Terror Spiders!

[Kyet]

 

What? Are we making it a thing? Could the spiders breath in space (they shouldn't)? Should I start a wiki page?

 

So many questions so little time...

 

EDIT: making the wiki page...

 

Yes, the plan is to do a PR and get it merged in once I'm satisfied with it.

It is taking some time because it is complicated.

For comparison, Xenomorphs reproduce in one way (facehuggers), have 7 types (facehugger, larva, drone, hunter, sentinel, queen, empress), and one event.

Terror Spiders reproduce in 3 ways, have 10 types (red/green/gray/white/black/purple/mother/queen/prince/empress), 3 events, a gateway mission that revolves around them, and are designed to have AI smart enough to be a genuine threat to crew even without player control (though equally, they're also playable).

Terror Spiders will not be as polished as Xenos upon release. But they should be at least as deep as Xenos are, mechanically, and just as interesting, both to fight and to play. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway.

 

Yes, the spiders can hold their breath in space. RL spiders can survive being underwater for literally hours. These are space spiders. To have space kill them seems silly (and bad gameplay, it encourages people do do things like bomb areas / depressurize rooms to try to kill them).

 

As for the wiki, check out: http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/User:Tzo

Not final, but it is where I've been working on the documentation I will add as a proper wiki page when they're merged.

 

Looking forward to this man, can't wait.

 

 

They're looking forward to it too.

 

[Kevak]

I recommend that you blacklist certain rooms so the AI spiders don't enter/hide in them. Namely Cryodorms.

[Kyet]

 

I recommend that you blacklist certain rooms so the AI spiders don't enter/hide in them. Namely Cryodorms.

There's a partial blacklist already - queens, for example, won't nest in hallways, or in any room where a hostile is visible.

 

I'm not going to arbitrarily ban spiders from ever entering the cryodorms room, though, because:

A) If the person is actually SSD, they should be in the cryo pod, which spiders can't open

B) If they're not actually SSD, they're just AFK, they're a valid target.

 

I might code in something that makes spiders consider SSD players to not be valid targets, however, and prevents player-controlled spiders attacking anyone who is SSD.

 

[Kevak]

 

I mean more of stuff along the lines of:

 

Player opens door to cryodorms>Spider is sitting in there waiting to ambush someone because they see the room as a valid ambushpoint>Player who wants to cryo gets mauled.

 

[Kyet]

 

I mean more of stuff along the lines of:

 

Player opens door to cryodorms>Spider is sitting in there waiting to ambush someone because they see the room as a valid ambushpoint>Player who wants to cryo gets mauled.

 

Thoughts:

1) If a player-controlled spider is willing to do that, blocking attacks in cryodorms won't solve it. They could just ambush people on their way to cryodorms.

2) An AI spider can already be stopped from doing that by simply welding the vent in cryo, same as with any other area. If the vent in an area is welded, they can't ventcrawl to that area.

3) People who are going to cryodorms probably don't care if they die, as they're leaving the round anyway.

4) Putting in a code check for this one specific room would create weird situations, e.g: spider chasing someone through the halls, player leads them to cryodorms, suddenly spider cannot attack them for no obvious reason.

5) As far as I know, there are no other monsters, player-controlled or not, which have a hard-coded check preventing them from attacking in that one specific room.

 

I have, however, put in a check that prevents spiders (AI or player) from targeting or attacking SSD players.

This only applies to characters controlled by players who are logged out. IE: who generate the "Probably suffering from SSD." message if you try to shake them.

Simply AFKing in the round will not earn you any mercy, because you are still logged in.

This check exists to prevent someone whose internet drops out from dying to spiders while they are disconnected.

 

[Kyet]

 

Update 10: https://github.com/Kyep/Paradise/commit ... d300646521

- Updated some black spider sprites

- Prevented white spider victims in gateway from bringing infection to main station, using new, better method

- Refactored lots of code

- Bugfix for spiders getting other spiders as enemies

- Bugfix for failed faction inheritance

- Bugfix for spiders getting stuck in vents.

