Remove Surgery Menu for Autopsy

[Shadeykins]

Bringing this back to life.

* Make the surgery table in the autopsy room an autopsy table.

* Autopsy table can only perform autopsies, no menu pops up which reduces each step by two clicks.

* This results in 22 less clicks per autopsy (yes, that's literally how many clicks this pop-up menu adds for autopsies).

OR

* Remove the surgery menu entirely and go back to how surgery used to function (which was intuitive and not hand-holdy).

Edited March 22, 2017 by Shadeykins

[ZN23X]

I wish autopsies were just more...necessary. Early on I played coroner a few times. Did autopsy reports where I wrote the cause of death, signed it, attached a photo for EVERY corpse that came in. I prepped and tagged every body appropriately. Even stored all thier stuff in lockers and returned thier IDs and PDAs to the HOP. 

Was super excited that security might need the reports at some point but every shift it resulted in me carrying a folder of lots of effort that nobody was ever gonna see or need to the shuttle.

It was sometimes interesting RP wise but I lost the drive to do the detailed reports.

Edited March 23, 2017 by ZN23X

[Shadeykins]

Part of that drive also comes from a menu that literally doubles your work per autopsy.

 

Autopsies are exceedingly relevant. If security doesn't want them, ignore them. Take important autopsies that suggest evidence of traitorous activity right to the Captain.

[Love-To-Hug]

I really hate this suggestion, I'll be honest with you. This is major code snowflaking (and with that comes bugs) just to save two clicks.

The real problem with autopsy is it usually doesn't reveal much that the detective's scanner doesn't already tell you. Only when the patient has died mysteriously is it ever useful (such as figuring out what chemicals were in the patient's body).

If you want autopsies to be more useful, expand the amount of information autopsies can tell you - stuff the detective's scanner can't tell you. What weapons were used to kill the patient, for instance.

Saving clicks isn't going to do anything on its own, but if you were going to do this, I'd make it so starting surgery with an autopsy scanner makes it 'autoselect' autopsy surgery and you can jump straight to making the incision.

Edited March 23, 2017 by Love-To-Hug

[Cidolfus]

Doesn't it already show what was used to cause the damage?

[Anticept]

It saves much more than 2 clicks. Usually you have to autopsy multiple body parts. If you do a true and full autopsy, that's 11 unnecessary menus.

[SomeGuy9283]

27 minutes ago, Anticept said:

It saves much more than 2 clicks. Usually you have to autopsy multiple body parts. If you do a true and full autopsy, that's 11 unnecessary menus.

True, but given how autopsies take no great amount of skill and the risk to reward ratio is so incredibly low(as in there usually is no great hurry), I think that's warranted.

[PhantasmicDream]

the forensic scanner only shows who's blood and prints may be on the body, and fibers from what ever clothing the person is wearing.  
With the autopsy you get what's inside the person, who what they were stabbed with.

I'd love to see more Detectives and Coroners working together.

 

But really, i do miss how nice doing autopsies were before,  I don't think it's really a big deal having these extra clicks. 

[Dinarzad]

Autopsies give you the probable source of the damage, any chems present inside of them at time of death and the possible Cause of Said death.
If someone was beaten into crit and left to suffocate or if they flat out beat them to death. Combined with a Detective's forensics, you usually get a pretty damn good picture of who did what. The only problem is sec usually doesn't wait on those reports and by the time the Coroner does his job, Sec has already moved on.

Which is partially why shortening autopsy time is kind of ideal, because then it can be done in that 10 minute holding window security has for suspects without taking forever and leaving said person locked in a room for a millenia.

[ZN23X]

I'd just like to see how the autopsy will help the investigation. Let's take this example:

Dead body is found. Detective scans it. Fibers from medical hardsuit and black gloves. No DNA, no fingerprints. Not much to go off. So we know we are looking for someone potentially in a medical hardsuit with black gloves. Autopsy reveals the additional info that the death was caused by an energy sword. What additional info was revealed that will help determine who did it? If someone was seen with a real energy sword we would arrest them anyways even if they hadn't used it to kill anyone.

Security pretty much only has a strong lead to go off if they get DNA or fingerprints. The type of weapon that killed someone doesn't really help unless someone is walking around waving the weapon around. If the weapon is a common item (hatchet, fire extinguisher, etc) anyone could get thier hands on one, if it's uncommon it's already contraband and illegal if we find someone who has it. Most of the time sec already has a name and it's just a matter of finding the person wherever they are hiding, especially because cloning sickness isn't mandatory (which I wish it was...but let's face it admins got enough crap to deal with and this would be one more thing they'd have to police). Half of victims wake up and are like "SO AND SO KILLED ME!"

Don't get me wrong I'd LOVE for autopsies to be more important. If they could reveal DNA of the attacker they'd help. Or something more? Dunno...

Edited March 23, 2017 by ZN23X

[Shadeykins]

13 hours ago, Love-To-Hug said:

I really hate this suggestion, I'll be honest with you. This is major code snowflaking (and with that comes bugs) just to save two clicks.

The real problem with autopsy is it usually doesn't reveal much that the detective's scanner doesn't already tell you. Only when the patient has died mysteriously is it ever useful (such as figuring out what chemicals were in the patient's body).

