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+--- Thread: Guide to designing/mapping shuttles (/showthread.php?tid=197)
Guide to designing/mapping shuttles - Cael_Aislinn - 02-10-2016
Greetings spacefarers! I am designing shuttles to be the goto choice for exploring and tooling around the system for space adventurers with the right balance of speed, range and transport capacity. With the latest update to the test server an early version of the shuttles is now available for testing. For said testing purposes, I've done up two basic premade shuttles based off the SS13 Arrivals Shuttle and Nuke Ops ship. As they are quite large, test pilots are recommended to spawn them on the NORTH or EAST edges of the ship hull as they spawn with the bottom left corner on the player.
I've designed the controls to be fairly intuitive but I'll have a quick word here. Use the second view mode to see the immediate surroundings of the shuttle and third view mode to see up to 7 (14?) sectors in the distance (the first viewmode returns you to normal). The arrow buttons control movement and turning. Movement forward and backwards is pixel based and fairly slow, while strafing is tilebased and has a 3 second cooldown. Turning is locked in 90 degree increments as the interior of the shuttle turns with the exterior. Use cruise mode to travel long distances in a hurry and maglock down (when you are touching enough metal walls and floors) for ease of loading/unloading.
Mapping Turfs
There are 3 turfs you want to use exclusively to map the interior of the shuttles. The differences are in opacity, density and sprite as well as what turf spawns when the shuttle is destroyed. You must use the 3 types so the shuttle can correctly track the status of it's interior. For "different" turf types just modify the sprite and stats. The types are:
/turf/simulated/shuttle/hull (dense and opaque, spawns steel walls on destruction)
/turf/simulated/shuttle/hull/window (dense but not opaque, spawns rwindow+grille combo on destruction)
/turf/simulated/shuttle/hull/floor (neither dense or opaque, spawns tiled floors on destruction)
Engines
Make sure that sufficient /obj/structure/shuttle/engine have been placed. Shuttles have a max speed of 50 pixels per second but more engines will increase the rate of acceleration. Direction and where they are placed is irrelevant, and they're purely props otherwise (for now).
Contents
Shuttles have full atmos, lighting and power simulation so make sure you place appropriate supporting objects (lights, wiring, an APC and/or SMES, spare atmos canisters, atmos alarm etc). Use ordinary station airlocks as well instead of dummy unpowered airlocks. It's a good idea to map out a "cabin" area as well, where you will place the shuttle helm /obj/machinery/computer/shuttle_helm which is necessary to pilot the shuttle. Make sure to leave a little space for some tables and maybe a copilot so that there's room for future control consoles to be developed. I also strongly suggest using the Halo themed airlocks at /obj/machinery/door/airlock/halo and /obj/machinery/door/airlock/multi_tile/halo
Entry/exit
In order to enter or a shuttle when it is not maglocked, you will need to place some instances of /obj/machinery/door/airlock/shuttle around the outside of the hull. They function as ordinary airlocks, but will allow entry at the corresponding point on the outside of the hull as well as exit from inside to that point outside (via the "Enter" and "Exit" verbs on the Vehicle tab). While the shuttle is maglocked players can enter and exit through the airlocks like normal, and eg cargo loading flaps and conveyors can function properly too. Remember to place windows so people inside can look out!
Size and dimensions
For technical and gameplay reasons, please restrict your shuttle interiors to maximum dimensions of 15x15 (and probably at least 4x4 or 5x5 in size). Also try to design your shuttle to be either rectangular or square to avoid invisible walls around the outside of the hull (the shuttle bounding box has to be either rectangular or square due to technical reasons, so design the interior accordingly).
Creating the shuttle sprite
Finally, as the shuttle will be the same size on the outside as the inside (no Tardis here) a sprite will be needed matching the full dimensions of the interior. Say your shuttle was 10x10, as each turf is 32 pixels by 32 pixels the sprite for that shuttle would need to be 320 pixels by 320 pixels. This is a decent job of work for any spriter (especially SS13 spriters who are used to working in miniature) so I have developed a shortcut to produce an iconic and reasonably decent looking sprite with those dimensions. Simply create an identical map to your interior but strip it of everything except for external airlocks, engines, walls and windows. Replace all floors with walls (to represent the "roof"). Disable the area overlay in the editor then take a screenshot of your finished top-down shuttle to represent the sprite! Remember to crop and/or scale and/or photoshop your screenshot appropriately so that the image matches the proper dimensions and looks cool.
Send everything you have created to me for final checks along with a description of the shuttle's purpose and I'll see about getting it onto the server. If you have any queries or requests for assistance you can come see me also.