- Expanded guide/orders help system

- Merged all attack code, fixing various attack code bugs

- Made away mission queen continue spawning spiders after maximum IF spiders are dying

- Refactored HiveCommand/etc code to share between queen and Empress, eliminating mostly-duplicate code

- Fixed bug with breaking cameras/firelocks

- Fixed awaymission teleproofing

- Fixed lots of minor issues with awaymission, found during "try to cheese this!" testing

 

Update 11: https://github.com/Kyep/Paradise/commit ... 36f6c00c35

- Reverted to update 9 map file, then re-did all the map changes in update 10. This was the only way to get around the permanent map corruption that sometimes happens in BYOND.

- Eliminated spider chittering.

- Fixed bug where deadly white/black types could almost never inject venom. Also added notification of which body part they are targeting.

- Added feature where grays stay on vents (cloaked) if possible.

- Added verb for grays to quickly set up lots of webs.

- Simplified Gray cloaking

- Increased # of spiders queens will spawn by default, to 25.

- Made destroying a web that a gray has built with AOE web, have a chance to decloak the gray.

- Made grays move a lot slower while cloaked.

 

[liran424]

 

What? Are we making it a thing? Could the spiders breath in space (they shouldn't)? Should I start a wiki page?

 

So many questions so little time...

 

EDIT: making the wiki page...

 

Yes, the plan is to do a PR and get it merged in once I'm satisfied with it.

It is taking some time because it is complicated.

For comparison, Xenomorphs reproduce in one way (facehuggers), have 7 types (facehugger, larva, drone, hunter, sentinel, queen, empress), and one event.

Terror Spiders reproduce in 3 ways, have 10 types (red/green/gray/white/black/purple/mother/queen/prince/empress), 3 events, a gateway mission that revolves around them, and are designed to have AI smart enough to be a genuine threat to crew even without player control (though equally, they're also playable).

Terror Spiders will not be as polished as Xenos upon release. But they should be at least as deep as Xenos are, mechanically, and just as interesting, both to fight and to play. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway.

 

Yes, the spiders can hold their breath in space. RL spiders can survive being underwater for literally hours. These are space spiders. To have space kill them seems silly (and bad gameplay, it encourages people do do things like bomb areas / depressurize rooms to try to kill them).

 

As for the wiki, check out: http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/User:Tzo

Not final, but it is where I've been working on the documentation I will add as a proper wiki page when they're merged.

 

Looking forward to this man, can't wait.

 

 

They're looking forward to it too.

 

Excellent. Just copy paste it to the terror spider wiki page when you're done and everything is implemented.

 

And the wiki team will take care of the rest.

 

[Kyet]

 

Excellent. Just copy paste it to the terror spider wiki page when you're done and everything is implemented.

 

 

That's the plan.

 

Fair warning: I'm unlikely to keep anything currently on the WiP version of http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Terror_Spider when I do the copy-over. At least in its current state, it is very inaccurate.

Examples:

 

• Access is wrong - brute force does not open everything. Their access is more correctly summed up as "anywhere with an unwelded vent", though there are some exceptions to this as well.

• Duties are misleading - "feeding" plays a minor role. Their duties could be more accurately described as "obey the queen" (if there is one), or "build a nest and kill anyone who tries to stop you" (if there isn't one).

They're not an "experimental round" / round type, they're initially going to be event-based most of the time. Yes, I do want to make them a round type of their own in future, but I need to see how they play as events (possibly admin-created events) first. I don't want to introduce an entirely new round type into the rotation unless I'm very sure it will be awesome.

They're not always an enemy, either. While they usually are, the queen can give them any orders/stances she wishes. Currently supported stances include pacifist (never fight, ever, not even in self-defense), defensive (defend yourself and other spides, but don't initiate combat otherwise), aggressive (attack all non-spider life on sight), and WAR (as aggressive, but actively seek out and exterminate bipeds).

On the "Jobs" page, their current row lists them as "Be a xeno but in spider form.". This is super misleading. While they have some mechanical similarities with xenos (hivemind aliens that ventcrawl and grow nests) they have just as many differences (e.g: no facehuggers, no weeds/creep/nest_structures, no evolving, no acid blood/spit/etc, but they do have a strict command hierarchy, a wide variety of different casts with unique mechanics and their own reproduction methods, lots of poison-based attacks, bosses, etc). I suppose they're closer to xenomorphs than they are to spiders, but playing them should feel quite different to playing xenos.

