirety of the game, your end result would still look like chunky visual mystery soup without any sort of guiding principles for aesthetics and visuals. Servers with strong visual cohesion like Goonstation and CEV Eris have guides on how to make sprites in their style, such as Goonstation's Spriting Guidelines or Eris' pre-made palettes.

We could do that.

We could, and should, get our standards for spriting down somewhere accessible; I'd even entertain a standardized palette for Shiptest at some point. However, before any of that, I want to clearly define the aesthetic our server is actually going for. It's been in somewhat in flux for a long time. We've always had a vague idea of what we want in the back of our minds, but we've only recently taken the time to really discuss what we want Shiptest to look like.

I won't go into the topic of visual direction too deeply here (this dlogpost is mostly just me getting used to writing posts like these), but I've discussed the matter with Any%; we both agree that we want industrial environments that remind you that you are on the Rim.

There's something rugged about the idea of everyone happily going about their day ready to come face-to-face with hard vacuum, and our design should capture that.

That's something to apply to the setting as a whole, and deviations from it should be done with intention, to highlight some kind of difference. Factions and cultures will get their own design addenums or even separate style guides to keep them cohesive yet distinct.

Those style guides aren't in this dlogpost (sorry), but progress on them is being made, and they'll arrive alongside major resprites and lore refreshes. Until then, trying to aim for an industrial style works, for now. I do fully intend to write another post dedicated to the topic of our aesthetic in the future, once the aforementioned style guides are complete! Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

First progress report - 09/20/2022

This is the first progress report I'm posting here. To access just the progress reports with no formatting or anything, go here. Look forward to the exciting future news that will be posted here!