Cable Art

[Carn]

Would anybody miss cable art?

Cable art is the way you place wire cables in the game. It allows you to do those weird swooping curves and such, with multiple cables on one turf. Pretty much all it's good for is drawing crappy pictures that don't look very good (crayons are better).

The reason I ask, is because I would like to restrict them to one cable per turf and have their sprite update automatically depending on whether it has any neighbouring cables (similar to how windows and walls work).

This would allow me to streamline the powernetwork code significantly, and hopefully, allow me to add some nice features to it. Such as diverting power to/from specific departments.

If people actually use cable art, I could add some simple shapes/lines to crayons so you can draw big pictures with them, as an alternative.

[Atheist Sex God]

Cable art shows up once every fifty rounds or so. I don't really think anyone would think twice about it.

[Fiksowanie]

Jan 28, 2014 6:05:44 GMT -5 Carn said:

The reason I ask, is because I would like to restrict them to one cable per turf and have their sprite update automatically depending on whether it has any neighbouring cables (similar to how windows and walls work).

I agree with generally everything else you've said (wiring is a massive pain to anyone that's tried to do it) but this is a major no-no. It's important to have multiple wires per block or wiring solars as well as multiple parts of the station and the solars would become impossible/very inefficient.

If you're talking about allowing multiple branches per block, I'm all more for that, but it becomes a nuisance when two or more parallel wires are running next to each other like they are near the SMES and takes a lot of user choice out of wiring.

[derpthestewpidgoat]

I'm not too sure about this, but I hope that if you do this, cables are actually POSSIBLE to get into certain places, like when an asshole cuts a wire going into an SMES, its almost impossible to fix that because you can't get *on* the SMES so you can place down the wire and connect it back together.

[Fiksowanie]

You don't actually need to stand on the tile to lay the cable there. As long as you can reach the ground at the corners it is fairly easy to rewire the SMES.

[Zebidian]

I'd like to be the first to suggest that perhaps we should re-code the wires so that the power running through each piece will only supply power to a connecting wire of its colour. My knowledge of SS13's code is little, but if making more efficient connections without hogging up power off another power-grid/APC, would be solved by this new concept, perhaps it should be implemented? I think it would also be nice to add a cable painter if this change was added, that way you would always have a sufficient amount of each colour when if you run out of one particular colour.

*edit* Matching colour cables should also automatically connect to prevent "cable knots" and shitty wiring jobs. 

[Fiksowanie]

Feb 14, 2014 2:28:21 GMT -5 Zebidian said:

I'd like to be the first to suggest that perhaps we should re-code the wires so that the power running through each piece will only supply power to a connecting wire of its colour. My knowledge of SS13's code is little, but if making more efficient connections without hogging up power off another power-grid/APC, would be solved by this new concept, perhaps it should be implemented? I think it would also be nice to add a cable painter if this change was added, that way you would always have a sufficient amount of each colour when if you run out of one particular colour.

*edit* Matching colour cables should also automatically connect to prevent "cable knots" and shitty wiring jobs. 

What you're suggesting actually complicates the code as it doesn't change the powernet at all, it only adds a script to connect same-color cables. EDIT: simplifies code because it gets rid of another set of instructions for placing on already-existent cables.

This is a great idea. On /tg/ there's an airlock paintgun that can easily be modified to change cable coil colors.

[derpthestewpidgoat]

I think its already possible to make a cable wire go over other cable wires without them connecting, but its been a while so I might not remember correctly. But yes I do think this might make it a bit easier, we need a simpler way of wiring anyway. *I still want a more complex way of producing energy, singulo is too simple IMO*

[Zebidian]

Feb 15, 2014 15:20:53 GMT -5 derpthestewpidgoat said:

I think its already possible to make a cable wire go over other cable wires without them connecting, but its been a while so I might not remember correctly. But yes I do think this might make it a bit easier, we need a simpler way of wiring anyway. *I still want a more complex way of producing energy, singulo is too simple IMO*

Yes, I would love to see this too. Perhaps as a reward for highly advanced Blue Space research there could be some sort of alternative energy source perhaps less deadly but just as efficient. Or maybe have something that you must collect in space, like old alien tech, but it has a random spawn every time that way it requires effort to create this power source.

[derpthestewpidgoat]

Feb 18, 2014 0:59:14 GMT -5 Zebidian said:

Feb 15, 2014 15:20:53 GMT -5 derpthestewpidgoat said:

I think its already possible to make a cable wire go over other cable wires without them connecting, but its been a while so I might not remember correctly. But yes I do think this might make it a bit easier, we need a simpler way of wiring anyway. *I still want a more complex way of producing energy, singulo is too simple IMO*

Or maybe have something that you must collect in space, like old alien tech, but it has a random spawn every time that way it requires effort to create this power source.

No please no, that is already bad enough looking for just the one starship part.

[Carn]

To clarify:

Currently, if you want a fork in a wire, you have to lay another cable on it.

I want to make it so there is only one cable per tile. I'm thinking it would behave mostly the same as how it does now. Except, that when you go to place the second wire on the turf (to make that fork), it will just update the existing cable so it would look like the current wire-placing system. So you will still be able to branch wires in multiple directions.

The main thing I was asking, was whether anybody would miss the weird swooping curves and diagonals. Because if I restrict it to cardinals (NSEW) I will have (2^4)-1=15 sprites as opposed to (2^8)-1=255 sprites (!!!)

It's simply to speed up network rebuilds slightly and simplify code.

tl;dr:
You wouldn't be able to have two cables on the same turf.
You could still 'branch/fork' wires.
Adjacent wires wouldn't autojoin (changed my mind).
You would never get 'knots', i.e. it'd always appear as if you wired it the pretty way.
No diagonal wires