New atmoshperic system

[orelbon]

Is there a way to speed up the atmospheric simulation so you can't stay in a room next to a breach for like 1 minute before the air actually gets sucked out. i mean its ridiculously slow, and unrealistic it takes a little bit of fun out of the game watching someone run around a breach all fine and dandy. Plus when playing AI you can't locate explosions quickly because atmosphere alarms are too slow.

[necaladun]

 

The air alarms seem a problem - it takes a long time for a room to get to a point where they shut off.

 

Watching people get sucked out of airlocks is one of my favourite things of SS13. In fact, the first time I ever killed someone was by opening doors while I was wearing magboots and my victim wasn't.

 

I honestly feel the dangers of atmospherics are not just a key part of SS13, but of the whole "being in space" experience.

 

[orelbon]

i feel exactly exactly the same.

[Nakhi]

 

ZAS was enjoyable for the explosive decompression effects. Now you can blow a hole in a room, take a minute to put on internals, and still walk away with zero injuries. There's no danger to it, on a server where danger is kind of around every turn... other than that turn into space.

 

I agree with Neca that that's the experience of being in space. Anything less isn't really space. Then there's the air alarm problem. A room can be breached for several minutes before it actually shows up, which is problematic in, say, a meteor storm.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

This isn't really something you can just *do*. LINDA isn't just designed to be bumped up in speed on a moment's notice. Despite being better than ZAS, it still is a tax on the server in terms of calculations. Increasing the speed even a little bit is going to have a large impact (negative) on server performance.

 

It's already a bit too fast, currently (2x the normal speed) and it definitely shows in terms of server performance during large scale depressurization/flooding/etc.

 

Explosive decomp, insta-fill/drain rooms (ZAS) and what we currently have (gas flowing) are mutually exclusive.

 

[Fj45]

 

I have said this before but I'll say it again.

 

ZAS was great in its "impact". Breaches sending people flying and all that.

But it was completely broken in everything else.

 

Its a bit of a catch 22, no atmos system will really be perfect. (unless the game had a huge overhaul/remake.)

 

[orelbon]

What are the Pros and cons of ZAS and LINDA?

[Fj45]

 

Uhhh....well thats a long one...

 

I'll speak in overalls. LINDA has better performance, is easier to code (ZAS completely wrecked fire based weapons, and chemical reactions couldn't do their job.), has less bugs and has far better balance in general.

 

[necaladun]

 

The real problem I've found is how easy it is to just...walk or run past a breach. Or through it even!

 

If the processing speed isn't that tweakable - how about the rate at which pressure is lost to breaches?

 

[M3hillus]

If only there was a method where ZAS and LINDA were combined. Hear me out. When It comes to the minor stuff, IE regular atmos, LINDA does the thing. But for when space tiles are involved, the ZAS area calculation is done on the room instead.

[Plotron]

 

That LINDA/ZAS combo sounds promising, but you have to make it smart enough to work as intended.

 

Either way, I don't see anything like that coming in the nearest (1 year) future. LINDA feels ridiculously easy to handle.

 

Plus, I find lack of feedback regarding certain tiles and their life support to be awkward. Move one meter and start freezing up! Can be partly attributed to how slowly paced LINDA is.

 

ZAS had its own share of bugs, but whatever.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

The real problem I've found is how easy it is to just...walk or run past a breach. Or through it even!

 

If the processing speed isn't that tweakable - how about the rate at which pressure is lost to breaches?

 

Processing speed IS the rate at which pressure is lost during breaches. How often gas moves will inevitably make the gas pressure equalize sooner---but your CPU cycles are going to go up by a large margin if you increase it. A big draw of why we switched with LINDA was increased performance during large scale depressurizations, plasma fires, etc. You're going to end up wiping this out, completely (and make day to day processing worse) if you increase its processing speed.

 

One thing worth pointing out is that depressurized rooms drop in temperature now, meaning that areas that do depressurize end up becoming quite deadly without a suit (because the temp slows you down AND causes damage...which in turn makes you take even more pressure/oxygen damage).

 

There are a few issues that need to be handled with LINDA in terms of behavior---if you find something odd, please report it on the Git; if we don't know what it is, we can't move forward to fix it.

 

[Fj45]

And remember, cold/oxy/pressure damage can all be re-balanced.

[necaladun]

 

The real problem I've found is how easy it is to just...walk or run past a breach. Or through it even!

 

If the processing speed isn't that tweakable - how about the rate at which pressure is lost to breaches?

 

Processing speed IS the rate at which pressure is lost during breaches.

 

How often is this? Once a tic/second/minute etc?

 

What I mean by the rate is not how often it updates, but how much pressure is lost. With a breach you'll have one square 0 kPa, one at 101. After one process cycle, what will the 101 one be?

 

[Fox McCloud]

Pretty sure that would involve tinkering with the base calculations of LINDA---which is even more dangerous than messing with how quickly it processes.

[Fj45]

 

http://imgur.com/a/xnFgb

 

This is something I have been working on to make LINDA sliiightly more interesting and deadly. All I need to do now is get it into a better format, polish it up and find a coder insane enough to attempt this.

 

[BiberDark]

 

Linda is in my oppinion far to easy. On my old station some years ago (Titan Station). I set the old atmos to, I think it was bay Zas, Extreme and still find it easy. Do you know the scene from Alien, where Ripleys Babyalien got sucked out through a 5cm hole in the wall. So it should be! For the complainers: adapt or die!

 

 

 

 

[spoiler2][/spoiler2]

 

[Fj45]

I have already explained why ZAS just doesn't work.

[BiberDark]

 

I didn´t say you should get ZAZ back, but you should make Linda way more agressive.

 

People should think about opening a door or window to space, without proper equipment. Because that is highly dangerous in reality. I dont know how fast a room would be without atmosphere if there is a missing wall (3-5 seconds depending on the size of the hole). Not to mention the temprature drop to -200C° or more.

It should suck you to the leak in an area about 5 fields at least, to be real. Depending on the difference in air pressure and hole size.

There should be more magnetic shoes for enginnering ,too.

Also this would make Atmos more needed, to seal and repressure areas within the station in combination with engineers.

 

It's ridiculously easy to open a door walk through a room/maintainance wihtout air and leave it again on the other side. No wonder that those things will be ignored by the playerbase.

Civ:i Oh look a meteor! --> Open the door and make a visit.

 

PS: Door Timmings should be shorter. They stay open forever.

 

[fludd12]

An interesting, if likely hard to implement without extensive coding, solution would be to make LINDA calculations on groups of 2x2 tiles, which would "speed" LINDA calculations up, lessen lag, and improve some aspects of realism that people are complaining about, without completely removing the gameplay elements we know and love.

[orelbon]

 

An interesting, if likely hard to implement without extensive coding, solution would be to make LINDA calculations on groups of 2x2 tiles, which would "speed" LINDA calculations up, lessen lag, and improve some aspects of realism that people are complaining about, without completely removing the gameplay elements we know and love.

This is actually the best suggestion iv read, is it even possible?

 

[ArgyleSweatShop]

I really like the suggestion of switching back to ZAS but thats not an option

[Fj45]

 

ZAS had great impact,but was completely broken in regards to everything else.

 

LINDA completely lacks impact but atleast it works. Fire fighting is possible. Incendiary weapons are possible. The atmos system isn't just "and now you die."

 

[orelbon]

Hah lol "and now you die"