If you want autopsies to be more useful, expand the amount of information autopsies can tell you - stuff the detective's scanner can't tell you. What weapons were used to kill the patient, for instance.

Saving clicks isn't going to do anything on its own, but if you were going to do this, I'd make it so starting surgery with an autopsy scanner makes it 'autoselect' autopsy surgery and you can jump straight to making the incision.

1) Clearly you've never done much programming. It would literally just be a table that calls the autopsy surgery function directly while they're laying on it. That's almost 0 "snowflake" code. In C++ it would be written out as a check just prior to the menu being called. For example

if table == "autopsy table"

{

     proc function(); //in this case, the function for autopsy surgery

}

else;

This already occurs since the code is already set up to check tables... Particularly if you're on a standard table, a rollerbed, a surgery table, or an abductor table. You really have absolutely no point here because it involves absolutely no "snowflaking". It's an addition of *maybe* 6 lines of code, and the map already references this particular table as autopsy_table.

2) Tells you plenty, especially if the person was killed by something innocuous that you may not expect. You can pick up on changelings, vampires, and other antags via autopsy. This is an entirely separate matter from this suggestion though, anyways.

3) It saves 22 clicks, by removing 11 menus that pop up (as you have to autopsy every part of the body to get a full picture). This is a reduction from 56, to 34 clicks. That's almost 50%. Autopsies don't get done because they're so damn tedious, and this is one of the reasons why I neglect to play coroner. What used to be something done in a reasonable time frame now requires severe corner cutting, or the entire shift being dedicated to just one thing.

4) This isn't a suggestion about "making autopsies more useful", it's a QOL suggestion to remove pointless tedium.

5) See above. It's also not very intuitive to have to hold the scanner while doing the incisions, especially since you have to do filing, inject the body with preservatives, take pictures, and label the morgue trays. You're already juggling an innumerable amount of things in your hands. In fact, having it check for the scanner in your hand is likely even MORE code than what I've suggested. Again, see #1.

6) People shouldn't be doing surgery in an autopsy room either, which this change supports.

6 hours ago, Anticept said:

It saves much more than 2 clicks. Usually you have to autopsy multiple body parts. If you do a true and full autopsy, that's 11 unnecessary menus.

22 clicks, as stated above. 11 menus, 2 clicks each (Autopsy, and then OK). Two more clicks for starting and stopping the incision, for a total of 44. Then scanning each limb and printing the report brings it to 56.

5 hours ago, PhantasmicDream said:

But really, i do miss how nice doing autopsies were before,  I don't think it's really a big deal having these extra clicks. 

It isn't, but QOL changes are simple to do and there's almost never a reason not to do them. It's just pointless tedium.

5 hours ago, ZN23X said:

-snip-

Not even remotely what this suggestion is about, but I'd love to see another suggestion on expanding autopsies.

[Anticept]

One thing to consider: If the autopsy table is destroyed, how do we replace it?

Maybe the autopsy scanner should be the device that triggers the "autopsy surgery", and then you just click each body part. Still somewhat tedious, but a lot better than 11 freaking menus.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Anticept

[Tayswift]

Autopsies are decently useful right now for confirming cause of death. For example, I always find bodies in space, and it's useful to be able to tell if the victim died purely of exposure to the vacuum, likely indicating an accident, or were injured and incapacitated before being thrown out an airlock. This is something a real life medical examiner does, which is pretty cool (fun fact, in the US, coroners are often elected and don't require medical degrees, and aren't actually responsible for performing autopsies most of the time).

Other things real life medical examiners/forensic anthropologists do is identify mangled or decomposed bodies. I don't know if anyone here's seen the show Bones, but it might be interesting if we took the body identification role from the detective and gave it to the coroner, or at least allowed the coroner to identify dead bodies. I remember once I was trying to figure out who an unknown I picked up was, and was surprised I couldn't do it via autopsy. Basically, doing an autopsy should be as exciting as this (Bones season 12 spoilers)

[ZN23X]

I'll try to think of some ideas on how to make autopsies more important and make a separate post. Didn't mean to hijack ?

[Love-To-Hug]

Shadeykins you just literally decribed snowflaked code, something the maintainers hate.

[Jovaniph]

On 3/24/2017 at 1:03 AM, Anticept said:

One thing to consider: If the autopsy table is destroyed, how do we replace it?

Maybe the autopsy scanner should be the device that triggers the "autopsy surgery", and then you just click each body part. Still somewhat tedious, but a lot better than 11 freaking menus.

That is actually not a bad idea and would seem much easier to implement. IPC repair already does this when you use a screwdriver. Maybe something like holding the scanner on one hand the a scalpel on the other. The same way when you cauterize a wound.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Jovaniph

[Purpose2]

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6937

[ZN23X]

17 hours ago, Purpose2 said:

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6937

Now we start a new post to make autopsies more useful. Well done @Shadeykins! You suggested this and helped it happen with the quickness.

[Shadeykins]

On 2017-03-24 at 6:15 PM, Love-To-Hug said:

Shadeykins you just literally decribed snowflaked code, something the maintainers hate.