 

 

[Kyet]

 

Update 12: https://github.com/Kyep/Paradise/commit ... 7a006c7c94

 

Mini-update for the sake of Ping's awaymission testing team:

- Bugfixes for away mission doors appearing in walls. All three cases (chem lab 1 & 2, medbay maint) are fixed.

- Major rebalance for awaymissions to reward smarts (hardsuit available near start), increase self-sufficiency (UO71 medbay now has cryopod & synthflesh patches), and punish clueless zerging (giant black widows are incredibly lethal to greytide now).

- New atmospheric lighting for awaymission. Yes, its controllable.

- New story, with accompanying loot that you can take with you out of the mission.

- All spiders can now open public-access doors.

- Eliminated over-complicated "war" system, and refactored diplomatic options for queens.

- Enabled static placement of grays, without ventcrawl. This enables other people to use them in designing away missions.

- Prevented spiders from cocooning paper. Partly for awaymission balance, partly for RP reasons.

- Ensured loot that drops from spiders appears on top of, not below, their corpses. In the case of keycards, this is very important.

- Prevented ghosts from being offered control of dead spiders when they clicked on them.

- Rewrote Show Guide verb, now includes a summary of all other verbs, including rare/type-restricted verbs.

- Erased the silly AOEWeb ability of Grays. Instead, gave them better nesting AI that automatically sets up webs near their lairs - and keeps them there once they find a good nesting spot (ie: they won't nest in tiny rooms, or in places with no trap spots, or next to the queen). Player-controlled spiders also go through the nesting setup. This ensures player spiders can more conveniently build nests, but also prevents them from abusing their invisibility to cloak up near-instantly on a new vent.

- Fixed bug where ghosts were offered control of queen in awaymission, even though she's never controllable.

- Made queen poison spit respect THICKMATERIAL on chest (empress still ignores). This is a big deal as even 1-2 hits from her can have a large impact on the fight if you are not properly protected and/or carrying the right healing meds.

- Made walking into a terror web have a good chance to decloak and aggress any gray spider hiding in the vicinity. Running into the the webs *will* get you ambushed and killed.

- Removed the ability for destroying terror webs to do the same. Shooting all webs from maximum range to flush out the spiders and engage them at a safe distance no longer works. They are too smart for that now.

- Fully switched over from codersprites to Travelling Merchant's sprites for the black spider, aka: giant black widow spider. Amazing sprites. Previously, black spiders would change sprite sets as they died or faced north. Now they will look badass all the time.

 

[liran424]

 

Access is wrong - brute force does not open everything. Their access is more correctly summed up as "anywhere with an unwelded vent", though there are some exceptions to this as well.

 

fixed

 

Duties are misleading - "feeding" plays a minor role. Their duties could be more accurately described as "obey the queen" (if there is one), or "build a nest and kill anyone who tries to stop you" (if there isn't one).

This is the general roll for all terror spiders.. all terror spiders FEED ON THE LIVING FLESH... but if you say so

 

They're not an "experimental round" / round type, they're initially going to be event-based most of the time. Yes, I do want to make them a round type of their own in future, but I need to see how they play as events (possibly admin-created events) first. I don't want to introduce an entirely new round type into the rotation unless I'm very sure it will be awesome.

fixed

 

They're not always an enemy, either. While they usually are, the queen can give them any orders/stances she wishes. Currently supported stances include pacifist (never fight, ever, not even in self-defense), defensive (defend yourself and other spides, but don't initiate combat otherwise), aggressive (attack all non-spider life on sight), and WAR (as aggressive, but actively seek out and exterminate bipeds).

more then 75% of the rounds will be the queen ordering abductions... so enemy.

 

On the "Jobs" page, their current row lists them as "Be a xeno but in spider form.". This is super misleading. While they have some mechanical similarities with xenos (hivemind aliens that ventcrawl and grow nests) they have just as many differences (e.g: no facehuggers, no weeds/creep/nest_structures, no evolving, no acid blood/spit/etc, but they do have a strict command hierarchy, a wide variety of different casts with unique mechanics and their own reproduction methods, lots of poison-based attacks, bosses, etc). I suppose they're closer to xenomorphs than they are to spiders, but playing them should feel quite different to playing xenos

 

It's supposed to be something sharp, punny and describes the job in 3-4 words, give me a break. As the players will experiment with the round I'm sure will find something better.

 

[Kyet]

 

abductions

Just to clarify: Terror Spiders' reproduction is quite different to Xenomorphs'.

Xenos have to facehug people, abduct them, drag them back to a nest, and wait for them to burst.

 

On the other hand, Terror Spiders have three breeding methods, none of which involves abduction:

 

• Greens kill/incap you, then web you up and drink your blood. Once you are webbed, you cannot be moved (though you can be freed if someone destroys the cocoon - something spiders cannot do). They also have no incentive to wait on webbing you, since once they web/drink you, they can then lay eggs at any future point. Their main method of movement is vents, and they can't take bodies through vents, so the mechanics heavily discourage them from abducting people. Their incentive is to kill you and drink your blood, not abduct you.

• Whites want to infect you with spider eggs. They infect, then they run. That's what they are designed for. At most they might tranq you, but combat is a big risk for them so they want to avoid attracting attention. They're hit-and-run spiders.

Queens produce eggs over time, even if they never so much as see another mob. They're not very strong in combat, so their incentive is to find somewhere dark and quiet to hide while they build up their brood.

 

In general, terror spiders are not intended to, and don't have the mechanics to support, crew abductions.

The egglaying types cannot generally open powered doors, for example, and you can't take a body with you through a vent.

 

[liran424]

Noted

[Kyet]

 

Update 13: https://github.com/Kyep/Paradise/commit ... e19a0e7c89

- UO71: Added food vendors to the halls, and prepared food to the kitchen. No longer will explorers go hungry.

- UO71: Eliminated all the UO71 ID cards. You get basic door access by using a terminal in the second room. All other doors unlock automatically when you defeat certain spiders. No longer must you hunt around for, swap out, or otherwise fiddle with ID cards to do things.

- UO71: Deleted some filing cabinets that were causing pathing issues for spiders in Eng and Civil.

- UO71: Changed all SMES' starting charge (1.5e+006 to 5e+006) and output (7k to 25k). UO71 should no longer run out of power.

- UO71: Replaced queen chamber airlock with triple blast doors. This eliminates the chokepoint on the chamber and makes the fight much harder.

- UO71: Replaced the inner airlocks on the mother/prince chambers with rwindows. This ensures they will aggro as you walk by, IF you have opened their chambers.

- UO71: Added some more supplies to UO71 medbay.

- UO71: Added cyborg recharging station to UO71 science.

- UO71: Added purple (praetorian) spider to guard a loot item. Partly to prevent cheesing, partly to give awayteams more experience fighting them.

- UO71: Added robotic arms and legs to science divison. Only one of each, but should provide parts for replacement surgeries when awayteams are ripped limb from limb.

- Feature: Added "Toggle Debug" and "Toggle Instant" verbs for empresses. They toggle debug mode and instant growth, respectively, for all spiders. Debug tools.

- Cleanup: Made various cleanup changes aimed at preventing potential conflicts with Paradise master when I put up a PR for this.

- Balance: Changed white spider invasion event spawncount from 3 to 1. Big nerf.

- Mapping: Changed awaymissions to NOT constantly select UO71 anymore (another pre-PR change)

 

Update 14:

Merge pull from Paradise13/master, bringing the spiders codebase up-to-date with Paradise.

Necessary in order to identify and fix code conflicts between the two.

 

Update 15: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradis ... 0ef034b1c7

- UO71: Adjusted lighting throughout UO71 - should be MUCH more atmospheric now!

- Fixed bug where dead gray spiders would keep building webs.

- Fixed many bugs introduced in Update 14, where changed Paradise code caused many things to trigger compile errors:

-- Deleted all references to meat_type and meat_amount, verified spiders still don't have meat, even when butchered.

-- Deleted all references to min_oxy, max_oxy, ditto for tox, co2 and n2. Adjusted to new heat system based on atmos_requirements var.

-- Changed C.deactivate to C.toggle_cam. Verified those spiders can still break cams.

-- Updated "stance" code to "AIStatus" code. Verified queen still nests, etc.

-- Created local config/config_away_mission.txt. Allows SVT and I to change away mission config without code changes.