I suggest you take a programming course, because even a cursory understanding of programming will tell you how easy making a check like this is.

"snowflake code" is an entirely subjective thing and is often assigned to features people don't like.

This PR is a tidier solution though, and removes 44 clicks instead of 22 (even better) thus addressing the QoL problem.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Shadeykins

[Doukan]

In a similar vein, it''d be great if cause of death took a little bit of effort to accurately determine.

Afterall, everybody knows exactly what an "organic needle" is and to get that line you need exactly one click.

[Love-To-Hug]

14 hours ago, Shadeykins said:

I suggest you take a programming course, because even a cursory understanding of programming will tell you how easy making a check like this is.

"snowflake code" is an entirely subjective thing and is often assigned to features people don't like.

This PR is a tidier solution though, and removes 44 clicks instead of 22 (even better) thus addressing the QoL problem.

That is remarkably condescending, especially when you take into consideration that the maintainer said he wasn't changing the surgery specifically for the reasons I stated:

Quote

It would be way too snowflakey to give specific exceptions to surgery, but we can go with the next best thing: removal of the surgery aspects of autopsies.

That said, this was a clever solution that I don't think any of us thought of. But my point about why your initial suggestion could not be implemented still stands.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Love-To-Hug

[Shadeykins]

18 hours ago, Shadeykins said:

I "snowflake code" is an entirely subjective thing and is often assigned to features people don't like.

Primary point is here. The two lines of code involved in Tajaran glovesnipping was "snowflake".

Snowflake was also used as an excuse when the PDA slot was slated for removal, because adding a button elsewhere was "snowflake".

I can draw up a hundred more examples of this phrase being used for things people simply don't like if you're really interested.

Either way, it's a throw-away phrase and the misappropriation of it is immediately evident to anyone who's learned to program in just about any standard language. I gave you a concrete example of how heinously easy it would be to implement the suggestion line by line, though the solution presented achieves the intended result to a greater effect (which is the only important takeaway here).

Both solutions more or less involved the addition or subtraction of a check, and both involve bypassing a menu. In the PR's case it removes a requirement (checking if the autopsy surgery has been performed) and likely also axes the autopsy surgery from the surgery menu (thus touching on the autopsy scanner, and surgery scripts). In the original suggestion's case it adds one check, and touches one script. This is the crux of why I asked you to do some programming, because checks like these (else if ladders) are the absolute first thing you learn to do outside of outputting text to a screen and statement structure (where brackets go). BASIC is an easy language to start with, though lots of people find python, LUA, and C++ very intuitive as a lot of spooky script (dreamed up scripts like BYOND) are built from the logic/organization of these systems.

Whether or not someone thinks one way or the other is "way too snowflakey" is irrelevant here, both are viable implementations. Again, "snowflake" is a throwaway term which seems to refer to a stylistic choice in programming rather than the efficacy or viability of certain solutions. In this instance we're literally talking about checking, or not checking a single variable.

I doubt you are familiar with it, but the age-old joke about C++ programmers seething at their coworkers who learned Javascript first fits nicely here.

This is the crux of why I've been responding to you and telling you to try your hand at programming, because you genuinely seem to not understand the basic underpinnings of how programming works.

Either way, this suggestion has been addressed and something in the vein of it is on the GitHub now.

[IK3I]

4 hours ago, Shadeykins said:

 Again, "snowflake" is a throwaway term which seems to refer to a stylistic choice in programming rather than the efficacy or viability of certain solutions. In this instance we're literally talking about checking, or not checking a single variable.

Snowflaking code actually refers to putting something in that requires hooks and checks from a bunch of unrelated things to make it work. Like the pod code is slightly snowflakey in that it has to have it's own subset in the main damage and AI functions rather than independent ones as an example. In other words, Snowflaking is just another word for poor coding practices that act against OOP, the route that this codebase has decided to fully embrace, and ultimately lead to inconsistency and spaghetti code.

 

That being said, it is commonly used as a cringy catchall for content that requires changes that feel different in game far more than they are in code. In this case, when people say snowflaky, it would be fair to say that it's the feel of it rather than the real details of the implementation. while this is ultimately valid criticism, it's being attributed to the wrong thing and using the wrong term in the wrong context to boot. 

 

On a side note, can confirm, learned C++ first, I fully understand that joke. Halp me.

[Purpose2]

This is the suggestion forum, and a suggestion thread.

This is not the coder forum, and not a code thread.

 

Take your complaining about 'Snowflakery' elsewhere, it doesn't belong here... this is for concepts.

[IK3I]

Part of suggestion threads and discussion is potential implementation routes. Saying that code related discussion should not occur in a feature request (even a QoL feature request) is far more detrimental to topic and discussion than any code related tangent that might arise...

 

The only difference between this particular thread and another is that this one took a more technical approach in a very lose sense, that ultimately devolved into a shouting match over the overuse of the term Snowflake. I'm of the opinion that this topic has entirely derailed at this point because of the conflicting viewpoints and it should probably just be left to rot away in the depths of the forums as a warning to everyone about the risks of using terms without understanding them, or their connotations.