- Fixed issues pointed out by Tastyfish on Github

-- Absolute paths for New() in UO71 code

-- Deleted access cards

-- Changed [src.name] to [name]

-- Changed all use of: X << "..." to: to_chat(X,"...")

 

We now have a pull request, at: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4229

 

[Kyet]

 

They're looking forward to meeting you.

 

 

[Kyet]

 

There have been 10 updates since my last post.

Most of them were mini-updates, focusing on bug fixes, code refactoring, etc to make the PR go through and get these into the game.

If you want a full list, go to: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradis ... 29/commits

To voice your support, thumbs up the PR: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4229

 

To summarize some of the big changes:

1) The only source of terror spiders on the main station is now a random (late-round) event. This major event chooses the antagonist(s) randomly - it can be a white, a prince, a mother, or even the dreaded queen of terror. Infestations are now highly randomized.

2) All bosses (Queen, Prince, Mother) have been re-worked to make them more dangerous. Mothers are now aggressive by default, princes have a stun attack, and queens can save up eggs to unleash waves of spiders at once.

3) All terror spiders are no longer spawnable from xenobio/slime reactions, nor are they tamable with sentience potions. An infestation on the main station is a separate brood from the AI-controlled ones in the awaymission.

4) In-game info has been improved. Better guides, more info available when examining spiders, more communication on the spider hivemind (now default chat method for spiders), etc.

5) The away mission has been upgraded, with certain areas now dark... and with spiders waiting to leap at you from the shadows. Rarely encountered map issues have now been fixed, loot rebalanced a bit, and new challenges added.

 

[Kyet]

 

Situation:

- We're still in the queue to be merged: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4229

- Saw this today: http://i.imgur.com/I03l0Zv.png

 

[Kirbyroth]

 

Spider silk is known to be stronger then steel in tinsel strength think we can have more uses it for it other then useless cables. Perhaps some makeshift armor or combine it with plasma for a super threads to reinforce current armor or mechs.

 

Seems widows only do toxic i thinking they do something more.

 

Just some things to maybe add one the main stuff is out and working.

 

[Kyet]

 

Spider silk is known to be stronger then steel in tinsel strength think we can have more uses it for it other then useless cables. Perhaps some makeshift armor or combine it with plasma for a super threads to reinforce current armor or mechs.

 

Seems widows only do toxic i thinking they do something more.

 

Just some things to maybe add one the main stuff is out and working.

 

1) Spider silk being usable as cable has been removed. It was too generic. Instead, high-tier spiders drop medals when you kill them (no IC reason, just to ensure you get a shiny reward from killing them) and some low-tier ones can be butchered for better loot (e.g: spider carapace armor). I would like to upgrade the loot system in future, but I've been focused on bugfixes and refactoring for awhile now, in the hopes of getting this merged.

 

2) Black Widows are amongst the most lethal spiders right now. Even a single bite will kill you in 2-3 minutes. Multiple bites can bring your estimated time to live to under 30 seconds - and prevent you reaching medbay before the venom takes hold. Black terror spiders are useless against mechs, borgs, etc, but they are incredibly lethal against unprotected crew. They are one of the glass cannon types. Trust me, they don't need any more attack power.

 

[Kyet]

 

After many updates, etc, this ultimately did not work out.

 

My closing comment from the github:

Unfortunately, given what I've heard from asking around just now, I don't think the maintainers are ever going to merge this, no matter what, even assuming I kept addressing all comments.

 

So... RIP Terror Spiders.

 

If anyone on a downstream fork of Paradise wants to use my code, message me or something. I'm happy to work on it (and/or let you do so) for another codebase, I've just given up hope it will ever be merged here.

 

[LittleBigKid2000]

Press F to pay respects

[Shadeykins]

 

I still think it's a total load this didn't even get considered for merging.

 

It was a great idea when it was first pitched, it formed into something even better.

 

I was literally shocked when I got the message on server that this PR was closed, considering how long this has been in discussion and how much feedback has already been received/taken into account.

 

[saywat_the_15th]

Damn, would have been interesting.

[Ragonath]

I'm really sad that this was not implemented. It seemed like a really interesting antagonist and would have added so much more than simple NPC spiders now and then.